03-26-2018, 04:48 AM
Greetings all! While having the pleasure to play around mostly with build 5.0-6467 and a couple of later ones, I've been reacquainted with a long-known reality that all of my NTSC GC Sonic games, and likely the entire Sonic line-up were made to display in some strange ~3.8:3 aspect ratio which has the effect of horizontally squishing the frame somewhat. Characters look thinner, circles are ovals, etc. (load up SA2:B, go into "Extras"... now you can't un-see it haha). Months ago I thought, "Fine, setting the aspect to Force 4:3 should stretch it out", but somehow this option does not stretch any of these games in window or fullscreen and only compresses 16:9 games to 4:3. Luckily the Stretch to Window aspect option actually does stretch these not-so-4:3 Sonic games... to the entire width of my 1920x1080 monitor while fullscreened. It was then I realized I at least had some control over the fullscreen resolution, and by making it display at something 4:3 like 1440x1080 while the "stretch" option was selected, the game would appear perfectly 4:3! While this did work, the omission of the fullscreen resolution option from the UI meant I'd have to monkey with the FullscreenDisplayRes value in the Dolphin.ini file every time I wanted to play something Wii-related.
Is there a better way!? Being able to set up solutions for specific games using the game ini overrides I learned about recently would be terrific, but as discussed, just changing the "aspect" option on its own won't fix this particular issue... yet. Assuming there are no hidden aspect options that will stretch narrow-aspect content to 4:3, could a command line via a shortcut be used to change FullscreenDisplayRes to anything I want? Using this section's instructions I tried adding a bunch of versions of a --config command which was supposed to point at that setting in the Dolphin.ini, but either I couldn't get the syntax right or this command just isn't supported.
Ok so that's the most important thing. The other is more of a curiosity than anything and regards the GameCube BIOS boot via selecting Tools > Load GameCube Main Menu > (region). (I'm absolutely delighted someone added that function by the way!) Now recall that animation of the tumbling cube that plays after loading a game, when that IPL.bin file is where it should be and Skip BIOS is unchecked on the GameCube tab in Config. I've noticed that this doesn't occur in any Dolphin when booting through the Tools menu. On a real NGC, this animation would play upon booting and would then go to the game if a disk was detected (like when Skip BIOS is unchecked in Dolphin), and the main menu if no disc is detected. Would it be at all possible for that animation to be implemented into the Tools boot method without fundamentally breaking something more important? I'm nostalgically interested in that prospect.
Well those are the points I'd like clarified. Since this is my first post and I don't want to bloat that "Thank You!" thread, I want to use this space to type "Thankyou": thanks to all the Dolphin contributors the internet over for helping me and many others retrieve part of their childhood from the proverbial lavatory called "time"! Haha.
Is there a better way!? Being able to set up solutions for specific games using the game ini overrides I learned about recently would be terrific, but as discussed, just changing the "aspect" option on its own won't fix this particular issue... yet. Assuming there are no hidden aspect options that will stretch narrow-aspect content to 4:3, could a command line via a shortcut be used to change FullscreenDisplayRes to anything I want? Using this section's instructions I tried adding a bunch of versions of a --config command which was supposed to point at that setting in the Dolphin.ini, but either I couldn't get the syntax right or this command just isn't supported.
Ok so that's the most important thing. The other is more of a curiosity than anything and regards the GameCube BIOS boot via selecting Tools > Load GameCube Main Menu > (region). (I'm absolutely delighted someone added that function by the way!) Now recall that animation of the tumbling cube that plays after loading a game, when that IPL.bin file is where it should be and Skip BIOS is unchecked on the GameCube tab in Config. I've noticed that this doesn't occur in any Dolphin when booting through the Tools menu. On a real NGC, this animation would play upon booting and would then go to the game if a disk was detected (like when Skip BIOS is unchecked in Dolphin), and the main menu if no disc is detected. Would it be at all possible for that animation to be implemented into the Tools boot method without fundamentally breaking something more important? I'm nostalgically interested in that prospect.
Well those are the points I'd like clarified. Since this is my first post and I don't want to bloat that "Thank You!" thread, I want to use this space to type "Thankyou": thanks to all the Dolphin contributors the internet over for helping me and many others retrieve part of their childhood from the proverbial lavatory called "time"! Haha.
)