Bobscreen

Anamorphic widescreen

Something I hadn't considered until the other day - what's our policy for games with anamorphic widescreen? Or more specifically, Wii games?

I wasn't really paying attention, but screenshots of Wii games on Sonic Retro are often being taken from the Dolphin emulator, which can render games in all sorts of crazy resolutions. The unofficial policy (because I don't think we've been policing these things) is 853x480, i.e. "widescreen" 480p. The emulator rendering 853 columns of pixels because it can.

However, on a real machine the Wii renders content internally at 640x480, which is then stretched to 16:9 if widescreen is enabled. That would mean that to be accurate, all Wii screenshots should be taken at 640x480 - the native resolution.

But I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that by 2007, Widescreen televisions were the main target, and so could be considered the "correct" way to play the game. I would expect there to be 4:3 alternatives (because it's Nintendo), but what's the better choice? Do we go for pixel-perfect 4:3 screenshots or slightly blurry anamorphic widescreen versions? That is, assuming one option doesn't look like arse. I guess there's nothing stopping us doing both, or is having the Sonic Retro-style "choose your title screen" a bit clunky?

This is less of a concern for me with the PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube because even if the games are optimised for widescreen displays, the consoles weren't really designed with the feature in mind - it was more of an afterthought (even if the PlayStation 2 BIOS says otherwise).

This template can't currently stretch a 4:3 image to a 16:9 one, but I think we need that feature regardless. Probably need to stop it stretching Game Boy (Advance) games too. Not sure it's treating Master System games right either. -Black Squirrel (talk) 13:24, 2 July 2018 (CDT)

This might require more thought - we need to be supporting vertical monitors too.

So we need to support:

• No stretching
• 4:3
• 16:9
• 3:4
• 9:16 (is this ever a thing?)

A means to cope with SMS 3D screenshots (maybe)

And for all of these, we need to be able to override the widths and heights, so that screenshots are never more than 320x240px (or I guess 240x320 if vertical - it should be able to detect if w > h) in bob templates, but can be any desired size outside.

e.g. on my Anamorphic widescreen page I want all the Virtua Fighter screenshots to have a 224-pixel height.

Can't currently be bothered to work out the maths. It gets messy with all the CSS margins. -Black Squirrel (talk) 16:00, 2 July 2018 (CDT)

Resizing

As it is now, the full size image is being used (and scaled with css) instead of a thumbnail. Is this intentional? - Hivebrain (talk) 12:41, 11 July 2018 (CDT)

The only reason it does this is because it made the maths easier to comprehend in my head. If it can be done, it's probably worth doing.

There are some fringe cases that will need to be tested - 512x448 PlayStation 2 screenshots being resized for bobs for example - Mediawiki will apply a filter when it's knocked down to 256x224, then the browser will apply another one when that's stretched to 320x224 - will it get too blurry? -Black Squirrel (talk) 12:51, 11 July 2018 (CDT)

Updates

I copied Template:BobscreenTest over here, since it seems to work properly now. Some arcade game aspect ratios are questionable, since all I did was measure the screenshots on flyers to get an approximation. More research is needed. Eventually we'll add 3D 3DS screenshots, but I don't know if any 3DS emulator has that yet. - Hivebrain (talk) 15:59, 20 July 2018 (CDT)

Atari 8-bit

I downloaded a few ports of Frogger II to get a title screen (and then later realised after uploading things that I wanted the disk versions). In doing so I noticed the Atari 8-bit version is odd:

the emulator permanently renders a 336x240 image for all Atari 8-bit games. Judging by the fact the rest of the internet uses this resolution I think it might be right, but is it? -Black Squirrel (talk) 13:21, 6 August 2018 (CDT)

Looks like it's 320 wide with 8 pixels of overscan either side. 320x240 might be right, but without knowing for sure I'd probably leave it at 336x240. - Hivebrain (talk) 13:51, 6 August 2018 (CDT)