smoothen original DM graphics as addon for CSBwin?

[beowuuf]

Did you remmeber to set the directX tick in the menu for the sounds?

[zoom]

I thought I had, but obviously did not! Now it works fine

[T0Mi]

phew... I'm over it. Rehi guys.

I had to write drivers logbook for 06+07 -by hand- withhin 48 hours, what a pleasure. %&$§/&

so... let's have a look what Paul has done.

Conflux III entrance untouched:



Conflux III entrance touched:



In my eyes this looks like a real 640x400 screen, not a 320x200!

Well done!



Let's take a look ingame, where it seems a bit more tricky

Black flame untouched:


Black flame touched:



The flame looks much better (IMHO), but the single pixels on the blank grey bricks would need some different kind of treadment. Maybe it's simply impossible regardless of which filter is been used to better that. No idea (except... you know). Still: I would play it with 'blur on', after some time the eye gets used to the look and it feels natural, good and DMorig.

What I'm really missing (beside RTC_winCE2002 ) is a -real- STlook for the big screen. Wouldn't it be a cool option to really -change- the screen resolution (of the monitor) to 640x400 when 'maximize window' in x2 mode is selected, instead of just enlarging the window to it's max? Then (gessed it right) the linekilling needs to be done, resulting in the beloved atarilike look.

Of course this is about nostalgia (and about the Atari)... maybe an DM enthusiast should spend thoughts about how DM could solve the future challenge of surviving with all the modern games around, keeping young people interested in good games without the need of eyepopping graphics, rather than dwelling in the past. But on the other hand... DM had such an impact - it will survive just by the influence it had, even when the engine itself has died.

T0Mi

[Parallax]

Mmmh, funny, it's "starring out".
I guess it's an artefact of the interpolation scheme that a straight line of one color on a background of another gets a series of notches. The effect is most clearly visible at the edge of the brick walls is the last image (white line on light gray background.)
I am willing to bet that it's still possible to do better. Also wondering: how far could you take this with the right interpolation scheme, hypothetically? This is x2 along each dimension, but could it handle x3? x4? x4 is 1280x960 and all but the oldest graphics cards should be able to display it, right? And with 16 times the pixels, think of the possibilities...

[Gambit37]

I remember a website from a few years back that had some different anti-aliasing algorithms on it. One of them interpolated the data between blocks of a similar colour but would not do so for high contrast colours, so straight lines of white next to balck for example would simply be made higher res. It was a kind of 'bets of both worlds' approach.

I can't for the life of me remember where it was and I don't have a bookmark for it. Sorry.

[Crash.]

How about something like this?

[Gambit37]

It just looks fuzzy and out-of-focus to me. *shrug*

[Crash.]

I was trying to find a way to soften the edges and add some anti-aliasing, without completely discarding the original detail. I tried using multiple translucent layers with different levels of pixelization.

Oh well

[Gambit37]

Sorry, didn't mean to sound harsh, it's just my opinion: I prefer the sharper quality of the originals.

[Crash.]

I'm just trying to find a way to improve them. Originally I played on a 12 inch Atari ST Monitor. Now I'm playing on a 20 inch monitor, and the old 16-color 640x400 graphics could use a tiny improvement, such as cramming the DM2 graphics into DM via RTC :/

[Toni Y]

There already are good (well, better than the screenshots shown ) algorithms to "smooth" low res graphics, such as Mame2X, advanced Mame, Super SAI, Super Eagle, etc.

My favourite is the Super2xSAI, but I don't like it for all games, just a select few where it works really well.

hqNx seems to perform well, but I haven't seen it in action personally.

Here's some info and links about various algorithms for this purpose:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Eagle#hqnx_family

Now I'm playing on a 20 inch monitor, and the old 16-color 640x400 graphics could use a tiny improvement, such as cramming the DM2 graphics into DM:

Unfortunately that's not possible with CSBwin, since the engine runs using the Atari ST graphics routines which are limited to 16 colours and that sort of change isn't really feasible as "post process" effect.

[Crash.]

Are the post process shots here also limited to 16 colors, but perhaps at higher resolution?

Coding post processing is beyond my capabilities, but I'm just trying to understand what you guys are working on.

Is there any way to use hardware 3D acceleration to scale and/or filter CSBWin? I would like to be able to use it without setting my resolution to 640x480.

Cheers!

[Paul Stevens]

use hardware 3D acceleration to scale and/or filter CSBWin

No problem--Provided your hardware 3D
acceleration supports VGA mode 0dh.

[Crash.]

Any better?

[Toni Y]

Any better?

Not really, no, IMO.

It looks like what it is, a crappy resample with a blur applied.

For comparison here's what the algorithms that at least try to not simply make the image blurry look like with DM (snes emulator because it comes with said filters):

hq3x

Simple 3x scaling for comparison

[Gambit37]

For comparison here's what the algorithms that at least try to not simply make the image blurry look like with DM (snes emulator because it comes with said filters):

That was the stuff I was thinking of a few posts back. Yeah, quite like that style...

[Crash.]

That hq3x would be very nice. Can it be done for CSBWin?

[T0Mi]

The antialiasing Paul added to CSBwin_blur already did a great deal.
As a tickable option it would be a very nice addition.

As for hq3x: looks like pixels (drawn as dots) of the same color are connected among each other with lines of the same diameter.
Then an antialiasing is done using additional colors. Sadly CSBwin can not provide these extra colors.


Here is another idea:

Playing around with EDGE I know it is possible to increase the size of monsters, adding pixel rows/lines in steps of 16, even doubling the size is possible, so... wouldn't it be possible to use redrawn graphics in -real- 640x400, then reorganizing the places like for CSBwinCE? Would need the parts of the viewport and everything in it to be moved to their new places too. If Paul says this is possible we could set up a library and everyone willing to redraw the new graphics based on those from a scaled screen sizex2 can contribute. A whole lot of work, but probably the only way to -really- improve the graphics of CSBwin.

[Crash.]

I do get some error messages on startup with CSBwin_blur, but aside from that, the only thing that I would want to change - if possible - is the grid pattern that appears on solid colored surfaces. I don't know if it is possible, but could the ant-aliasing operate only on areas where there is a change in color, but leave the solid areas alone?

Cheers!

[Crash.]

Like this then?

[Gambit37]

Yeah, I like that one, it gives it a nice hand-drawn feel.

[Crash.]

It's a shame that CSBwin can't do more colors or higher resolution. I would think there might be a way for the 16-color output to be read from memory and post processed then displayed in more colors. I guess someone would have to re-write the display routines?

The only thing I'm capable of doing is to try running all of the graphics files through hq4x then see how they look when put together in one of the other DM clones.

[ian_scho]

Wow, the mummy just looks so different. He's wearing a sort of camo-toilet-paper gear that's common when on a recon mission in the dungeons of Kleenex.

[Gambit37]

[Crash.]

FYI, I've converted the entire original Dungeon Master graphic set with hq4x.