PSP Shooting questions (not another "what games")

[seiatsu]

Hi all. As of late, life has left me less time for playing my favorite shooting games. Because of this, I decided to give my other emulators a rest and put my psp to use (since it will allow me to play anytime I have a few minutes to kill and not just when I'm by my PC). However, this transition has raised some rather varied / random questions...

1) For the games that will run in tate (quite a few of the games I like fortunately ), is there any reason not to run them stretched to fit the full length instead of leaving the black bars at the top and bottom? Typically, I never stretch screens (for games with a standard orientation) due to poor image quality but when running in tate on PSP, I feel there is not much degradation of the image (other than the slight elongation which seems far less noticeable to me in shooters compared to other games). Additionally, for some reason I feel the black bars on top and bottom are a little distracting but when they are on left and right, i don't even notice. Does anyone feel that this affects gameplay?

2) Soukyugurentai: Yes, I know the PSX version is inferior to my saturn version but, I can't take that one with me. Having never played the PSX version until now, I don't know my way around the menu (other than the options menu). Does anyone have or know of a translation for this. I found a translation for the saturn version but the PSX version doesn't follow suit. If anyone could give a brief description of the other menu items, that would be awesome.

3) This last one is just me nit-picking but I'm curious. I'm running Dodonpachi fine on PSP (I see a lot of people have had trouble for reasons unknown to me). However, on the beginning of stage two, when the stage first starts, I hear this brief but obnoxious buzz sound. The volume of the buzz is much louder than my normal sound settings. It's only for a moment, then the music plays as normal. At first I thought it was my rip and conversion so I re-ripped and converted to PSP again. Same thing. Does anyone else have this problem? Everything else works fine but that damn buzz at the beginning of stage two gets on my nerves (I'm a bit of a perfectionist...probably why I like shooting games =) ). I assume this is nothing harmful but am curious if I am the only one experiencing that and if anyone possibly knows why.

Sorry for the wordy topic but these are things I've been wondering about but can't seem to find answers.

[glitch]

is there any reason not to run them stretched to fit the full length instead of leaving the black bars at the top and bottom? [...] Does anyone feel that this affects gameplay?

stretching always affects the ratio between horizontal and vertical movement speed, which is usually supposed to be 1:1.
i'd say that's pretty detrimental to the gameplay...

[spadgy]

I certainly find the stretched tate PSP screen a bit unusual to play with, but my main problem is how to hold the thing and press the right buttons comfortably with it tate'ed.

[Aquas]

I certainly find the stretched tate PSP screen a bit unusual to play with, but my main problem is how to hold the thing and press the right buttons comfortably with it tate'ed.

The correct method would be to output the signal to a TV screen that IS tate'd, so you can hold the PSP regularly as a controller... I assume that's why the functionality is there.

[seiatsu]

stretching always affects the ratio between horizontal and vertical movement speed, which is usually supposed to be 1:1.
i'd say that's pretty detrimental to the gameplay...

Are you sure on this? Since it's only stretched one way, it seems to be only enlongating the image so technically, if it took one second of travel to travel from the bottom to the top before, it should still only take one second now. Not saying you are wrong...just seems weird. Is it certain?

I certainly find the stretched tate PSP screen a bit unusual to play with, but my main problem is how to hold the thing and press the right buttons comfortably with it tate'ed.

Initially, this was odd but only for a few minutes (mainly due to never having done that). I adjusted quickly. I just map fire to X and bomb to O. Sometimes I will map R with something too just to have it. It's pretty good after the initial.."this is new/weird" moment.

The correct method would be to output the signal to a TV screen that IS tate'd, so you can hold the PSP regularly as a controller... I assume that's why the functionality is there.

I don't think this is correct for a couple of reasons. Since most of these games are emulated...it is in the original settings for the original hardware. It's not a psp feature. For games that are native to PSP, they fill the screen completely by default. Since the aspect ratio is probably different than most TV's, outputting to tv and tating would probably crop your image (unless you are tating an HD set (which most people probably wouldn't) but even then, I'm not sure it'd be a proper fit).

[spadgy]

The Capcom Classic PSP collection shmups can all be tate'ed in several formats with the select button, and that's a retail release.

No point outputting to a TV for me either, as they all come on the PS2 version that I have...

By the way - that's 1942, 1943, 1943 Kai, Exed Exes and Vulgus on that PSP comp... plus loads of run and gun games...

[indstr]

Are you sure on this? Since it's only stretched one way, it seems to be only enlongating the image so technically, if it took one second of travel to travel from the bottom to the top before, it should still only take one second now. Not saying you are wrong...just seems weird. Is it certain?

yes.
obviously, the output of the display doesn't affect the game movement itself, but what is different is your perception of the movement. the left and right movement will still be the same, since you didn't stretch the game "horizontally" (when tated). the vertical movement will appear faster (i'm not sure how much, i'm sure there's an easy formula to figure out but i'm guessing about 15-20%), because you actually changed the aspect ratio of the video output. the ship on your screen has further to travel in inches.

So, for example: let's say, in the game it takes 5 seconds for the ship to go from the top of the screen to the bottom of the screen.

in 4:3 aspect ratio, your ship goes from bottom black bar to top black bar in 5 seconds.

in 16:9 aspect ratio, your ship goes from absolute bottom of screen to absolute top of screen in the same 5 seconds. meaning that the graphic of your ship actually has to travel "faster" to get there, during the same amount of time.

whether it actually bothers you or messes up gameplay, that is just something that you will have to try and see.

myself being a perfectionist, i can't stand playing anything other than the original aspect ratio

[seiatsu]

Yeah, I don't have those collections on psp (have it for ps2 though =p) so I'm not sure how it's handled in that regard. In fact, they may be emulations (instead of ports) as well...just on disk so that could be why. Star soldier, however, is written to consume the whole screen when tated without altering the image. Based on that, I don't think their intention is TV output. Either way though, that part doesn't matter to me as I'm with you that if I were playing on a TV/Monitor, I would just run the respective systems counterparts.


As a side note, I really do wonder if I will get the answers I seek from my op. I've hunted around quite a bit with no luck. (I know someone knows, at the very least, the DDP question...however, my most wanted answers are the other two)

[indstr]

i already answered your question #1 , quite well i thought

anyway, the "collections" are all emulation, i've only tried a couple of them so i can't remember for sure but i think they usually have options for both fullscreen and bars (i.e. 16:9 or 4:3). since they're not ports, obviously they can't change the game code, so if you run fullscreen, it's still going to encounter the same vertical speed problems as 16:9'ing a homebrew emulator

[indstr]

btw, what firmware version are you running? i can't for the life of me get DDP to work, and unfortunately souky didn't work the last time i tried it (firmware 3.80) so but it seems like i got it to work at some point in the past. i'm a little disappointed

[seiatsu]

Yeah, I didn't see your second post until after I wrote that. I think we were replying at the same time (I was at work and started my reply but then had to do something and came back to it). Anyway, I see your points but the one thing that comes to mind is that not only are you stretching the length of the screen but you are also stratching the length of the ship so theoretically, the timing would not change. The fps do not change, etc. I dunno...maybe I'm not thinking about this the right way but i see valid points from both sides of the discussion. Not saying I'm correct just the way I'm thinking, if there were an issue, it wouldn't be speed. Not positive though.

Also, aside from the possible speed issue you mentioned...I'd still be curious if other people had different takes on how stretching would have ill effects on gameplay.

I'm somewhat of a purist / perfectionist too but the black bars at top and bottom also bugs me (just as the stretching does). It's funny because I never stretch horizontal and it doesn't bug me at all. I will probably do a play comparison to see if either way (strectched or not) effects my performance at all. If it seems somewhat equal, then it will probably came down to which bugs me more

In regards to what firmware I'm running, I'm running 3.71 m33-2. I will upgrade eventually i'm sure but haven't had a need yet since everything i need is working as it should. As a side note, I've run DDP without issue (aside from that brief annoying buzz i mentioned) since near the beginning of the CFW days. Can't remember when I first put soukyugurentai on but it was also fairly early (just not as early as DDP). I'm really not sure why a lot people have such trouble running these two as it's always worked for me. I suspect that you have an incomplete rip as people often strip stuff out to lighten the files...in some cases, they won't work. I ripped them myself and didn't cut anything out. That could be why. May be worth a try if nothing else is working. Again, this is just a guess as I had an issue like that with a game once and it came down to being an incomplete rip.

[spadgy]

but i think they usually have options for both fullscreen and bars (i.e. 16:9 or 4:3).

They do indeed.

Never knew they were emus...