Mid-res screenshots

[icycalm]

For those wondering why reviews of games like Genji and Nocturne don't come with screenshots but only with artwork, it's because we haven't figured out how to make screens of that generation look good online. We have a technique (or more than one, I guess) for low-res games, and high-res games can have the framegrab posted without touch-up, but 480i games were still meant to be seen on CRT monitors and TVs with scanlines, so we got to figure a way to process them accordingly. If ronan's reading this maybe he'd like to take a shot at it. Here are some screens from Nocturne to practice on if and when you are up to it:

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/megaten/megaten3.htm

[ronan]

I would be ready to work on it, but I think there are two problems. (If I am wrong, please correct me.)
- On 480i images, as normally displayed on a 15kHz monitor (big beam spot), one usually cannot see any separation between the 480 scanlines. There is therefore no real need to simulate them.
- On 480p images, as displayed on a 31kHz monitor (smaller beam spot), the separation between the scanlines may be visible. But to simulate them, we need to create an image with at least 960 lines (ideally 1920). Isn't it too big?

[icycalm]

It's been years since I looked at a 480i image, and I wasn't looking for scanlines back then, so I don't remember. As for your second point, couldn't I resize them to something smaller, and make the smaller image clickable to get the full screenshot? Isn't that what Recap is planning for his update to Postback?

I really don't know how this shit works, so any questions you have you should take up with Recap. I will trust your and his judgement, and I will try to work into the reviews whatever images you post for me here.

[ronan]

Alright, I will have to get some more information and talk with Recap and another expert. I will let you know. (By the way, we will need good screenshots in PNG...)

Recap planned to use clickable thumbnails for his new site, that is right. I am curious to see how it will look when it is done.

[icycalm]

I can't take new screenshots for all these games reviewed by other people. Hell, I can't even take screenshots for the games I review. Until some people start volunteering to take screens using emulators, etc. we'll have to make do with what's available online. The hard work is developing the template, no? After that you can just apply it to screens from Google Image Search in seconds, right? And then we can replace them with better ones at the first opportunity.