American Laser Games (Mad Dog McCree and others)

[Toni Wilen]

Genlock overlay positiong relative to Amiga display does not anymore change in different graphics configs (lores/hires/doubled/overscan/extreme etc)

Note: genlock calibration and gun calibration should be done again. Positioning has changed slightly. (Confirm also that ALG games still work..)

Still no idea why calibration screen accepts both gun trigger but it never selects the other gun..

Log shows no unemulated commands. But maybe there is still something odd, appen -ldlog 2 to command line to get detailed report.

And finally, some screen flashing reduced when REPEAT/SEARCH commands are executed. (Not sure what real LD player do but this looks nicer..)

[phasermaniac]

Now both guns seems to work, thanks!
I don't know what you mean about the calibration screen.
The problem for me now is video incorrectly positioned, it shows from center to bottom right.

[Toni Wilen]

Another update. It seems HW has 2 ways to select gun #2, parallel port (which wasn't used when in calibration screen, only during the game) and $f60000 bit 0 which is used during calibration screen and during game.

Switched to IO port.

Originally Posted by phasermaniac

Now both guns seems to work, thanks!

Second gun didn't work in calibration screen

I don't know what you mean about the calibration screen.

Service menu has calibration screen. (better check it, it has also genlock positioning menu)

The problem for me now is video incorrectly positioned, it shows from center to bottom right.

Screenshot and config needed. "Works for me".

EDIT: and make 100% sure you got the latest version. If you aren't sure, try other browser or append ?somethingrandom at the end of URL.

EDIT2: Make sure video is correct size (all the blanking stuff removed), not the wide 900+ pixels wide.

[papagustavokrat]

Same problem for me with the video position, now is not centered and re-positioning the genlok cut it

[papagustavokrat]

So, now when start the game, the video is not centered (is aligned to the left, see image 1, and the genlock exceeds the right limit of the image)

If I centered the genlock from the service menu, the genlock is cut off and not fully visible, and the video remains in the left position (images 2 and 3).

In this situation, both lightguns shoot correctly aligned to the crosshair, but are not alñigned with the enemies on screen

[papagustavokrat]

Ok... I found my problem... Is for the dimensions of my video.. I convert directly from the mp4 version on archive.org that has a 928x576 pixels, resizing it to 720x576 solved all my issues, and I can play with both guns at same time

[phasermaniac]

Tested in another pc with resolution sugestion above and it works nice, thanks toni!

[Toni Wilen]

Yes, original uploaded video is 928x576, which includes full horizontal line, instead of only including visible video. This is getting scaled incorrectly. ("Correct" video can be found in turran amiga file server)

Manual genlock offset config file entries added (genlock_offset_x and genlock_offset_y) if you want to manually adjust genlock overlay position relative to Amiga display.

And finally, statefile support. Note that matching config file must be loaded first, complete data (for example LD file and NVRAM file paths) is not saved or restored.

[mrbabbage]

I've already bored many people senseless over this (not in this thread, thank goodness), but 928x576 video includes a lot of overscan either side of the picture which is fine on a regular TV, but not here. On TURRAN we've cropped out all the overscan (vertical and horizontal), which is how the ALG games were done by Damien and I all that time ago. When (if) the other games come out, you'll probably need to do the same reedit, but if it's the same release setup as before, I'll just decode the picture to raw video and generate my own.

[phasermaniac]

I see Winuae does not display the video at the hud size, for example:
ALG games displays the hud at 480 (240x2) but the video is displayed at 746x477?
Marbella vice displays the hud at 512 (256x2) but the video is displayed at 746x560?
I supose this difference between hud and video sizes is the overscan, true?
Shouldn't look even better if the video file are the same size that winuae displays?
In some games, Using the ~Uploads/DamienD/ALG/ videos I get what I think is some interlace artifacts (horizontal lines when image moves fast vertically)

Also, as I use 240p to 288p resolutions in a crt tv, I have the videos resized to the half 360x240 (ALG) and 384x288 (Marbella Vice), but with the new winuae updates, I can only get the video correctly aligned with 720x480 or 768x576 resolutions. Can I do something to make it work with low resolutions?

[Toni Wilen]

Video size should be same as active video area and if you want video to be smaller, scale the video and add black borders. Don't change video width or height.

But.. I am 100% sure video is meant to be larger than Amiga display because input is basically normal laserdisc video and videos are supposed to fill whole visible display area (at least when using CRT where bezels hides part of display). These games use quite small Amiga bitlane size (no overscan in use) = video area is (much) larger by design.

You won't get any better quality video from method that WinUAE uses and it won't be changed. (WinUAE is not a video player!)

Also, as I use 240p to 288p resolutions in a crt tv, I have the videos resized to the half 360x240 (ALG) and 384x288 (Marbella Vice), but with the new winuae updates, I can only get the video correctly aligned with 720x480 or 768x576 resolutions. Can I do something to make it work with low resolutions?

This can be fixed. I need test video uploaded somewhere...

[phasermaniac]

Okey thanks, hero you go:
https://we.tl/t-pQzqGke69t

[Toni Wilen]

Should be fixed now (I messed up the scaling code in previous updates..). winuae.7z updated. Please confirm.

[phasermaniac]

Works perfect thanks!
One little last thing: Can Single line mode be 256 instead of 240 in pal mode?
I think this is why Marbella vice looks bad in single line mode, am I wrong?

[phasermaniac]

Hey Toni sorry to insist, only out of curiosity, "single line mode" displays at 240 height true?
Is this the reason why Alg games looks ok (ntsc 480i-240p) but marbella vice (pal 512i-256p) doesn't?
Or I am doing something wrong?

[Toni Wilen]

I don't understand your question. All visible lines are visible as long they fit on screen. (PAL: 26 to 312/313 (+1) or NTSC: 21 to 262/263 (+1))

+1: Line 0 is technically last visible line (not blanked) but that depends on display.

Game can (mostly) freely set where display starts and ends (inside above line range) and display is rarely "centered".

[phasermaniac]

lores_single images are using:
Resolution: Lores
Line mode: Single

hires_double_resized images are using:
Resolution: Hires
Line mode: Double
And resized to the half in photoshop (512->256)

You can see crime patrol 2 displays good at lores and single line mode
Marbella vice at lores and single line mode displays much worse than at hires and double line mode, you can see the splash is not displaying some horizontal pixels, and video looks much worse

[Toni Wilen]

Ah, I didn't notice that. It was caused by genlock transparency "mask" being misaligned with bitplane data in single line mode. (Disable genlock when game is running: missing pixels appear)

winuae.7z updated (this change will be in final 5.2, it is not too late yet)

EDIT: updated again, video vertical positioning was wrong.

[phasermaniac]

Now looks perfect. Amazing. Thanks again

[phasermaniac]

Hi Toni, after playing marbella vice, I was replaying some of the Alg games, and I am just curious about Last bounty hunter: Triggers don't work. Any clue about this?