With BGRA you can do nearly everything with antialising so you can create your own Tetris but without "stair" graphic.
Of course, but I must play the original NES Tetris (played on FCEUX), but instead of recording poor and ugly (!) original game, I decided to make a layout with more modern style and record it. Thanks to this, viewers can see quite nice interface and see a lot of data that the original game doesn't show. But the graphics have to be pixelated — it's a 36-year-old retro game, after all.
I thought that the thumbnails for the published videos would be game frames, but instead of flat ones, let them have perspective. Previously, I did them manually in GIMP, but not only did it take some time, but each came out slightly different. Well, why do it manually, if I can write a small application that will convert the screenshot into a thumbnail — in a second.
It can be played in some way?
In some way yes— that's why I created it.
See the example video —
NES Tetris (NTSC) — 168,080 score (level 18-0). What you can see in the video is just a visualization. At the same time, I play the original game (on a laptop screen) on the FCEUX emulator, and Richtris (layout) renders the visualization in real time on an external monitor screen. The sounds you hear come from the emulator, while the input is read directly from the system (controller thumbnail in the lower left corner in the video).
In addition to rendering a nice visualization, Richtris does a lot of additional activities, including creates additional counters (gain score above input preview, pace below score, RNG quality and other meters in the lower right corner), and also stores an unlimited number of obtained results in configuration files. And after each game, it shows the statistics screen with a ton of different data.
Richtris is a response to the software used for the
Classic Tetris® World Championship (see their example video —
CTWC 2019 Quarterfinal match), but intended for single-player games for the purpose of recording. CTWC uses the original NES consoles and the layout renders based on the signal from the consoles. Richtris does the same, except it analyzes the contents of the emulator window and renders not only the gameplay, but all game scenes.
In the meantime, I'm working on a longer movie in which I will record with the camera what my PC station looks like while playing. Thanks to this, you will know what it is all about. But it will take some time.