Not too long ago, we saw the first release of the Mode 7 HD mod by DerKoun for bsnes, a Super Nintendo emulator. This allowed for SNES games that utilized Mode 7 to be upscaled at up to 4x their original resolution. Byuu, the lead developer behind bsnes, then incorporated DerKoun's code into an official branch of the emulator, to be built upon. After a few tweaks here and there, the 5th beta of the "Mode 7 HD" mod has released, bringing with it some new changes and additions. Firstly, this branch of the emulator has gotten an official name: bsnes-hd. This was done not only for clarity on the title of the project, but also because DerKoun plans to add new upscaling features to more than just Mode 7 related things. Notably, a widescreen mode for non-Mode 7 backgrounds has also been added, though it's buggy and can cause crashes in specific games such as Donkey Kong Country, while F-Zero appears to work fine, and Super Mario World, though it has some issues, it also plays well enough. You can try games out for yourself by grabbing the latest beta of bsnes-hd down below.

Download (Windows and source):

http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=76484668394989134799

This is, of course, offered as-is.

If anyone could provide binaries for Mac, Linux or anything else it would be much appreciated.

Name change:

The project is now named "bsnes-hd", as "HD Mode 7 mod" was simply too long. Also I have moved beyond just Mode 7 and have plans for more. A repository will be available soon.

New features:

1. Widescreen for non-Mode 7 backgrounds. Results of course vary between games and even scenes.

To avoid HUDs repeating and other unwanted effects I have added settings to disable widescreen for the separate background layers and even just the top or bottom of a layer.

The default is always "on" for all 4. Sample values for some games are:

"F-Zero": BG3: "off"

"HyperZone": BG2: ">80"

Please post settings for other games here.

2. Sprites that are partially inside the non-widescreen area are now drawn entirely when possible.

The new "unsafe sprites" settings allow sprites to enter widescreen areas further if the game keeps updating them. This will however cause significant artifacts in many games. If ROM-hackers want to discuss optimizing games for this, feel free to contact me.

3. more widescreen aspect ratios (16:10, 21:9, ...)

Known issues:

- Setting very high scale factors and a widescreen AR at the same time causes the emulator to terminate. The solution would be increasing the size of the arrays that store the pixels. That, however, causes lower frame rates at any settings. So I won't fix this, until I can do so without impacting performance for everyone. My lack of C++ experience makes this difficult. Maybe someone can help me out here.

- (edit) The logo intro of Donkey Kong Country crashes in widescreen.

Coming next:

Auto detection for perspective correction. I know I wanted to that first, and I have the fundamentals done, but the widescreen additions just got done quicker. I'll keep working on it.

Thanks for all the feedback, and the articles and videos. It's still feels kind of unreal to me.

Source

 

[Ev1l0rd]

Kinda dissapointing to see a useless hard fork like this.

Why couldn't this code have been proposed and merged in bsnes upstream?

This just promotes pointless fragmentation, something bsnes was kinda able to solve.

 

[Rabbid4240]

What the hell was that

It was a cursed video

 

[bandithedoge]

"PS2 widescreen patches are dumb", they said

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Kinda dissapointing to see a useless hard fork like this.

Why couldn't this code have been proposed and merged in bsnes upstream?

This just promotes pointless fragmentation, something bsnes was kinda able to solve.

This is a super experimental feature and nobody wants to clutter up the code with potentially broken junk.

 

[Ev1l0rd]

This is a super experimental feature and nobody wants to clutter up the code with potentially broken junk.

Then keep it separate and perfect it before merging, as opposed to making it your own hard fork.

EDIT: Ok, I looked into it, it seems byuu is ok with it based on the grounds that he doesn't find this feature relevant for bsnes, sooo, scratch whatever I said.

 

[raxadian]

This looks cool I admit.

 

[regnad]

A tas breaking the game to the point where it can start writing it's own arbitrarily code to ram and writing the og mario bros. game in to be ran.

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Have you not tried with both widescreen and up ressing enabled?

What’s ressing?

 

[jt_1258]

What’s ressing?

err, well, I was just trying to refer to the option to render mode 7 graphics at a higher resolution, I might not be using correct terminology though

 

[regnad]

err, well, I was just trying to refer to the option to render mode 7 graphics at a higher resolution, I might not be using correct terminology though

How do you do it?

 

[regnad]

Excuse me for being a dummy, but how do I use this?

I’ve set it to widescreen, tried F-Zero with BG3 set to off. Not only is it not widescreen, but I’m not even seeing the Mode 7 HD effect. It just looks like normal SNES F-Zero.

Edit: Okay, I've got it working. But when I raise the scale past 480p, and certainly past 720p, I get huge slowdowns. Any way to fix that?

 

[regnad]

Am I the only one experiencing this?

 

[Hero-Link]

Excuse me for being a dummy, but how do I use this?

I’ve set it to widescreen, tried F-Zero with BG3 set to off. Not only is it not widescreen, but I’m not even seeing the Mode 7 HD effect. It just looks like normal SNES F-Zero.

Edit: Okay, I've got it working. But when I raise the scale past 480p, and certainly past 720p, I get huge slowdowns. Any way to fix that?

you need a REALLY good computer to use this. And i mean really good, i really mean it.

 

[regnad]

you need a REALLY good computer to use this. And i mean really good, i really mean it.

It’s a pity! I wouldn’t say my computer sucks, but I also wouldn’t say it’s really good.

Oh well! 720p it is!

 

[elm]

So I guess you couldn’t use this on the Snes Classic Mini?

 

[gothicall]

Now, this is what I call a remaster



This one with no widescreen patch, only HD Mode 7, I truly love this awesome project.