Some database users are rejecting my screenshots

[catfer]

Some database users are rejecting my screenshots

Hello my name is Fernando (catfer)

First of all, I want to say that I love the launchbox application,
and in gratitude I am uploading screenshots of various systems for those games that do not have screenshots yet.

I try to make the screenshots I upload to the database have the best possible quality and sometimes it is necessary to rescale an image too small to appreciate the details,

one of those users who reject my screenshots said that the original resolution of the nes is 256x240

I have multiplied the resolution 4 times so that all users can appreciate the current quality of emulation of the games.

We all know that launchbox is an application that is used in conjunction with emulators. Is there someone who can play and not being blind with the original resolutions of the games on our FullHD and 4k screens?

If the rejections continue, I will have to abandon the collaboration, despite the fact that there are thousands and thousands of games without screenshots (something necessary).

and it's a shame, because I love the launchbox system and I only want to help within my limited possibilities.

i've uploaded hundreds of images and new games added, and never had a problem until now.

Pd, sorry about my bad english, my native is spanish from spain

Edited July 1, 2020 by catfer

[Z3R0B4NG]

The thing is if the screenshots are at native resolution and scale up to whatever the screensize of the picture in LaunchBox is, it will still look sharp no matter what, so the high resolution is not really required, unless you want to look at it in full screen mode, which isn't really the point.  
You can have a screenshot at 1080p and a scaled up 256x240 picture and they will look identical but the 1080p screenshot will obviously require quite a bit more storage and with tens of thousands of roms that just bloats up the install folder size of LaunchBox.... so there is a bit of pro and con for you to consider.  

Personally i only reject screenshots if the game already has a ton of screenshots and it is getting to silly levels (2 to 4 is absolutely enough, there is no need for 10 or so screenshots), or if i see black lines from a 4:3 game screenshotted in 16:9, that would only result in letterboxing, those i always delete when i stumble over them.  

I don't think there are any hard rules for the resolution of screenshots.  

[neil9000]

5 minutes ago, Z3R0B4NG said:

I don't think there are any hard rules for the resolution of screenshots.  

Correct, these images should not be rejected in my opinioin. Images should only be rejected if they already exist and are of lower resolution. Not sure who the user who rejected them is, but what are they going to do with PC games, reject 4K images because there PC is only capable of 1080p, therefore a 4K screenshot is also a "bad resolution"?

[Z3R0B4NG]

I only really noticed this behavior with retro consoles that do have one fixed native resolution.  

For modern consoles and PC that would of course be ridiculous because there is no real native resolution.  

[neil9000]

5 minutes ago, Z3R0B4NG said:

I only really noticed this behavior with retro consoles that do have one fixed native resolution.  

Thats not true though, they have a "max" resolution, but not a fixed one. Just taking the above image and reason for rejection above, "The Nintendo NES have 256x240 internal resolution" Thats only true for PAL region, NTSC was even lower at 256x224, so if a 256x240 image was added with a US region tag, that should technically be rejected if we are only using "native resolution", that is if we go on the logic the rejector offered up.

Then take something like the PS1, we gonna just limit the database to just one of its many supported resolutions?

 

[Z3R0B4NG]

ok, true  

but explain that to the moderators who press the reject button

Edited July 1, 2020 by Z3R0B4NG

[neil9000]

6 minutes ago, Z3R0B4NG said:

ok, true  

but explain that to the moderators who press the reject button

Well thats exactly my issue, the moderator in question seems to be making up his own rules and rejecting things that i feel should be accepted.

@Jason Carr There are no database rules that say uploaded images have to be a exact match to the original game resolution right?

[Jason Carr]

31 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

Well thats exactly my issue, the moderator in question seems to be making up his own rules and rejecting things that i feel should be accepted.

@Jason Carr There are no database rules that say uploaded images have to be a exact match to the original game resolution right?

Correct. Especially if a game does not have screenshots already, we should not be rejecting images over picky resolution issues.

[neil9000]

6 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Correct. Especially if a game does not have screenshots already, we should not be rejecting images over picky resolution issues.

Cool thanks Jason, as i thought. If only we could find those moderators and let them know that.  

[catfer]

thanks for the help, i'll go to continue uploading High quality screenshots how until now.

[spycat]

The notion of rejecting screenshots based on non-compliance with the original machine's resolution is laughable when the database contains more important irregularities such as magazine covers posing as box fronts.
One example is the game 3-D Breakout (Commodore 64 platform). The "box front" for this game is a magazine cover which contains no mention whatsoever of the game in question.
On a more serious note, some game box fronts have 3rd party watermarks which are illegal according to the database rules.
Examples of this is the game Archon II: Adept for the Atari 800 - visible website watermarks on the box front and back images, and also the game Batty Builders box front.
And I've also come across box fronts which are for a different platform.

[Suhrvivor]

By the way, the aspect ratio of your screenshots is wrong. NES (and any analog TV console) was meant to be displayed on a 4:3 CRT TV. The native resolution (and any multiple of it) is not 4:3, thus doesn't display the game how it was seen on a real console connected to a TV. Take this into account when uploading screenshots of old systems.

[neil9000]

4 hours ago, Suhrvivor said:

By the way, the aspect ratio of your screenshots is wrong. NES (and any analog TV console) was meant to be displayed on a 4:3 CRT TV. The native resolution (and any multiple of it) is not 4:3, thus doesn't display the game how it was seen on a real console connected to a TV. Take this into account when uploading screenshots of old systems.

Actually the signal outputted from the systems was not 4:3, it was stretched to that by the CRT's of the day. The actual aspect is narrower than that and stretched.

https://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?t=15879

[kurzih]

Hi!

Just a quick comment from my part. As I said before in a different discussion, I'm really for uploading new screenshots, especially when there are missing ones. I don't mind if they are upscaled - I personally prefer hi-res images anyway, especially for Box Art (I have been painfully trying to find good ones for new games I've added for example to PC-98/PC-88 etc. and Japanese games for different consoles and also replacing ones that are really low-res).

I would just HOPE that screenshots are uploaded without any shaders/filters/special effects. Because they will look quite different from what they used to be. I just uploaded an example after I saw one case (didn't reject it though, just wanted to give an alternative to the uploader):

The one that was recently uploaded by someone for the Game Boy Advance Game "Boboboubo Boubobo: Majide!!? Shinken Shoubu":

The version I have suggested, I manually upscaled the PNG file to the same size as the upper one (PNG's are great since they are losseless):

Sure, my version looks pixelized, but so it should - GBA didn't smooth the graphics like that.


But please keep uploading those missing screenshots, this is just my opinion!!

 

Edited July 2, 2020 by kurzih

[catfer]

5 hours ago, kurzih said:

Hi!
 

The version I have suggested, I manually upscaled the PNG file to the same size as the upper one (PNG's are great since they are losseless):

Sure, my version looks pixelized, but so it should - GBA didn't smooth the graphics like that.


But please keep uploading those missing screenshots, this is just my opinion!!

 

With a resolution of 240x160 the GBA does not need any type of filter so that the pixels are not visible ...
anyway, the screen frequency and the filters that the old LCD screens applied as blur, smart or ghost already filter the images that the human eye perceives... 
without forgetting that, the GBA does not use a real/true color palette, it uses its own.
I usually increase the resolution of the games by upscaling their video/image with the XBRZ or XBR lvl3 filters for the video outputs; Vulkan, Direct 3D, OGL.

The only way to capture an image of what a game looked like in a real GBA, is by taking a physical photo 30cm from the screen of a real GBA, and using an ultra 8k resolution so you can capture all the pixels on the screen, something out of my limits...

Many people say that they never use filters on emulators and that they like to see their original shape with Pixels like elephants.
And this is all wrong.
We used crt screens at a resolution of 720x576 and a variable frequency of 50-60hz, the cable type applies a filter to the image of the games; RF, S-video or RGB. The region applies another filter to the image, by cropping the image with vertical or horizontal black bands. alteres the aspect of the games stretching the image to adapt it to the dimensions of the screen television, And finally each television model had a particular filter (scanlines or something similar). All these filters made to lose definition to the original image that the console games showed, and we did not never see the pixels saw them until we started using things like VGA, RGB, HDMI on LED or lcd screens.

Edited July 2, 2020 by catfer

[kurzih]

In the end this is a matter of taste. But those XBRZ/XBR filters make the games look really apart - almost like a beautiful remaster (which I didn't reject by the way). I'm sure some would choose the XBRZ version and others the type which I suggested.

Personally I'm really fine with just using Fullscreen and Bilinear if available and using some scanlines if needed to get that groovy nostalgia from the 80's-90's. Some filters work well with some platforms and others don't. It's really cool to try out with Retroarch's shaders* for example to find what suits you best or WinUAE etc. to just try to get the view as close as you had decades ago with your original machine. And the Mini consoles are a good example of how 8bit/16bit games have been put to look in 720p HDMI output. Though some (more than the TV mode) filters could have been added

Just please understand that there are many views on the matter and all of them are no more wrong or right than the others. Even nowadays some cool Indy games like to have their graphics pixelized á la 8-bit/16bit era. And they works fine on 4k etc.

*EDIT: also not forgetting about the fantastic work of @Mr. RetroLust 

 

Edited July 2, 2020 by kurzih

[catfer]

here different ways to look a retro videogame:

retroarch - genesisplus core, capture unfiltered

First capture: no filters, VGA cable, ntsc. This is the way that megadrive / genesis games look by connecting the console to an LED monitor by RGB cable (this way we did not saw it 25-30 years ago)

retroarch - genesisplus core, capture xbr 6p

VGA cable XBR 6p filtered. I think this is the most appropriate way to see the games on our current fullHD and 4K screens, but it has some drawbacks, for example it does not mix colors and it does not have scanlines that improve the final result in my opinion.

Kega Fusion Capture, with 25% scanlines and RF cable emulation

I think this is the most similar way to how we saw games 30 years ago on our CRT televisions, it is true that things like the curvature of the screen and some shades of black and white are very different.

 

All are valid ways to play, each person has different tastes. Although I think that to make a screenshot the most important thing is to highlight all the original details and if possible improve them. But it's a personal opinion.

 

[neil9000]

Screenshots uploaded to the database should not have shaders applied to them, they should just be the default look the emulator gives out of the box.

[Mr. RetroLust]

I think the best way to go would be the gameplay screenshots without any filters applied cause if we would allow filters it could get messy as everyone has a different taste in what they apply.

[catfer]

the toxic attitude continues. No one should be able to ban a screenshot in games that don't have screenshots. If they do not agree, upload your image alternatives and send them to a vote.