Topic: Alundra

[GHS]

Is anyone ells doing Alundra? I have mapped the game up to Magyscar.
My main motivation for mapping it was to get all the items in the game (some thing I was never able to do before)

[BumFengShui]

Yeah, I am a completionist myself and have only been able to get everything in Alundra once. Getting to the end of the game and finding out you missed a Guilded Falcon in a dream sucks pretty bad.

I haven't put any work into mapping Alundra since the 1st half of last year, & since you've been doing it I haven't really thought much about going back to it.

I stopped mapping it because no matter what emulator and/or graphics plugin I use, my screenshots always come out slightely different than they look in the emulator.
Example

[GHS]

what emulator are you using?  I'm using "PSX emulator 1.13", no plug-in settings to bother with.

[Revned]

Are you talking about the colors or the slight difference with the guy on the right? I've actually become aware of several problems with ePSXe's graphics plugins recently. The software plugin seems to take screenshots with reduced color palettes, and the OpenGL plugin has some weird alignment problems with some sprites. It's quite annoying. Unfortunately, the pSX emulator doesn't have nearly the compatibility.

[mechaskrom]

@BumFengShui
The attached png-file is an 8bit indexed image (max 256 colors). PSX outputs 15bit (555 rgb, 2^15 colors) or 24bit (888 rgb, 2^24 colors) graphics. Could you attach screenshots in 24bit png-files instead? That way the reduced colors from an 8bit image doesn't affect the screenshots.

But I guess if Alundra never outputs more than 256 unique colors at any time then it's no problem. Just one thing to keep in mind.


I'm also using pSX 1.13 and I recently discovered that it's a bit weird. Screenshots and alt-print screen are slightly different, but not as much as in BumFengShuis example. And the colors are not "real" 15bit values, but are off slightly, not much though. I'm guessing it's because how pSX, directx, my graphic card, etc is rendering 15bit values. I wrote a tool that will try to correct this in images and if I use it on pSX screenshots and alt-print screens it will make them identical.

I probably should fix my suikoden 1 maps because right now they have an inflated amount of colors because of this quirk in pSX. It's not visible, but it could save about 3-4MB of space in total because of less colors to compress.

If anyone is wondering this is how I create the LUT  I use to render "real" 15bit values in 24bit:

Code: [Select]

byte[] lut5To8BitColorChannel = new byte[32];
for (int i = 0; i < 32; i++)
{
   lut5To8BitColorChannel[i] = (byte)((i << 3) | (i >> 2)); //what I use
   //lut5To8BitColorChannel[i] = (byte)((255.0 / 31.0) * i + 0.5); //mathematically correct?
}
It's not entirely correct, but very very close.

[BumFengShui]

I really thought pSX v1.13 was one of the emulators I tried but apparently not, I compared a screenshot from it with 1 of your maps and they are exactly the same. I probably wouldn't have gone back to it so thanks for suggesting it. Now I just need to test it with Arc The Lad, when I was mapping it I found a backdrop image that comes out all messed up in ePSXe aswell and it's not stitchable with alt+PS either.

Yeah, I was talking about just the colors, that guy has a breathing animation and he's just on a different frame in each image.
mechaskrom, you are too technical for me. I don't really know anything about the bits and codes. Anyway, problem solved but thanks just the same.