640x400 or 640x480

LurkerScum · Post by **LurkerScum** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 5:07 pm

Hi guys, I'm curious what is the proper resolution for DOTT (I know that game was originaly designed for 320x200).
On my MSI Wind game looks better on 640x400 (because of the panoramic proportion). It should be like that?

fingolfin · Post by **fingolfin** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 5:23 pm

320x240 resp. 640x480, i.e., with aspect ratio correction enabled.

A good way to verify this is right at the start: If you look at the grandfather clock, the face of the clock is squashed vertically in 320x200 mode, causing it to look like an ellipse instead of a circle; but with ASR *on*, its proportions are correct.

Background: Back in the days, screens didn't have quadratic pixels; rather, they were slightly higher than wide. Thus, when one does not account for this (using ASR), games look squashed in the vertical direction.

LurkerScum · Post by **LurkerScum** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 5:38 pm

Thx. So all games in 320x200 should be ASR to 480? Even Toonstruck?

Post by **eriktorbjorn** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 5:50 pm

LurkerScum wrote:Thx. So all games in 320x200 should be ASR to 480? Even Toonstruck?

Toonstruck seems to use 640x400 pixels. If the blueprint of the Malevolator is supposed to be more or less circular, I guess it should be stretched to 640x480 pixels to look right on my screen.

That game isn't supported by ScummVM, though.

raina · Post by **raina** » Fri Apr 24, 2009 1:33 am

Most of the time I find it more pleasing to the eye to keep the ratio of pixels intact even if it means looking at a little squashed image. But it's really a non-issue with a good CRT monitor where you can adjust the pixel dimensions instead of adding lines of pixels to the image in software.

Nikioko · Post by **Nikioko** » Tue Apr 28, 2009 12:04 pm

fingolfin wrote: Background: Back in the days, screens didn't have quadratic pixels; rather, they were slightly higher than wide. Thus, when one does not account for this (using ASR), games look squashed in the vertical direction.

Quadratic means square, right?

But you are right, in those days, pixels had a rectangular shape with a height/width ratio of 6:5.

This is easy to calculate: if 320 pixels have a width of 4 (assuming the standard 4:3 screen) and 200 pixels a height of 3, that makes a ratio of 4/320 by 3/200 or (after multiplying with 400) 5 by 6. So you have to add 20% of the height get square pixels. 20% of 200 is 40, so the height will be stretched from 200 to 240, and the aspect is corrected.

raina wrote:Most of the time I find it more pleasing to the eye to keep the ratio of pixels intact even if it means looking at a little squashed image. But it's really a non-issue with a good CRT monitor where you can adjust the pixel dimensions instead of adding lines of pixels to the image in software.

There are better methods than repeating every 5th line, e. g. antialiasing.

raina · Post by **raina** » Tue Apr 28, 2009 3:57 pm

Nikioko wrote: There are better methods than repeating every 5th line, e. g. antialiasing.

Sure you can process it in many different ways but pleasant results are few and far between.