Screenshot thread

[Zboj Lamignat]

Very inconspicuous.

 

[Endemic]

Fun part about the graphic novel is that Woden and Horne are played by Sam Lake's parents

 

[Riskbreaker]

HL, "Signal Lost"

Spoiler

And something extra

Spoiler

Nothing to see here, move along.

Majestic piece of work, can't find any fault with it save that it ends, and ends so abruptly with quite the cocktease.

 

[Beggar]

Fun part about the graphic novel is that Woden and Horne are played by Sam Lake's parents

Credits itself made me Every name is scandinavian. For 20 years I thought muricans created it

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Fun part about the graphic novel is that Woden and Horne are played by Sam Lake's parents

Haha holy shit what

 

[Endemic]

Haha holy shit what

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0291337/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_cl_sm

Markku Järvi ... graphic novel model
Teemu Järvi ... graphic novel model
Tuula Järvi ... graphic novel model

 

[Sunri]

 

[Rincewind]

Completed the first battle eradicating terrorist rebel scum, and made it to the Second Circle of the Emperor's prestigious secret organisation. Hail Imperia!

 

[spekkio]

^
Wrong aspect ratio, newb faggit.

*Edit: I've been converted to the proper Imperial ways.

 

[Rincewind]

^
Wrong aspect ratio, newb.

Okay... because you brought it up, and to prevent the further spread of misinformation: that post of yours is patently wrong about aspect ratios.

Short version that applies to 99% of DOS games:

• In 640x480 mode pixels are perfectly square on a regular 4:3 aspect ratio VGA monitor (1:1 pixel aspect ratio), hence aspect ratio correction must not be applied. You got this part right.
  
• On the same 4:3 aspect ratio VGA screen, pixels are not square in 320x200 mode, but have a pixel aspect ratio of 1:1.2. Therefore aspect ratio correction must be applied! (FYI, you need 320x240 or 320x256 to achieve square pixel aspect ratio with an image that fills most of a 4:3 AR screen)

There's no ifs or buts, and it's not based on "preference" as some people mistakenly believe... Everybody who had a standard 4:3 VGA monitor in the 90s (so literally everybody) experienced 1:1.2 pixel ratio in 320x200 mode, so you always must enable aspect ratio correction for 320x200 in DOSBox. DOSBox Staging that I'm using by the way always does that by default because that's pretty much the only correct way.

About your comments in that post of yours, it doesn't matter that the blue squares aren't perfectly square if you measure them with a ruler when aspect-ratio corrected. The artist most likely didn't give much fuck, he just drew a square with equal sized sides (in number of pixels) and called it a day. What's much more important is that the human faces and characters look correct when aspect-ratio correction is enabled, and just plain wrong and squashed when uncorrected, just like on your screenshots.

More info about PAR if you want to educate yourself. Just do the calculations and see it for yourself. Btw, there was a way to achieve square pixels on VGA displays by using Mode X, but this was rarely used in games, much more often in demoscene productions:

However, 320×240 was the best known and most frequently used, as it offered a standard 40-column resolution and 4:3 aspect ratio with square pixels. "320×240×8" resolution was commonly called Mode X, the name used by Michael Abrash when he presented the resolution in Dr. Dobb's Journal.

(source)

Reference: years of graphics coding and doing pixel gfx on both the Amiga and DOS/VGA, so not quite a "newb", as you put it

Further explanations:

• No, MS-DOS games weren't widescreen: Tips on correcting aspect ratio
• You're playing your DOS games wrong: A word on aspect ratio
• DOS Gaming Aspect Ratio - 320x200

 

[spekkio]

see above

 

[Rincewind]

It's all great and everything, but I still prefer my "plain wrong and squashed" output (320x200 resized 2x):

You might prefer playing it in pink sunglasses standing on your head, still only the aspect-ratio corrected version is objectively correct. That's how the artists created the original art on a VGA screen. You just got used and attached to the incorrect AR, that's all. Btw, the face of the guy obviously looks squashed when not aspect ratio corrected. Same for the floppy image on the backup icon. There's nothing to argue about here, I just pointed out the obvious facts.

I've also checked the '98 Win9x version, and for some reason, characters look exactly as "plain wrong and squashed" as in my screenshots (black bars at top and bottom - IMO to keep proper AR, instead of being stretched vertically, like in your screenshot):

Probably one of many things this version does wrong, 'mrite?

It's a shoddy port then. Most likely they didn't want to fuck around properly upscaling stuff, they slapped on a 2x integer scaler and called it a day. Another reason why they didn't properly AR correct could be that it looks like shit on a 640x480 or 800x600 screen, there would be a lot of interpolation going on. It's much less of an issue at higher resolutions like 1920x1080.

 

[Morenatsu.]

DOS games are pretty much always non-square, even when the artists sometimes forget. Imagine telling people how to play old games while not knowing this very important and irrefutable fact.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Fission Superstar X

Spoiler

 

[Alienman]

That pic in spoiler is me in every multiplayer game.

 

[Sigourn]

Spoiler

 

[Rincewind]

"Arguing" about the necessity of aspect ratio correcting 320x200 DOS games on square pixel aspect ratio modern screens... that's a new low even for codex standards. Feels like "arguing" with a flat-earther. I blame public education!

 

[Morenatsu.]

On the other hand, you definitely shouldn't use aspect ratio correction on 256x240 console games. Unless you should.

And on the third hand, RGB-modding old consoles is absolutely wrong. Composite 4evar.

 

[Rincewind]

On the other hand, you definitely shouldn't use aspect ratio correction on 256x240 console games. Unless you should.

I don't know much about old consoles, having never owned or played with one. Are you referring to the resolution of the NES? If so, all these older consoles were meant to be hooked up to standard 4:3 DAR (1.333:1) TV sets. But 256/240 = 1.0666(6), which means you were meant to display the image with square pixel aspect ratio on the TV, letterboxed?

Or did the image fully fill the screen so it was overscanned? Meaning the effective visible are was somewhat smaller than 256x240?

The SNES had a bunch of different resolutions with 3 different aspect ratios, were these all overscanned as well? And I guess vertically-doubled resolutions like 512x224 had 1:2 PAR pixel-rectangles.

Progressive: 256×224 (8:7), 512×224 (16:7), 256×239 (256:239), 512×239 (512:239)
Interlaced: 512×448 (8:7), 512×478 (256:239)

Most TVs didn't have image stretch controls, that kind of adjustment had to be done by a TV technician, so I'm quite sure you were stuck with whatever pixel aspect ratio the console's composite output used.

Just curious of this stuff!

 

[Fedora Master]

(Synthetik 2)

 

[Morenatsu.]

On the other hand, you definitely shouldn't use aspect ratio correction on 256x240 console games. Unless you should.

I don't know much about old consoles, having never owned or played with one. Are you referring to the resolution of the NES? If so, all these older consoles were meant to be hooked up to standard 4:3 DAR (1.333:1) TV sets. But 256/240 = 1.0666(6), which means you were meant to display the image with square pixel aspect ratio on the TV, letterboxed?

Or did the image fully fill the screen so it was overscanned? Meaning the effective visible are was somewhat smaller than 256x240?

The SNES had a bunch of different resolutions with 3 different aspect ratios, were these all overscanned as well? And I guess vertically-doubled resolutions like 512x224 had 1:2 PAR pixel-rectangles.

Progressive: 256×224 (8:7), 512×224 (16:7), 256×239 (256:239), 512×239 (512:239)
Interlaced: 512×448 (8:7), 512×478 (256:239)

Most TVs didn't have image stretch controls, that kind of adjustment had to be done by a TV technician, so I'm quite sure you were stuck with whatever pixel aspect ratio the console's composite output used.

Just curious of this stuff!

I think it would end up as 4:3 on an actual television, but most games I've played completely ignore this. So all those chibi JRPG characters are shorter and fatter than they should be. Some games were properly made for 4:3, but it depends. Not sure about other resolutions. Personally, I just play things in the original resolution on a CRT and adjust the geometry for each game.

Other fun examples are Radiant Silvergun and Soukyugurentai, both vertical shooters for the Sega Titan Video that apparently gave no shits and used square pixels, which at that system's resolution makes them widescreen. No idea what they'd look like in an actual arcade.

 

[Cryomancer]

 

[FreshCorpse]

Baking bread in the Monomyth demo a few months back

Post-tutorial plot slides from Highfleet

Spoiler

Some cool, expressive interior design from Thief

Re-roll animation in Into the Breach

 

[FreshCorpse]

Two fun NPC portraits from ATOM RPG. All NPCs have unique portraits and dialogue in this game and while that must have been hell to produce it is a joy to play

Some of the lighting effects from Splinter Cell 1 (2002), this thing was ahead of it's time. Very linear though, apparently they ditched Thief-style linearity about halfway through development.

Spoiler

 

[FreshCorpse]

And one more (I had to split this up across multiple posts because it seems there is some limit on images per-post or something?)...

I've been experimenting with Playnite as a replacement for Steam/GOG Galaxy. It's basically a "meta game launcher". That sounds awful but actually turns out to be quite a good idea. I mostly buy from either the steam store or gog and but do have the odd thing on origin/uplay/epic. I cannot be buggered to keep multiple clients open at the same time and playnite shows everything at once in one program. It's FOSS and written in C# which, AFAICT (I'm not a windows person professionally), is a reasonable and fairly efficient way to write GUI applications on Windows these days.

I take a lot of steps to avoid "analysis paralysis" in choosing a game to play which basically amounts to having a four tier system: stuff I'm playing now ("Current"), downloaded stuff I might want to play soon ("Prospects"), stuff that is endless or casual ("Perennials") and then stuff I've put to the side for whatever reason ("Backburner"). Having a single, meta-launcher thing makes it way easier for me to just keep stuff straight and actually succeed in playing the main thing that I want to play every time I sit down at my PC - in practice all lists except Current are closed so I'm just picking from three games.

Anyway, I strongly recommend making sure that playing games is not a case of "let's open steam and look at stuff and maybe find something" as that's just a route to wasting your free time. YMMV