Hi everbody,
I have
news for the
Tomb Raider games!
First, as I said, a contributor to the development of
DuckStation suggested to me on
GitHub the idea that the aspect ratio is related to the resolution for the 2 first games. And he was right! The aspect ratio is defined by the resolution of "
366 x 240 pixels", so the correct aspect ratio is "
366:240" or "
1.525:1".
With a 4:3 aspect ratio,
Tomb Raider I and
II haven't the good proportions:
By chance, after having bored a lot
the developer of DuckStation,
he accepted to add a "custom aspect ratio" feature in the last build of the emulator
https://github.com/stenzek/duckstation/issues/1945
https://github.com/stenzek/duckstation/issues/1913
Now, this emulator is really perfect! The developer really did an excellent job! It's amazing!
It will be very useful and also indispensable for Tomb Raider 3, 4 and 5!
So, for
Tomb Raider I and
II, we need to choose a custom aspect ratio of "
366:240"
to match the aspect ratio of the PC version:
It totally matches the PC version (even if the FOV is different):
For
Tomb III,
IV and
V, it was less obvious, because the resolution of the game is of "
512 x 240 pixels" and can't defined the aspect ratio as the 2 first episodes. Otherwise we get an excessively large image:
And with a 4:3 aspect ratio, we already know that it's not correct either:
But for me, there was necessarily a logic! In fact, I thought that the most logical thing was that the aspect ratio was defined by one of the resolutions accepted by the console too. I supposed that the developers chose to develop their games on another resolution than the final resolution of "
512 x 240 pixels" and then they optimized the game for this resolution.
The closest resolution which can match the good aspect ratio was "
384 x 240 pixels"!
After having made some researches about
the resolutions of the PlayStation, I found these interesting informations:
In terms of resolutions, the console was constrained by the NTSC and PAL Television standards. For US and Japanese markets, a developer could pick an horizontal resolution of 256, 320, 384, 512, or 640. Vertical resolution was either 240 pixels (by skipping every other scanline) or 480 pixels interleaved. Both vertical modes ran at 60Hz. The only difference between NTSC and PAL is the increased vertical resolution (256/512 instead of 240/480) and the lowered refresh rate (50Hz).
Mode - NTSC (60Hz) - PAL (50Hz) - Remark
0 - 256 x 240 - 256 x 256 - Non-Interlaced
1 - 320 x 240 - 320 x 256 - Non-Interlaced
2 - 512 x 240 - 512 x 256 - Non-Interlaced
3 - 640 x 240 - 640 x 256 - Non-Interlaced
4 - 256 x 480 - 256 x 512 - Interlaced
5 - 320 x 480 - 320 x 512 - Interlaced
6 - 512 x 480 - 512 x 512 - Interlaced
7 - 640 x 480 - 640 x 512 - Interlaced
8 - 384 x 240 - 384 x 256 - Non-Interlaced
9 - 384 x 480 - 384 x 512 - Interlaced
Notice the 384 pixels wide modes (8 and 9) which seem to have been a late addition based on their id.
(source : https://fabiensanglard.net/doom_psx/ )
And if we choose an exact aspect ratio of "
384:240" or "
1.60:1" for
Tomb Raider III,
IV and
V,
it perfectly match the aspect ratio of the PC version (I checked under
MS Paint, and the squared textures are perfectly squared to the nearest pixel)!
The PC version:
It's strange, because with these resolution modes, there isn't any mode with "
366 x 240 pixels". I don't really know how the PlayStation works, but I suppose that
Tomb Raider I and
II used maybe the mode "
384 x 240 pixels" and then the console cropped some lines of pixels to achieve a resolution of "
366 x 240". In fact, there are some chances that all the
Tomb Raider games were developed with this resolution of "
384 x 240" and then adapted them to a different final resolution for the renderer.
OK! That's it! All mysteries have been solved!
I just want to add something off-topic! I had some difficulties at the beginning to find
how to enable the vibrations of the gamepad.
I noticed
some lags in some games like Tomb Raider III too, but there weren't relative to my configuration, because the emulation speed was at 100%. So I decided to try
the overclocking of the CPU of the console.
I will explain you these 2 things, because it can be useful
To allow the vibrations of the gamepad to function, you need to
assign a button for this:
I personally chose the "
PS" button on my DualShock4.
Then, you need to
enable the vibrations in the game too (if this one accepts them):
To finish, you just need to
push the right button in the game. Generally one time is enough if the emulator has saved the state (it automatically does this when you quit the fullscreen mode).
If you have some lags in games and the emulation speed is at 100%,
you can enable the overclocking of the CPU of the console (I think 150% is enough):
But warning! It can render some games unstable!
To finish, I just want to show you
some beautiful screenshots in 2160p of the Tomb Raider games with the correct aspect ratios!