Homebrew RetroArch Super Game Boy Borders! (overlays)

[Chaos Rush]

I'm a huge fan of using Super Game Boy Borders, to me it just feels wrong to play a GB/GBC game on a TV without a border. I was disappointed when I found out that Gambatte for RetroArch Wii doesn't have Super Game Boy support (both color and border), but with some tricky manipulation of the overlay system, I have found a workaround.




First of all, the Super Game Boy borders are 256x224 (typical SNES screen resolution), and the actual Game Boy screen portion is 160x144. When stretched to a 4:3 aspect ratio (so in my case 640x480), the Game Boy screen portion approximately became 400x308 - but this tutorial has it at 400x300 because that's the only way I could get everything to work, since because of how RetroArch Wii works, the overlay has to be the same aspect ratio as the actual viewport.

So here's how to achieve it:
1. download the "border overlays.zip" at the bottom of this post.
2. place the contents in "apps/retroarch-wii/overlays/wii" on wherever you have RetroArch Wii stored (such as an SD card)
3. Change your Wii and your TV screen settings to 4:3 mode. (otherwise things won't have the correct aspect ratio)
4. load up RetroArch Wii and choose the Game Boy emulator (gambatte)
5. Go to Settings--->Video Options
6. Make these changes:
6a. Screen Resolution: 640x480p
6b. Default Filter: Bilinear filtering
6c. Aspect Ratio: Custom
6d. Custom Ratio: (120, 104 : 400x 300)
7. Go to Settings--->Overlay options
7a. Overlay Scale: 1.60
7b. Select Overlay Preset, choose one of the new overlays I provided in the download
7c. Overlay Opacity: 1.00
And that should do it!

This was done on a 16:9 TV, so I'm not sure how it would affect CRT TV's. Because my custom overlays have artificial scanlines built in, if anyone wants me to make ones without the scanlines so that it would display better on CRT TV's, just ask lol.

Or you could just use this as a template:

 

[Gaming4Ever]

Nice this is something that was bugging me too....u really need the Full retro experience hehehe

THX for this man appreciate it

 

[drakorex]

One thing I noticed though, when you start another Retroarch emulator, it uses the last settings from whatever you had before. So you'll end up playing a NES game on a smaller resolution with a Super Gameboy around it. Hopefully this will be fixed in the future.

 

[SuperrSonic]

I see what you did there, "overlay0_full_screen" doesn't work on the GC/Wii versions. So it doesn't scale to the current resolution(640x480, a 4:3 AR) but when you use 400,300 for GB games you get a 4:3 ratio which means you can use the scale option to scale perfectly around the viewport.

You can still let your Wii use widescreen, but have your TV use 4:3 mode. Lastly if you want to avoid bilinear filtering you can mess with overlay0_rect but it's a pain to use.

One thing I noticed though, when you start another Retroarch emulator, it uses the last settings from whatever you had before.

That should not happen unless you didn't have a config for that core in the first place. What RA does is copy the settings in retroarch.cfg to the core config and vice versa. See if you load VBA Next then its settings from its config will copy over "on the spot" to retroarch.cfg. Except, when you don't have a core config available, the current settings from retroarch.cfg will copy over to the new core config.

I suck at explaining things but hopefully you get it.

 

[drakorex]

I see what you did there, "overlay0_full_screen" doesn't work on the GC/Wii versions. So it doesn't scale to the current resolution(640x480, a 4:3 AR) but when you use 400,300 for GB games you get a 4:3 ratio which means you can use the scale option to scale perfectly around the viewport.

You can still let your Wii use widescreen, but have your TV use 4:3 mode. Lastly if you want to avoid bilinear filtering you can mess with overlay0_rect but it's a pain to use.


That should not happen unless you didn't have a config for that core in the first place. What RA does is copy the settings in retroarch.cfg to the core config and vice versa. See if you load VBA Next then its settings from its config will copy over "on the spot" to retroarch.cfg. Except, when you don't have a core config available, the current settings from retroarch.cfg will copy over to the new core config.

I suck at explaining things but hopefully you get it.

Launching from Wiiflow plugin, if that matters.

 

[zerofalcon]

Spoiler

Hey thanks for the tutorial! I managed to do some 3DS virtual console borders for Gambatte. Too bad retroarch for Wii can't stretch correctly the border (overlay) but anyways it looks cool.

 

[Maeson]

If it's of any help, I'll put here a pack with over a hundred borders from Game Boy games that I recollected time ago, but I have to give credit to SuperrSonic and VagueRant from AR Forums because they made the .cfg's and did some borders themselves.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/s16grwhmcov0w2b/105 SGB Borders Retroarch Wii.rar

They work in a different way, but maybe you can find use for them.

 

[Chaos Rush]

So apparently I'm not the first one to try this concept: http://www.libretro.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=1545&hilit=super+game+boy
Also if you look at the third post of that link, someone came up with their own method of achieving specifically SGB borders (it's pretty much exactly the same as mine, but the difference is how the borders are scaled) but I can't quite get it to position properly on the screen.

I know this isn't perfect but I think this really just goes to show how badly we want Super Game Boy border support. Playing low-res Game Boy games on a TV blown up to super high resolution is really ugly no matter how accurate you get the pixel ratio, and Super Game Boy borders just makes everything easier on the eyes.

 

[SuperrSonic]

but I can't quite get it to position properly on the screen.

You can use overlay_rect0 to manipulate the overlay, for GB games try "0.0,0.012,1.0,0.976" That's Vague Rant's calculation and according to him there is no math to use it perfectly.

However the feature to use overlays as backgrounds is there, it just doesn't work on Wii.
This link has the details: https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/issues/621
But to save you the trip, it's because of all the custom resolutions the function wasn't implemented but it's not impossible to do. Of course the troubling part is that the issue was reported like half a year ago, so there's that.

Honestly using rect isn't so bad if you plan to use the same settings(which is the case here).