240p test suite

[tepples]

"PLUGE" is one of the tests:

The PLUGE (picture line-up generation equipment) pattern is used to adjust the TV's "brightness" or black level.

The inner bars are a signal level slightly lower than standard black, which causes some TVs to distort or even lose sync. The outer bars are the darkest mix of colors the NES can show.

You should adjust brightness until the outer bars are clearly visible and inner bars are not.

But how would the shark image be used with the PLUGE test?

[orlaisadog]

It was the filename.

[tepples]

I know about the filename. But where would a shark appear in a PLUGE pattern?

[tepples]

Would it be a good idea to add a screensaver that begins after five minutes of inactivity, draws a bouncing logo, and plays a fanfare whenever it hits the corner?

[tepples]

240p Test Suite (NES, GB, GBA) v0.18

Add one new test from the Genesis version. This time it was the NES version's turn for size optimization.

Highlights on all platforms:

• PLUGE: Add PLUGE Contrast sub-test with shark graphic (Genesis 1.16 parity)
• Want your name in the credits? Become a patron

Highlights on specific platforms:

• GB: Mention worse smearing on Game Boy Pocket and other help tweaks
• Overscan (NES): Select to invert grays; border contrasts with BG
• Sharpness (NES): Pixel-align emblem at center
• Manual lag (NES): Remove misleading DDR-style grading

Behind the scenes:

• VWF (GB): Glyph address calculation uses 16-bit shift instruction
• VWF labels (GB): Reduce stack use, including moving tile width from stack to register C (requested by ISSOtm)
• PB16 (GB): Fix padding for odd-length packets
• gbcnamtool (GB): Fix vertical flip and conversion without incruniq
• GB: More refactoring and other size optimizations (with ISSOtm's help)
• Help (NES): Compress text with DTE; update Gus look to match GBA
• Linearity, Sharpness, Stopwatch, Crosstalk (NES): Compress map with new iu53 codec
• NES: Move several tests' code to UNROM bank 2 to make room in fixed bank
• Linearity (NES): Construct grid CHR from gridless CHR
• Stopwatch (NES): Reduce tiles of sprite circles (the "hand")
• NES: Move rectfill-based screen layouts to UNROM bank 1
• NES: Organize "library" code shared by my other projects into a separate part of the fixed bank
• NES: Move most local variables to zero page for smaller code size: now below 40 KiB
• NES: Rename some source files to match their GB/GBA counterparts

Download: GitHub release or ROM+source zipfile (below)

[tepples]

240p Test Suite (NES, GB, and GBA) v0.19 is out

It took another heroic compression effort, but I freed enough space to add a Super Game Boy border and colorization to all tests that would benefit from it. Not a lot of changes on NES and GBA though.

Highlights on all platforms:

• Stopwatch: Bolder digits
• Help: Standardize phrasing: "stuck pixels", "hide or show", "start or stop"
• Help: List patrons as of release time

Highlights on specific platforms:

• GB: Super Game Boy colorization and border
• Backlight zone (NES, GB): Increase starting size to 2 pixels
• Color bleed (GBA): Fix frame # covering everything
• PLUGE Contrast and Vertical scroll (GBA): Center pattern horizontally
• README (GB, GBA): Explain rationale behind "144p" and "160p" titles

Behind the scenes:

• Help (NES, GB): Integrate Johnathan Roatch's faster DTE compressor written in C
• Linearity (GB): Compress with reflection
• GB: Improve incruniq tilemap compression
• GB: Compress font and large graphics with nibble-wise Huffman coding
• GB: Move variables to HRAM; other code size optimizations
• GBA: Use a more common makefile
• GBA: Specify each PNG's conversion settings in a grit file

Download: GitHub release or the ROM and source zipfile below

[frantik]

thanks, have been getting back into crts lately, will give this a go on my powerpak with some tvs

[frantik]

every once in a while on the plunge test the top and bottom bars are green instead of grey. the easiest way to reproduce it is to rapidly press start during this test to switch in and out of the info window and the plunge test

[tepples]

240p Test Suite (NES, GB, GBA) v0.20

I wanted to get a few changes in before the deadline for inclusion on an NES multicart.

Highlights:

• NES, GBA: Add Convergence test
• NES: Add MDFourier tone generator
• GB: Add SGB-only Chroma crosstalk test
• Vertical scroll test (GBA): Display the correct help page
• Help (GB, GBA): Blink Gus's eyes
• Help (GB): Wait to draw status line until Huffman decoding finishes

Behind the scenes:

• GB: Move common routines to RSTs

Download below or from the GitHub release

[sdm2]

Is it possible to add some flickering of different colors every frame, or some interlacing effect to check if the LCD TV works fully with 240p signal?

My two LCDs unfortunately cut off half frames (all 25 odd frames) and the graphic effects changed every frame are displayed incorrectly (like sprite flicker, fast color change).

https://www.hdretrovision.com/240p/

Even when HDTVs are capable of accepting a 240 video signal, they might not process it correctly for display. This can result in visual artifacts appearing on the screen during rapid motion. 240 content is displayed at 60fps. Computer generated content, such as video games, utilize this capability to their fullest by rapidly changing parts of the screen every single frame, usually to convey a message to the player. A common example is your character "getting hit" or "taking damage". In many games, this causes your character to flash on and off rapidly at the 60fps rate.

240p video signals are electrically equivalent to 480i signals, except for that special timing signal described above. Because of this, improperly designed TVs can misinterpret 240 signals as 480i signals. This results in the 240 signal running through a processing path which it wasn't meant for. Assuming a 60fps flashing object, several different things can happen as a consequence:

Every other frame, the even frames (arbitrarily), are completely dropped so that a flashing object appears solid.

The other set of frames, the odd frames, are completely dropped so the object has disappeared.

The frames are merged and the object appears combed.

[tepples]

Nothing with "different colors", but these tests have 25/30 Hz flicker to make "YouTube syndrome" in a scaler easy to spot:

• Color bleed (hold a direction, turn the stripes with A)
• Shadow sprite (toggle even/odd with A)
• Stopwatch (press Up twice to enable the blinking ruler)
• Grid scroll test (press Up three times to set it to full speed of a half cell per field)
• Full screen stripes (hold a direction)

[tepples]

240p Test Suite (NES, GB, GBA) v0.21

Highlights:

• NES: Build-time option to exit to menu if included in Action 53 multicart, either from menu or pressing Reset twice
• PLUGE (NES): Draw center grays in correct colors after closing help
• MDFourier (NES): Hold Start at boot to skip to this activity; warn for reduced precision (triangle phase differs from power-up state) and add tones to indicate it for profile v7 and v8; fix stuck note after pressing B to stop; caution that Famicom expansions are not tested; NSF version
• GB: Add Convergence pattern
• Overscan (GB): Change WX in hblank to hide a 1-line-tall glitch (reported by LIJI32)
• Stopwatch (GB): Make hours digit work
• Lame boy (GB): Glove contrast; vest and sleeve trail; squash bottom when on ground; involve the abdominal and back muscles
• Help (NES): Add shading detail to Gus's shirt and cap (GBA parity)
• Help (GB, GBA): Make some descriptions more concise (with Artemio's help)
• SGB border: Simplify title to reuse more tiles and more closely match the recent Genesis version

Behind the scenes:

• Disable -static when building DTE encoder on macOS (#24)
• Vertical scroll (GB): Compress tilemap with PB16
• Help: Move non-ASCII symbols to $18-$1F to free DTE codes; coalesce repeated lines of text; compress each line of text twice and keep the smaller; assume no document has more than 9 pages
• GB: Share code for "Select: Invert grays" and for scroll tests' speed control
• SGB packet sending: Use ring counter
• GB: Switch to smaller ADC/DAA binary to decimal converter
• GB: Numerous micro-optimizations
• GB unused.py: Recognize more optimization opportunities
• GB: Allow use of out-of-PATH copy of RGBDS
• GBA: Compile with -fno-common for GCC 10 compatibility

Download below or from the GitHub release

[tepples]

240p Test Suite (NES, GB, and GBA) v0.22

This release adds MDFourier to the Game Boy port and fixes a longstanding inaccuracy in the SMPTE color bars on NES.

Highlights:

• NES: Add Safe areas pattern
• SMPTE bars (NES): Move I and Q to correct hues ($0C and $03)
• Color bars (GB, GBA): A to toggle NTSC 7.5% setup
• Color bleed: Rearrange to 10 rectangles
• GB: Add MDFourier audio test
• MDFourier (NES): Run automatically if Start+A held during Reset
• Help (NES): Improve antialiasing of Gus's outline
• Add a back story for Gus
• NES: Begin work on printable manual
• Document deliberately replaced assets

Behind the scenes:

• NES, GB: Change random formula to reflect new cc65
• GB: Continuing micro-optimizations
• GB: Free space occupied by RSTs and interrupts that won't be used
• GB: Migrate to RGBDS 0.4.0 (no dedent, no duplicate section names, rename GLOBAL to EXPORT)

Download below or from the GitHub release