Sonic 1 PC

If you want a better opinion you should probably release some kind of demo before continuing. It's hard for people to really judge the gameplay on screenshots alone.

 

...yes...

 

I told you on cult dude, this looks awesome, and I'd definitely like to play it =P

 

OOOOoooo... :o Shiny ^-^

 

Respectfully disagree. At the very most, horizontal blurring is good for MD games since most of them used horizontal dithering to create the illusion of more colors on a TV. Vertical blurring just makes it look fucking ugly. AA does a lot better job of not making things too blurry because it's working with much higher resolutions and usually 3D images that can be rendered at any resolution to start with (to a limit, of course). When you take 320x224 and resize it to 640x448 with interpolation it tends to look like ass, but if it's resized to 640x224 with interpolation then 640x480 without then it looks hella better.

 

Hmmm - so it's best to interpolate horizontally and then line double to get the desired resolution? As you say, that would make sense given how the image is formed on the original hardware, but is there a way to perform that sort of image processing? A particular emulator video filter for instance? It'd be nice to be able to see a comparison since that may well give the best image; I know I'm not very fond of viewing 320x224 on a high-rez screen and as you say full blurring is a bit much (but still preferable to chunky pixels for me), this may be a nice compromise.

Bit more on-topic: I seem to have prompted renewed interest in this, hopefully it'll be worth finishing :D Someone should give the Cult thread a bump (no account over there).

 

I'm very sorry since this is deviating from Hez's topic (split needed?), but here's some comparison shots of filters.
No filter:

Note the vertical lines under Sonic. The graphics weren't designed to look like this.

Regen's NTSC filter:

This is theorically like the real thing. The vertical lines have disappeared and make new inbetween colors, instead.

Kega Fusion's TV mode:

Also merges vertical lines, but in a more regular (and blurrier) way.

HQ4x filter:

Vertical lines aren't merged, so as smooth as some curves might look, the graphics won't show as many colors or any translucency effects.

 

Filters? 2xScale ftw, it's all I'll ever need.

 

Yes, I think a split is in order. I find the bottom one of those pics to be the only one I consider decent-looking. The top three are all too blurry to varying degrees, whereas the bottom one is smoothed without appearing blurred. I find TV filters defeat the main advantage of emulation, a clearer picture, and when using the original consoles I always use RGB mode, again to avoid encoding artefacts. Is the lesser colour count you mention due to a lack of cross-talk between colours, I.e. the game functions in a similar manner to the CGA over composite method used by some old games? Similarly for any fake translucency used, I assume this is achieved with interpolation and will therefore look odd if seen perfectly clearly? All of these problems would apply as well to using RGB over compisite as well though, and I'd ratehr avoid that in any scenario.

 

I insist, real hardware in my TV, using an A/V cable, looks exactly like Kega in this configuration:

• Filtering on
• TV mode (RF)
• No scanlines
• No brightened

Also plays sounds as when in overdrive mode

 

<!--quoteo(post=183135:date=Mar 5 2008, 10:28 PM:name=Hez.zip)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Hez.zip @ Mar 5 2008, 10:28 PM)
=3 anyone?[/quote]
I like it, but the ground tile looks a bit weird comparing to the rest( I always found AAIz ground tiles(specially the ones inside a "hole") kinda ugly).

 

The perfect filter, for me, would have the fake-ish transparency and colour mixing effects of an NTSC filter, combined with the nice smoothness of the Super2xSAI/HQ2x filters. If you could filter a filter (A 3x NTSC filter over HQ2x), then a seperate filter wouldn't be needed...

 

Isn't that using two filters already? Anyways I guess you should reverse their order, because blurring only works well with the original image, with a filtered one things become harder...

 

The newest vid seems to be Mario - looks nice but it's no Sonic 1! I've already seen the older videos and am strongly in favour of an enhanced Sonic 1 remake over an original game - you could always do that later or release the engine to let others build levels. Marble Zone in widescreen with lightning shields looks great :drool:

 

My quarrel with the 2x or higherscale filters is that they makesmall points look horrible. A great example would be the eyes of Mario in the SNES mario games.

 

It seems that you've got bored with making a Sonic 1 port, and decided to make a fan game instead. By all means, go ahead, as the new stuff looks nice, but I'd rather have it as a separate project. I can see a couple of weird issues with the physics too, such as Sonic gaining a speed boost from sliding down a boulder.