Hacking WiiFlow Lite Theme - Rhapsodii

[matt!]

Hi. Thanks for the quick reply!

Edit: I'm wondering if the safe zone image I posted is correct. It's from Opera Wii developer guide. I’ll try to find a better one. This page suggests safe area height is even smaller at 448 (so 480-32)

Have you marked up a screenshot? From Dolphin or Wii?

Yes, it’s always been an issue and it's been working it's way up my list until today. I believe it's mostly a WFL issue that has knock-on effects for themes. I believe WFL screen size setup could be incorrect.

Until now I’ve “corrected” it using WFL display size options but that results in uneven scaling and text becomes less readable. I run my Wii at EDTV 480p over Component cables to my 640x480 LCD. Wii menu fits perfectly, games fit perfectly, some homebrew fits perfectly, WFL and others don’t.

Whilst I would love it to be a simple setting my side I don't believe that's it. The Wii menu screen, for example, fits perfectly and if I adjust horizontal alignment even by 1px I see black background rather than overscan or cropped image.

The TV is centered (manually horizontal, automatically vertical) and the overscan I see is where the bezel on my TV obstructs the very top/bottom edges of the panel. I have no overscan at the left/right.

Here are some supporting photos, these all have captions:

 

[Hakaisha]

@matt! , backup your current rhapsodii.ini and try this one:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/hollwmbn94afhzh/Rhapsodii_Crop_Fix.rar/file

Looking closely at your images, your 480p input while running homebrew apps appears to be vertically cropping around 16 more pixels than the standard safe zone; resulting in the clipped images. It's particularly apparent in the USB Loader GX screenshot, with the top icons cut in half.

I took a mesh of your screen, straightened it out and overlayed it on the earlier overscan frame I made:

Do not mind the different cover sizes, mine are stretched to compensate for 16:9, the icons and background do match up here to give us an idea of what's happening. This indicates that your safe zone is roughly 608 x 430, rather than 608 x 465.

Here is a comparison between the two cropping sizes. The outer being 608x456, the inner dotted-line one being 608x430, where your display is cropping to.

The quick fix for this, as far as Rhapsodii is concerned, would be to subtract and add some Y values to your MAIN/screen and GAME/screen icons and messages, by around 5 pixels to make them fit within the tighter space, which I have already done to the provided ini file.

Now, as to why this is happening, I am unsure. It almost seems as if your native Wii Menu fits the screen fine, but any Homebrew application will automatically crop MORE off for some reason.

Please let me know if the new ini file has solved your problem.

 

[matt!]

Thanks! I'll try this later today.

This indicates that your safe zone is roughly 608 x 430, rather than 608 x 465.

Yikes! Even worse than i thought.

Now, as to why this is happening, I am unsure. It almost seems as if your native Wii Menu fits the screen fine, but any Homebrew application will automatically crop MORE off for some reason.

I am wondering if certain homebrew use a shared method (libogc?) of screen setup. I'll dig in more into this and take it up at WFL GitHub.

 

[fledge68]

@matt! so after looking into this. it sounds like you don't like wiiflow's screen height setting because it just squishes everything vertically. what you want is a overscan setting that only affects the y position of buttons and text without squishing them. thus objects above the y midpoint (480/2 = 240) would be moved down and the objects below would be moved up. the only problem would be possible overlapping of objects near the midpoint (240).

or you just want wiiflow and all its themes to make sure that all objects (text and buttons) be placed within your safe zone even though on modern flat screen hd tv the edge would look like wasted space.

I wonder if wiiflow and themes could be made for your safe zone. but we add a setting - 'modern tv video = on/yes'. if set to yes it will move the x and y position of objects outward from center (x=320 and y = 240). this way we don't worry about the overlapping objects mentioned above.

 

[matt!]

That sounds like a better approach to video settings, would work for me.

But I'm really interested in how Wii Menu gets everything perfect with no configuration but homebrew requires per-user/app custom settings?

 

[Hakaisha]

@fledge68 , would it be possible to just leave our themes 'as is' , and add a WiiFlow setting that moves the objects inward, instead of outward?

As far as I can tell, Rhapsodii only needs to move some MAIN/ and GAME/ objects inward to meet Matt's safe zone. The themes in their current state meet the standard safe zone and work for most people's setups so far.

It feels a bit counterintuitive to set the theme icon placements to meet the less common, smaller safe zone size by default. If this 'press objects inward' button is implemented into WiiFlow's settings, it would be easy enough to click it, check the tighter placements, and make the adjustments where necessary in Adjust CoverFlow's 4:3 settings so nothing overlaps for people who need to use this smaller safe zone setting.

 

[fledge68]

@fledge68 , would it be possible to just leave our themes 'as is' , and add a WiiFlow setting that moves the objects inward, instead of outward?

As far as I can tell, Rhapsodii only needs to move some MAIN/ and GAME/ objects inward to meet Matt's safe zone. The themes in their current state meet the standard safe zone and work for most people's setups so far.

It feels a bit counterintuitive to set the theme icon placements to meet the less common, smaller safe zone size by default. If this 'press objects inward' button is implemented into WiiFlow's settings, it would be easy enough to click it, check the tighter placements, and make the adjustments where necessary in Adjust CoverFlow's 4:3 settings so nothing overlaps for people who need to use this smaller safe zone setting.

I realized later that the moving outward idea doesn't work for objects (button and text) that are set to display centered on the screen. moving inward is better. but i tried wiiflows width and height adjustment and to me it really didn't make the text any harder to read. everything looked perfectly fine to me (maybe a tad smaller).

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

I don't know if it's related to this, but I notice that when I configure video in Retroarch, if I set an height of 448px the screen will vertically fit with my tv, perfectly. If I set 480px instead, I have a slightly cropped image on top and bottom of the screen (that can contain vital information like high scores). This is noticeable in Dosbox Wii, as well. For this reason I couldn't play games like Alien Breed (all the important info like player energy, keys etc. are out of the screen). In general, every homebrew that outputs at 640x480 has this issue, and it can't be fixed adjusting the screen size on the TV.

 

[matt!]

I've added some more photos to my imgur album, you'll need to click through to see them all. There are a mix if perfect screens and screens that have slight or major overscan/cropping, with apps set to default video output (no correction using overscan or positioning). I'd be interested to see similar albums from you all when running at 480p?

A little about my LCD TV, it's VGA resolution which means 640x480 which means pixel perfect for Wii/DC/PS2/PS1/Xbox/etc games when played over component/VGA with 640x480p video output. That's the reason I bought it, of course. The overscan it has is because the plastic bezel overhangs the edge of the LCD panel for reasons cosmetic (so you can't see the physical edge of the LCD) and technical (lines of data at top/bottom edge of analog TV broadcast). It is therefore a hardware obstruction that appears as overscan, rather than overscan set through software that can be corrected through the TV menu settings. Anyway...

IMHO the perfect outcome would be for as few changes to be made as possible. If themes could remain unchanged that would be perfect. If there turned out to be an long-standing issue regarding homebrew video setup, then it's a discussion for the future as correction in apps such as WFL may have knock-on effects.

At this point, my main interest is to try to figure out why the Wii menu and all official games are perfect at 480p, whilst only some homebrew is perfect whilst others have varying levels of overscan.

With regards to RetroArch @TetsuoShima if I set RA video settings to Auto or 640x480 everything fits on my TV perfectly, or as expected, with slight obstruction/overscan only on top and bottom. In this case it sounds like my LCD panel has "no" overscan at 480p, but your TV does have overscan that you cannot counteract?

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

With regards to RetroArch @TetsuoShima if I set RA video settings to Auto or 640x480 everything fits on my TV perfectly, or as expected, with slight obstruction/overscan only on top and bottom. In this case it sounds like my LCD panel has "no" overscan at 480p, but your TV does have overscan that you cannot counteract?

Here are some pics I took:

Spoiler: Genesis plus GX - 640x448 - perfect vertical fit

Spoiler: eDuke32 - 640x480 - Cropped screen on top and bottom

Spoiler: Mame2003+ 640x480 - cropped sceen on top and bottom

I coudn't take pics of Dosbox Wii, because I deleted the Alien Breed games, and they were the only games that were suffering from the issue.

Spoiler: My theme Rhapsodii Shima - default screen size. No issues here.

 

[MrSW]

I don't know if it's related to this, but I notice that when I configure video in Retroarch, if I set an height of 448px the screen will vertically fit with my tv, perfectly. If I set 480px instead, I have a slightly cropped image on top and bottom of the screen (that can contain vital information like high scores). This is noticeable in Dosbox Wii, as well. For this reason I couldn't play games like Alien Breed (all the important info like player energy, keys etc. are out of the screen). In general, every homebrew that outputs at 640x480 has this issue, and it can't be fixed adjusting the screen size on the TV.

I second this, the overscan on the Wii only became noticeable to me when playing arcade games. Then I realized it's pretty much everywhere. Taking a screenshot on WiiFlow reveals how much my screen is not displaying.
@matt! are you sure that you don't suffer from overscan in official games? keep i mind that they are made with overscan in mind so you might have not noticed

 

[matt!]

That’s a good question! I’ll have to check and find some comparison images to compare with, and/or output to a CRT.

I’ve been chatting to Extrems (Not64, Swiss, 480p fix) about this whole thing and it’s seems to be caused by my TV acting a certain way with specific Wii resolutions.

One thing to note is I am running 480p on a 4:3 TV, @ TetsuoShima

I’ve also ordered a Wii VGA cable to see if things are different than with Component.

I’m away right now so it’ll be at least a week until I can try some things.

Thanks for your patience! And thanks for having this kind-of off-topic subject in this thread.

 

[Hakaisha]

That’s a good question! I’ll have to check and find some comparison images to compare with, and/or output to a CRT.

I’ve been chatting to Extrems (Not64, Swiss, 480p fix) about this whole thing and it’s seems to be caused by my TV acting a certain way with specific Wii resolutions.

One thing to note is I am running 480p on a 4:3 TV, @ TetsuoShima

I’ve also ordered a Wii VGA cable to see if things are different than with Component.

I’m away right now so it’ll be at least a week until I can try some things.

Thanks for your patience! And thanks for having this kind-of off-topic subject in this thread.

It's interesting to hear that Extrems has mentioned specific Wii resolutions. Don't WiiFlow/USB Loader GX and the standard Wii Menu both display at 640x480? I would like further elaboration on this, if possible.

I hope you will keep us updated about your experience with the VGA cable. The only device I have that can completely remove overscan on the Wii is the XRGB-Mini Framemeister, using Terminal-D or SCART upscaled to HDMI. I have not tried VGA yet. I don't particularly like how it looks without some overscan however. I eventually opted to use the Sewell Wii HDMI adapter, which has provided the best experience for me.

This subject is not off-topic, by any means. Screen resolutions, overscan safe zones, and different people's experiences with them are important information to have for WiiFlow and WiiFlow theme creation.

 

[matt!]

I have a D-terminal cable (wrong purchase, thought it was VGA! Ha!) but no Framemeister.

It's interesting to hear that Extrems has mentioned specific Wii resolutions. Don't WiiFlow/USB Loader GX and the standard Wii Menu both display at 640x480? I would like further elaboration on this, if possible.

Apparently they are not 640x480, but he's unwilling to elaborate. But the conversation is on his discord "Extremscorner" here

I'll also pickup one of those Wii to HDMI adapter.

 

[matt!]

@Hakaisha it seems getting on of those Sewell Wii/HDMI adapters that does only 480p is quite a task (very expensive!) but i'll keep it on my list.

I added more photos from 240p test suite that were enlightening to me: Checkerboard, Grid, Linearity, Overscan and more. My panel has zero overscan at the sides and the physical bezel obstructs ~10% of the image at each top/bottom (though I believe there is zero overscan if i were to remove the front of the TV).

Regarding the Wii output, from what I understand the programmer is in charge of how video is output and there are many ways to do it. Take my re-explanation below with some noob salt.

They can draw any size output on the maximum canvas size of 720x480 for NTSC/EDTV (or 720x574 for PAL) as detailed here. It's up to the developer to take into account the current screen mode (tv type, EDTV/480p, 480i etc) and aspect ratio (4:3 or 16:9 widescreen settings, which is anamorphic meaning that the output image is in the same area and stretched at display time). So it's quite common for homebrew apps to behave differently based on their needs. With 4:3 pixel aspect ratio is 10/11 and the video is output like that on the understanding that the TV will squeeze it and correct for the non-square pixels. In other words at output time a circle is wider than it is tall 11x10 and then TV scales it by 10/11 because it needs to deal in square pixels, and we get a perfect circle.

Compare Nintendont very clean screen handling, one file:
https://github.com/FIX94/Nintendont/blob/master/loader/source/global.c

WFL is much more complicated, across many files including:
https://github.com/Fledge68/WiiFlow_Lite/blob/master/source/banner/BannerWindow.cpp

240p test suite, fairly clean:
https://sourceforge.net/p/testsuite240p/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/240psuite/Wii/240pSuite/source/video.c

With regards to Wii Menu, it seems that the Wii Menu is drawn at 672x456 surrounded by blackness on the max possible canvas that is 720x480. The centre 704x480 pixels are used (to maintain aspect ratio; circles are wide at this point), and then resized to 640x480 (circles are now equal height and width) for output (still including black edges). The active area of this 640x480 is approx 610x456 with black around the sides. At this point your TV is free to do what it feels like with this resulting image. Most will crop off the black edges and then scale the resulting image, maintaining aspect ratio, to fit the display. And remember for Widescreen it will finally stretch the image horizontally.

Now think of another app drawing its active area at a slightly different size and repeat the logic

 

[matt!]

So I bought a different TV. Another Philips 480p LCD, this time a 20PFL4122.

Overscan issues are gone!
Other issues present themselves.
But it's generally better so I'm happy.

Lesson learned? Maybe.

Have fun all.

ps: I also updated my fixed Rhapsodii.ini for WFL 5.4 (for new button ordering and positioning)
https://gist.github.com/gingerbeardman/141bd5173757c1bfea688b80951541b1

 

[matt!]

I just did some more tidying up in my Rhapsodii.ini

Things all animate the same way now, buttons are all the same size, etc. Same
URL above.

 

[Hakaisha]

I just did some more tidying up in my Rhapsodii.ini

Things all animate the same way now, buttons are all the same size, etc. Same
URL above.

Matt, you're a hero whom I do not deserve.

I'm very impressed and grateful for all the work you've done for this theme. With your permission, I would very much like to have all of your changes added to the official release. I will give you credit for all of your hard work.

 

[matt!]

Sure thing! Happy to help.

I'm all about little details, so I really enjoyed fixing up the consistency.

I'm working on a system that is a kind of preprocessor/macro tool that allows you to use new keywords in the .ini that are easier to type/remember/understand, then you generate the normal .ini.

These Rhapsodii changes helped me on my way.

 

[Hakaisha]

Sure thing! Happy to help.

I'm all about little details, so I really enjoyed fixing up the consistency.

I'm working on a system that is a kind of preprocessor/macro tool that allows you to use new keywords in the .ini that are easier to type/remember/understand, then you generate the normal .ini.

These Rhapsodii changes helped me on my way.

Thank you, @matt!

This 'theme.ini generator' tool of yours sounds interesting. I'd love to check it out, if you plan on releasing it some day.

Some time ago in the WiiFlow Lite thread, Fledge provided a link to an old (albeit outdated) WiiFlow theme template that has quite a bit of info that I have found very useful. Especially concerning how the different effect_scales, and buttons, buttons2, and buttons3 function according to their corresponding zones. You may already know about it, but I thought it may also be useful to you for your ini generator project.

Here is the link: https://sites.google.com/site/wiiflowiki/customization/themes/theme-template