Mortal Kombat HD Remix with MUGEN

What settings do you have, is there something aside from "stretch using hardware" pixel aspect ratio 4:3?

Enforce aspect ratio, I have that on also.
 
In the MAME menu that you bring up when you press tab there is a screen section and there's usually two settings.. the pixel aspect ratio and 4:3.

I then use my OS' built in screenshot function rather than MAME's as it just does a screendump of what is on the screen as is.

See the "video" settings:
settings1.jpg


When you pick it you get this:

settingsvideo.jpg
 
I admire Smoke.Tetsu's tenacity when it comes to this issue. He is 100% correct. CRT monitors of that time were non square. Assets pulled directly from the rom would be artificially wide looking which is why my Guard was sort of looking squat since I traced it from the original asset. I actually forgot about this. However that being said, It's not a huge deal for me. I'm sorry it's just not high priority. If my assets are slightly more squat or wide than the original, I honestly won't lose sleep over it. If it feels right and looks right then I'll be happy. That's just me.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but they can see this game relatively correctly in Arcade Kollection.

You are correct actually. That pretty much makes my conditioning argument void.
Although as I said, characters and backgrounds are being remade with our eyes, so they should look natural and not fattened. And having slightly stretched UI actually works better IMO. So there are reasons to stick with what we're doing.
 
You know, it probably wouldn't be too bad to use the "slightly squat" look as a workflow if there was some kind of setting in the engine to compensate for it. :p

I don't know if MUGEN does though. It would be similar to the horzontal\vertical adjustments monitors have except it would only affect the pixels on the screen rather than the screen itself and thusly the boundries.

Or maybe a "quality assurance" person can go in and inspect everything and adjust accordingly. ;) That could be a lot of work if the fighters aren't made from the ground up with the correct proportions. But probably not so bad for the backgrounds.
 
Check it.

Whether you're stretching or compressing, converting sprites backgrounds or anything else to 4:3, 16:9/10, 4:3/16:9/10 whatever - regardless of what you're trying to do with the image, it's pixel aspect ratio that's correct. The two examples smoke's thrown at me were not. In certain scenarios (movies) yes, stretching a 4:3 image to 16:9 will turn a square into a rectangle. That is not what happens here, it uses a different method which makes that upscaling example irrelevant.

The second example was the arcade cabinet's lifebars. He showed a picture of somebody's arcade with the overscan way too high and used that to propel his argument. Then I showed my machine, which has the correct amount of overscan that isn't being hindered by bad caps or what have you, which tells a different story. That's because the examples he showed weren't based off the correct factual data, it's perceived data - "Google'd data" if you will that happens to be flawed which by relation, makes the logic flawed. So instead of asking the people who study the engine (myself), who know how the hardware works (myself) and who actually own the arcade cabinets (you guessed it), we're basing this "conclusive evidence" off of something some guy heard on the internet once.

Not trying to demean smoke or anyone else who agrees with him, I just can't explain this any simpler than that. You can change whatever you want, make the lifebars bigger/do whatever. But the sprites need to stay PAR because anything else will cause problems.
 
You know, it probably wouldn't be too bad to use the "slightly squat" look as a workflow if there was some kind of setting in the engine to compensate for it. :p

That would either crop the height or create black bars though, so that wouldn't be a good solution IMO.
 
No that's not what I'm referring to. I'm taking about a compressing compensation sort of thing I'm not talking about cropping. What it would do is compress it slightly by adjusting the pixels on the screen rather than what you are saying. It's kind of hard to explain except for perhaps the anamorphic example I gave earlier. The image there is squashed into a full frame and then stretched out to the full widescreen. This would be in reverse and not as extreme... a tiny bit of the view background on the sides may have to be added to compensate however.

That being said I'm not sure if MUGEN has such a setting so it may be a moot point but I'd like to think it has settings to deal with pixel aspect ratios without cropping either the height or width.
 
I know the people who are trying to refute my argument aren't just now finding out how to adjust the video settings in MAME.

I think I'm gonna take a break from this thread for a while.
 
Check it.

Whether you're stretching or compressing, converting sprites backgrounds or anything else to 4:3, 16:9/10, 4:3/16:9/10 whatever - regardless of what you're trying to do with the image, it's pixel aspect ratio that's correct. The two examples smoke's thrown at me were not. In certain scenarios (movies) yes, stretching a 4:3 image to 16:9 will turn a square into a rectangle. That is not what happens here, it uses a different method which makes that upscaling example irrelevant.

It's not that though. It's that our monitors display pixels differently than a CRT TV, has nothing to do with 4:3 to 16:9 conversion. This is evident on any content shown on it whether it's a movie or game, like I said I've personally ran into this problem. Check the MK Arcade Kollection, that is how it's meant to look and it is definitely different to what you see inside mame at original pixel ratio. As much as you know about the games and the hardware, I'm sorry but you are incorrect on this issue.

Regardless, I would like to stay with the workflow we are currently using so we both agree on doing the same thing anyway.
 
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I hate how TerryMasters seems to think if my examples aren't totally flawless then my entire argument is invalid and falls down like a house of cards. Well I'm sorry but it doesn't and my GIF's back me up on it and so does even his photo which clearly shows the game being played at 4:3 with the pixels on the screen being affected thusly... it may not have as much overscan which may or may not be adjustable (it usually isn't) but still the rest of it doesn't lie and clearly shows the game being compensated to 4:3 from the source material which is not widescreen no matter how you slice it.

The way he's practically attacking me almost suggests he has some kind of personal vendetta against me or something. Also if we are to get personal like that I doubt he knows the inner workings of the source code of the game and machine as well as he suggests if he thinks the way the sprites coming out of the ROM raw are the way they are supposed to look when being displayed on the screen when obviously the game was designed to be played at 4:3.

And he's the only one currently attacking me with uncalled for criticism.. the rest like Calactyte have seen the light even if they may not change their workflow.

And BTW, I haven't just heard anything I'm saying here on the internet once... that's belitting and practically calling me a newbie. Like others here I have played the games in the arcade and home since they first came out... and I am well versed on the technical details of screens, games and things like that. I just needed some examples an the internet and my own copy of MAME and what you post are the only things I have to give as examples right here. Again my argument is not like a house of cards.
 
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I am simply glad we are discussing it. Discussions like these elevate this project to more than your standard fan-game. It means we make decisions based on knowledge and even if we choose not to change the workflow in a situation like this, we've considered the topic. If we pay this much attention to detail on everything then I think it will turn out even better than expected.

No that's not what I'm referring to. I'm taking about a compressing compensation sort of thing I'm not talking about cropping. What it would do is compress it slightly by adjusting the pixels on the screen rather than what you are saying. It's kind of hard to explain except for perhaps the anamorphic example I gave earlier. The image there is squashed into a full frame and then stretched out to the full widescreen. This would be in reverse and not as extreme... a tiny bit of the view background on the sides may have to be added to compensate however.

Yeah I understand what you're saying, and there would need to be more background information to compensate. It's an interesting solution, perhaps Interloko could give some input on it since he's programming.
 
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Also to be honest even if the over-scanning was a little off in an example I've given before not all arcade screens where made exactly the same nor do their condition stays the same forever. I've seen some MK cabinets with washed out colors for example and different settings. The quality may vary from machine to machine. But the thing that is always the same is that they are 4:3 and display the games like MK appropriately which the pixel aspect ratio of the source material is formatted for... period.

Yeah I understand what you're saying, and there would need to be more background information to compensate. It's an interesting solution, perhaps Interloko could give some input on it since he's programming.

I'm not sure about that I mean I had the argument thrown at me before for not making MK widescreen that there would need to be more background information at the edges but just like the cropping tool in photoshop the viewport would simply stop where it needs to in when getting to the edge of the screen if the engine is programmed correctly. For this though yes there may need to be a tad more background added to the left and right of the stage. Or maybe not if the viewport is handled correctly.

It would also require for there to be a firm confirmation that it's possible and everyone to agree to the workflow of making things exactly to the original pixel aspect ratio so that some things wont look squished and others not squished.

I have to admit that talking about widescreen and aspect ratios and things like that is very confusing and almost like arguing about religion in a way. I mean many people just go by beliefs and when presented with facts get offended. Such as the fact that the original aspect ratio for MK is 4:3 regardless of how the sprites are formatted.

I have to admit I'd be a little dissapointed to have to play the game looking slightly squat though giving MAME with it set to 4:3 or the MKAK the advantage of being totally correct even if they are not widescreen or HD.

Also as far as turning a square into a rectangle that's exactly what's going on when displaying the assets uncorrected such as the title screen. Or the reverse... turning the character portraits in the choose your fighter screen into more square like shapes when they are really more like rectangles turned 90 degrees.

BTW I did a quick comparison of your select screen BTW:

MKselect.gif
 
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It would also require for there to be a firm confirmation that it's possible and everyone to agree to the workflow of making things exactly to the original pixel aspect ratio so that some things wont look squished and others not squished.

I have to admit that talking about widescreen and aspect ratios and things like that is very confusing and almost like arguing about religion in a way. I mean many people just go by beliefs and when presented with facts get offended. Such as the fact that the original aspect ratio for MK is 4:3 regardless of how the sprites are formatted.

I have to admit I'd be a little dissapointed to have to play the game looking slightly squat though giving MAME with it set to 4:3 or the MKAK the advantage of being totally correct even if they are not widescreen or HD.

I personally have been making everything to original pixel ratio, but it's logical that backgrounds and characters would be made with keeping natural proportions in mind. And because of that, I feel it balances the whole production out and so converting everything to respect the original 4:3 ratio would probably make a negligible difference which wouldn't be worth the time and effort. While staying true to the game is a major priority for me, a line needs to be drawn somewhere because we are not getting paid for this, and if we're not getting paid then it comes into our free time, which is limited. Decisions need to be made on how to handle the workload, and taking upon something like that IMO endangers the project from actually getting finished.
 
Yeah I can understand the free time thing. When the project stops being fun then that's no good. However my MO here has always been to help guide the project to be the best it can be from the very start. I mean take a look at my posts since I first joined in this thread a few pages back.
 
BTW I did a quick comparison of your select screen BTW

Yes and if you check it you will find it to be at exact OPR. How this can be balanced out is simply for the characters to be made to 4:3 specifications, with extra background information. I can tell you now that if you tried to fit the 4:3 composition into 16:9 it will create so much negative space and look really bad. I feel there is slightly too much information as it is already, but not much can be done, so adding more is a bad idea no matter what.

Also why is your gamma so high?
 
Yeah you can do that.. make the character portraits slightly wider and add in a bit more info to them although your dragon appears to be a little wider than the original when displayed at 4:3 although to be honest that's not really a bad thing.
 
Yeah you can do that.. make the character portraits slightly wider and add in a bit more info to them although your dragon appears to be a little wider than the original when displayed at 4:3 although to be honest that's not really a bad thing.

Looking at your image again, it appears to be wrong, it should look like this:

22770821018175901322911.jpg
 
Also why is your gamma so high?

I don't know... I'll check my settings although I posted the shots from it only for comparison of aspect ratio and not for the colors. I seem to be having a couple of other problems as well with some glitches showing up on the screen here and there but nothing that affects the aspect ratio but I'll look into the gamma thing I may need to reset the settings for MAME or something.
 
I don't know... I'll check my settings although I posted the shots from it only for comparison of aspect ratio and not for the colors. I seem to be having a couple of other problems as well with some glitches showing up on the screen here and there but nothing that affects the aspect ratio but I'll look into the gamma thing I may need to reset the settings for MAME or something.

I think there's the overscan problem too because yours is too stretched, check MKAK image for reference.

time to get back to work, gentlemen

Correct, and that's what I'm off to do now. I should have the remaining UI posted soon.
 
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