Mortal Kombat HD Remix with MUGEN

[Lord Deimos]

Smoke, from what I gather of your argument, the pixels back then were NOT square. [I am a little slow, bear with me] Do we know the exact pixel ratio used back then (x/y)? Is it 2:1 like from your example? Are your corrected images simply this ratio times the number of original "x" pixels to reach a new "true" pixel size for the screen? If this is exactly what you mean, what is the final ratio reached by doing this?

 

[smoke.tetsu]

Actually to be technical the pixels where probably taller than they are wider on the actual screen itself so they had to do wider pixels in order for it to look correct on there. Just like the doom example which displays the same kind of fatness when displayed on screens with square pixels.

So when displayed on a modern screen with square pixels the screen uses at least double the amount of pixels on the width causing the image to be naturally stretched.

Consider these facts...

1) When calculated the aspect ratio of the screen with the raw artwork straight out of the ROM from MK is around 16:10.

2) The original arcade monitors where 4:3.

3) They didn't letterbox it or crop out the sides.

4) the shape of the pixels on the screen where non-square

5) The game resolution was 399x253 yet it's on a 4:3 screen and thusly squashed to fit.

As far as I know the screens at the arcade tended to be 512x384 which again is 4:3.

Thinking about it the example X/Y images I showed aren't really wrong they just show what happens with the raw sprites when corrected (above) or non corrected (the one with the wide pixels). Just like my example from Doom.

My corrected pictures are from MAME with the aspect ratio for the game set to 4:3 so it treats the game much like the original monitors did.. minus the overscanning they did.

What does that all add up to? Not to the sprites being correct just raw out of the ROM without any correction.

I mean look again at this GIF of my corrected to 4:3 scorpion vs. the image taken directly off of an arcade cabinet.. how can one dispute this? Only if you are used to seeing it uncorrected.

Yes the screen was compressed onto the RGB monitor but that's what they designed and formatted the art for! They specifically designed and formatted the art on the RGB monitors used in the arcade!

It's true that in some cases it can end up being too compressed\squashed but I think my example GIF speaks for itself.

 

[la_luna]

Smoke I think you're right. I have encountered problems with pixel aspect ratio before in video making.
Just because something is made (recoreded) in certain resolution, it doesen't mean it's meant to be
viewed as such. RAW artwork means nothing, the end result (what you see on the monitor) is what counts.
And the end result in this case is on CRT monitor. Can't believe I havent noticed this before, it didn't even
cross my mind, I had it fixated in my mind to be 400:254 and that's it.

Anybody knows how they handeld the Arcade Kollection? When you take away the side-pillars, what is left?

 

[smoke.tetsu]

Black bars.. AKA pillar boxing.. they decided to decorate them rather than leave them black in other words. So what they did is compensate it for 4:3 and making it pillar-boxed and then added in decorated bars instead of unused space. Presumably an HD remix would instead do the same sort of compensation but then increase the visible area showing more of the background. When you display it uncorrected you get thinner pillar boxes than what the arcade kollection had since the screen is being displayed wider than it should be.

To be fair though much off what I've seen so far seems to be naturally proportioned.. apart from any old sprites that are slapped in raw into a screenshot or the masked guard.

 

[Bleed]

Smoke's argument is making more sense to me. If I understand correctly, the old monitors would squash the image so you have to pre stretch it for compensation.

If the Raw images were to be the same as what we saw in those monitors, they would end up looking too thin after going through the monitors distortion.

They had to counter the distortion from the monitors.


I think we need to mimic the monitor's distortion, to fix the pre distortion. Then scale up proportionally, and either cut off the sides or add to the image.

If we use the sprites from the Rom directly,then we are using a pre distorted image as reference.

I think that's why the first model of UMK3 scorpion I made came out looking so stubby and fat.

 

[smoke.tetsu]

I wrote a whole thing up but reading it a few times I think Bleed has got the idea. Where they had prestretched artwork to compensate for the squashing the old monitors did. If they didn't prestretch them yes they would end up looking too thin but on the flipside everything now looks a little fatter than it should be when viewing the raw images although apparently some are used to it and might even prefer the incorrect way.

But again MKAK does the correct display to 4:3 with pillarboxing and so does MAME if you set the display ratio to 4:3.

When doing the pre-distortion here you wouldn't need to cut off anything as this would all be done with the source images and when viewed in widescreen only the viewport would change showing more of the stage.

 

[Bleed]

I'm saying the raw images are too wide, for a thinner display on the old monitors because the monitor will squash horizontally.

So if we use the Raw files as reference, all our stuff will look too wide.

correct?

 

[smoke.tetsu]

Yes, exactly correct... I was editing my post because I realize you mostly have the right idea.

The only thing we don't really have to worry about here too much is the over-scanning the old monitors did which cut off some of the visible area of the screen making the energy bars fit exactly to the top of the screen yet left more space when seen on a screen with no overscan enabled in a game such as a computer monitor. Although some TVs still do overscanning atlhough I noticed when one hooks up a PC to a TV it compensates for it so it's not really a problem there either. It mostly applied to those non-round monitors like the old CRT RGB monitors used in the arcade where.

Some people where saying on some of the mockups the status bars where too close to the top but if you take a look at where they where on the original arcade monitor the overscanning practically made the timer flush with the top of the screen.

 

[TerryMasters]

They didn't compensate by pre-stretching the images. So using anything other than pixel aspect is going to cause lots of issues (why SNES/GENS didn't play the same as the arcade).

 

[smoke.tetsu]

That's not why they didn't play the same as the arcade. The reason was because of hardware limitations and they physically made the sprites smaller because of limitations. They also had to use less frames of animation as well to fit within the confines of the 16-bit consoles. They probably didn't even use the same engine. In MK1 for the SNES they attempted to make it look the same as the arcade and the frame rate suffered because of it.. the genesis dialed back the graphics but had other issues going on there due to it but none of it was due to them doing what I'm suggesting.

You are simply not understanding this issue and are conflating the way the images come out raw with how they are supposed to look when displayed on the screen... and yes the sprites where slightly wider than they should be to compensate for the squashing the RGB monitors did. Don't believe me? Fine.. don't.... but it doesn't make it not true.

If one doesn't pre-compensate for it and does it to the raw image then in order for it to look correct they will have to program the engine to do it at runtime. Otherwise everything will be slightly fatter than it looked at the arcade which is what the artwork was designed for... the OAR (original aspect ratio) is 4:3 and nothing else. It was not designed to be viewed raw in 16:10 or 400:254 or whatever the pixel aspect ratio is.

 

[TerryMasters]

I am understanding, and your logic is flawed which is what interloko was trying to point out.

The MK cab you posted:

My MK cab:

See the difference? Let's stick to forgetting about 4:3.

 

[smoke.tetsu]

You can't forget about 4:3. Yes we are designing this for widescreen but that doesn't mean the raw images are correct out of the ROM or that the aspect ratio on the original arcade monitor was anything but 4:3 and that it wasn't displayed as such. Why are you fighting me on this anyway? Your arcade monitor is not displaying anything uncorrected at 400:254 or 16:10 or any other widescreen format.

Again a widescreen version should be the same exact aspect ratio as it was originally displayed only with the field of view increased.

 

[jarvis653]

Okay, definitely wasn't expecting this discussion.

But yes, smoke.tetsu is right and I thank him for bringing it up. This is something that I wanted to talk about from the start, but I was honestly wary about it and as you can see from the responses, with good reason. I'm already anal about things like size and composition so this might've been too much to digest for you guys from me.

The first time I ran into this issue was when I was doing VHS capture work. When viewing it back on my monitor, I was confused at why the damn picture looked stretched. These were my home videos, with things and people I've known all my life, see everday, and so I was 100% positive that it was no trick of the eye and was stretched. I checked the aspect ratio, it was 4:3 like I had expected, so this just brought more confusion. Then it dawned me, that it's because the shape of actual pixels were being displayed differently.

So anyway, it's true that if we wanted to do this project as faithfully as possible, then we would have to change everything to solve the issue that smoke.tetsu has brought up.
However, there are reasons to keep doing what we've been doing.
One of them is conditioning. Think about it - how many people these days are actually seeing this game the correct way? Say if we did this the correct way, how many people do you think would say instead that it is stretched, much like you guys have to smoke.tetsu? Another reason is, it's very unfriendly to 16:9. Even with the currently wrong proportions it's difficult to suit it to widescreen, so trying to do it with 4:3 would be even worse. At the end of the day, this game was composed for old technology, and trying to make those compositions look good on new technology creates a whole lot of problems that inevitably result in even more changes to the original. Think about the implications on gameplay too.

Anyway I'm interested to see where this discussion goes. But you should know that what smoke.tetsu has told you is fact so arguing with him over that is pointless. It's just a matter of whether this is something we'd want to do or not. With so much work already done with the method we are currently using, it's definitely a step backwards as everything would have to be remade again.

 

[smoke.tetsu]

For shits and grins lets take a look at my corrected 4:3 scorpion shot compared to TerryMaster's photo lets flip back and forth shall we:

The frame isn't exactly at the same spot but it's pretty spot on so yes.. viewing the raw sprite you get a wider than you are supposed to have effect. To be perfectly honest I think it might be a tad off due to stuff like camera angle but not as off as if it was uncorrected.

By the way I think it's perfectly possible to compose the images to be correct compensating for what was going on in the old days but still make the whole thing widescreen friendly. I mean mostly what you have to do to make MK widescreen when it comes to the gameplay is increase the field of view showing more of the stage at any given time. The display aspect ratio and the pixel aspect ratio are two different things which is something I was hoping to get across.

You can take screenshots of stuff like the vs screen portraits and other title screens and use that as a guide for the proportions of say.. character portraits on the select screen and then add more vertical info and adjust certain elements to the width if you wish as well.

Actually more people than you know are used to seeing it correct because the MKAK and other home versions where set to display at 4:3 and not the uncorrected pixel aspect ratio that the sprites turn out as when ripped to raw images. It's mostly modders who are used to seeing them raw or people who play in MAME and don't set it to 4:3.

To hammer the point home I added in the uncorrected pixel aspect ratio scorpion as a third frame here:

So in order it's:
1. Arcade from TerryMaster's screen
2. 4:3 compensated in MAME
3. Uncorrected 16:10

 

[jarvis653]

By the way I think it's perfectly possible to compose the images to be correct compensating for what was going on in the old days but still make the whole thing widescreen friendly. I mean mostly what you have to do to make MK widescreen when it comes to the gameplay is increase the field of view showing more of the stage at any given time. The display aspect ratio and the pixel aspect ratio are two different things which is something I was hoping to get across.

Like I said, even with the currently wrong proportions it is difficult - see how much talk there was over something simple as lifebars not working compositionally in 16:9. The UI which I'm responsible for already has some issues with the wider space and I'm trying various things to solve those problems. This would just add even more space and subsequently change even more things. This is a basically a matter of which is the lesser evil.

 

[Bleed]

I set Mame to 4:3 and did a screen cap with F12.

Then I took a screen shot of the Arcade collection from the PS3, here's the difference.

The Collection is less wide

 

[jarvis653]

I set Mame to 4:3 and did a screen cap with F12.

Then I took a screen shot of the Arcade collection from the PS3, here's the difference.

The Collection is less wide and not showing as much of the stage, the characters look a little thinner.

MAME for some reason doesn't convert snapshots to any ratio other than the original. Check your snapshot, I bet it is 400x254

EDIT: I just did it for you, and it is as I said

 

[jarvis653]

This issue has just provided a logical way to solve the lifebars problem for me though. Instead of placing them compositionally with straight 16:9 spacing, I can try spacing them by converting to 4:3, upscaling horizontally then matching the lifebar position to that image. It will make them less distanced than the 16:9 version but more distanced than usual and looking better compositionally in the wider area of space.

Also smoke.tetsu, this issue would have more bearing if we were redrawing everything from the game. But because everything is being remade instead, the proportions are being judged by human eyes and will therefore look natural and correct. The benefits of having a slightly stretched UI means less changes need to be made for it to look aesthetically pleasing.

 

[la_luna]

Same as you Jarvis, I ran into this problem while making and converting videos. I read about it a lot and finally got it, but at the time it nearly drove me insane lol. So keep in mind, for someone who hasn't encountered this kind of problem before, this is not an easy subject.

Think about it - how many people these days are actually seeing this game the correct way?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but they can see this game relatively correctly in Arcade Kollection. I'm not sure since I don't own it, that's why I asked earlier when you take of pillar boxing in MKAKs MK1, what is left? Is it correct, etc.
and judging by smoke.tatsus answer it is correct, (4:3, + decorated side pillars)

To be fair though much off what I've seen so far seems to be naturally proportioned.. apart from any old sprites that are slapped in raw into a screenshot or the masked guard.

Guilty as charged, it never even crossed my mind that the original game
was working on a CRT 4:3 monitor

All the stuff smoke.tatsu said in the last few pages should've been the first
post in this thread for everyone to read (and understand) it is 101% correct.

 

[smoke.tetsu]

Bleed.. well that's odd.. your 4:3 looks a lot like my uncorrected shot.. in this gif it displays yours first then my uncorrected then my corrected one:

I used SDLMAME for my corrected screenshot by the way and the built in screenshotting on the Mac to take the shot with gives you WYSIWYG.