Yes, some MS-DOS games were "widescreen"

Post by **rusty_shackleford** » December 6th, 2025, 23:53

A 10 year late reply to Felipe Pepe's article in Gamasutra:
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/ ... pect-ratio

Here is a 320x200 screenshot of Ultima Underworld upscaled 2x using nearest neighbor(that is, No filtering):

unmodified-UU.png

What do you notice in this 'uncorrected' image?
Circles! The inventory backgrounds are circular, not ovals! This is the correct PAR(Pixel aspect ratio) already.

If you follow the article's recommendation for correction, you receive THIS:

stretched-UU.png

The inventory icons are now oval. (I cannot pick which character paper doll I prefer, both seem fine.)
Yes, that means the intended hardware probably displayed it at least partially incorrectly.

There is no one-size fix all for displaying old games, many games have artwork designed for both PARs, especially so for any game that used scanned art.

Further reading, some games display perfect spheres in 'uncorrected' 320x200, others don't:
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=17110

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Post by **rusty_shackleford** » December 7th, 2025, 00:08

From the manual that came with the game, you can see the icons in the inventory were intended to be CIRCLES:

Post by **Tangerine** » December 7th, 2025, 00:10

Report Felipe to ICE for being wrong.

Post by **rusty_shackleford** » December 7th, 2025, 00:48

Tangerine wrote: ↑ December 7th, 2025, 00:10
Report Felipe to ICE for being wrong.

@Roguey post the tweet of him crying about old japanese women not wanting to sit next to him

Post by **Tweed** » December 7th, 2025, 00:49

Feelapeepee

Roguey · Post by **Roguey** » December 7th, 2025, 02:22

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ December 7th, 2025, 00:48

Tangerine wrote: ↑ December 7th, 2025, 00:10
Report Felipe to ICE for being wrong.
@Roguey post the tweet of him crying about old japanese women not wanting to sit next to him

Post by **Vergil** » December 7th, 2025, 02:34

This is the best thread to browse while sucking on some delicious werther's originals while the grandkids play in the sun room.

Griffin · Post by **Griffin** » December 13th, 2025, 07:44

I don't buy it that they meant Ultima Underwold to be played on 16:10 monitor, I'd bet there were less than 1% of 16:9 monitors at the time and even fewer monitors in 16:10, if any at all. Why the **** would they make game for widescreen displays in 1992?

There was probably some fuckup and they found out too late that the rest of the screen takes too much space from the game window so they had to squeeze the graphics. Who did the manual probably ****** up too and accidentally put the screenshot in wrong aspect ratio and didn't notice or didn't care.

Post by **rusty_shackleford** » December 13th, 2025, 10:03

Griffin wrote: ↑ December 13th, 2025, 07:44
I don't buy it that they meant Ultima Underwold to be played on 16:10 monitor, I'd bet there were less than 1% of 16:9 monitors at the time and even fewer monitors in 16:10, if any at all. Why the **** would they make game for widescreen displays in 1992?

There was probably some fuckup and they found out too late that the rest of the screen takes too much space from the game window so they had to squeeze the graphics. Who did the manual probably ****** up too and accidentally put the screenshot in wrong aspect ratio and didn't notice or didn't care.

They didn't, it's just that the graphics weren't created with the extra tall pixels in mind, it's possible the artists didn't even know and were working on e.g., XGA workstations

I used "widescreen" because the article does. It just happens to look correct at that ratio, nothing more than that. The real thing to take away is to find geometric primitives and attempt to figure out what the developers used during the creation process. When the circles are sufficiently circular, you're getting close.

Stack of Turtles · Post by **Stack of Turtles** » December 13th, 2025, 10:10

I assume you were supposed to use the knobs to adjust the image to your taste.

Griffin · Post by **Griffin** » December 14th, 2025, 10:29

In graphics program Amiga devs used there was a bug/**** up that when using circle tool, it didn't create perfect circle but oval shape, but devs either didn't pay attention or didn't care so tires in at least one Test Drive weren't round in NTSC as it was made on American computer. Could be something similar in UW.

Post by **Rand** » December 14th, 2025, 15:28

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ December 6th, 2025, 23:53
What do you notice in this 'uncorrected' image?
Circles! The inventory backgrounds are circular, not ovals! This is the correct PAR(Pixel aspect ratio) already.

Yes, that means the intended hardware probably displayed it at least partially incorrectly.

I played it on hardware of the time at the time.
They were always circles for me.

If I recall correctly, CRT pixels were a different shape or layout or something where the LCD ones are more of a perfect grid? Something like that.