Gaming snes emu mockup - with 3d pic

[morphius]

I have been thinking for a while about what an snes emu could do with the "layers" from an snes game. I decided to do a quick mockup of yoshi's island to show what it could look like in 3d. I can't seem to attach the mpo to the forums so here is a direct link

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25012178/yoshi.mpo

let me know what you think and If you have requests for any other games.

 

[Pong20302000]

very awesome

i made it viewable on 2d monitors

 

[KingVamp]

That is so cool. Way better than the wiggle version... shoot even the 2d one.

 

[Paarish]

Wow that's really nice.

I now want SNES 3D Classics

 

[koji2009]

That was one of the first things they showed when they first had 3DS units available for the public to test, old SNES games tricked out in 3d by their layers.

The best part is, since these are naturally part of SNES games (you're just adjusting the 'space' between the layers so they pop-out instead of resting on top of one another) it should be almost impossibly easy to do. You wouldn't need to even port the games, just create a single emulator.

This wouldn't be ideal for all games though as many use those layers to hide off graphics issues and in some games it would be quite weird (think in an RPG where the sheets would float above the character instead of resting on top of them when they go to an inn).

That said, nintendo hasn't confirmed it actually will do it... but there truly is little reason why they SHOULDN'T aside from more licensing fun... oh and all the unhappy people buying the games on wii only to have to rebuy them on 3DS.

 

[Spidey_BR]

Super Mario, Donkey Kong and Megaman games would DEFINITELY make great use of this new feature.

 

[Sheimi]

Oh wow, That is awesome. Come on Nintendo. Port Yoshi's Island to the 3DS!

 

[nerrelferrel]

super metroid would be awesome since it has so many background layers at once. i wonder how well the 3D effect would work with the petals in this room:

 

[Pippin666]

Super Mario, Donkey Kong and Megaman games would DEFINITELY make great use of this new feature.

F-yes DO WANT !!

Pip'

 

[F34R]

I'm not a fan of purchasing old games that I've already played, but this would be a great idea. SMW, SM3, and a box load of other games would be amazing in 3d.

 

[DiscostewSM]

That was one of the first things they showed when they first had 3DS units available for the public to test, old SNES games tricked out in 3d by their layers.

The best part is, since these are naturally part of SNES games (you're just adjusting the 'space' between the layers so they pop-out instead of resting on top of one another) it should be almost impossibly easy to do. You wouldn't need to even port the games, just create a single emulator.

This wouldn't be ideal for all games though as many use those layers to hide off graphics issues and in some games it would be quite weird (think in an RPG where the sheets would float above the character instead of resting on top of them when they go to an inn).

That said, nintendo hasn't confirmed it actually will do it... but there truly is little reason why they SHOULDN'T aside from more licensing fun... oh and all the unhappy people buying the games on wii only to have to rebuy them on 3DS.

If the layers (and sprites) were converted to be used in a 3D coordinate system based on layer/sprite priority so that depth was added, then yes, depth spacing could potentially create the effect. However, layers/sprites that are closer would have to be scaled down to a degree and those farther away be scaled up so both would match the original sizes. There is also another way. They could just take the layers (and sprites), determine the priority ordering for them, and just offset their horizontal positions based on that. Unfortunately, both the former and latter methods would cause a potential side effect of missing/corrupted graphics on the sides of the output due to the altered locations of the layers/sprites to make the 3D effect. Reducing the visible horizontal area would remedy this, but then you now have a thinner viewing area much like the Yoshi Island mockup earlier (but not as severe).

 

[koji2009]

If I get what you're saying, then no they wouldn't have to actually do any sort of resizing of the layers, doing so would actually be detrimental as you'd be able to "peek" around the layers (since foreground layers scaled down to be the same resolution would leave holes around the border and wouldn't fit the screen)

If you mean, by the simple fact of having the layer "closer" than the last one would make it appear larger, then yes it would likely trim a few pixels off of the side, which would be a non-issue in nearly every game as long as you had the HUD in the right position (this would be the only layer where it would be appropriate to scale it down to fix the screen, I know at least one DS SNES emu can already do this, the downside of course would be for games where the HUD layer shares actual gameplay elements, but those are the exceptions and not usually the rule)

(edit) To expand out on this, you have to remember that SNES games are also a lower resolution than the 3ds, even if you take into account aspect ratio (256x224 is the standard game res, though there are a few other graphic modes the system does support, including a 'hi-res' 512x224 but that's only used on a few games and mostly only for displaying text in certain RPGs. Because the SNES has a lower resolution, the upper layers being slightly enlarged from being closer to perspective actually works to the advantage of the system, able to fill in the rest of the screen real estate while only having to deal with the pillar boxes.

We're probably talking on each layer the difference between a couple pixels, this will undoubtedly lead to a little blurring but it should be managable and in most games wouldn't require much adjustment (objects on the top layer overextenting the lower layers)

The only other solution would be to have the actual system render at a higher resolution than the SNES actually supports which would be impossible via emulation... What you'd be talking about then would be porting the games and, most likely, reworking their entire engines which would be quite a task just to bring a 20 year old game to the portable with 3d effects... It's not like today where game systems all had fairly similar SDKs and used common programming languages, the NES/SNES/early N64 days Nintendo used very proprietary programming languages that were much lower level and don't port easily... It wasn't till the late N64/GBC/GCN era that Nintendo made the switch to C as their primary language for their SDKs.

(edit 2) forgot to mention something... nerrelferrel: That scene is composed of only a single (maybe 2, been too long since I played it last) so while it would definitely stand out, it's not going to be a shower of all different levels of depth unless they did some manual tweaking of the scene.

 

[nerrelferrel]

you're right that it's just one backdrop in that area, the effect would probably be cooler in places like this that have at least two background layers

i don't know much about technical stuff but if snes games can't be rendered in higher resolutions then how do they end up in 480p on the virtual console? does the wii just upscale the signal on its way out?

 

[Lube_Skyballer]

Mega Man 2 was rumoured to get a 3D classics remake on the 3DS, right? iirc

 

[the_randomizer]

you're right that it's just one backdrop in that area, the effect would probably be cooler in places like this that have at least two background layers

i don't know much about technical stuff but if snes games can't be rendered in higher resolutions then how do they end up in 480p on the virtual console? does the wii just upscale the signal on its way out?

The signal is upscaled, resulting in lopsided pixel ratios, lack of proper filtering. Overall, they look like crap; Snes9x Next is where it's at because of the filters.

 

[elisherer]

nice...

extracted the photos for uou guys to see...