Author Topic: Double dealing character: Horrible resolution?  (Read 3031 times)

Double dealing character: Horrible resolution?
« on: September 10, 2013, 12:56:38 PM »
Greetings, dear maidens!  :)

I received my copy of DDC today and started to play a few minutes ago. The demo was very pixelated, but since it wasn't the full version of the game I thought ZUN might fix that.
Well, apparently he didn't. Everything in the panel where the game takes place is blurred and fuzzy. And I get really mad at this, because all the other Touhou games work just fine. It's not an indistinct picture, but it's pretty unsharp.
The funny thing is that everything not in the "shooting panel" is crystal clear. The Dialogues, the artwork, the score bar on the right - everything's fine.

I changed the resolution but this didn't help either. I usually play in fullscreen mode and never experienced any problems up to date.

My PC is almost brand new and a gaming PC which handles every game on the market easily. So my specs shouldn't be the problem. I use the latest version of DirectX too. The framerate is fine too. Always constant at about 60 FPS.

Can anybody help me out? I googled several times, but no one seems to have encountered this problem. :(
« Last Edit: September 10, 2013, 02:16:50 PM by Reimulover »

Re: Double dealing character: Horrible resolution?
« Reply #1 on: September 10, 2013, 03:03:06 PM »
It would be easier to help if you could post a sample image.
Would be glad to get help with Touhou Doumeiju ~ Mystical Power Plant Translation Project spellcard comments' translation.

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Re: Double dealing character: Horrible resolution?
« Reply #2 on: September 10, 2013, 05:51:46 PM »
Agreed with Vectorfish. What resolution do you typically play it in? The lower resolutions make a bit of things pixelated in DDC because the game is scaling down larger images. (ZUN probably should have made lower resolution images to counter this but whatever)
I figured out how to play midi in games with a different device on Win7 ^^
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Re: Double dealing character: Horrible resolution?
« Reply #3 on: September 10, 2013, 07:27:18 PM »
Er... unfortunately I don't know how to make an appropriate screenshot out of this..  ??? :blush: It (The resulting screenshot)'s too small and does therefore not display the actual unsharpness.

Resolutions i play in: TH 6-13: 640x480, TH14: 1280x960.

I compared TD to DDC (both in 640x480) and TD looks slightly better in my opinion. Nevertheless, DDC looks better in 640x480 than in 1280x960 as far as the shooting window itself is concerned. The title looks blurry though.

So, this is some kind of equilibrium, it seems.

 Sexy title graphics but fuzzy gameplay =  High resolution.

Shitty title graphics but acceptable gameplay graphics = Low resolution.

And sorry again for not being able to create a proper screenshot..  :blush:

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Re: Double dealing character: Horrible resolution?
« Reply #4 on: September 10, 2013, 07:35:12 PM »
That's really weird. The higher resolution typically looks better than the lower one for everything. (does on my system) Only thing I can think of is your graphics card is doing something weird. Maybe mess around with the drivers a bit?
I figured out how to play midi in games with a different device on Win7 ^^
TF2 Backpack
Embodiment of Scarlet Hair English Patch is almost completed.
^ I didn't forget about this. I don't know what you're talking about. >_>

Re: Double dealing character: Horrible resolution?
« Reply #5 on: September 10, 2013, 07:57:22 PM »
Er... unfortunately I don't know how to make an appropriate screenshot out of this..  ??? :blush: It (The resulting screenshot)'s too small and does therefore not display the actual unsharpness.

Resolutions i play in: TH 6-13: 640x480, TH14: 1280x960.

I compared TD to DDC (both in 640x480) and TD looks slightly better in my opinion. Nevertheless, DDC looks better in 640x480 than in 1280x960 as far as the shooting window itself is concerned. The title looks blurry though.

So, this is some kind of equilibrium, it seems.

 Sexy title graphics but fuzzy gameplay =  High resolution.

Shitty title graphics but acceptable gameplay graphics = Low resolution.

And sorry again for not being able to create a proper screenshot..  :blush:

Did you tried to make a screenshot while the game in fullscreen mode? If it's so, try to make while it runs in window mode.
I have a feeling that I know what you're talking about. If the game is run in lowest resolution in fullscreen, GUI and actual game look like in older games. But if you try to run in higher resolution, GUI looks better but actual games looks noticeably worse (more pixelated) because the scaling is done programmatically which was implemented not so well (unlike scaling due to fullscreen mode where OS lowers the screen resolution). So in some cases you might want to play in low-res mode. I don't know if it's true to all computers but in my case it's so.

It looks something like this (take a look at Sakuya):
Low-res in fullscreen - http://s21.postimg.org/oxka94b5h/image.png (smooth scaling)
Hi-res in fullscreen - http://s21.postimg.org/sv7jyixyt/image.png (not so smooth scaling)

It might be not so noticeable on static images but it's difficult not to notice in motion.
« Last Edit: September 10, 2013, 08:22:57 PM by Vectorfish »
Would be glad to get help with Touhou Doumeiju ~ Mystical Power Plant Translation Project spellcard comments' translation.

Re: Double dealing character: Horrible resolution?
« Reply #6 on: September 10, 2013, 08:37:49 PM »
You found it! That's exactly what it looks like! :*

So it's ZUN's fault? I could write him an E-mail telling him to try fixing this in a future update. Luckily, I speak Japanese. 8)

Okay, so there's nothing left than just to lower the resolution for now, I guess.  :ohdear:

Thank you very much guys. You really helped me outta here.  :D

Re: Double dealing character: Horrible resolution?
« Reply #7 on: September 10, 2013, 09:00:39 PM »
You can give it a try but I doubt that he will try to fix this issue. There are two ways to solve it: add sprites in higher resolution (preferable one; actually, I hoped that he would do that in full version) or implement better scaling functionality.
Would be glad to get help with Touhou Doumeiju ~ Mystical Power Plant Translation Project spellcard comments' translation.

Agent of the BSoD

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Re: Double dealing character: Horrible resolution?
« Reply #8 on: September 10, 2013, 09:26:29 PM »
Huh, ok, so that's what you meant. I'd have to take a look at this when I get back home then.

And yeah, he probably won't do anything about it. Only thing he cares about now is bugfixing I think (and this isn't really a bug, but a programming design decision).

EDIT: Yep, it looks just like that for me too. Funny, because I never noticed it before. Silly scaling algorithms.
« Last Edit: September 11, 2013, 02:25:01 AM by Agent of the BSoD »
I figured out how to play midi in games with a different device on Win7 ^^
TF2 Backpack
Embodiment of Scarlet Hair English Patch is almost completed.
^ I didn't forget about this. I don't know what you're talking about. >_>