First PureBasic game render screen on TV

talisman · Post by **talisman** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 9:05 pm

First game demo screen render made with PureBasic. This is a rewrite of old RPG game written in Visual Basic, currently it does nothing but display custom background image and message box with text. Debug info on top shows screen redraw parameter and message box offset delta values.

For now I must say that my 2 hour coding is very pleasing with PureBasic and the result is nice. I hooked up this image to my LCD TV, but here I ran into a problem. My LCD TV is HD Ready with very big native screen size. My game is rendered at 640x480 and this makes image scaled on TV, which makes everything look very unpleasant. Can anyone recommend a good thin CRT TV or standard definition TV with composite / component video? I use NVIDIA graphics card to output to TV and project aim is to make games near arcade level, so it can be very possible that some day I build a personal cabinet and use an old CRT TV with my own games, sort of homebrew / DIY arcade.

Idea of game I currently have in mind will utilize very simple four button controller. On screen you have character, which must find gems and he is controlled via controller with four buttons. What makes challenging is that (hopefully) the AI of enemy will step towards you every time you make a step in the game, so you need to find out strategy how to collect all gems before enemy hits you. I am struggling with AI part and the RPG engine this game is based on was very incomplete as well, but if / when I progress I tell you.

That's all for now, sorry for long post, but I think it is nice to tell everyone this little success even if no game is complete yet.

Best regards, talisman.

Trond · Post by **Trond** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 9:21 pm

There is usually a button on the remote control that changes the scaling mode, maybe you can at least get the correct aspect ratio.

talisman · Post by **talisman** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 9:35 pm

Trond wrote:There is usually a button on the remote control that changes the scaling mode, maybe you can at least get the correct aspect ratio.

Thanks, now changed from "Wide" to "1:1", I have black borders but it is no problem, however the image still looks (sorry for rough word) bullshit. I rather save the LCD TV for movies and get a true monitor for game development. Any suggestion? I fear that it is already too late to find a standard definition TV, so what are the options? The display must be interlaced, that is for sure to get maximum arcade feeling!

Kaeru Gaman · Post by **Kaeru Gaman** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 10:08 pm

is the display to smooth or to blocky?

is it about selfmade games or generally?

talisman · Post by **talisman** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 10:13 pm

Kaeru Gaman wrote:is the display to smooth or to blocky?

is it about selfmade games or generally?

Smooth? Blurry. Background on the screen capture aside, the text is not sharp and looks blurred. It is about DIY arcade games not just generally. Thanks in advance!

Kaeru Gaman · Post by **Kaeru Gaman** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 10:39 pm

the problem could be caused by the big difference of the resolutions, and a "broken" ratio...

e.g. when you stretch 480 Heigt to 1080, each pixel has to be expandet to 2.25 pixel.
this makes the appearence blurry.

additionally, using the hardware interpolation can be worse than the software solution.

you can help this a bit by switching to software interpolation...
have a look into the control center of your grafix card.
with my nVidia, I can switch from "Display integrated scaling" to "nVidia scaling", the latter is the software solution.
sometimes it looks way better than what your Monitor can do.

when it's about Game you write yourself, you can chose different solutions than a 640x480 fullscreen.

if it's really about oldskool look, you could display all elements on a 320x200 Image,
and resize this with flag #PB_Image_Raw to 2x, 3x, 4x or 5x size to display it into an almost desktopfilling window.
this will give maximum oldskool look, because the pixel will look big and blocky.

you can achieve a similar effekt going via Sprites3D and resizing, but this works better with DX7, not with DX9.
Gloomy Nights and Living Dead uses such a technique.
http://www.gloomy-nights.de/thegame.php?ln=en
http://www.purebasic.fr/german/viewtopic.php?t=17345

J. Baker · Post by **J. Baker** » Thu Jun 04, 2009 11:59 pm

The problem isn't the game graphics as your tv should have some sort of upscaling feature. Upscaling usually only works with hdmi, dvi or component though. If you are using s-video or just the normal single (yellow) video output from your graphics card, I could see this happening.

What method is used to connect your graphics card to your tv?

EDIT: I just saw that you said your tv is hd ready. Which it may not have upscaling features. But should still look good if dvi is the connection.

talisman · Post by **talisman** » Fri Jun 05, 2009 9:15 am

I had used component video, because my gaming console was plugged in via the only HDMI input (there's no DVI / VGA). Using NVIDIA GPU scaling (force) the picture looks much better, actually the text is sharp now but it still looks a bit "smooth". Went to the store yesterday to get a DVI - HDMI cable and used my NVIDIA to tell that it is HDTV output. Setting it to 720p output and configuring my LCD TV to have Aspect Ratio 1:1 and Upscaling OFF the picture looks excellently sharp. Of course now there is a black rounding bar, but when setting Upscaling to ON this bar fades away however it will make the game text smooth again. I want the game text specifically to be razor sharp just like at arcades where everything is extremely sharp. Any ideas here? I won't be making games at any higher resolutions than 640x480 for example.

Kaeru Gaman · Post by **Kaeru Gaman** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 2:09 am

> Any ideas here?

two suggestions in my yesterday's post... :roll:

djes · Post by **djes** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 10:40 am

If you want perfect sharp display, you can't rely on TV upscaling/downsampling. You have to work at the native TV resolutions. Try differents resolutions to figure what it is.

blueznl · Post by **blueznl** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 11:25 am

Sharp images require native resolutions, or framed resolutions. It all depends on the screen you have.

Interpolation always causes blur, there's no way around that.

dagcrack · Post by **dagcrack** » Sat Jun 13, 2009 4:09 pm

Well, by the looks of it your font is one of the issues. Try a composite font (MS Serif?)

In the image it's clear you're using a TrueType/OpenType font... You'll either have to load it through API to avoid the anti-aliasing or just load a plain old composite font.

I think that's what you mean by "sharp" ie. rasterized without AA.

But yeah, that background reminds me of the SNES - Although it lacks any coherent design - is it randomly generated or were the worker ants drunk?

I'll PM you some old code for the fonts.

Rook Zimbabwe · Post by **Rook Zimbabwe** » Sat Jun 13, 2009 10:08 pm

Talisman... nice start... cannot wait to see where you go with it!

I hope you convert it PNG ans scale colors back... it took a bit to load the image... shrinking the size might make this thread more friendly!