# [UPDATE] mGBA adds high-res scaling in its latest development builds



## Deleted User (May 21, 2019)

This on switch would we awesome!


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## sarkwalvein (May 21, 2019)

Finally those fine games in 4K!


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## Mama Looigi (May 21, 2019)

Yay 
The only problem is I can’t remember where I put my roms. I’ve been looking all over the place (my hard drive) and I can’t find them. I think they were lost when a certain something happened. Don’t close Cortana in Task manager, kids


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## Knucklesfan (May 21, 2019)

Mr. Looigi said:


> Yay
> The only problem is I can’t remember where I put my roms. I’ve been looking all over the place (my hard drive) and I can’t find them. I think they were lost when a certain something happened. Don’t close Cortana in Task manager, kids


Just open up a browser window in your home folder (like your username folder) and then type in ".gba" it'll find them all


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## NoNAND (May 21, 2019)

Apparently emulators seem to be getting better each day.
thanks to this I now can get to play some games like f zero and Mario kart.
I wonder how good do those games look with this new feature. Presumably less jaggy and pixelated
here's hoping this gets implemented to the switch version of mgba and hopefully further to it's retroarch core.
it's truly something groundbreaking and a game changer to breathe new life into these old games.
(the day I can play GBA games at high-res on my switch is the day I vanish never to be seen again)


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## Mama Looigi (May 21, 2019)

Knucklesfan said:


> Just open up a browser window in your home folder (like your username folder) and then type in ".gba" it'll find them all


Yeah, for some reason it isn’t that simple for me. Sometimes I’ll leave it searching for a half hour and when it’s finally done, no results


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## VinsCool (May 21, 2019)

Impressive!


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## guisadop (May 21, 2019)

Technology is amazing!


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## Sonic Angel Knight (May 21, 2019)

Like father, like son. (Referencing Bsnes emulator being snes and mgba being Gameboy advance, a glorified snes portable)


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## FAST6191 (May 21, 2019)

While of limited use as far as the whole library is concerned there are still plenty of games that would benefit from such things. Might have to give this a look.

If someone is taking a look at things can you see what, if anything, is done for Payback (a GBA actually 3d GTA like game).


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## sarkwalvein (May 21, 2019)

Mr. Looigi said:


> Yeah, for some reason it isn’t that simple for me. Sometimes I’ll leave it searching for a half hour and when it’s finally done, no results


Windows search has become a PITA the last decade really. Specially when it tries to be intelligent.
I would say do not use that.
Search with any other tool, or index your files with any other software e.g. cathy.

If you don't want to use any other software but bare Windows, a simple "dir c:\*.gba /s/a" on the command line should suffice.
Unless they are on e.g. drive d, then "dir d:\*.gba /s/a", etc.


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## naddel81 (May 21, 2019)

why does it have HD and the map still flickers?


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## AlanJohn (May 21, 2019)

Can't wait to see games like Driver 3D, Asterix and Obelisk in full HD!


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## Rabbid4240 (May 21, 2019)

Anyone know good games that use this feature? Just give me like 5 or less.


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## Zense (May 21, 2019)

I'm really glad we get this, though I'm also intrigued by what this could mean for the legacy of these originally very pixelated games in the future...


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## Zumoly (May 22, 2019)

Mr. Looigi said:


> Yeah, for some reason it isn’t that simple for me. Sometimes I’ll leave it searching for a half hour and when it’s finally done, no results



Get "everything". It's a small but very handy tool that'll show every file you possibly have on your computer and/or hard drive.


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## FAST6191 (May 22, 2019)

SexySpai said:


> Anyone know good games that use this feature? Just give me like 5 or less.


On the SNES, which popularised the effect, it was known as mode7 for the hardware mode it used there. It is not mode7 on the GBA but the name stuck for reviews/discussions of the time, though if you do a search then you will probably find more about the ROM release group called MODE7. Today it is not as well known but that might help. http://www.coranac.com/tonc/text/affine.htm and https://www.coranac.com/tonc/text/mode7.htm and http://problemkaputt.de/gbatek.htm#gbalcdvideocontroller if you want some technical discussion of it.

Many racing games will use it. Fzero being among the more notable along with mario kart, however there are plenty of others. Some will be more "race to the horizon" approaches where it is not as useful but still plenty in that style.
The GBA FPS efforts might also yield something here. Most are not good games, made worse by only having dpad input (it was bad then, however many years on this is when we have all had free look games for longer, and analogue sticks on controllers... yeah), but might be worth a look. 
The iconic chocobo scene from Final Fantasy 6 also made it to the GBA version of that game, as did the world map part, the former comes fairly early in the game too.
I mentioned payback above. I don't know if it will do anything here as I have not properly looked into what payback does (it is full 3d but I don't know if it is just software or borrows what it can from hardware).
There are a load of demos that will make use of it. http://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?platform[0]=Gameboy+Advance&order=thumbup (my favourite http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=24571 ). https://www.gbadev.org/demos.php?listby=popularity&offset=100 

http://www.thunderboltgames.com/fea...he-game-boy-advance-how-well-could-it-be-done might also yield some possibilities.

Tetnus on Drugs/Lockjaw (one of my favourite tetris homebrews) could also be worth a spin. 

https://pdroms.de/files/nintendo-gameboyadvance-gba/lockjaw-v0-42 should have a download.


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## Deleted User (May 22, 2019)

nice, i remember asking if this was a thing about 3-ish years ago, nice to see it finally exists


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## jt_1258 (May 22, 2019)

oh this is gonna be fucking awesome for the simpsons road rage. a mode 7 game that took mode 7 to a whole new level


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## Jayro (May 22, 2019)

Looks amazing. Can we get some bilinear filtering next like the SNES got? That would be a blessing on the cake, especially for FPS games like Ecks vs Sever.


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## raxadian (May 22, 2019)

So it will make GBA games look like 3Dish Sega Genesis games?


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## regnad (May 22, 2019)

Jeez, this thing is stuttery as crap for me even at x1 enhancement using OpenGL.

My computer isn't top of the line, but it's by no means terrible. Any suggestions?


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## spectral (May 22, 2019)

Hard to say for sure without knowing your PC spec but likely the only solution is a more powerful PC, although it's possible as the features are developed they'll be further optimised.


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## wiewiec (May 22, 2019)

Nice... GBA games always looks terrible on TV, now it is super


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## lordelan (May 22, 2019)

Can't breath after watching that video and looking at the Mario Kart screenshot on Twitter.



Elalexyzoner said:


> This on switch would we awesome!



Compared to bSNES we can hold our hopes up since mGBA exists as a libretro core as well so we might get those features in RetroArch at some point.


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## Kazalber (May 22, 2019)

Can't wait for it to come to the Switch


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## SpiffyJUNIOR (May 22, 2019)

To everybody asking for a Switch port, it most likely won't happen without a lot of optimization. Getting around 45FPS at 6x on a i5-7300HQ and 1050 Ti on the latest dev build.


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## Fates-Blade-900 (May 22, 2019)

This is great! It'd be even better if I had a 4K Monitor.


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## Edgarska (May 22, 2019)

Mr. Looigi said:


> Yeah, for some reason it isn’t that simple for me. Sometimes I’ll leave it searching for a half hour and when it’s finally done, no results


Have you tried WinDirStat?


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## FAST6191 (May 22, 2019)

Edgarska said:


> Have you tried WinDirStat?


I like windirstat and all but that is an odd approach.
Everything from https://www.voidtools.com/ on the other hand.

Granted this might just be a search index needs rebuilding.


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## Alex4nder001 (May 24, 2019)

Can't wait for this to arrive on the Switch!


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## Edgarska (May 25, 2019)

Edit: wrong thread, but while I'm here I would just say I tried this with a few games and it's very impressive.


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## MushGuy (May 25, 2019)

Come on, Snes9x! It's your turn now!


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## Deleted User (May 27, 2019)

This needs to get on Lakka (once HDmGBA gets it's bugs fixed ofcourse!)


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## PrincessLillie (May 27, 2019)

I prefer to play games in their original resolution, but I can definitely see why this would be popular.


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## Issac (May 27, 2019)

So exciting to see this! Would love to see a big bunch of comparison screenshots. Granted I haven't looked that much for them, but the SNES ones had pretty clear before and after images, while I've only seen the after images for this one. So it's difficult to really appreciate the improvement  

Gonna have to look for some more screenshots


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## regnad (May 27, 2019)

I've gotta say if my PC struggles with this, I can't imagine the Switch is going to have an easy time of it.


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## FAST6191 (May 27, 2019)

regnad said:


> I've gotta say if my PC struggles with this, I can't imagine the Switch is going to have an easy time of it.


It depends.

The general idea behind these sorts of mods is 3d is all about manipulating points in space. Being maths then multiplying it by arbitrary numbers, and maybe adding some smoothing, anti aliasing, precision in the "texture", precision in "shadows", an additional subsurf render or something, is trivial. Most 2d based consoles don't have such reference systems and instead are dancing pixels on a flat plane, and some 3d ones have their own quirks like using things for reference points (see some of the GC widescreen stuff from the Wii) but we can skip that one for the moment. However things like the SNES' mode7 graphics and the GBA's similar take on the matter then you do still have points in space and maths done upon them rather than sliding and flipping set size sprites on top of backgrounds.
If you take the "obvious" route of rendering each frame out and doing maths on each of them rather than the more tedious but likely quicker method (and still just as valid) of creating a 3d model and keeping it updated with changes then you will see it nail resources. A modern machine of some potency should be able to handle the former though, and the end result will be nice to look at as a proof of concept. Spend the time to make the latter and it will run on far more modest machines. Not sure where that will end up -- probably not the same sort of demands as the likes of the 2x super sai filters we have seen for years but maybe more in line with those of the more exotic stuff like XBRZ we saw in more recent years.


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## regnad (May 27, 2019)

FAST6191 said:


> It depends.
> 
> The general idea behind these sorts of mods is 3d is all about manipulating points in space. Being maths then multiplying it by arbitrary numbers, and maybe adding some smoothing, anti aliasing, precision in the "texture", precision in "shadows", an additional subsurf render or something, is trivial. Most 2d based consoles don't have such reference systems and instead are dancing pixels on a flat plane, and some 3d ones have their own quirks like using things for reference points (see some of the GC widescreen stuff from the Wii) but we can skip that one for the moment. However things like the SNES' mode7 graphics and the GBA's similar take on the matter then you do still have points in space and maths done upon them rather than sliding and flipping set size sprites on top of backgrounds.
> If you take the "obvious" route of rendering each frame out and doing maths on each of them rather than the more tedious but likely quicker method (and still just as valid) of creating a 3d model and keeping it updated with changes then you will see it nail resources. A modern machine of some potency should be able to handle the former though, and the end result will be nice to look at as a proof of concept. Spend the time to make the latter and it will run on far more modest machines. Not sure where that will end up -- probably not the same sort of demands as the likes of the 2x super sai filters we have seen for years but maybe more in line with those of the more exotic stuff like XBRZ we saw in more recent years.



But wouldn't the same "tricks" used to speed things up yield the same results for both Switch and PC? I guess my point is my PC is more powerful than a switch and still struggles with both this and bsnes-HD


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## FAST6191 (May 27, 2019)

Haven't looked at what bsnes does at this point so will have to skip that for now. As far as the quoted post is concerned it is not as much tricks if you are thinking speedhacks of yesteryear but a fundamentally different approach, or at least one that builds massively off the simpler and slower approach you can knock out as an experiment.
The simple approach takes the data in the emulated system's memory every frame and does what it does to it (presumably rather than looking at it like a jumble of pixels like every other filter it looks at their positions in "space" and does the maths to scale it and smooth things out). As far as a general flow of operations is concerned that is nothing major. Doing it every frame (60 of them a second remember, though some drop down to 30) is however quite demanding, especially if you also have to do the rest of the stuff that the emulated system does.
Building a model and kicking that to a graphics card, and then sending updates every frame (or every time it is changed, possibly also detecting when the whole "model" is changed), and allowing it to do anti aliasing and all that stuff they are designed for takes far more code and fiddling to accomplish but will yield the same results for far less demand on a CPU.


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## pasc (May 27, 2019)

yes please !


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## spectral (May 27, 2019)

FAST6191 said:


> Haven't looked at what bsnes does at this point so will have to skip that for now. As far as the quoted post is concerned it is not as much tricks if you are thinking speedhacks of yesteryear but a fundamentally different approach, or at least one that builds massively off the simpler and slower approach you can knock out as an experiment.
> The simple approach takes the data in the emulated system's memory every frame and does what it does to it (presumably rather than looking at it like a jumble of pixels like every other filter it looks at their positions in "space" and does the maths to scale it and smooth things out). As far as a general flow of operations is concerned that is nothing major. Doing it every frame (60 of them a second remember, though some drop down to 30) is however quite demanding, especially if you also have to do the rest of the stuff that the emulated system does.
> Building a model and kicking that to a graphics card, and then sending updates every frame (or every time it is changed, possibly also detecting when the whole "model" is changed), and allowing it to do anti aliasing and all that stuff they are designed for takes far more code and fiddling to accomplish but will yield the same results for far less demand on a CPU.



You're over thinking his point. His point is however it is doing it, it is currently slow on PC's that are much more powerful than a switch. So if the PC doesn't have the power to do it, how does the switch? It's doubtful they will use one method on PC and another on switch. So however it is doing it, it is reasonably demanding or PC's wouldn't be struggling.


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## lordelan (May 27, 2019)

Nice, finally it appeared on the Switch.
Hopefully it gets upstreamed into the Libretro core as well in the future (when it's polished).


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## SaberLilly (May 27, 2019)

it can only get better from here, nothing like playing a GBA game on the big screen.


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## FAST6191 (May 27, 2019)

spectral said:


> You're over thinking his point. His point is however it is doing it, it is currently slow on PC's that are much more powerful than a switch. So if the PC doesn't have the power to do it, how does the switch? It's doubtful they will use one method on PC and another on switch. So however it is doing it, it is reasonably demanding or PC's wouldn't be struggling.


If the methods available were limited to what we are seeing now then sure. The method we are seeing right now is more results focused than speed focused. The same results can be achieved with a lot less but with a bit more complicated code and leaning into hardware that the Switch will have a take on, and just about any PC still running will have a take on.


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## stitchxd (May 27, 2019)

Elalexyzoner said:


> This on switch would we awesome!



Sorry this might be for the Switch build of the standalone emu:

https://github.com/mgba-emu/mgba/releases


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## Deleted User (May 28, 2019)

Sorry if i don't get it, this contains the update for rescaling for Switch? with standalone you refer it doesn't work on Retroarch?


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## tabnk (May 28, 2019)

Stock clock on handheld mode.
fzero 45 FPS at 2x.

Mario Kart full speed at 2x.

Not bad.


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## BertBR (May 28, 2019)

How about Fast Forward like MyBoy (Android) ?


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## Reploid (May 28, 2019)

Emulators proved to be superior to hardware again


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## FAST6191 (May 28, 2019)

Reploid said:


> Emulators proved to be superior to hardware again


While I agree that emulators have far greater potential than stock hardware, and usually live up to it, this sort of thing could be done in hardware as well, and usually quite trivially as these things go too (if you have the hardware there doing everything else it is not too hard to supplant whatever the GBA's bad mapping methods do for something far nicer, and chuck in a bit of AA while you are at it). I have thus been quite disappointed when we see hardware clones that don't do cool stuff like this.


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## HaloEffect17 (May 30, 2019)

Does version 0.7.2 have the Hi-res renderer or do I need to download the development builds still?


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## HaloEffect17 (May 30, 2019)

What is the highest high-res multiplier that works for you without lag? I tried changing 1x to 13x and it slowed down considerably.


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## Deleted User (May 30, 2019)

HaloEffect17 said:


> What is the highest high-res multiplier that works for you without lag? I tried changing 1x to 13x and it slowed down considerably.


You're using it on PC?


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## FAST6191 (May 30, 2019)

240x160 pixels * 13

= 3120 x 2080

Are you trying this on a 4K screen or something?


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## HaloEffect17 (May 30, 2019)

Elalexyzoner said:


> You're using it on PC?





FAST6191 said:


> 240x160 pixels * 13
> 
> = 3120 x 2080
> 
> Are you trying this on a 4K screen or something?


Yes, on PC. And no, it's a 1080p screen, I thought 13x would be fine as that was what was shown in the OP. What would be a good multiplier for 1080p output then?


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## Esppiral (Oct 22, 2019)

I am trying it right now with vrally 3 and asteris and Obelix XXL  and I see no difference


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