Blurring Pixels (Fuzziness?)

sheamkennedy · Post by **sheamkennedy** » Sun Sep 27, 2015 6:11 am

Wow I haven't been on here in ages!

Anyways I have this thing I've been wondering about but it's kind of hard for me to explain so bare with me.

A long time ago I read a post in some forum or something saying that there was maybe a way in the editor to enable "fuzzy/blurred pixels" (I'm not sure if this is the correct terminology so let me explain).

Basically enabling this feature would cause the pixels in the game to look sort of fuzzy kind of giving the same effect of playing an old nintendo game on a poor television set to some degree. I swear I read of a way to do this at some point in time and swear I bookmarked it but can't seem to find this anywhere. Not to mention I'm having trouble searching for it on google since I don't know what the proper term is called. Can anyone shed some light on this? Or am I just crazy and imagining such a feature...?

Post by **TMC** » Sun Sep 27, 2015 11:27 am

I'm think you're thinking of smoothed scaling.

The graphics backends have an option to smooth the graphics when running at a 2x or greater zoom. The type of smoothing used is graphics backend dependent. gfx_directx uses bilinear filtering, and the others use a non-smoothing scaling algorithm that's similar to these algorithms on Wikipedia. (I think the one we use is slightly different to any of those.)

No smoothing:

gfx_directx smoothing:

gfx_fb & gfx_sdl smoothing:

The only way to enable those smoothing algorithms is with the -s command line switch or additionally in the case of gfx_directx, going into the Options menu and turning on "Smooth drawing". You can add commandline switches with a ohrrpgce_arguments.txt config file.

There's currently no way get one of those types of smoothing in the other type of backend, though in future there might be.

Nathan Karr · Post by **Nathan Karr** » Sun Sep 27, 2015 12:44 pm

No smoothing is best smoothing.

kylekrack · Post by **kylekrack** » Sun Sep 27, 2015 5:06 pm

Nathan Karr wrote:No smoothing is best smoothing.

I don't know, the smoothing used in that last screenshot (I've seen it before although I don't know what it's called) could be used to make an interesting art style if you used it in the right way. Don't get me wrong, I've seen it totally mess up perfectly good pixel art. That can be frustrating. But if you used it intentionally, it might complement the art nicely. Maybe if it were used in a Scribblenauts-esque style..

sheamkennedy · Post by **sheamkennedy** » Sun Sep 27, 2015 5:37 pm

@TMC: So a text file can be used to configure the game to have smoothing on other peoples computers but if they have a different backend it won't work?

I also like the last algorithm shown. It kind of reminds me of what Super Mario World looked like on my TV back in the day. I just wanted to play around with this a bit and see what I could do. I agree that perfectly blocky pixels look best but it's just not how it used to look on TVs growing up. It's sort of a display perfection that I think we've achieved and now most people have become accustomed to it.

Post by **TMC** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 4:14 am

I was intending to add support for that Scale2X-like filtering in gfx_directx. No plans to add bilinear filtering to the other backends. When that happens I would add an actual option in Custom to turn it on. In the meantime as a workaround you can place a file called ohrrpgce-arguments.txt in the same directory as game.exe/ohrrpgce-game containing just -s. And remove gfx_directx.dll so that you don't get bi-linear filtering instead. I'm not sure where to put that .txt file on OSX.

At high zoom levels the filtering is stacked; here's an experiment from long ago. 12x zoom I think. But a warning, there's no filtering at all for certain zoom levels like 11x, the zoom level may be automatically reduced on small screens, and we may change the filtering algorithm in future.

sheamkennedy · Post by **sheamkennedy** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 4:35 am

That looks wonderful. It'll be nice to see this once it's build in. I'll mess around with it a bit in the meantime.

Spoonweaver · Post by **Spoonweaver** » Wed Sep 30, 2015 11:22 pm

Hmm, pretty neat. Seems f12 doesn't show the blurring effect in the screenshots.

I like that we have neat effects like this. I'd like more options.

Post by **TMC** » Fri Oct 02, 2015 5:27 am

What options are you suggesting? More of filters presented on that Wikipedia page?

sheamkennedy · Post by **sheamkennedy** » Sat Oct 03, 2015 5:01 am

I don't know if the suggested filters have to be already existent but I think a cool one would be if all the square pixels were made to look like circular dots, kind of like an LED matrix. I think it would be easy to do since it would essentially be playing a black overlay on top of the screen that shows only the coloured pixels through the open circles.

Post by **TMC** » Sat Oct 03, 2015 11:16 am

Actually it would be nice to just pull out a large chunk of graphics code from a project like MAME that supports ten different filters like TV scan lines and pretty much everything on that Wikipedia page. No idea how much work it would be.

Spoonweaver · Post by **Spoonweaver** » Sat Oct 03, 2015 1:02 pm

Yes, this is what i meant.

Gizmog · Post by **Gizmog** » Sat Oct 03, 2015 4:16 pm

TMC wrote:Actually it would be nice to just pull out a large chunk of graphics code from a project like MAME that supports ten different filters like TV scan lines and pretty much everything on that Wikipedia page. No idea how much work it would be.

While you're at it, can we natively support Galaga? I kinda have an addiction.

Post by **TMC** » Sat Oct 03, 2015 4:23 pm

That's your job!

Feenicks · Post by **Feenicks** » Sat Oct 03, 2015 5:38 pm

New contest - make a galaga clone?