Knight Arms - X68000

[Sketcz-1000]

Part side-scrolling shooter, part Space Harrier clone. All awesome?

www.hardcoregaming101.net/knightarms/knightarmsPNGRESIZE.htm

www.hardcoregaming101.net/knightarms/knightarmsPNG.htm

We had a bit of an interesting situation with this, hence why I designed two different pages. The X68000 screens provided were in a 3x2 ratio. If you reduce it to a 1x1 ratio you have the PNG page. Except the images look a big squashed. Unfortunately there's no way to reduce it in size to 3x2 without anti-aliasing and blending the pixels, like in the JPG page.

Which do you prefer? Obviously you wouldn't have this problem on an X68000 monitor, but for articles about the system, it presents a problem.

[Snarboo]

I prefer accuracy over a 1x1 ratio, so JPEG.

[Sketcz-1000]

But 1x1 is the accurate option. It's what the game is naturally rendered at.

3x2 is the unnatural workaround needed to compensate for not running it on actual hardware. Which is fine on a fullscreen PC monitor.

Well, I have no preference either way with regard to this - if you click the shrunk images in either page you'll get the raw fullscreen image.

[Snarboo]

What I mean by "accurate" is the aspect ratio of image as it is displayed on screen rather than how it is rendered. If it's displayed at 1x1, then the 1x1 option is preferable. However, if the system displays it at 3x2, then I'd prefer the screenshots reflect how it truly appears when played.

This same issue appears in a number of other games, Doom being one example. The game naturally renders at 320x200, but it was stretched to 320x220 when displayed on 4:3 monitors, thus making the pixels rectangles rather than squares. The artists at id clearly took this into account as shown in this picture. Knight Arms seems to be the same way: while the 1x1 ratio is "technically" correct, the game was clearly meant to be viewed at a 3x2 ratio.

As crisp as 1x1 pixel art is, I'd rather the images reflect the correct aspect ratio.

[derboo]

Sept 14, 2012 5:04:56 GMT -5 Snarboo said:

Knight Arms seems to be the same way: while the 1x1 ratio is "technically" correct, the game was clearly meant to be viewed at a 3x2 ratio.

Actually, it should be 4:3. 3:2 is just what the emulator displays to avoid having doubled pixel lines. It's actually possible to display screens pixel-perfect and perspective correct, but you need a size of 1024x768 for that, a resolution the emulator author apparently didn't see as a given. (for 320x200 games it would be even 1600x1200, for anything between 256x240 and 256x224 pretty much impossible).

This is the most faithful the screenshots can get:
www.hardcoregaming101.net/knightarms/knightarms20full.png

Edit: Did a litle math for fun, turns out you can actually display 256x224 images faithfully in 1792x1344.

[roushimsx]

Also hopping on the "whatever aspect ratio it displayed at on the monitor" bandwagon.

Lots of arcade games ('specially the CPS2...) and old DOS games did the same thing. They're intended to be viewed in 4:3. You'd never see the game displayed at 1:1 on the real hardware, but you would see it look much more like this:

[ReyVGM]

I like to put images exactly like the emulator produces them, as that is their true resolution. How it looked on a monitor/TV is irrelevant because then you would also have to add blurring and scanlines to each screenshot to make it "accurate".

So I go with the PNG article.

My problem with you modifying the images is that if you do, then you can never tell what is the true direct-feed resolution of the game. Basically, you are "faking" the image and you can't undo that effect.

[Discoalucard]

I'd say go with the PNGs. Technically a vast majority of the screenshots on this site (and on most retro sites) are not displayed "correctly", but I prefer pixel perfect images over blurry ones in the proper ratio.

In the event that we DO resize them though (which happens for layout purposes) then we keep the emulator, pixel perfect screenshot as a hyperlinked file.

[nickz]

I personally like the JPEG screenshots. When I was taking the screenshots, I put them in PNG format because I usually put all my pictures in PNG format. I never stopped to think that JPEG might have some advantages while I was doing it.

What do you guys think? Next time I take pictures of X68000 games, should I use PNG or JPEG?

[Discoalucard]

Technically the file format has nothing to do with it. In a general sense, the only real difference between PNGs and JPGs is compression. And since we don't want compressed images most of the time, you should still be using PNG.

This is just about resolution - whether we should be using pixel-perfect, 1x1 screens, or adjusting them (and filtering them in the process) to reflect a more proper aspect ratio.

[nickz]

Got it! I'll stick to PNGs.

[derboo]

Yeah, always use untouched PNGs for submissions with pixel-based graphics. If there's anything that needs to be done to them, we'll do so during layouting, always providing the originals as hyperlinks. Saving as JPG causes fragmentation in pixel art, kinda like in 32-bit era FMVs, only not as obvious.

[Sketcz-1000]

Usually when resizing images I convert them from PNG to JPG. With PNG you've got a lossless format - every pixel will be distinct and as it was when playing. But when you shrink these down (such as some PC88 games), the pixels get blurred together. In cases like this it seems like a good idea to use JPG, since you've lost the fidelity anyway.

When submitting screens, please always submit in a lossless format, like PNG, BMP, or GIF if it uses 256 or less colours. Most emulators produce PNG or BMP screens anyway. Infranview is a free screenshot utility which can bulk convert/rename if you need to. Otherwise we can handle any conversions.

Also, and this is a personal view/request, please try not to submit box art in PNG format. It increases the file size and doesn't benefit the quality at all (and for whatever reason I have trouble opening them quite often). JPG is usually fine for artwork.

[starscream]

The resized images on the JPG page look fine to me, they're not overly blurry, which is really the only objection I have against resizing these kinds of resolutions. I find the squashing a bit too much in the case of 256x256 X68 shots.

[BulletMagnet]

Another vote in favor of the JPEG thumbnails with PNG links if you click 'em.