Яндекс

Monday, December 1, 2014

Widescreen hack

Many people ask me: is it possible to implement the "widescreen hack"? They mean the "Adjust game aspect ratio to match yours" feature of  Jabo's Direct3D8 1.6 plugin which enables widescreen mode for games not intended to run in widescreen. Since this feature is a hack, it does not work with any game. You may check a compatibility list. I was unsure how it works, so I didn't promise that it will be implemented in GLideN64. Recently I got an idea how to make that feature and did a quick test. Check the result:

normal 4:3 screen

16:9 aspect with the hack enabled

The hack is applied only to 3D objects, don't pay attention on stretched sprites.
As I can see, proportions of 3D object remained correct. To be sure, I open wide screen shot in Paint and lay normal screen shot over it:

It fits pretty well.

Now back to the question: is it possible to implement the "widescreen hack"? It depends. The screen you see is not from beta, it's even not a work in progress. It is an experiment, pretty successful as I can see. I need time to complete it. Time is money. The project collected 8K funds and I'm overloaded with works planned to implement for these money. "Widescreen hack" is among tasks, which will be done with 10+K funds. BTW, another 10+ task, "port to Apple Mac OS X" is almost ready. You still can support the project - the more time I can work on this project, the more complete the result will be.


22 comments:

  1. Hello. I have been following all N64 emulators and plugins since the very beginning. Now I have my first question about plugins :).
    Performance wise, how is it going to be GLideN64 in comparison to Glide64?
    Also, I want to thank you for your dedication, because I always used Glide64 and I think it is the best one ever!

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    1. Recently I tested one N64 demo rom and compared Glide64, glN64 and GLideN64. Glide64 is currently 3 times faster than GLideN64 on that demo. I may find an excuse that my plugin is WIP, not optimized etc. But glN64 is also two times slower on that demo than Glide64. glN64 is much simpler than both Glide64 and GLideN64, it does not use wrapper as Glide64 and it still 2 times slower. The only explanation I see is that Glide64 is very optimized plugin :) Currently I'm working on bug fixing, but I keep necessity of optimization in mind.

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    2. Thanks for your quick reply! :) By plugin speed, my question is if GLideN64 is capable of run fb effects in full speed, not overall plugin speed. Glide64 is full speed to me, except for some fb effects that give some quick pause when activated. Im pretty sure that your new plugin is full speed on games with today's hardware, is that right?

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    3. "Im pretty sure that your new plugin is full speed on games with today's hardware, is that right?"
      Actually, currently it depends on game and emulator. Some games still run slow. Non of CPU cores is loaded 100%, so I have no idea why it happen.

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    4. You mean it can use all cores? That's good to hear anyway! I wish you luck. That's a lot of work in such a short time. Hopefully those answers will come in time :)

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    5. >You mean it can use all cores?

      No, I mean that if at least one core would be 100% loaded it could explain the slowdown.

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  2. Hi Gonetz,
    I donated $25 during the Indiegogo fund raiser, And just the other day donated $15, does this give me forum access ($40 perk) or does it all need to be made in one donation? I can provide receipts of both transactions if you'd like. I didn't mind waiting before, But now that you have the ball rolling i want those monthly betas haha

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    1. Hi Mitchell,

      Of course your help will be sum up, and you may claim your perk. Just register on the forum and admin should grant you the access.

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    2. I need email address of the 25 USD donation. Cannot find it.

      Olivier

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  3. Thanks a lot for trying out a widescreen hack. It's the primary reason why I favor Jabo's plugins, and now it's likely going to be in this I'm probably going to jump ship. I wish people had bothered making such amazing plugins before now. I can only imagine what things would be like if you weren't limited to a plugin spec in the first place.

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  4. I funded your project with 25$ and it said I would get beta access in November. But I can't find download instructions anywhere. What's up with that?

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  5. Due to large amount of work the second monthly beta release with high-res textures support will be delayed for a few weeks, sorry. I'll get download instructions by email when the release will be ready.

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    1. Thank you for the almost instant reply :)

      I was already suspecting something like that, but I wasn't 100% sure. Now I know and knowing is half the battle! :D

      Can't wait for the first test on my machine! Keep up the good work!

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    2. I posted an update about it on indiegogo:
      https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gliden64-graphics-plugin#activity

      I supposed that all indiegogo contributors receive emails about project's news and updates.

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    3. * I'll get download instructions by email when the release will be ready.
      You will get download instructions by email when the release will be ready.

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    4. It's okay. I was just being a little dumb :) Got it now.

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  6. gonetz. Regarding high resolution texture support. With previous plugins the approach for dumping / replacing textures was a bit odd. For example, in Mario Kart 64 where each character is made up of four sets of 32 frames. When dumping textures, there were about 1,200 found. The reason for this appeared to be that the in-game textures had lighting effects applied which the dumping method interpreted as unique textures. So, for example, when going through a tunnel the character is darker and these were identified as all new textures. This resulted in a huge effort to replace any one character properly. I designed a MagiKoopa model that I really want to put in Mario Kart 64 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nE_LOM2C0E) but had major challenges to overcome in replacing 1,200 textures. Is there anyway your approach could dump these textures as just the actual originals and not identify lighting effects as new textures?

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  7. Usually that happens for color indexed (palette) textures. Game changes palette and the same texture looks like a new one. Need to check is it the case for MK64, or the game really uses 100500 different rgba sprites. For CI textures there is a solution: if you don't want to create new HD texture for each palette, you may use palette BMP format. Details can be found somewhere in GlideHQ manuals.

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  8. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  9. It is the most beautiful Christmas present we can give to millions people. Your Gliden64 and blog is the ideal place in which to find the best gift for this season.

    Thank you so much!

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  10. Hi gonetz, sorry for the off-topic question, but will this plugin proper emulate Body Harvest ?

    I really want to finish that game, but in every emulator and plugin that i test occur some weird clipping bugs that makes the game impossible to play, since it's occur in key moments (like crossing a bridge, climbing a stair or enter in a building).

    Sorry for the confusing english (i'm brazilian), but i'll appreciate if you answer :)

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  11. Hello,

    I can't currently assure you about Body Harvest because I did not test that game yet. I don't remember open issues in our bug tracker for this game. You may open an issue for this game here: https://github.com/gonetz/GLideN64 and attach save states from the moments, where the clipping bugs appear. I'll check them.

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