[Utility] Fix the black borders in FF etc

[John Peterson]

If anyone is interested I wrote a program that can fix the black borders in all games that have them, for example the Final Fantasy games. Both source and binary is avaliable here. You use it by running it at the same time as pSX 1.13 and then pressing <Esc> when either this program or pSX is in focus. I have included batch file shortcuts for the diffferent scaling settings in the file under Downloads, mainly the 7% or 17% scaling change.

[Coincidently it also fixes the fast forward option in full screen mode. Fast forward has no effect (except some picture flicker that always occurs as you press or release the Fast forward key) while in full screen in any game I have tried. It only works in the non-fullscreen 'regular surface' mode.] - Update: It was because I had forced VSync to be on in my graphics card settings

One limitation seems to be 5:4 (and possible 4:3) screens where it can only fix half the black border (the bottom border) because the game picture wont follow the application window outside the desktop area upwards. But on my 16:10 screen it entirely cures the big (17% of viewable area) black borders in FF7 and the 7% of viewable area black borders in for example FF8 and Vagrant Story.

This type of fullscreen mode (that don't change the display resolution or materially redraw any surfaces, but rather just maximize the window and hide eventual window borders, menus and taskbars) is the same as the one that is accessed from the 'Fullscreen' button in Dolphin. It's also the same as the 'Other' Fullscreen Mode in VisualBoyAdvance. I find it to be slightly more convenient than the 'traditional' or 'regular' way of getting a fullscreen mode, i.e. by releasing and recreating all DDraw (or other) surfaces because that may take around a second, but resizing the window is instantaneous. However, if you use the same resolution when you do the ReleaseSurfaces() InitSurfaces() it's almost as fast as resizing the window. So the main point with this program is to fix the black borders.

[You need to have DLL.dll in the same dir as 'pSX HotKey.exe' when you run it, otherwise the mouse cursor will not be hidden in the fullscreen mode.] - Update: Not needed anymore

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Last edited by John Peterson; May 14th, 2009 at 23:31..

[Gamesoul Master]

Nice work. You should post this on the official forums too (hopefully I didn't scare you off with how I was the other night... wasn't a good night for me to be posting I suppose).

That fast forward in fullscreen thing concerns me though (the fact that it doesn't work for you), since it normally works perfectly fine. Though you weren't meaning to ask about it, I feel compelled to ask... do you have VSync forced on in your video card settings? That's about the only reason I could see fast forward working in windowed mode but not fullscreen (since pSX has to normally disable VSync to fast forward in the first place). Otherwise, I'd be curious to know what on your computer is causing the problem if you ever get it figured out.

Is the resize flicker that occurs whenever you start/stop fast forward a known issue? pSX doesn't normally do that while maximized or in fullscreen or anything like that, but in the pseudo-fullscreen your utility creates, pSX attempts to resize to a window that allows the taskbar and status bar to be shown.

After further testing, it seems that the problem is the utility and behavior in pSX that was solved before v1.13. To explain further... a while back, pSX had problems holding custom window sizes, mainly because whenever VSync was toggled, pSX would snap back to its original window size. Wouldn't normally be a problem, except fast forwarding with VSync on causes it to get toggled off during fast forward, and back on afterwards. pSX Author fixed that problem however, and never again was it seen.

But somehow, your utility is causing the same thing to happen again. When I have VSync on and try to fast forward, pSX tries to snap back to that size I referred to earlier during each toggle (however, your utility seems to catch this within a fraction of a second and resizes it again). With VSync off, the problem doesn't occur at all.

Other than that... while I'm not a fan of stretching images off their aspect ratio (which is what your utility does on my 16:10 monitor... lol), the program seems quite nice. One question I have though is... pSX also has the option to adjust the aspect ratio to many different options. I don't have a game with borders unpacked to test with (just recently moved), but how does your aspect ratio change differ from pSX's? I'm aware of the black border situation, but your program allows a 16:10 (which zero PS1 games run at), so I'm confused exactly what's going on. Using the various different ratio options via the batch files all yield the same "stretched across my whole screen" problem instead of properly adjusting pSX to display with the specified aspect ratio.

Could you please elaborate on the difference of what this utility fixes and what it enhances? The more I read and test, the more confused I am about what exactly you actually set out to accomplish while creating this utility.

__________________


Ultima's pSX Frontend v1.12 (Windows)
Shendo's MemcardRex v1.1
DirectX Web Installer

PC Specs:
OS: Windows XP Pro SP3 (32-bit)
CPU: Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2200 @ 2.20 GHz
RAM: 3 GB DDR2 PC2-5300
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 3450 PCI-E x16 (512 MB)
Sound: Realtek HD 7.1 onboard sound

[John Peterson]

Originally Posted by Gamesoul Master

Nice work. You should post this on the official forums too (hopefully I didn't scare you off with how I was the other night... wasn't a good night for me to be posting I suppose).

Thanks I did post it in the official pSX forums too, in my "Black Borders" thread here.

Originally Posted by Gamesoul Master

That fast forward in fullscreen thing concerns me though (the fact that it doesn't work for you), since it normally works perfectly fine. Though you weren't meaning to ask about it, I feel compelled to ask... do you have VSync forced on in your video card settings? That's about the only reason I could see fast forward working in windowed mode but not fullscreen (since pSX has to normally disable VSync to fast forward in the first place). Otherwise, I'd be curious to know what on your computer is causing the problem if you ever get it figured out.

Yes, thanks. I had VSync forced to on for my graphics card, that's why fast forward didn't work in fullscreen mode.

Originally Posted by Gamesoul Master

Is the resize flicker that occurs whenever you start/stop fast forward a known issue? pSX doesn't normally do that while maximized or in fullscreen or anything like that, but in the pseudo-fullscreen your utility creates, pSX attempts to resize to a window that allows the taskbar and status bar to be shown.

After further testing, it seems that the problem is the utility and behavior in pSX that was solved before v1.13. To explain further... a while back, pSX had problems holding custom window sizes, mainly because whenever VSync was toggled, pSX would snap back to its original window size. Wouldn't normally be a problem, except fast forwarding with VSync on causes it to get toggled off during fast forward, and back on afterwards. pSX Author fixed that problem however, and never again was it seen.

But somehow, your utility is causing the same thing to happen again. When I have VSync on and try to fast forward, pSX tries to snap back to that size I referred to earlier during each toggle (however, your utility seems to catch this within a fraction of a second and resizes it again). With VSync off, the problem doesn't occur at all.

Okay I see, it's the VSync that cause the window to be 'reset'. When I turn off VSync for the windowed mode I don't have that problem anymore. Thanks

Originally Posted by Gamesoul Master

Other than that... while I'm not a fan of stretching images off their aspect ratio (which is what your utility does on my 16:10 monitor... lol), the program seems quite nice. One question I have though is... pSX also has the option to adjust the aspect ratio to many different options. I don't have a game with borders unpacked to test with (just recently moved), but how does your aspect ratio change differ from pSX's? I'm aware of the black border situation, but your program allows a 16:10 (which zero PS1 games run at), so I'm confused exactly what's going on. Using the various different ratio options via the batch files all yield the same "stretched across my whole screen" problem instead of properly adjusting pSX to display with the specified aspect ratio.

Yes, I got tired of the bad aspect ratio too so I updated my utility to also allow a 4:3 mode. I have posted a new binary at the Google Code site too. You need to run the exe with a 'k' (as in keep aspect ratio) in the command line to use it, for example as "'pSX HotKey.exe' k1".

Originally Posted by Gamesoul Master

Could you please elaborate on the difference of what this utility fixes and what it enhances? The more I read and test, the more confused I am about what exactly you actually set out to accomplish while creating this utility.

It's just the black borders basically. And the option to have one key, for example the Esc key, to both enter and exit the fullscreen mode, I would like an option for that in the Misc settings.

The downside is that I can't remove the top black border on any 5:3 monitor because of some internal restriction in pSX that I can't alter. So I also want to bring this to the attention of the pSX author so that he can fix the screen scaling. He needs to check what resolution the game is using so that he can cut out the right picture. If pSX was open source I would be more than willing to fix that.

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Last edited by John Peterson; May 14th, 2009 at 20:24..

[John Peterson]

Originally Posted by mudlord

Charming: A scalar that uses UGLY hacks.

Looks like now pSX will turn the way of No$GBA.
It was the MusicMOD and now this?????????

Thanks for your support mudlord. I'm not forcing anyone to use this. I made this because I wanted it, and I was kind enough to also post the source for it so anyone can easily fit it to their needs if they want to.

And I can add that I use the No$GBA fullscreen mods that I think you refer to too, I'm very happy about those utilities too.