MiSTer FPGA - Another World (Out of This World) / Amiga
25*WATCH IN HIGHEST QUALITY 1440p!* This is a tough game, in more ways than you'd think! Not only considering the difficulty of pulling off the very-tightly choreographed sequence of inputs you need to get through, but also the difficulty that modern internet-optimized video encoders have with it! You'd think the simple graphics would be cake, but YouTube's encoder is so hyper-optimized that the darker palette two-tone backgrounds that many scenes comprise of just confuse the hell out of it, resulting in visual artifacts in these scenes. This happens even with 4k uploads- the simple graphics confuse the encoder into thinking it can drop things as low as possible, and then it stabilizes after a new scene sets in or fast action/animation stops, and then as soon as there is significant movement it goes into this constant re-calibration cycle where it is starving bitrate in the darker flat-colored sections and then adding it back and stabilizing.
An interesting way to combat this is to use heavier shadow mask effect, which sounds counter-intuitive as these are typically the noisiest to use with streams/YouTube, but the added detail in these darker flat-colored areas actually ends up being a benefit as it forces more bitrate to be allocated there by YouTube's encoder. Unfortunately when the game already uses such a dark palette, using such heavy mask effects isn't really an option as it will make things far too dark. YouTube's encoder just isn't optimized for the content of a game like this in the slightest. In fact, if you re-upload the same video of this game over and over again, you will always get a different result as the encoder struggles to figure out what the hell its doing. I tried test footage with ~20 different encoder settings, bitrates, CBR instead of CQP, lossless, and even HEVC encoding and nothing helped in this game. Seeing GameSack's video release from last night ("Games that Push Hardware Limits 10") really drove this home when I saw his pristine 4k captures couldn't cleanly handle the SNES version and its viewport at roughly half the size of whats shown in this video. The SNES version uses a similarly dark palette to the Amiga original, so it was a great comparison point. Thanks Joe!
Learning this game for a clean playthrough really exposed all the glitchy, random & frustrating behavior that can happen at parts. Still enjoyed finally learning this one though! This was a truly groundbreaking game for its time, that I owned on PC but never completed until now. I had to play this in a capture window for 1440p recording.
*Note: Copy protection is cracked, but I role-played it by using an online version of the decoder wheel anyway 😅
Thanks to the many folks who have worked on Minimig for nearly two decades now, resulting in the awesome Amiga core we have on MiSTer. Special shout-out to the Mega Boys for making Amiga so accessible to newcomers, with the excellent Amiga.Vision/MegaAGS pack. (https://amiga.vision/)
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Amiga core 2023-02-16 build - Another World
a.k.a: Out of This World
Core Options- Aspect Ratio: 40:27 (Custom)
Filter Hori: Gaussian Sharp 70 // Filter Vert: Scanlines - Adaptive\40_80
Shadow Mask: Imaging Science & Technology CFA MYCK (Lighter) [RGB] (https://pastebin.com/iu27UMHk)
Gamma: Off
Played using a Sony DualShock 4 controller w/ 1ms USB polling.
Video: 5x PAL Integer Scaled to 1440p / HDMI to Datapath e1s capture card
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|:=-Timestamps-=:|
00:00 - Boot / Copy Protection
01:24 - Full Game
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Twitch: / walrusfpga
Twitter: / walrusfpga
=---------------CONTRIBUTE---------------=
None of this would be possible without the constant hard work of Sorgelig. It cannot be overstated how much he has done and continues to do for this project, since its beginning. You can support him either at his Patreon in the link below, or on Paypal, depending on your preference. MiSTer is a paradigm shift in how we can experience these classic games. This is a long-term preservation project that will continue to grow so that gamers today and in the future can experience these excellent systems as accurately and lag-free as possible. Donating what you can will help keep the updates coming. Thank you.
Patreon: / fpgamister
PayPal: https://paypal.me/FPGAMiSTer
=-----------------INFORM-----------------=
Github link for this core: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Minim...
MiSTer Forum: http://MiSTerFPGA.org
MiSTer Documentation: https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs...
Official MiSTer Discord (live chat/help): / discord
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Worldwide list of sellers for MiSTer expansion boards: https://misterfpga.org/viewforum.php?...
I have personally ordered all my parts from https://www.MiSTerAddons.com and have been 100% satisfied with the quality and service there.