PhilExile

Also, they are replicating cheap CRTs. I have two Sony PVM20m4u studio monitors and they do not exhibit any of the ghosting or muted colors that are shown here. New arcade machine screens don't look this bad. If they have been in constant use for over 20 years, then they probably do, but that's not necessarily something you want to emulate. I'm more impressed with this set of filters, but again, these aren't for arcade. http://www.fly.net/~ant/libs/ntsc.html

Hi Mtx, Yes, I've read about those. They use OpenGL effects though and I don't think they can be ported to the Xbox because of that. I'd be happy with just the scanline option I detailed above.

Hello, I figured it would help if I created an example of what I'm talking about using Rastan, a 320x240 native game, as an example. Rastan, default resolution: Rastan 480P, 2X with scanlines overlay at 50% black: Rastan 720P, 3X with scanlines overlay at 50% black: Since this would work with the 720p mode, it would actually outperform the XRGB3 capabilities since it can only simulate scanlines on an HDTV at 480p.

Hello, No, they are global. It works great. We are still ironing out all the details and whatnot. People are going to love this.

Hi Cos, I hear what you're saying, but this would be a feature mainly for HDTV users. The reason it doesn't look good on SDTVs is because Xbox outputs 480i, which has subtle scanlines that flicker due to interlacing. These clash with the emulator's simulated scanlines and make it look weird. In theory, scanlines should look great if CoinOps outputs 480p since you could make a filter that draws a single solid pixel line every other line, so 240 gray/black lines. It may also work with 720p, but the number of solid pixel lines would have to be 360 instead. I think CoinOps could be coded to see if you are outputting 480p or 720p so it would know how many scanlines to draw. If we could get this to work, it would be another first for a MAME emulator as far as I know. It would also make owners of the XRGB3 cry. Talk soon

Hey BP, I'm not sure if this would be difficult or impact performance, but have you considering implementing any filters that simulate scanlines? It might be fun to have for the users that like them. A lot of people buy things like the XRGB3 for a ridiculous amount of money to add scanlines onto an HDTV setup. See below: http://retrogaming.hazard-city.de/ It would be something cool to have in CoinOps. I could help you test/tweak this as well since I can compare the scales output by my Emotia/PVM Monitor and compare it to whats being simulated via CoinOps on the HDTV. Thanks again, the pixel perfect feature is working fantastic!!! Talk soon

Hahaha, thats a fun idea, I bet its possible. You could someone wire something up so that when a quarter is inserted it triggered the "select" button on the Xbox. Depends on how thsoe things work.

Hey BP, I think what you're proposing is a good idea. If you want games like Vigilante to overscan, there could be a advance setting such as the following: - Enable Overscan As you said, CoinOps would look at your default screen area and enlarge it by 20% or even 30%. As long as it keeps the XY center and CoinOps is scaling 2X, it shouldn't cause any pixel distortion. A 10x11 pixel option would definitely help games like Strider that are 384x224. The idea behind this is that it would compress the 768 pixels to a manageable 640. This is all in theory of course, we will have to test it. I think Cospefogo has more experience with this, so he'll be able to elaborate here if needed. I image it being the following: - Enable 10x11 pixels for Widescreen I do think this 10x11 should be limited to widescreen games, however, I'm not sure if its possible to limit the function to just these games. Thanks again BP, the feature is fantastic!

I'm still messing around with this is as well, but I just wanted to say that this new feature is really, really impressive. BP has added something that no other arcade emu on the Xbox can do. If I remember correctly, this is even difficult to pull off well on the PC arcade emulators. BP really hit the ball out of the park on this one! T H A N K S !!!!!!!

Hi OldOne, I think the only way this can be achieved is through a hacked BIOs. As far as I know, the guys trying to get this to work never managed it. BP indirectly made a great point, if you did change the BIOs to output 240p, it may goof up HD output, crash the emulators that were never coded for this output and in general, limit the Xbox's versatility. I.E. Hooking up to SD or HD TVs with a broad range a resolution options. This said, I'm a fan of 240p and its possible on Xbox, I do it myself on one of setups. Just get an Extron Emotia, a Frosty VGA cable or something like the Neoya XVGA, and read this guide: http://scanlines.hazard-city.de/ Once you have everything hooked up. Change output on your Xbox and emulators to 480p, then flip the switch on the Emotia to "non-interlaced" and presto, 240p. I'm been doing this a few months and it works flawlessly. Also, with BP's new pixel perfect X settings it looks exactly like the arcade in CoinOps. Hope this helps you out.

Cospefogo, I was able to get Pixel Perfect X working by extending the screen size. Its pretty great!

Go into your E directory and delete any folder that starts with "BABE" from both the TDATA and UDATA folders. It may be BABE2009. Restart the Xbox and try to launch CoinOps again. I'm betting this will fix your problem. Or not.

Can't wait to try it BP! Again, thank you for taking the time to work this out. Much appreciated!

OK, if 3x is OK with Cos, its OK with me. Cos, Capcom was nuts, they future proofed their games: http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?publicUser...amp;bId=8987002 It was originally played at 320x224 monitors, they just mushed the pixels horizontally. I've found, while experimenting with 240p and the Emotia, that the vertical pixels are the most important to hit to avoid distortion. Vertical "tates," like Pac Man, are more of a problem. You really need both horizontal and vertical dimensions to be perfect. 10x11 would be a cool feature that could address stuff like this I suppose.

Hey Frank, I hope I'm wrong, but check out explanation from Cospefogo's site: The vintage consoles have different scrensizes, and it's mandatory to keep them in mind to reach perfect adjustments on Xbox. It's important to mention a example of how the things work: a pixel is a square, and square have all sides the same size (duh!), correct? So, if you take a 2x2 pixels screen and you want to increase it's size - while keeping a correct aspect ratio - the first size possible without any distortions will be a 4x4 screen. You can't resize a 2x2 image into a 3x4, 4x3, 5x2 image, the aspect ratio will be completely destroyed, and so, all the graphics inside. The same happens for 320x240 screens. They must be 640x480 when doubled, they should not be 623x482. Incorrect screensizes can be perfectly used by the Modern Method guys, because all the filters they use will be masking all distortions, but incorrect screensizes can't be used by the Oldskool followers, since the absence of filters will reveal a lot undesirable "artifacts". If you don't like filtering, you should have in mind that it's important to keep a correct size displaying. It was my experience that things were slightly off. You could see it in the numbers and whatnot. Try something like Super Mario Bros in the NES emulator and you'll see what I mean. Again, I hope I'm wrong because it will make bringing perfect pixels to 720p that much easier. Hey Phil, look at this: Nothing will "look off" @3X. Things just gets bigger..

Hey Cospefogo, I slightly disagree with you on this. CPS1, 2 and CAVE can be 640 wide, since this is how they were originally displayed in the arcade.

Hi Frank, I've messed around with this before and unless you multiply by equal numbers (2, 4, 6, etc), it won't work right. You need to double the pixels or things look off. 3x is just as pixel-perfect as 1x or 2x is.. Sorry, can you explain? CPS2 example: 1x, 3x

That sounds good. We should give it a whirl and see if it works. I can also help you with 720p. I have an HDTV as well. Personally, for HDTV, if you're going to scale it to 3x, you won't get "perfect" pixels anyway. Maybe we could do something like scale it to 3x and make sure antialias is on. I think that'd be best unless we could get 1080i input and do the screen resolution at 4x.

Hello, I just tried this with Alien Syndrome, but it only displayed a black screen. Here is the code I used. I started with the default position of 0,0,1,1 and made the PNG 640x480. I also tried it with PNGs as 320x240 and got the same black screen as a result. bezel: file = black.png alphafile = alphamask.png layer = bezel priority = 0 visible = 1 position = 0.0,0.0,1.0,1.0 Any ideas?

That's really interesting. Its a hack sort of and a really clever one! I think you'r right though, the CoinOps screen setting could much things up. I can try this later today though. Thanks! eoldone' date='Mar 27 2010, 08:48 PM' post='329674'] Hi folks, there is a way to change the CoinOps screensize and aspect ratio on a game by game basis. I show you on Zaxxon as an example... Create two plain black pngs the size of 256x224 and name them alphablack.png and black.png create a text file named zaxxon.art (always use the rom name) with the following content: bezel: file = black.png alphafile = alphamask.png layer = bezel priority = 0 visible = 1 position = -0.250,-0.459,1.250,1.469 Zip up the three files to zaxxon.zip and put it in the Coinops/artwork dir. Thats about it... The hard part is to calculate the position values in zaxxon.art The CoinOps source code says the following: ********************************************************************** POSITIONING The positioning of the artwork is a little tricky. Conceptually, the game bitmap occupies the space from (0,0) to (1,1). If you have a piece of artwork that exactly covers the game area, then it too should stretch from (0,0) to (1,1). However, most of the time, this is not the case. For example, if you have, say, the Spy Hunter bezel at the bottom of the screen, then you will want to specify the top of the artwork at 1.0 and the bottom at something larger, maybe 1.25. The nice thing about the new artwork system is that it will automatically stretch the bitmaps out to accomodate areas beyond the game bitmap, and will still keep the proper aspect ratio. Another common example is a backdrop that extends beyond all four corners of the game bitmap. Here is how you would handle that, in detail: Let's say you have some artwork like this: <============ 883 pixels ===============> (1)-------------------------------------(2) ^ | ^ | | | 26 pixels | | | v | | | (5)-----------------------(6) | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |<---->| | | | | 97 | Game screen | | 768 |pixels| 700 x 500 | | pixels | | |<---->| | | | | 86 | | | | |pixels| | | | | | | | | | | | | (7)-----------------------( | | | ^ | | | 42 pixels | | | v | | (3)-------------------------------------(4) v If you're looking at the raw coordinates as might seem logical, you would imagine that they come out like this: (1) is at (0,0) (2) is at (883,0) (3) is at (0,768) (4) is at (883,768) (5) is at (97,26) (6) is at (797,26) (7) is at (97,526) ( is at (797,526) The first thing you need to do is adjust the coordinates so that the upper left corner of the game screen (point 5) is at (0,0). To do that, you need to subtract 97 from each X coordinate and 26 from each Y coordinate: (1) is at (0-97,0-26) -> (-97,-26) (2) is at (883-97,0-26) -> (786,-26) (3) is at (0-97,768-26) -> (-97,742) (4) is at (883-97,768-26) -> (883,742) (5) is at (97-97,26-26) -> (0,0) (6) is at (797-97,26-26) -> (700,0) (7) is at (97-97,526-26) -> (0,500) ( is at (797-97,526-26) -> (700,500) The final thing you need to do is make it so the bottom right corner of the image (point is at (1.0,1.0). To do that, you need to divide each coordinate by the width or height of the image (1) is at (-97/700,-26/500) -> (-0.13857,-0.052) (2) is at (786/700,-26/500) -> (1.122857,-0.052) (3) is at (-97/700,742/500) -> (-0.13857, 1.484) (4) is at (883/700,742/500) -> (1.122857, 1.484) (5) is at (0/700,0/500) -> (0.0,0.0) (6) is at (700/700,0/500) -> (1.0,0.0) (7) is at (0/700,500/500) -> (0.0,1.0) ( is at (700/700,500/500) -> (1.0,1.0) Alternately, you can also provide pixel coordinates, but it will still be relative to the game's native resolution. So, if the game normally runs at 256x224, you'll need to compute the division factor so that the bottom right corner of the game (point ends up at (256,224) instead of (1.0,1.0). Basically, if you have the original coordinates shown right below the image, you can compute the values needed by doing this for X coordinates: (X coordinate on artwork) - (X coordinate of game's upper-left) --------------------------------------------------------------- (width of game in artwork pixels) And this for Y coordinates: (Y coordinate on artwork) - (Y coordinate of game's upper-left) --------------------------------------------------------------- (height of game in artwork pixels) ********************************************************************* Remember one thing. The global screensize setting will interfer with the new settings. So better leave them at default values... Maybe someone like Cospefogo can figure out some decent settings... I am too stupid... I have not tried it, but i think this trick will not work on any of the new cores added to coinops...

Hi BP, You're absolutely right, this won't be easy. Its funny, stuff always appears to be easy at the outset, but then once you get into it, its a different story. My professor in college used to say this about interactive design: its hard to make functionality appear easy. I'm willing to help you out as much as I can and I have some ideas on how this can work. Cospefogo will bend over backwards to help too. I hear you on the randomness of arcade machine resolutions! TheOldOne made a good point in that this feature will primarily benefit cab users or people like myself who are simulating a cab with a video monitor. As such I think we should focus on getting this part working first and then (maybe) take a look at HDTV. Is there a way to code a resolution check of the ROM before it launches, I.E. - Can CoinOps be programmed to do an if/then process before launching each ROM? I'm guess it would be something like the following - if resolution = 320x240, double native if resolution = 640x480, native The user could enable "native resolution option" in the Settings menu and only in 480i/p mode. The following would then happen when you launch a ROM: - Launch After Burner - CoinOps "sees" its native resolution is 320x224 and gives the following options - Native Resolution (X2) Fit to Screen or - Launch Capcom vs. SNK - CoinOps "sees" its native resolution is 640x448 and gives the following options - Native Resolution Fit to Screen or - Launch Marvel Vs. Capcom - CoinOps "sees" its native resolution is 384x224 and gives the following options - Native Resolution Standard* (X2) Fit to Screen * Capcom is crazy and they made this game, as well as many others, widescreen even though it would be run at SD. So the proper value for 480i/p this would be 640x448, not 768x448. For more in depth explanation of this madness check out this article: http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?publicUser...amp;bId=8987002 All this said, I don't know how to program, but I think you'll get what I'm saying. Again, thank you for looking at adding this feature. I think it will benefit a lot of Xbox users, especially in the future. Best Regards

So if (XBOX) comments on any aspect of CoinOps you'll remove the feature? That doesn't make any sense to me. Its like your doing things for him rather than the people that support your efforts. In any case, its your time and emulator. If you want to remove the feature because of one drunk* jackass, that's up to you of course. * happy juice = booze, beer, etc

It looks like (XBOX) said he liked the feature, so BP decided to remove it because of this. I don't get it. Judging from the poll when it was up, there were a LOT of people who wanted the future. BP, please don't let one bad apple ruin the bunch. Your strongest supporters would love to see the pixel perfect feature. Thanks

I guess I'm the only person who doesn't miss Mortal Kombat.

Hah, can someone rename this the Jackass Thread? Nobody ever liked you Bobby Drake.