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DOS games with weird resolutions?

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First post, by cyclone3d

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Looking to test a VGA-VGA cross scaler that I received today.

I need a list of some games that have non-standard resolutions to make sure that it will work properly with everything I can throw at it.

Also need to update the firmware on the thing, but I want to do some testing with the stock firmware so I can watch for improvements when I do upgrade it.

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Reply 1 of 20, by BitWrangler

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I think this is what you want to know about...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_X

But searching "mode X dos games" gives some sites that I believe are not welcome here, if you want specifics.

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Reply 2 of 20, by cyclone3d

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Ok, so mode X is one possibility.

Found a very helpful article on nerdlypleasures though that shows a bunch of different resolutions.
http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2014/09/o … tions-when.html

And the mode X article that is referenced in the above article.
http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2014/09/c … mode-x-and.html

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Reply 3 of 20, by leileilol

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Jazz Jackrabbit (320x199) and Battle Isle 2200 (360x240) immediately comes to mind.

Quake also supports the very wide gamut of mode X modes (all the combinations between 320x200 and 360x480 you can think of).

Some Gamemaker games run at 312x196. BC Racers runs at 288x224.

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Reply 5 of 20, by Jo22

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I remember that Bananoid also used a weird resolution.

Bananoid is a freeware Arkanoid clone, which runs on a tweaked VGA mode the author likes to call 360x240 MCGA.
It features seven levels that span two screens for a total resolution of 544x240, according to the manual.

http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/bananoid/

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Reply 6 of 20, by Jepael

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cyclone3d wrote:

I need a list of some games that have non-standard resolutions to make sure that it will work properly with everything I can throw at it.

Normally games use standard resolution timings even if they make the visible area smaller or larger than by default.

As the first VGA monitors were "fixed frequency" type, they really work with singe line rate of about 31.46kHz, while frame rate can change between 60 and 70Hz (maybe down to 50 if memory serves). It means the horizontal scanning speed cannot be changed (except within tolerance), but there can be variable amount of total lines per frame to get down to wanted vertical frame rate, usually 70 or 60 Hz. Another thing that can be changed is the vertical scanning speed to fit either 350, 400 or 480 visible lines on screen, and that is set with sync polarity. There are rumours of even damaging monitors by changing the H/V timings, most likely multisync monitors can handle non-standard timings properly.

Therefore, no matter how many active or visible pixels or lines a game uses, they for the most part adhere to the strict timing limits so that they work on any standard VGA monitor and VGA card. As the image is normally underscanned to fit the screen, a game can within limits of monitor borders and VGA registers make the visible area wider or narrower by changing the number of active pixels drawn per line, but it does not change the line frequency.

As VGA card has two selectable pixel clocks, that gives two possibilities for how many pixels there will be per line to make the line rate constant.
25.175MHz clock can fit nominal 640 pixels on screen by default, and by doubling the pixels (halving the pixel load clock) it gives the 320 pixel modes.
28.322MHz clock can fit nominal 720 pixels on screen by default, and by doubling the pixels (halving the pixel load clock) it gives the 360 pixel modes.

And as monitor can draw nominally only 350, 400 or 480 lines visible, the other modes can be made by replicating lines, i.e all 200-line and 240-line modes are really scanline doubled 400 and 480 line modes. Normally 350 and 400 line modes are 70Hz modes and 480 line modes are 60Hz on standard VGA.

Unless there are bugs or deliberate changing of video timings for some reason, weird resolutions should just be using standard timings, but are just using more or less pixels or lines that are normally used in the visible area. Because the monitor does not know this, therefore modern LCDs and converter boxes might not show properly the areas that extend beyond standard visible area.

So, for example, 320x200, 320x400, 360x200, 360x400, 640x200, 640x400, 720x200, 720x400 should all be identical 70Hz formats from the monitors perspective.
Same goes with 320x240, 320x480, 360x240, 360x480, 640x240, 640x480, 720x240, 720x480, these should be all identical 60Hz formats to the monitor as well.

Syndicate uses standard 640x480 resolution timing but reconfigures the VGA card to only draw 400 lines of video memory data and to start drawing those 40 lines later than by default to get those 400 lines centered on 480-line screen.

Reply 7 of 20, by zyga64

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Try Megablast: http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/mega-blast
My 15" Dell LCD (1024x768) tells me about "unsupported resolution". Tried several cards (S3, Ati, Nvidia) without success.
My 20" Samsung LCD (1680x1050) cuts the image down, makes it unplayable. Great game though.

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Reply 8 of 20, by silikone

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leileilol wrote:

Jazz Jackrabbit (320x199)

An uneven number?
But why

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Reply 9 of 20, by cyclone3d

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zyga64 wrote:

Try Megablast: http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/mega-blast
My 15" Dell LCD (1024x768) tells me about "unsupported resolution". Tried several cards (S3, Ati, Nvidia) without success.
My 20" Samsung LCD (1680x1050) cuts the image down, makes it unplayable. Great game though.

It works with that.
It is detected as 720x576 at 50Hz

It could really be 360x288 though.

Is there an English version of the game? The copy I found I am not sure what language it is in.

Great thing about this scaler is that it also supports zooming and shrinking as well as aspect ratios... down to the pixel level 😁

I'm going to do some more testing with a bunch of the different games with weird resolutions before posting up information about it in the eBay thread.

Was pretty expensive when new, but is now discontinued AND the seller that has them has a bunch of them for cheap.

Downscaling or even 1:1 ratio seems kinda wonky/blurry with the original firmware or maybe I just don't know how to set it up properly for that, but that is not really what I needed anyway and I am guessing that pretty much nobody would be using it for that feature anyway.

Problem I was having with the Atlona VGA to HDMI scalers (the old ones that support the lower resolutions) is that they overscan the picture at certain resolutions and there is no way to turn off the overscanning.

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Reply 10 of 20, by cyclone3d

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Ok, so after testing a bunch of games, I am pretty confident that this thing can handle pretty much everything you can throw at it.

It is a TVONE 1T-C2-400-US
http://www.tvone.com/high-resolution-pchdtv-scaler

The software (serial interface) even lets you make completely custom resolutions as well as have complete control over everything in the unit including sending raw serial commands.

The current software can be gotten from here:
tvone.crmdesk.com/answer.aspx?aid=8785& ... 2bdownload

If they update it, here is the link for the software page:
http://www.tvone.com/softwares

CorioTools Suite is what you want for this unit.

Anyway, I'll post the eBay seller link here as I have already ordered a second one. I'll also post it in the eBay thread.
$25 shipped in the US.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/162418782230

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Reply 11 of 20, by xjas

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My old VGA tweakmode testing suite is still online. It has a whole bunch of examples of stuff but you might find the included program "tweak" especially useful.

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Reply 12 of 20, by Gamecollector

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silikone wrote:

An uneven number?
But why

Because 320x200 is 70 Hz with VGA.

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Reply 13 of 20, by cyclone3d

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xjas wrote:

My old VGA tweakmode testing suite is still online. It has a whole bunch of examples of stuff but you might find the included program "tweak" especially useful.

Oooohhhh. I'll test with that next. Pretty sure it will pass with flying colors.

Edit: Not sure if some of the stuff is not working because of the video card or the scaler. I think I am going to have to try hooking directly up to a CRT to see what the video card can handle, and what the scaler can handle.
I am using a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI currently.

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Reply 15 of 20, by cyclone3d

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jxhicks wrote:

How is refresh rate handled by this scaler? Does it let you output at the original refresh rate or does it force a frame rate conversion?

Depending on the original resolution and refresh rate, there are possibly some defaults out of the 113 that are going to be the same refresh rate as the input refresh rate.

For the ones that aren't, you can use the software for it to make custom resolution/refresh rate settings and then save them to the scaler itself.

It also lets you modify the stock output settings and I think custom settings if you want, even via the buttons on the scaler itself.

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Reply 17 of 20, by zyga64

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cyclone3d wrote:
It works with that. It is detected as 720x576 at 50Hz […]
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zyga64 wrote:

Try Megablast: http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/mega-blast
My 15" Dell LCD (1024x768) tells me about "unsupported resolution". Tried several cards (S3, Ati, Nvidia) without success.
My 20" Samsung LCD (1680x1050) cuts the image down, makes it unplayable. Great game though.

It works with that.
It is detected as 720x576 at 50Hz

It could really be 360x288 though.

Is there an English version of the game? The copy I found I am not sure what language it is in.

It is in Polish. I'm afraid there's no English version 🙁

Resolution and refresh rate is typical for Amiga however, what can be easy explained as it is DOS version of Amiga game.
I'm curious if there is a (easy) way to find current resolution/refresh without such a device ? DOS TSR maybe ?

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Reply 18 of 20, by FFXIhealer

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Anyone else remember SimCity (now known as SimCity Classic)? I used to play the old DOS version on 486 PCs and it was ALWAYS stretched vertically. I know this now because EVERY SINGLE VERSION of the game besides the DOS one I remember playing for hours has perfectly square zones, but the DOS one did not. Sure, it was "3x3", but the boxes were always taller than they were wide. I'm going to assume at this point that it was a resolution problem, that it was more like 320x200 instead of 320x240, which would have given a proper 4:3 screen ratio. So my CRTs of the time stretched the screen vertically. It looked a lot like this:

SimCity Tall.png
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SimCity Classic for DOS at 320x200
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I remember the first time I saw SimCity on the SNES. I thought the game was weird because all the zones were SQUARE. Like this:

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SNES version of SimCity Classic
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So there's a weird resolution game for ya.

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Reply 19 of 20, by leileilol

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FFXIhealer wrote:

it was a resolution problem, that it was more like 320x200 instead of 320x240, which would have given a proper 4:3 screen ratio. So my CRTs of the time stretched the screen vertically.

That is not weird at all.

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