[Feature Request] Proper Cutscene Presentation for Widescreen Displays
Chalking opened this issue · comments
This port is amazing and I'm loving it and love the work you have done, though I have noticed one thing that I strongly believe could and should be improved.
When playing the game in 4:3, Majora's Mask(and Ocarina of Time, by extension)'s cutscenes are letterboxed to a resolution quite close to 16:9. So when playing on a widescreen monitor, there are black bars all around the screen that are almost the same width. (played in a window here for better comparison)
However, when playing in a 16:9 resolution with the recompilation PC port, the cutscenes, instead of having a properly adjusted FOV/camera position/cropping, the viewport is simply expanded like the rest of the game. This introduces problems, as parts of scene that were never meant to be viewed become visible. (Unfortunately I couldn't get an example screenshot as it moved too fast, but in the opening cutscene, Tatl and Tael teleport around and jitter the right edge of the screen at one point.
Ideally, the cutscenes could be adjusted so that they fill up the screen properly in 16:9. I initially imagined that this could create a small issue, since the blue triangle at the bottom of dialogue boxes overlaps the black letterbox, however upon creating a mockup example, it turns out that the cutscenes are just a tad wider than 16:9, so this wouldn't even be an issue! Example of what I think this ideally should look like (approximately):
The only issue remaining here would be determining what size the text/text boxes should be drawn at. I would probably personally prefer them smaller, though it would be nice to maybe have an option to maintain consistency with the original release (Though understandably that's quite niche).
Of course, once the user begins using aspect ratios wider than 16:9, there would be no helping seeing things that weren't initially meant to be seen. But I firmly believe this should be fixed. It would greatly benefit the cutscene presentation of the game for the most common aspect ratio in use today, and it frankly just makes sense. The cutscenes were cropped to widescreen originally, so instead of keeping the giant black bars and expanding the viewport to see things you shouldn't, it just makes sense to just zoom in on them to be able to see their originally intended presentation.
I would love for this to get fixed before Ocarina of Time's port is finished, so that players with 16:9 displays could benefit from the wider field of view during gameplay, while also getting a truly authentic widescreen presentation of the cutscenes, without having to choose between glitches at the sides of the screen, or switching back to 4:3 and having black bars all around the screen.
This is a thing that a LOT of modern ports of games with cutscenes like this suffer from, and I would VERY much hope this could get fixed. Thank you for reading and for all your amazing hard work.
P.S. since doing this to cutscenes still ends up leaving a very small letterbox, maybe this could also be extended to making the letterboxing in-game like when locking on smaller? I think it would be more accurate to the original release there as well, and just more convenient. Though I think the cutscenes are more important, if only one had to be changed.
Thank you again!
Down for this as an option, but I will say I think the black bars themselves are as much part of the creative intent as the aspect ratio.
While I would agree with you that they WERE part of the creative intent of the cutscenes (in-game it doesn't really matter to me much), that would only apply assuming we're playing on 4:3 displays.
This issue regards widescreen displays, and if the original creators had to choose between actually zooming into and filling in to fit the resolution they were TRYING to create (but could only fake using black bars), vs keeping the bars, having a wider FOV, but with a bunch of glitches on the sides of the screen and things they never animated, I believe they would have with 100% certainty chosen the former.
See the 3DS remakes of OOT and Majora's Mask for example. Those games ran at an aspect ratio EXTREMELY close to what they originally cropped the cutscenes to on N64. When it came time to adapt the cutscenes for the 3DS's aspect ratio, they had to choose between those 2 options. And wouldn't you know, they decided to take the opportunity to remove the bars to get the TRUE aspect ratio!
I believe my point is made quite strongly with this, I don't think the current PC port has the intended cutscene presentation currently.
I think this makes sense to have, probably with an option with this mode as the default setting. My only question is how wider aspect ratios should work. Right now my thinking is that as the aspect ratio gets wider, the black bars should shrink (to maintain the original horizontal field of view) up to 16:9, at which point the black bars should stay at that minimal height and the horizontal field of view would be allowed to increase. The reason I think it should work that way instead of getting rid of the black bars altogether beyond 16:9 is because I do think they add a bit of a cinematic aspect to the cutscenes. That would look something like this:
As far as text goes, the text will have to be drawn at the original size. The main reason is that allowing text scaling would require large changes to the text renderer that would increase the scope of this change quite a lot, but I would also have concerns about how the font would look when slightly scaled if somebody is playing in 16:9 but with the original vertical resolution.
I mentioned part of this (showing too much of a cutscene shows assets not meant to be seen). It's this one #255. @Mr-Wiseguy, please check this for further information since I included a screenshot where Link isn't supposed to be visible but is seen floating in mid air lol.
Another issue was opened (#63) much earlier as well that goes over part of this issue as well. Let's consolidate these issues when this is completed. Duplicate issues suck lol.
Thank you so much for your reply!!! I agree basically completely with an implementation like how you've shown in the image you made @Mr-Wiseguy! I would also prefer having an option leaving those minimal black bars, as I think they do help distinguish when a cutscenes is playing. Although, if we were to have those 2 options, maybe it would be possible to have 3 so that everyone is happy?
"Original" - current behavior
"Adjusted" - minimized up until 16:9, and then kept for wider aspect ratios, like how is shown in the image you made
"Removed" -black bars gone entirely once the aspect ratio becomes wide enough
Also, would it be possible for these changes to the black bars to be applied to gameplay as well? I think that would also be a great addition, as it would make things like lock-on consistent with the cutscene, allowing the whole game to have a more consistent presentation.
Please let me know what you think!