Topic: By default, FCE Ultra doesn't draw top and bottom 8 scanlines *furious*

[TerraEsperZ]

After messing with FCE Ultra's Video settings, I realized that by default, the drawing area (which can be changed) starts at the 8th scanline and ends at the 231th, meaning that it only displays 224 lines out of 240. This means that there's a big chance that most of the maps I've done so far for the NES are missing some tiles on the top and bottom >



My compulsion for "as perfect as possible" maps is telling me to go back and correct them all but... I really don't feel like going back and checking/correcting them all. At least I can easily correct something I'm working on right now without much hassle...



Has anyone ever run into something like this? I think I remember Revned realizing something similar for his Mega Man maps but he didn't feel like going back to add a few rows of pixels to all the maps and I can understand this



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"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

[JonLeung]

I alwasy thought the NES and Super NES both had resolutions of 256 x 224...



I used NESticle for a long time before switching to FCE Ultra and I think all the screen captures from there were 224 pixels tall.  (Unless the title is too long, the "Map Of The Month" front page thumbnail's area is 256 x 224, designed so that I can fit a single screen from NES or Super NES games.)



Maybe 224 is the height that is usually displayed, but I suppose you'd still want to show as much map area as possible if that information is accessible.  Kind of like that weird landmass in the sky on the eastern side of Death Mountain in The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past...



I'd like to go back to my maps (luckily, I only have a few) and site images to make a number of corrections - the majority of them are just palette errors, however.  Having to go back into a good number of maps for a significant change must be frustrating if, as a perfectionist, it means enough to you.  Since those missing pixels don't affect the "play area" I think only the mapper himself would notice...

[Revned]

I hate this "feature" of NES emulators :-/

[Maxim]

Almost all NTSC (ie. Japan, USA, Canada) TVs of the same age as the NES would have cut off those lines anyway, which is why the authors do it. Only PAL regions really got to see those originally, and I think some NTSC-only games left junk in those rows, or just left them blank.

[TerraEsperZ]

That's what I was thinking, but sometimes you get several more lines of a given stage, or you get to see the bottom tiles entirely instead of them being cut off. I've become used to doing maps where tiles are fully visible (when possible), so if the bottom row of tiles is missing 2 lines of pixels, I try my best to fill them in and if showing everything makes it easier, then so much the better.



Besides, as for junk showing up, many games tend to show wrong colors along the edges of the screen when scrolling, probably an artifact of the way the NES deals with tile colors, something you almost never see on a real TV because the right and left edges can sometimes be cut too. In fact, in FCE Ultra you have the option to clip the leftmost and rightmost 8 pixels although this isn't enabled by default unlike the top/bottom thing.



Personally, the more you show me, the happier I am. I almost always have to crop screenshots when making a map anyway, so it's not like it would give me additional work.



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"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

[snesmaster]

I ran into this problem as well very early on when trying to map The Legend of Zelda and I realized I was missing part of the graphic.  Since that I always set emulators to PAL mode to get those extra pixels you otherwise would miss.  I would advise anyone making maps to use the 240 lines instead of 224.  Every NTSC American game I have played so far will display more of the games graphics when running in PAL mode even though it is not a PAL game.



I personally like to get as much of the games graphics into the map as possible.  I'm a big fan of "Jump Higher" or "Walk Through Walls" codes to get all of the game mapped.  Some games have quite a bit of graphics drawn in areas you normally would not be able to ever seen unless you are able to walk through walls.  It is interesting they took the time to create the extra graphics for areas that would normally never be seen.

[TerraEsperZ]

PAL mode does tend to break some games that use graphics in unusual ways (like for status windows or a partially scrolling background), but more often than not you get more of a given stage than in NTSC mode. Before I found about that little trick, I once had to go back and complete by hand the bottom 8 pixels of an entire stage because as much as possible, I like to show all the graphics in their entirety.



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Current projects: Ristar-The Shooting Star (Gen), Sonic The Hedgehog (Gen), Sonic CD (Sega CD), Mega Man Zero (GBA), Battletoads (NES), Bucky O'Hare (NES)

[Revned]

My Mega Man maps from years ago are still missing pixels around the edges. Someday I'll fix them. This also reminds me of Castlevania III. It had an entire row of tiles that wasn't shown in-game. I used a level editor to get them, and areas fit together much more nicely afterwards.

[TerraEsperZ]

I used a level editor to get them [...]

Cheater! Cheater!



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Current projects: Ristar-The Shooting Star (Gen), Sonic The Hedgehog (Gen), Sonic CD (Sega CD), Mega Man Zero (GBA), Battletoads (NES), Bucky O'Hare (NES)

[Revned]

Hey, I mapped the rest manually!

[Zeric]

When I did RockMan Complete Works I noticed that the scanlines where missing on the left side as well, as the the top and bottom ones. It was the same for the NES version which was fixable with the PAL Mode except the left scanlines was still missing. Which I had to do manually.



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Current Projects: Akumajo Dracula (X6800 - Final Stage) Mega Man X2 (SNES - Sigma 2) Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (GBA - The Arena & Forbidden Area Left.)

[Ryan Ferneau]

Oh, I figured that if the game doesn't show the left edge, then I don't need to, either.  Not gonna use hacky methods to put in something you can't see or interact with.