Full Screen Stretching problem

Ratty · Post by **Ratty** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 6:04 pm

I have my video mode set to 1024x768 DS F but only some games will actually stretch to fill the whole screen.

These games fill up the whole screen correctly
-----------------------------------------------------
Super Mario World
Super Mario World 2
Super Castlevania IV
Secret of Mana
E.V.O. Search for Eden
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

Most of my games actually display correctly.

Final Fantasy III however has black borders on all four sides except during the opening scene. Same with Super Mario RPG.

Chrono Trigger has like a two inch black border that displays at the bottom of the screen everywhere except for the overworld.

Why might this be?

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 6:19 pm

Certain games intentionally do this. This actually happened on the real console.

Ratty · Post by **Ratty** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 6:21 pm

Oh do they? I'm fine with that if that's how they're supposed to display. So FFIII had black borders all around it when playing on a real SNES?

Might as well stuff another couple problems in here.

Sometimes when going off the screen in any game, a few pixels will be left behind on the screen until the next screen loads. This most often happens in RPG type games where you transition from one screen to the next.

In SMRPG, when watching the various scenes from the game that play at startup, the bottom of the picture sometimes bounces up and down rapidly. This is very annoying.

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 6:31 pm

Ratty wrote:Oh do they? I'm fine with that if that's how they're supposed to display. So FFIII had black borders all around it when playing on a real SNES?

Yes.

Might as well stuff another couple problems in here.

Sometimes when going off the screen in any game, a few pixels will be left behind on the screen until the next screen loads. This most often happens in RPG type games where you transition from one screen to the next.

In SMRPG, when watching the various scenes from the game that play at startup, the bottom of the picture sometimes bounces up and down rapidly. This is very annoying.

It depends on the game. I haven't played SMRPG on the real thing, but I presume the latter is a rendering problem. In most cases though, you will notice stuff more easily on a computer screen, than when you did on the TV screen, such as the "invisible blocks" in Zelda:A Link to the Past.

SquareHead · Post by **SquareHead** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 8:39 am

Deathlike2 wrote:
Ratty wrote:Oh do they? I'm fine with that if that's how they're supposed to display. So FFIII had black borders all around it when playing on a real SNES?
Yes.

To expand: Google overscan.

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 1:35 pm

Overscan is a TV issue and not caused by the games.

SquareHead · Post by **SquareHead** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 10:27 pm

creaothceann wrote:Overscan is a TV issue and not caused by the games.

Yes, but aren't the black borders for FF3 to compensate for overscan? We are talking about games that were intended to be viewed on a TV screen.

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 3:21 am

There're many games that display the full image though.

IMO the more important reason for these borders is to save resources. There's just less to draw, ie. less tilemap entries to update. Here's what StarFox does: link. The left & right black bars are deliberately not rendered.

Ratty wrote:Chrono Trigger has like a two inch black border that displays at the bottom of the screen everywhere except for the overworld.

If you mean ZSNES' display: it's black because of the PAL resolution (239 lines vs. 224 for NTSC) and at least one game toggles the line count constantly (I forgot which one though).