FF6 Hacking
Widescreen hack possible? Any volunteers? - Printable Version

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Widescreen hack possible? Any volunteers? - FitzRoyX - 02-04-2020

Is anyone here skilled enough to make a widescreen hack for Final Fantasy VI? I think it would really help renew interest in the game and other hacks. There's a fork of bsnes that can show 448 width instead of 256. You can download the emulator fork here and see some screenshots of other games in widescreen here.

I wasn't able to make screenshots for this game because it doesn't render the way other games do. This and FF4 are the only games I've seen so far that do this. The Mode7 cutscene with the magitek armor goes wide just fine, but something is locking the width elsewhere. Also, battle scenes can't be helped, but overworld/town anything with scrolling will be wide.

[Image: ff6m1.png]


In the "Enhancements" part of the settings, choose "2:1" for Aspect and "all" for Widescreen. Disable Aspect correction and enable "Show overscan". This will show you the max distance you can render.


RE: Widescreen hack possible? Any volunteers? - madsiur - 02-05-2020

The main things to change that I can think of are the following:

1) Render the tilemap outside the regular screen size (same for overworld maps and Airship mode)
2) Manage NPC movements outside the regular screen size
3) Change some maps tilemap that would look quite ugly on widescreen (Narshe in mind as an example)
4) Adapt main menus to widescreen

It's possible to do these things I think if I understand correctly how widescreen hacks work, but it's probably a huge project to tackle..


RE: Widescreen hack possible? Any volunteers? - FitzRoyX - 02-05-2020

(02-05-2020, 06:45 AM)madsiur Wrote: The main things to change that I can think of are the following:

1) Render the tilemap outside the regular screen size (same for overworld maps and Airship mode)
2) Manage NPC movements outside the regular screen size
3) Change some maps tilemap that would look quite ugly on widescreen (Narshe in mind as an example)
4) Adapt main menus to widescreen

It's possible to do these things I think if I understand correctly how widescreen hacks work, but it's probably a huge project to tackle..

#1 this is the most important job. Just rendering scrollable areas further, uncramping the view distance during exploration. Mode7 airship stuff won't need any hacking, it's widescreen already.
#2 the thing that really matters here is to make sure the npc sprites are visible and not "popping in and out" of some invisible threshold. There is a "sprite unsafe" option that helps with this. Anything else, like keeping them moving, is gravy.
#3 I think it's best to avoid subjective alterations to the maps. If there's garbage tiles on the edge that were previously hidden, sure blank them out, but I wouldn't rearrange anything or do landscaping.
#4 the only thing that needs done here is to prevent the menus from repeating into the expanded area. They don't need to be widened, because the width is not fixed anymore. For example, 384x216 and 448x224 are both going to be options. If a hacker widens menus to 448, they're going to be cut off in 384. Battle backgrounds can't be widened or repeated either, so it's best to just keep these elements at 256.

[Image: ff6-448.png]


RE: Widescreen hack possible? Any volunteers? - FitzRoyX - 04-11-2021

FYI a guy named snaphat is currently working on the widescreen hack. You'll need bsneshd and some specific settings.

github page is here: https://github.com/snaphat/final_fantasy_vi_widescreen






RE: Widescreen hack possible? Any volunteers? - madsiur - 04-11-2021

So they got maps working? That's a pretty good start!