Widescreen support!

[hurleybird]

Hi guys, you may not remember me, but I was the guy who originally suggested loading hi-res replacement textures in N64 games. Anyways, I just just got a new widescreen LCD, and after playing around with 1964 a bit, I have an idea of how we can easily implement native widescreen support in N64 games!

Ok, this is probably more of a graphics plug in job and not a 1964 thing, but here goes anyway, as I'm not sure where else to post this. Rice's video plugin already supports playing the N64 roms in a widescreen resolution (such as 1680x1050) but this is not true widescreen gaming, as everything still gets stretched. For 3d elements, proper horizontal+ widescreen support is super easy, just change the field of view from the default 90 to 100 (for 16:10 displays, different aspect ratios will vary... 16:9 is 107 IIRC). 2D elements (such as HUD elements) are a bit more tricky, as these would probably still be stretched... however, as we already are able to make replacement textures it should be possible to just make new 2D elements that scale properly into widescreen. Super easy! (at least for 3d games)

 

[schibo]

You are right, the problem is that due to the change in aspect ratio the geometry is also stretched. But it is better if a plugin would to try to draw the geometry for widescreen. There is no need for new textures to do that.

 

[hurleybird]

Changing the feild of view is the way (and the only way, for horizontal+) that it's done. Thats the way half life 2 and pretty much any other FPS supports widescreen The end result looks like http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/screenshots/hl2.php. No geometry stretching. To find out more, you can check out www.widescreengamingforum.com

New textures would only be for 2D elements that so that they are not stretched. For example, you have a HUD element, say, a health indicator. Take the image, double it in both dimensions, and horizontally compress the image by the same amount that it will be stretched going to a widescreen resolution. While texture replacement of this kind wouldn't be a must, it would make the game look better.

 

[schibo]

I like this and it is interesting, but you can't simply change the field of view in an N64 game without knowing some things about how the game works. One trick might be to use a viewport, and these games such as half-life surely would need to make adjustments to support diffferent aspect ratios by moving models such as the game player to be displayed properly on the screen, or simply zoom the camera out further. If you tried that in an N64 game such as Zelda OOT without compensating, you could chop link's feet or head off, or display weird artifacts on the left and right of the screen from objects that would otherwise have been off-screen clipped objects.

Now on the other hand, there are some N64 games that optionally support Widescreen, such as Road Rash 64 and Goldeneye.

 

[tailslol]

the widescreen without stresshing is already suported in jabo 1.7beta but the hud arent on the boton of the screen... just need a code to fix it.