liqmat wrote:

Really? Let me give you an example. […]
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Really? Let me give you an example.

I submitted the DOS game Bez Pegs which was not in their database which was fully approved and I upscaled my screenshots to 1024x768. Clear and easy to see.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/bez-pegs/screenshots

I then got rejected for doing the same thing when I submitted screenshots for the DOS title TrianGO so I resubmitted the screenshots in their native resolution as requested. I think they look rather blurry and unclear especially the text on the title screen.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/triango/screenshots

Frankly neither of these look good. In both cases, I'm guessing that the games' native resolutions didn't have a 4:3 pixel aspect ratio, but the shots were scaled to 4:3 anyway, using nearest-neighbor filtering. This causes unsightly artifacts like those uneven horizontal strokes in the text characters. The first example just had additional scaling applied on top of that, which doesn't help matters.

So I agree with xjas, but like he said, don't take that too hard. Sticking to the native resolution is simply easier and avoids such 'dirty scaling' problems. MobyGames has approved far worse examples than yours... but the one time I pointed out a few cases on their forums, a 50K-point contributor got so deeply offended that he ragequit the site before being coerced back by Management; so I don't really bother with that anymore. Still, constructive criticism is just that.

To be honest I would deny upscaled images as well; I don't know what methods the person used, and if they used something particularly bad then it could introduce shimmering artifacts due to uneven scaling, or blur the image. That said, it seems random whether or not they'll accept images because I've seen some total crap on there, particularly with 3D console games which have some """enhancements" applied to them in emulation. They look awful and aren't accurate at all to how the game should look.

On a somewhat related note, the most frustrating thing for me with MobyGames is just how hard is to actually get access to any of the high res simages. Having access to those can be really handy when making YouTube videos, since I often need high res scans of box art to be able to make 720p thumbnails that don't look like blurry garbage. For whatever reason, you have to specifically request access to them and the admins *may* approve of your request, at least that's what I was told on the forums. I can't even access high res versions of my owns scans. I've given up on using the site for resources all together and just scan everything myself.

VileRancour wrote:

liqmat wrote:

Really? Let me give you an example. […]
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Really? Let me give you an example.

I submitted the DOS game Bez Pegs which was not in their database which was fully approved and I upscaled my screenshots to 1024x768. Clear and easy to see.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/bez-pegs/screenshots

I then got rejected for doing the same thing when I submitted screenshots for the DOS title TrianGO so I resubmitted the screenshots in their native resolution as requested. I think they look rather blurry and unclear especially the text on the title screen.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/triango/screenshots

Frankly neither of these look good. In both cases, I'm guessing that the games' native resolutions didn't have a 4:3 pixel aspect ratio, but the shots were scaled to 4:3 anyway, using nearest-neighbor filtering. This causes unsightly artifacts like those uneven horizontal strokes in the text characters. The first example just had additional scaling applied on top of that, which doesn't help matters.

So I agree with xjas, but like he said, don't take that too hard. Sticking to the native resolution is simply easier and avoids such 'dirty scaling' problems. MobyGames has approved far worse examples than yours... but the one time I pointed out a few cases on their forums, a 50K-point contributor got so deeply offended that he ragequit the site before being coerced back by Management; so I don't really bother with that anymore. Still, constructive criticism is just that.

I think you are definitely right on the TrianGO screens that something went wrong with the aspect ratio, but as far as Bez Pegs, that is from my 286 6MHz and that is exactly what it looks like as far as aspect ratio. By the way, not much to look at, but Bez Pegs is a very fun puzzle game. One of the finest examples of voice over PC speaker I have ever heard in a game.

Regardless of the aspect ratio argument (some games expected users to adjust their monitors back when front panel dials were common), upscaling also destroys information about the image. For example if the game is using a custom palette in VGA or EGA64 mode, as soon as you convert it to RGB & use a scaling filter, that gets lost. On a site that's supposed to be an information resource, that kind of thing is extremely important.

"Screen"shots should depict the contents of video memory, not how the 'typical' user would see them on their imperfect monitor (otherwise why not start adding a fake bezel & scanlines?)

xjas wrote:

Regardless of the aspect ratio argument (some games expected users to adjust their monitors back when front panel dials were common), upscaling also destroys information about the image. For example if the game is using a custom palette in VGA or EGA64 mode, as soon as you convert it to RGB & use a scaling filter, that gets lost. On a site that's supposed to be an information resource, that kind of thing is extremely important.

"Screen"shots should depict the contents of video memory, not how the 'typical' user would see them on their imperfect monitor (otherwise why not start adding a fake bezel & scanlines?)

Cool, so could you link me to some of your contributions so I can see how it is properly done on MobyGames?

To be fair, the screenshot submission form explicitly states that

JPEG should only be used when the game's graphics mode contains more than 256 colors; all other shots should be submitted as GIF or PNG.

Furthermore, the MobyGames Standards are also clear on what screen resolutions are acceptable:

• Shots should be in the original resolution size.
• It is acceptable to get screenshots from a video capture of the game at a resolution higher than the system supports. However, these can be replaced with original aspect screenshots.

VileRancour wrote:

MobyGames has approved far worse examples than yours... but the one time I pointed out a few cases on their forums, a 50K-point contributor got so deeply offended that he ragequit the site before being coerced back by Management; so I don't really bother with that anymore. Still, constructive criticism is just that.

I think it was the same thread where the approvers told me that the interface used for approving screenshots doesn't allow for easy checking each image and/or the file format this is in. I'm pretty certain that if this is the case, it's one of the factors contributing to user screenshots that are not up to standards slipping past the radar.

Anyway, following the standards is the ultimate responsibility of the contributor, not the approvers. If you're willing to follow the rules and realise that some mistakes were made, file a correction or contact the approver(s) via PM to pull back your upscaled screenshots and replace them with images that are up to standards. It's never late to amend such mistakes, although the correction approval process may take a while. Approvers don't object if you ask them to remove something you have contributed but you've end up not liking for any reason.

You resized screenshots to 1024x768? I can't imagine that to be an integer scale of any DOS resolution. When scaling pixel art images you want to stick to integer scales, that is exact multiples. 640x480 needs to be scaled to 1280x960 for example. You can have different scale factors on different axis to account for different aspect ratio. For example, 320x200 scales to 1600x1200.

Here's a 20x20 image which I resized to 35x35 then integer scaled to 280x280:

The integer scaling is entirely lossless, the uneven pixels here is because I scaled 20x20 to 35x35 (NOT an integer scale).

Here's the same 20x20 image which I resized to 40x40 then integer scaled to 280x280:

This image is just integer scaled. Notice how the line looks perfect?

Now if you chosen any scaling algorithm other than nearest, it will smooth out scaling artifacts like this, but gives another problem:

Now we have a different image entirely. We've obviously added stuff to the image. This is bad. The easiest way to check if you've used a scaling algorithm that distorts the image is using paint and zooming in to the max zoom level and seeing if the pixels are the way you expect them to be. Paint only does integer zooming. If you resize 640x480 to 1280x960 then every pixel of the original image should be a 2x2 pixel block of the exact same color in the resized image. If you resize 320x200 to 1600x1200 every pixel should be represented by a 5x6 pixel block.

Now the larger resolution the source image is and the larger the target resolution is, the smaller these flaws will be, but they will always be there and there's really no logical reason for it.

So. Stick to integer scales if you want to resize the image without distorting it. Keep in mind that if you resize the image, then MobyGames can't resize the image properly later. That is, if MobyGames implements scaling properly then all the images you uploaded will look worse than the ones uploaded at native resolution. What you're doing by uploading prescaled screenshots might look good now, but it could be worse in the long run. Plus, by prescaling you also make it much harder for third parties to use your images for the same reason.

You also should not use jpg for low color images. Here's the 20x20>40x40>280x280 image as a low quality jpg:

One thing you'll notice is the image has a significantly larger file size. The second thing you might not notice because of a poor example image is the damage it does to the image, I'll zoom the upper left 40x40 pixels up for you:

See now? The jpg is larger and distorts the image. Don't do this.

In case you're not able to extrapolate from the examples, I've tested saving a Tyrian (320x200) screenshot resized to 1600x1200 as both png and jpg (50% quality). The jpg was 191KB and severely compromised in quality, the png was 39KB and lossless.

Thank you ZellSF. Your post actually helps. The weird part with the TrianGO screenshots is I did no scaling at all and left it alone. I think what happened with those is scaling happened in DOSBox. Does that sound right? Normal2x I believe. Maybe that explains the garbled title screen text. All my physical material scans I leave at the required 300dpi and 100% quality JPG as recommended by MobyGames. Those look great, but of course MobyGames I believe compresses the originals a little bit further. The overlays, while not PNG, they were submitted 100% quality and high DPI which is why they are so clear. In greyscale they had lots of uneven shadowing so I did some posterizing at the advice of some graphic arts websites which eliminated that. The DOS screenshots have been the challenge a bit though, but I'm learning. I am trying to capture some of these before they all ship off to the museum so this is my first attempt at MobyGames archiving and it's been, let's say, educational and eye opening on many levels.

When you press ctrl-f5 DOSBox should capture the image 1:1. If you use any other capture software you might capture the image after DOSBox scaling, which is usually not ideal.

TrianGO runs at 640x350, the MobyGames screenshot is 640x480. That's not a scale factor that works. Regardless of scaling method trying to fit 350 lines evenly into 480 lines won't look pretty. It will just be scaled way too unevenly.

Since it's both such a high resolution game, has non-square pixels and is in need of AR correction then it's actually pretty hopeless to make it look perfect. You'll pretty much have to sacrifice some AR correctness. 1920x1400 (3x horizontal, 4x vertical) is pretty close to 1920x1440 (4:3), but a bit wide:

1280x1050 (2x horizontal, 3x vertical) is a bit farther away and gives you a somewhat narrow image:

You can rescale the 1920x1400 image to 1920x1440 using interpolated scaling (lanczos used here):

or rescale the 1280x1050 image to 1280x960:

Looks good maybe, but the interpolation artifacts I mentioned earlier are still there. That means since we've added new information to the image, the original image can no longer be restored. If anyone wanted the image to be scaled another way they can't (and people disagree a lot on how to scale images), if they wanted to blow the image up to a large size they can't. Plus the images are larger in terms of filesize because we've added more colors to them (they would be even larger if I didn't manually optimize them a bit). So the AR sacrifice of either of the first two images is much preferred IMO.

You might have noticed the 1280x960 image looks worse. That's because the smaller our target resolution is, the more scaling artifacts we have to introduce. Which is why the ideal solution is that MobyGames scales the image, so it will use as large a resolution as makes sense for the individual visitor's monitor rather than a set static one. That requires them to have the 640x350 image (or the manpower to check for and downscale integer scaled images, which they don't have) and the required metadata (aspect ratio, which I'm guessing they're not collecting).