https://ibb.co/f6Pra8
From Shadow Hearts to the Sonic CD remake to Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, developers cannot align a texel to the pixel grid to save their lives. So I get to go and waste my time trying to reverse engineer Sonic CD remake, chopping it down the the bare-bones in an attempt the unearth some hopeful innate goodness therein. Words. The plain-text shader programs contained within the executable were promising, until I realized that Christian Pimpleface (come on, as if you didn't think it) (that hair is probably not doing him any favors) is just mish-mashing some points which are floating. Mis-configuring DirectX. In any case, omitting a 1:1 PAR option with integer scaling at any resolution and zero filtering is a sin.
Everyone cares about anti-aliasing (does "aliasing" technically exist if the source isn't actually sampled? [The answer is "no."]), but no one cares about the more subtle thing: motion fidelity/resolution/clarity/image stability/whatever you want to call it.
In 3D games, it's the 2D menus that tend to suffer this non-identity scaling distortion. Problems that didn't exist in the good old days because developers didn't generally have the power to screw it up. "Spiderman."
Watch, next time they'll include the practically-zero-effort-for-huge-gain feature "black frame insertion." Nope, management won't understand.
Let me guess: Sonic Mania has the exact same problem, as do all Retro Engine games. I can't wait to be annoyed by this if I decide to discard money on the physical release.
By the way, I care about this remake for the steady 60 FPS, increased field of view (those damn stages), and looping and elongated music. Since no PAR, I won't play it.
By the way2, I used Cheat Engine as guide to eliminate the window stretching factor, in case you are curious. Selecting 640x480 gives you a content area height of 500 pixels. Shocking, I know. But is it really surprising at this point? So search for 500, not 480.
But you're right: I am the only person in the world who notices. I am also the only person in the world who cares.
Breath of the Wild suffers from this too, of course. It stares you in the face each time you scroll through your inventory, for example. The credits text exhibits the signature shimmer. It's an awful game in general, though (opinion), so I suggest you spend your life on more artistically valuable things. (I wasted my time so you don't have to. Look how virtuous I am.)
* goes back to upscaled games on his 5120x2880 monitor *
Oh, and I came to this topic expecting Pro Action Replay codes. I was sorely disappointed.
edited 8:10 PM EDT June 10, 2018
Man achieves super high resolution. Man effectively realizes an arbitrarily lesser resolution.
Woman inherits the Earth.
Compared to dinosaurs, this is pretty darn bad.
The bug is actually worse in motion. So there will be no calming of my tits any time soon. (And they do want to be calm. Believe me. I've asked them.)
If on the off-chance anyone knows some reverse-engineering Direct3D 9 API-fu, I'm all ears. And tits.
Relevant:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb147229(v=vs.85).aspx
I found a nice analogy in this unrelated article:
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/06/truman-show-anniversary-jim-carrey-peter-weir-laura-linney
'“The Truman Show was made before video came out—when movies were still made on film,†explained Linney. “Now you can do a million takes and, because it doesn’t cost as much and isn’t as precious, there’s a casualness now on sets, which isn’t bad . . . just different. During that period of time, film was very valuable. So, when the camera was rolling, everybody became very quiet and everybody leaned in. Everybody, the crew, nobody could move, nobody could speak, nobody could whisper, no one could look at a phone—because we didn’t have them. It was a very different atmosphere on a set, and it’s one that I miss, actually, because people really had to listen. I look back on it as pure filmmaking, in a way, that just doesn’t happen anymore.â€'
Except they're too soft (which always sounds better, right?). When the product suffers, it's not only just different. It's also just wrong.
edited 12:42 AM EDT June 12, 2018
http://tanalin.com/en/articles/lossless-scaling
Sonic Mania is natively 424x240, technically taller than Genesis Sonic games and Sonic CD which output 224 pixels, but I'm not complaining. More on-screen content at the design expense of zoomed out Sonic. I think it was a smart choice to target half the standard 480p resolution. This enables the human-made (read: not algorithmic-ly sampled and thus "alias"-free) pixel art while also enhancing the vertical field of view as compared with the previous games.
The 424x240 resolution isn't exactly 16:9, but only a fraction of a pixel less wide. This is a perfect choice, because integer scaling is intended to display the viewport, often with black framing boxes.
The interesting consequence of this is that the pixel art for the sprites had to be completely redone. If Sonic were the exact sprite from the old games, he'd be too skinny without the theoretical CRT to plump him up (stretch or "horizontally distort intentionally" AKA Aspect Ratio subjective "Correction" for you pedants).
The wrong way to do this would have been to put each sprite/tile into an image editor and stretch. The right way would have been for an artist to manually re-create the sprites by hand for the new 16:9 aspect ratio.
Luckily Sonic Mania chose the right way.
However, Sonic Mania's PC fullscreen modes are broken. They apply scaling similar to the Sonic CD 2012 garbage. So we're stuck with non-graphics-card-exclusive windowed mode for correct integer scaling.
I'm willing to bet the console versions do the same garbage scaling, possibly with the exception of PS4 Pro 4K mode?
The last I heard, Windows' windowed/non-exclusive modes have improved to the point where they are just as jitter and input lag-free as exclusive fullscreen, but who knows.
Non-exclusive, "borderless window" fullscreen is only available in the INI. "exclusiveFS=n"
"But the pixel perfect mode is our favorite here and it also highlights the first console advantage - amazingly, Sonic Mania supports PS4 Pro. It outputs at native 2160p, enabling razor sharp pixels that line up perfectly with the pixel grid on a 4K TV. No blurring, no upscaling, no filtering."
Yeah, okay. What part of "line up perfectly with the pixel grid" and "no blurring, no upscaling, no filtering" don't you understand, technical gaming journalist? Maybe take off your nerd-colored, rose glasses first next time?
In other news, I've been detecting some jerkiness in Sonic Mania on both PC and PS4 Pro. I believe that it boils down to a difference in camera motion compared to the old Sonic games. Stand on a flat surface and jump while watching the camera move up and down.
I hope the issue is isolated to just the camera panning. Interesting post:
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/sonic-mania-ot-dreams-come-true.1419116/page-144#post-247306702
edited 9:37 PM EDT August 7, 2018
I also don't quite see the issue of jerkiness that you mentioned; I'll look harder next time I play, but the framerate seemed perfect to me.
edited 11:37 PM EDT August 7, 2018
How do you know the people who should be seeing these complaints will never see them?
How do you know whether I care that the people who should be seeing these complaints ever see them?
You're right, hard facts are perceived negatively. I'm the mean guy saying direct things. If you dig a little deeper, you might find someone who cares. Aw.
edited 11:49 PM EDT August 7, 2018
what?
Unfortunately this has the side effect of making all FMVs greyscale. So there's no way to play Sonic Mania using AMD's drivers and get a correct display.
Sonic Mania bug or AMD bug? My bet is this is a Sonic Mania bug. A low-priority test case, to be sure. It's only what you see the entire game, after all.
Hilarious: https://steamcommunity.com/app/584400/discussions/0/1836811737977650742/#c1836811737978193544
edited 1:45 AM EST March 9, 2019
We have a regression on our hands, folks.
Although Denuvo is no longer mucking around, consuming CPU, etc., this latest version makes the old INI setting "shaderSupport=n" ineffective. The FMVs are always in color regardless. Regardless.
Absolutely no way to achieve perfect point sampling with AMD, anymore.
(And I tried AMD's custom resolution feature and GPU scaling with image centering. It works, accept vsync enabled in this configuration slows the game to a crawl. Seems like a GPU scaling driver bug. Might as well bite the bullet and stretch to 16:9, at this point.)
edited 9:20 PM EDT March 30, 2019
This seems affect all audio in the game. This is probably related to poor (audible) sample rate conversion. Does not happen on Xbox One.
one solution i could see out of this is to adjust the volume of certain sounds just like what you have outlined there so the "crackling" doesn't become too obvious. otherwise all issues are on them.