Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

[rhester72]

Well, sometimes. There are plenty of examples of SNES games where square pixels in the native 8:7 aspect ratio produce true circles, while a 4:3 stretch of that makes ovals. That feature very obviously varies by developer, so you can't just blanket state that one or the other is truly correct.

Of course I can. The target display of an SNES *does not show square pixels*. This is demonstrably obvious.

It's certainly correct that some developers didn't follow Nintendo's style guide and couldn't be arsed to actually scale graphics properly (*particularly* with NTSC->PAL conversions in the vertical dimension), but that doesn't suddenly make televisions have square pixels - it makes lazy developers under impossible time constraints. None of this is news, and it doesn't make square pixels 'correct'...or composite blending wrong.

Now you're trying to have it both ways. It's disingenuous to argue that "artists worked hard to make their art in a way that it would display properly in 4:3, so the correct way to view that art is 4:3" and then in the next comment say "artists that made their work with a 1:1 ratio were just lazy and you should still stretch their work". You're trying to both argue for and against an artist's intent in the same breath. If you want to make the technical argument that "4:3 is correct because that's what the final product would be seen on", that's fine. If you want to make an artistic argument that that "viewing the art in an aspect ratio that matches the artistic intent is correct", that's fine, too. But you can't have both, because those two statements are in direct conflict.

And just to be clear, many of these examples of designs that clearly used square pixels were done by Nintendo themselves. We're not just talking lazy third party devs here, we're talking massive tentpole first-party releases like Super Metroid, Super Mario World, and more. Nintendo is the one setting the example of making art for square pixels, and not accounting for the final 4:3 output. If you have an actual style guide that Nintendo published for SNES developers, that would be a very interesting read. But just looking at their own biggest titles, it looks like that may not actually exist.

The reason is largely that tooling to give the artists true end-state WYSIWYG simply didn't exist then. Pixel artists were *entirely* cognizant that the target display would show their work distorted, and they simply didn't have time (or inclination, in many cases) to care.

I'm hardly "having it both ways". If the artist drew a perfect 1:1 circle, the TV would show an oval, and everyone was on the same page with that. If they drew two single-pixel vertical lines side by side of complimentary colors side-by-side, they'd get a third apparent color from composite blending that didn't *actually* exist in the GPU. Neither are these are in any sort of conflict.

I'll see what I can find re: a formalized Nintendo style guide. I can quote the relevant text (about the identical problem) for the Amiga if you like.

(And for the record, it's this sort of thing that I was referring to when I referred to 'reinventing technological history'.)

[rhester72]

Speaking of, forgot to mention this - it's a very worthy read (even if you think you know it all! :

https://www.amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?t=38

[rhester72]

I'll see what I can find re: a formalized Nintendo style guide. I can quote the relevant text (about the identical problem) for the Amiga if you like.

OK - I (lightly) scanned through all my old contemporary doc scans (and papers) and couldn't find anything specific re: Nintendo aspect ratio concerns - whether that's because formal documentation from them didn't exist (entirely possible) or my Kanji search skills aren't up to par (FAR more likely) is anyone's guess. (There was certainly published material specifically acknowledging AR design concerns for other contemporary platforms by 1986!) However, I think suggesting that early 80s Japanese developers and testers were blissfully unaware of 4:3 output stretching would defy imagination. Surely we can agree that the problem was very well known (if not very well addressed) even then. Things certainly got (a lot) better in this regard by the age of Genesis, as the images on my screen right now readily attest to (I've been doing Genesis testing for days for something entirely unrelated).

[antibolo]

Holy hell rhester72, what part of “but to each his own” do you not understand?

[rhester72]

Holy hell rhester72, what part of “but to each his own” do you not understand?

Ironic you should say that, given that's precisely what I (and many others) were advocating. What part of it confuses you?

[antibolo]

Holy hell rhester72, what part of “but to each his own” do you not understand?

Ironic you should say that, given that's precisely what I (and many others) were advocating. What part of it confuses you?

It's not irony if I am already on your side. It's fine to have opinions, but don't act all persecuted if people disagree with you, and then start making ridiculous claims that they shouldn't develop open source software because they have the gall to disagree with a random person on the Internet (gasp!).

Anyway, I'm done here, enjoy your thread derail about aspect ratios or whatever.

[rhester72]

I stand by what I said - open source is (quite by definition!) a people-oriented exercise, and one of sheer frustration for anyone that doesn't like interacting with people. I'm not speaking glibly, I'm talking from direct experience watching a considerable number of otherwise solid efforts flame out because they couldn't handle people reporting (often imagined or ignorant) problems and making (frequently ridiculous) feature requests. Love of creating things isn't enough.

I too was pretty much done with the thread - perhaps next time if you're looking strictly to criticize me directly, you can hit me up by PM? Thanks.

[eightbit]

composite.png (181.32 KiB) Viewed 17874 times

[gh221]

I'm new to this forum, but I really feel people are being mischaracterised in this thread. The original request and historic precedent were very clear, with videos demonstrating how these games originally looked. The first problematic post I see is from vanfanel, with quotes like "look as intended, at long last. It has been what, decades?" and "To the person who was smart enough to add the un-selective, complete composite blending to the Genesis core: THANK YOU". Those would certainly be insulting and abrasive to almost any emulation developer and could potentially have caused later antagonism (darksakul gave a well-reasoned response).

Also, a bit of antagonism from Threepwood, about the HV filters mentioned by Chris23235: "These filters are just blur filters that do not achieve a composite blend effect. They are no substitute for what the Composite Blend ON feature does."

Then Sorgelig pops in and is insulting and dismissive right from the start, saying people want to "render the video as complete crap without any benefits". Threepwood gave a considered reply and then Sorgelig retorts with "No idea about which improvement you are talking about." and "Wolf3D is originally very pixelated game. Talking about dithering on some walls in this game is meaningless". Again, completely dismissing the lived (and demonstrated in videos) experience of the original console. Again, Threepwood calmly disagrees.

Sorgelig again is dismissive, with "MiSTer emulates the console. Composite output is simply not a part of MiSTer, so you need to add it if you are fan of blurry videos." and "Basically scaling filter with blurriness already simulates bad quality of composite video". It's also demonstrably untrue from earlier screenshots, which show that Composite Blend is not a blur.

Then again, with "You call Sonic screen with composite blend (shown above) as normal? For me it looks like crap. It's like whole MiSTer project made in vain if I watch at that pic". People are asking for the emulation to accurately simulate what they had in childhood, which is probably more accurate to what game designers intended than sharp-edge pixel blocks.

And again, "Yeah, look at SFII screens. This is total crap. It's like "catch the flea but miss the elephant."" and "Generic dithering NEVER meant for composite blending."

Then lomdar67 starts chastising people with "Don't you think you have made your point?" and "...do it your self, it's all on Github!". But the problem is that people feel they haven't made their point, because they're being given insulting and dismissive responses and are clarifying as best they can.

Then dshadoff joins in with "Asking again and again won't position it any higher on a developer's priority list." and "Sorgelig has made it clear that he isn't interested in working on it", which isn't really accurate to the context. Sorgelig has been repeatedly dismissive with odd falsehoods, which people have been trying to correct.

Later, again, lomdar67 says "Sometimes these "suggestion" sound so demanding and for my taste this is not right and annoying! Sorry, but that's the way I see it". Again, this isn't what the thread is like, at all.

Antibolo joins in and says "I don't see why people want to deliberately destroy their picture quality for some dubious argument about composite output being the "correct" way to render those graphics (it's not), but to each his own", but saying "to each his own" doesn't excuse you from getting responses to antagonism like "deliberately destroy" and "dubious argument".

Later, dshadoff, in particular, says "Not sure what you're talking about. I don't recall seeing anybody say, "that's not how it was", or "that feature has no value"." - well, look at what I've quoted above. Sorgelig and Antibolo are clearly saying that. Also, dshadoff says "developers state that their priorities lie elsewhere", but not one developer in the thread has said anything like that. They've been dismissive and chastising, as though users shouldn't make requests and defend them from mistruths. Dshadoff characterises dev responses as "acknowledged but not a priority, stop asking", which again doesn't match what any developer has said in this thread. It's like dshadoff is replying to a different thread.

I don't know who is a core developer, but I would guess at Sorgelig, dshadoff, lomdar67, Antibolo, because they seem to be the ones pushing the narrative that they've been respectful and the users are being terrible, when that's clearly not the case, in this thread. I implore you to actually read this thread again and look at who was aggressive, dismissive and demanding. It wasn't those making the feature request, except perhaps vanfanel, briefly.

(I'm not arguing either for or against the feature request itself.)

[dshadoff]

Not sure why you're necro-ing this thread after nearly a year. It appears antagonistic by the way you're selectively choosing areas of contention in an already contentious thread, and glossing over areas where people try to be conciliatory.

For the record, I kind of like the thought of composite blend being an option and recognize its potential value, but I have too many projects. So it's not high on my list of priorities for me to implement (yes, still). But I would be happy to see somebody else implement (yes, still).

I know there are other developers who are also on the side of thinking that this is useful, and there are many more developers in the scene today than a year ago... perhaps this will appeal to one (or some) of them. I haven't seen Sorgelig reject a well-thought-out submission; only refuse to work on something himself due to priorities (as many developers do).

So to repeat what I said in the past, it's on the list, but not at the top.

[FoxbatStargazer]

Its almost certainly a bot/AI whose main goal seems to be trolling. Just stuck quotes together with some adversarial words that don't really line up correctly in context. Reads like mad libs. Kind of surprised they would be doing anything other than advertising...

Just a note that there are some cool composite scaling filters available now, so if you're using scaled output you can have some neat effects on any core out there.

[Threepwood]

Just a note that there are some cool composite scaling filters available now, so if you're using scaled output you can have some neat effects on any core out there.

If you are refering to the filters in the subfolder "Composite Blend", then those may be named "Composite Blend", but sadly do not achieve a composite blend effect (I just tested the latest version of those filters from mid April this year, again).

To compare, here a photo of an IPS screen showing Sonic 2. The stripes that make up the leaves are supposed to blend into each other and create a transparency effect with a uniform green layer. "Composite Blend: ON", without an additional filter, achieves this:

Comp Blend ON - No Filter.jpg (105.39 KiB) Viewed 15681 times

In contrast, the strongest of the filters you refered to that includes scanlines, "Comp_Blend_HV_075", does not achieve this effect while rendering the image quite blurry. The blurryness can be a desired effect of course, but it is not composite blend:

Comp Blend OFF - Comp_Blend_HV_075.jpg (82.61 KiB) Viewed 15681 times

If you are refering to a different set of filters, that are not distributed via the MiSTer Updater Script, then please be so kind and post a link to them

[FoxbatStargazer]

No I just didn't look at them so closely. I kind of like how 25%+scanlines looks but its not so strong an effect as to erase dithering or create transparencies. So if you want that then the search continues.

[matijaerceg]

Even if sonic gets some benefit from blending in very particular screens, it's not worths to enable it if it cannot detect the places where it has to be applied.

This is subjective. I play all Genesis games with full blend. It's how they games looked via composite, and that was the experience millions of people had, which is fact. I'm one of those people, and to me, Genesis doesn't look pleasing without such a filter.

I hope the full (non-adaptive) composite blend gets added to all cores.

This holds especially true when using analog board without scaler/scandoubler, as the video filters are unavailable there.