PC Engine screenshots

rabidrodent · Post by **rabidrodent** » 2012-05-07, 4:59:33

Hello, I didn't know if this would be more appropriate to post here or in the Ideas & WIPs board, but I decided to stick it here. It's nice to see some PCE rips cropping up, but the titlescreen screenshots are really stretched. I took some new screens for the HuCard games (the CD games, Exile and Legion, are kinda big so I didn't get around to downloading them):

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5251234/VGM/PCEscreens.zip

I took the screenshots with Ootake. Here's a quick guide to setting it up to take screenshots at their full resolution without scanlines and stretching.

First you'll need to boot a game. Then you'll need to click the emulator window to show the menu bar. This can be displayed all the time by clicking "Setting" and unchecking "Hide Menu".

Showing the overscan:
Setting > Screen > Start Overscan Customize > Show Overscan Top&Bottom

This makes the emulator display the full vertical resolution on startup. It should be set to "Overscan Height 8dot" by default, which is what you want. You might want to also select "Show Overscan Left&Right" but I don't think that does anything with the native resolution, maybe just the stretched view.

Turning off stretching:
Screen > Non-Stretched

Getting screenshots to appear at 1x size without scanlines:
Capture > Setting of Screenshot > Size x1
Capture > Setting of Screenshot > Non-Scanlined

Now you should finally be able to take native quality screenshots. Just click "Capture > Output Screenshot" or just press the Print Screen key and it will save the images to a "screenshot" folder in the Ootake folder.

Tom · Post by **Tom** » 2012-05-07, 5:11:16

To be honest, I noticed that the PC Engine screenshots seemed to be stretched in a weird way, but I have no idea about how they are supposed to look since I'm not familiar with the PC Engine.
Thanks a lot for your suggestions!

Kaminari · Post by **Kaminari** » 2012-05-08, 23:41:01

Overscan is not required as it's not meant to be displayed on a real CRT (it usually contains either black margins or graphic artifacts).

But yes, those screenshots need to be redone. The standard resolution for PC Engine games is 256x224, with the odd 336x224 and 512x224 cases. Except for the latter, I wouldn't care for aspect ratio -- too much hassle for nothing. Just follow the example of Famicom/NES captures, which are similar to PCE.

Post by **ValleyBell** » 2012-05-09, 11:47:03

I would leave the 256x224 (and probably 336x224, too) as they are and would double the vertical resolution of the 512x224 to 512x448 to avoid losing pixels or blurring the picture.

The actual resolution of the current screenshots seems to be 256x240, same as rabidrodent's screenshots, btw.
Also the colours of the new screenshots look much better.

rabidrodent · Post by **rabidrodent** » 2012-05-13, 5:36:08

I updated the link to include CD games, plus re-optimized versions of the other screens. Well, I couldn't get Ootake to boot the Japanese version of Exile, so that's not there.

I also included both 240px and 224px versions, so pick whichever you want I guess.

Also, I found out the "Show Overscan Left&Right" option alters the 336px horizontal resolution and expands it to 352px.

2ch-H · Post by **2ch-H** » 2012-05-13, 16:35:14

Edit : I deleted the file, Have included a screen shot to the my post of Pack Update Topic.
Exile, Japanese version screenshots

Because there is the game that is displayed funnily when it is 240px, I think that 224px is better