Re: [stella] Reflex: To NTSC/PAL50/PAL60, or not to NTSC/PAL50/PAL60

[Glenn Saunders <mos6507@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 02:30 PM 8/3/2004, you wrote:
> I haven't seen PAL versions of any game, so I can't say what the common 
> practice is for compensating for alternate video modes.  What I do know is 
> that NTSC and PAL60 only differ in palette, while PAL50 differs in 
> palette, aspect ratio and execution speed.  So, ideally, PAL50 games 
> should compensate for all three.


You can't compensate for aspect ratio for sprites for the most part because 
you can't exactly scale a sprite to sub-scanline levels.  So if a scanline 
is 10% shorter in PAL50 than NTSC then sprites are going to be shorter even 
if you somehow add some extra padding to extend the playfield out to the 
edges.  So with that, combined with the palette, sound, and speed 
differences, an NTSC game is just not going to be quite the same as a PAL 
game no matter what you do.