A few questions regarding Tate-mode

[320x240]

1. With more and more people buying widescreen tv's. will Tate-mode become even more redundant than it already is? Or will nothing change since it is only die hard fans of certain genres that would want a Tate-mode in the first place?

2. For those of you who prefer Tate over Letterbox, have you tried tateing on a monitor/tv with an aspect ratio of 16:9 or 16:10 and the play area stretched to fill the whole screen? What do you think of such a 'super-tate' mode?

3. Is a special Tate-mode option even needed for modern pc games? The rotate option of most modern graphic cards will suffice, right? Is there some graphic cards that don't support rotating?


Any answers will be much appreciated.

[Kiken]

1. With more and more people buying widescreen tv's. will Tate-mode become even more redundant than it already is? Or will nothing change since it is only die hard fans of certain genres that would want a Tate-mode in the first place?

I doubt anything will change.

2. For those of you who prefer Tate over Letterbox, have you tried tateing on a monitor/tv with an aspect ratio of 16:9 or 16:10 and the play area stretched to fill the whole screen? What do you think of such a 'super-tate' mode?

If by 'super-tate' you mean 'super-retarded', then I concur. Playing a 4:3 (or 3:4 game in this case) game that uses 8-way digital control in stretched widescreen completely fucks with the diagonals (they change to something like 60 degrees instead of 45). Hell, even using analog control might feel awkward.

3. Is a special Tate-mode option even needed for modern pc games? The rotate option of most modern graphic cards will suffice, right? Is there some graphic cards that don't support rotating?

I don't really understand this. Nothing is being rotated. The game is simply being displayed how it was programmed. Yoko modes normally require reprogramming the code to utilize the horizontal display.

[Dave_K.]

Its like Deja-Vu all over again. Note my comment about using the static bars on top/bottom to display static or dynamic game info/attract modes.

[Taylor]

1. Though I admit I don’t go through too many of them, every widescreen TV I’ve used has had a 4:3 setting that constrains the image with borders, preserving the original aspect – I use this for mushi and espgaluda and it’s fine, though I can’t play either in tate due to gravity.

In addition some games (ex: DDP:DOJ, Ikaruga) have 16:9 options that will put a border at the bottom of the screen in tate preserving the aspect ratio.

2. I tried mushi on my old TV with 9:16 aspect and it made my retinas bleed, the bullets are all wrong and there’s just too much screen.

3. If you look at it like that it’s not needed, but by that same logic a lot of game settings are redundant. It seems like an easy and advantageous option to drop into a vertical orientated game.

[320x240]

If by 'super-tate' you mean 'super-retarded', then I concur. Playing a 4:3 (or 3:4 game in this case) game that uses 8-way digital control in stretched widescreen completely fucks with the diagonals (they change to something like 60 degrees instead of 45). Hell, even using analog control might feel awkward.

Good call on the diagonals. A game with Galaga-like controls would still work though. Of course you would still have to adjust to slightly different enemy and bullet movements.

I don't really understand this. Nothing is being rotated. The game is simply being displayed how it was programmed. Yoko modes normally require reprogramming the code to utilize the horizontal display.

What I'm getting at is that when a game is made to be played on a pc, default mode would probably downscale the play area to letterbox size. Switching to Tate-mode would then be a matter of rotating the screen - if the graphics card support such rotation. Consequently there would be no need for the game to offer a Tate-mode (internal rotation).

[320x240]

3. If you look at it like that it’s not needed, but by that same logic a lot of game settings are redundant. It seems like an easy and advantageous option to drop into a vertical orientated game.

I'm a life time member of Lazy Coders Inc...

[Veracity]

1. Always been a niche requirement, and likely to remain so, but I don't see why the increasing prevalence of 16:9 displays should have any impact. If anything, high-profile publishers might become less nervous about supporting the option, since there's somewhat less chance of people breaking hardware now we're all on LCD, regardless of whether we much wanted to be. I doubt even that, though.

2. God, no. Why would you want to do that, any more than you'd want the bizarre defaults you sometimes see on arcade compilations (Taito Legends 2 stretches 3:4 games to 4:3 unless you tell it not to). If a game's designed for 3:4, I want to play it in 3:4, be that a tiny window in the middle of a 16:9 yoko screen, a 4:3 display turned sideways, or whatever. The market for tate mode reflects the desirability of not wasting most of your display area, but the apparent demand for images to go right to the edges of the screen, regardless of what this does to the aspect ratio, has always gone way over my head. There must be people out there who prefer it, though - most emulators seem to default to the same behavior.

3.

I'm a life time member of Lazy Coders Inc...

Possibly not worth worrying about from that point of view unless you're pitching to real publishers - I don't think I've played a single amateur game with tate support, though there surely must be some.

I'm not sure it's quite as simple as relying on drivers to do the work for you if you want to go full-screen. I tried driver rotation ages ago with one or two programs whose supported resolutions I wasn't happy about, and full-screen apps just crashed. Probably depends what API you're using and how, though - I'm not remotely up to date on such things. You might be ok if you plan for windowed display only.

[lgb]

1. With more and more people buying widescreen tv's. will Tate-mode become even more redundant than it already is? Or will nothing change since it is only die hard fans of certain genres that would want a Tate-mode in the first place?

Nothing will really change, from what I see. Though, I don't use tate very often to begin with, so I can't say a lot.

2. For those of you who prefer Tate over Letterbox, have you tried tateing on a monitor/tv with an aspect ratio of 16:9 or 16:10 and the play area stretched to fill the whole screen? What do you think of such a 'super-tate' mode?

Yes. It's god-awful looking. But it can make the game easier depending on if you're playing one of those "really thin rectangle games", like some older vertical games and Capcom verts (or at least the ones on CPS1/2; I've seen it done with Dimahoo).

3. Is a special Tate-mode option even needed for modern pc games? The rotate option of most modern graphic cards will suffice, right? Is there some graphic cards that don't support rotating?

It would be best to just put tate in anyway; I don't think indy teams care much for high-end computers and the latest graphics card. (Look at Pixel and keim, their games run on pretty much anything.)

[cools]

Blah, just give me a proper 16:9 vertical game. No problem with stretching then.

[320x240]

Blah, just give me a proper 16:9 vertical game. No problem with stretching then.

Since most widescreen computer monitors are still 16:10 this would mean black borders even in Tate-mode, unless the play area is stretched. There's also a good chance that potential players would have 4:3 monitors only.

[trivial]

I have a second 19-inch CRT dedicated to tate on my main PC. Some more native shmup love would be welcome. Multimonitor options too; they aren't just for spanning.

[TWITCHDOCTOR]

To be honest with you, as long as you don't own a monsterous wide screen, you can still Tate it sideways. Even with less hassels that with a tube screen. I'm thinking 30 to 35 inches of Tate is possible, and could be pretty cool, as long as you don't sit too close. I guess the typical arcade distance would not work, since the screen will be much larger than what we've known to expect. A nice widescreen though would be great for some light gun games like Time Crisis/House of the Dead, etc,etc.