gc-forever - Gamecube/Wii Forums

I'm hoping someone could help me with 240p support for the Game Boy Player.

I enjoy playing all of my GC games in 480p, however the Game Boy Player looks much better in 240p. I can accomplish this by using a hardware downrezzer solution (Extron Super Emotia), however I has hoping for an easier (and much cheaper) way. The Emotia costs around $100, the Component cables also cost around $100 and then you have to modify them to output VGA before putting them into the Emotia. That's a lot of money to spend, just to play GBA / GBC games.

Does anyone know if it's possible to hack the Game Boy Player Boot Disc iso to force 240p output instead of 480i? If so, you could just use the cheap S-Video (NTSC) or RGB (PAL) cables and have it look just as good as the $200+ hardware solution described above. In all the research I've done, it seems the GC hardware can output 240p, but there absolutely no games released that offer that signal output.

This is something I'm extremely interested in and would help in any way I could. Anyone who's seen GBA games in 240p will understand exactly why I want this so badly: They look amazing and in my opinion, better than 480p (at least on an RGB monitor)!

I hope someone can help.

Not the solution you want but there always RetroArch VBA Next video modes to fall back on.

robneal81 wrote:In all the research I've done, it seems the GC hardware can output 240p, but there absolutely no games released that offer that signal output.

I can think of at least 2 releases, although officially emulated that output in 240p:

Megaman X collection
Zelda and Zelda II on the Zelda collectors edition release

There may possibly be more that I'm not aware of.

wii_HD wrote:Not the solution you want but there always RetroArch VBA Next video modes to fall back on.

Thank you for your reply. I actually tried RetroArch on my PC (hooked up to my RGB monitor in 240p), as well as about 5 different versions of VBA and they didn't look good (I tried tweaking the video settings in each). I finally stumbled upon VBA version "M1022" and after messing with the video settings, it looked absolutely flawless...in windowed mode. As soon as it went fullscreen, it looked weird again and I couldn't find any way to change it. Also, all versions of VBA seemed to have some issues with sound and the Game Boy Player seems to be perfect with sound.

Also...and I do realize how stupid this sounds...I really want to play the original cartridge, since there's no way to cheat. With emulators, there are savestates and if I get frustrated enough, eventually I'll use them.

kel01 wrote:

robneal81 wrote:In all the research I've done, it seems the GC hardware can output 240p, but there absolutely no games released that offer that signal output.

I can think of at least 2 releases, although officially emulated that output in 240p:

Megaman X collection
Zelda and Zelda II on the Zelda collectors edition release

There may possibly be more that I'm not aware of.

Wow, I never knew that, thank you so much! That's really great news, as it proves it's possible to get 240p from the GC!

I wonder if you can use a hex editor and change the GBP disc to output 240p the same way those other games do. It seems people have been doing that with Dreamcast games (for 480p support), so it's plausible that we can do it with Gamecube games:

http://www.epforums.org/showthread.php? ... -amp-Guide

Also, if anyone else knows of other 240p Gamecube games, please let me know!

Those two collections output 240i, actually.

BenoitRen wrote:Those two collections output 240i, actually.

Are you sure? After kel01's post, I fired up my copy of the Zelda Collection and it looked wonderful. It didn't have that "interlaced flicker" that other games, or even the GC boot screen has.

It's not 240i. The picture is displayed using one field only so it's progressive (240p).

Perhaps we're confusing NTSC version Zelda Collection, with the PAL version?

I don't currently own either but it seems more likely NTSC copies would use 480p in progressive mode. Not 240p.

Would this do the trick? Maybe replace the resolution info in the Game Boy Player disc with the info from one of the 240p games?

http://www.sadistech.com/gcmtool/

The info on where the resolution is set looks like its here:

http://hitmen.c02.at/files/yagcd/yagcd/ ... tml#sec5.3

I'll have some time to start working on this tomorrow. Can anyone recommend an editor for the GC iso? Should I just use a basic hex editor?

So, I've tried on a few separate occasions to try and make this work, but had no luck. I couldn't get the GC Tools working, as I don't have a Mac. I tried some hex editors, but couldn't find any strings directly related to resolution.

I could really use some help.

good luck, it's not so easy.

Doesn't the gamecube need to be in the higher res so it can stretch the image properly to fill the screen?

Drakon wrote:Doesn't the gamecube need to be in the higher res so it can stretch the image properly to fill the screen?

gba games are exactly 240 wide. little room for overscan if 240p output.

theclaw wrote:

Drakon wrote:Doesn't the gamecube need to be in the higher res so it can stretch the image properly to fill the screen?

gba games are exactly 240 wide. little room for overscan if 240p output.

GBA is 240 x 160. I don't know what the dimensions of GC's non-interlaced screen are, but somewhere in the range of 256-320 x 224-240.

Whatever the actual dimensions are, there's plenty of room for a non-scaled GBA screen. Perhaps too much. You'd only be using about 2/3 of the vertical, which is probably why Nintendo decided to stretch it in 480i/480p mode.

I'd be very interested to see what GBP in 240p looks like. I've done a little research and it's definitely not that easy, as emu_kidid said, but I think it's doable without requiring massive amounts of effort.

The first step is to find and patch VIConfig. Next is to disable the stretching. That's enough for a proof of concept anyway.

Swiss source code already has routines for finding VIConfig for its 480p patch and it even reports the address via print_gecko, so if someone can check that out it'd be a start...

I'm going to post the info you gave cubescout on the Swiss Google code page. I'll report back with what the developers have to say on it. Hopefully it's no harder than 480p forcing and we get it as a feature soonish!

EDIT: I say all that as a realize that emukidid is, in fact, a Swiss developer himself. Not sure I should bother proposing it on the Google Code page in that case.

bobrocks95 wrote:I'm going to post the info you gave cubescout on the Swiss Google code page. I'll report back with what the developers have to say on it. Hopefully it's no harder than 480p forcing and we get it as a feature soonish!

A full implementation is much harder, but the proof of concept isn't. If someone could just get me that address I could create a patch using Dolphin's disassembler.

I can't actually run it myself at this point, so...

EDIT: I say all that as a realize that emukidid is, in fact, a Swiss developer himself. Not sure I should bother proposing it on the Google Code page in that case.

If there is enough interest from the users he or some of the other experts may do us a favor, but for the moment we're on our own.

Nice to see at least one other person thinks it's a good idea though.

cubescout wrote:A full implementation is much harder, but the proof of concept isn't. If someone could just get me that address I could create a patch using Dolphin's disassembler.

I can't actually run it myself at this point, so...

If there is enough interest from the users he or some of the other experts may do us a favor, but for the moment we're on our own.

Nice to see at least one other person thinks it's a good idea though.

If a dev could throw you a bone, that would be great; past that it's up to the users to prove that it's viable and wanted, so it's not much work on their end initially.

And 240p would be awesome- even if the component cables didn't cost an arm and a leg, 240p would still look much better on a CRT than 480i, and like the OP said it would make S-Video a more viable option. All I use my GCN for is the Gameboy Player unless I happen across a cheap component cable, so that would be great.

I'm the author of the video patches in Swiss.
This is trivial to implement, but I don't really want to.

Extrems wrote:I'm the author of the video patches in Swiss.
This is trivial to implement, but I don't really want to.

What kind of answer is that, you would of been better off not replying at all instead of trying to show off that you can do it.

Yeah I can do that easy but I can't be arsed to help you out is what you basically said

Yeah, your phrasing leaves a lot to be desired. It's your right to not want to implement something, obviously, but when you describe it as trivial then blow it off you're just leading people on...

Extrems wrote:I'm the author of the video patches in Swiss.
This is trivial to implement, but I don't really want to.

Don't want to implement in Swiss or not at all? I was thinking of a patch rather than a Swiss mod.

Mabe you don't want to maintain the patch?

Either way, any advice you could provide would be much appreciated.

theclaw wrote:Perhaps we're confusing NTSC version Zelda Collection, with the PAL version?

I don't currently own either but it seems more likely NTSC copies would use 480p in progressive mode. Not 240p.

My bad, now I get what was being said earlier. The NES games switch between 240p and 480p.

Added 240/288p forcing to Swiss, I don't know if it'll work as intended on the Game Boy Player.
An additional patch to force point sampling may be needed.