VOGONS


First post, by dukeofurl

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I recently replaced my CRT monitor with a new one. When jazz goes into the level, the game no longer takes up the entire screen. It also appears to be stretched out with some weird geometry. I'm running in Windows 98 but it was ok on my previous monitor.

The resolution is ok in the menus, and other games of a similar era seem to be ok. Does jazz use a weird resolution that maybe my new monitor doesn't know how to deal with?

Reply 1 of 11, by Tiido

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From what I know, the game uses a tweaked resolution in-game which will appear as a new resolution to the monitor and thus there are no geometry presets for it unless something is set before which seems not to be the case.

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Reply 2 of 11, by dukeofurl

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Hmm I suppose it depends on my monitor, but I wonder if I can stretch, squeeze and adjust this thing to appropriately fill the screen, while not having it effect the display in other resolutions which already appear correctly. Will give it a shot tonight.

Reply 3 of 11, by jmarsh

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It's not really a tweaked mode, it's 320x240 (@60Hz) with vertical blanking so only 200 lines are visible. It's normal for it to appear letterboxed.

Last edited by jmarsh on 2024-11-12, 08:03. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 4 of 11, by Jo22

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Didn't Jazz have this 320x199 resolution thing going on to make it run in 60 Hz?
Because 200 line modes are 70 Hz by default (on VGA; CGA and EGA were all 60 Hz)?

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Reply 5 of 11, by dukeofurl

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I was able to adjust this via the monitor settings to fill the screen without ruining settings for other resolutions btw. I was just surprised by the screen here. I've played Jazz off and on since it came out on various monitors and don't remember it ever coming up this way by default.

Reply 6 of 11, by jmarsh

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When you say "other resolutions", did you make sure to test 640x480 (since that's what the monitor would be seeing it as) ?

Reply 7 of 11, by dukeofurl

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jmarsh wrote on 2024-11-12, 03:18:

When you say "other resolutions", did you make sure to test 640x480 (since that's what the monitor would be seeing it as) ?

Yes, that's exactly what I was worried about, but it seems ok when I try other 640x480 stuff.

Reply 8 of 11, by leileilol

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The 60hz letterboxing is real. There's a few other games that do similar (like The Incredible Machine / Sid & Al's Incredible Toons)

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Reply 9 of 11, by dukeofurl

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Well how about that, heres a clip of jazz on my particular monitor around 20.10, with the letterboxing. The initial treatment of the game by my monitor was wrong but I guess full screen stretch is wrong too.

https://youtu.be/CaNDeyYP98A?si=CsHdhqAgPXDQxkiA

Reply 10 of 11, by clb

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Here's what comes out from the digital Feature Connector when playing Jazz Jackrabbit on a Tseng ET4000/W32p adapter:

The attachment JAZZ.png is no longer available

Effectively the game is outputting 320x224 pixels (if one crops 4 pixels of black VGA border from all sides).

But overall, it is like a 320x240 60Hz Mode-x style geometry (i.e. square pixels), but with effectively only 320x199 pixels being actively rendered to. The rest at the bottom are held black.

Reply 11 of 11, by Azarien

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dukeofurl wrote on 2024-11-11, 23:29:

Hmm I suppose it depends on my monitor, but I wonder if I can stretch, squeeze and adjust this thing to appropriately fill the screen, while not having it effect the display in other resolutions which already appear correctly. Will give it a shot tonight.

I think part of the tweaked resolution is that the intended aspect ratio is 16:10 (-ish) so all the squares are square etc., and filling the whole 4:3 screen is not how the game should look like.