What's the correct aspect ratio on a PC-FX/running Zeroigar?

[arromdee]

I've been trying to play Zeroigar on an emulator, but I never owned a real PC-FX and don't know what the real display looked like.

Googling shows that it had a resolution of 256x240 or 341.333 (=1024/3) x240.  Mednafen when I run it with a scale of 1 claims to be using 288x232 video mode.  I ran it with an xscale and yscale of 4 and it has 4x that mode, but it seems to be producing oval planets and oval explosions.

Does Mednafen already scale it properly according to aspect ratio, (so further scaling it by a constant 4 is enough), or do I need to use a different X and Y value to make it look like what people would see on an actual 4:3 TV?  Are those planets and explosions supposed to be round?

[elmer]

I've been trying to play Zeroigar on an emulator, but I never owned a real PC-FX and don't know what the real display looked like.

Googling shows that it had a resolution of 256x240 or 341.333 (=1024/3) x240.  Mednafen when I run it with a scale of 1 claims to be using 288x232 video mode.  I ran it with an xscale and yscale of 4 and it has 4x that mode, but it seems to be producing oval planets and oval explosions.

Does Mednafen already scale it properly according to aspect ratio, (so further scaling it by a constant 4 is enough), or do I need to use a different X and Y value to make it look like what people would see on an actual 4:3 TV?  Are those planets and explosions supposed to be round?

Zeroigar displays in 256x232 (i.e. 256x240 - 8 lines of overscan).

Well ... there's an exception for one screen, but if you can get your monitor/TV to look right, then Mednafen should take care of it.

AFAIK All that you need to do is to get to any 4:3 output ratio.

BUT ... I've just tested Mednafen in fullscreen mode on my 1920x1080 monitor, and the picture definitely isn't a pure 4:3 ratio, it does look a little "off". I usually play in Windowed-mode and hadn't noticed.

I think that you may need to play with "custom" scalings if you want it to look as-close-as-you're-going-to-get to a real TV.

[Arkhan]

Have you tried Magic Engine FX?  It's sometimes a bit more user friendly.

and yea any 4:3 setup should produce visuals that don't look like some goony flash game.

[SamIAm]

Have you tried Magic Engine FX?  It's sometimes a bit more user friendly.

Sorry, but this is bad advice for this particular game. Magic Engine FX screws up parts of Zeroigar to the point of being essentially unplayable.

[arromdee]

256x232 scaled to fit inside a 4:3 screen would give about 309x232.  It's producing 288x232, which sounds like it's scaling, but not enough to get to 4:3.  Scaling it to actually get to 4:3 does make it look better.  Of course, there could be overscan, but I wouldn't have any way to figure out how much.

(The people on the Mednafen forum seem to think it's already scaling properly....)

[Mednafen]

RS-170/RS-170A(approximate calculation, some uncertainty in numbers and implementations):
256 * (4 / 3) / ((5369318.18 * ((63.556 - 10.89) / 1000 / 1000)) / (485/2)) ~= 292.7

"Industry standard", 12 3/11 MHz rate for sampling square pixels from interlaced NTSC video:
256 * (12272727.27 / 2) / 5369318.18 ~= 292.6

[arromdee]

"Industry standard", 12 3/11 MHz rate for sampling square pixels from interlaced NTSC video:
256 * (12272727.27 / 2) / 5369318.18 ~= 292.6

I don't understand this.  Are you saying that this is what you should do assuming that the TV output is composed of square pixels?  (In which case I would express my doubt that the PC-FX outputs square pixels.)  Or are you saying that this is what you should do if the TV output is non-square pixels and you want to stretch square pixels to look like them?  (In which case I would ask how you figure out the corresponding number to know how to stretch the pixels vertically, since it would not make sense for this number to always stretch by a factor of 1.)

[Arkhan]

Have you tried Magic Engine FX?  It's sometimes a bit more user friendly.

Sorry, but this is bad advice for this particular game. Magic Engine FX screws up parts of Zeroigar to the point of being essentially unplayable.

Oh, does it?

I've only ever used MEFX to grab screenshots.    I don't think I've ever actually played a PC-FX game for any other reason in an emulator.

What does it do to the game? lol.

[SamIAm]

Have you tried Magic Engine FX?  It's sometimes a bit more user friendly.

Sorry, but this is bad advice for this particular game. Magic Engine FX screws up parts of Zeroigar to the point of being essentially unplayable.

Oh, does it?

I've only ever used MEFX to grab screenshots.    I don't think I've ever actually played a PC-FX game for any other reason in an emulator.

What does it do to the game? lol.

Basically, it doesn't do rotation effects properly. That means that the entire stage 2 boss, the ice-breath attack from the second boss, and one of the laser-blast attacks from the stage 6 mid-boss won't show up on the screen at all like they're supposed to. You'll find yourself getting hit (hard) and not being able to see what hit you at all. The stage 2 boss hard enough to learn how to fight when you can see him moving normally; if you can't, you're pretty much finished.