Mortal Kombat: DA and the Xbox.. 480p=slowdown.. Fix inside.. (1 Viewer)

[Tony_I]

Hello. I didn't see anyone mention this yet, so I guess I'll the one to bring in the bad news.

MK does indeed output 480p, but the problem is that if the level is a "busy" one, (rain, snow..) slowdown occurs.

To test this, just fight a match on Sub zero's board (snowing out), and smash one of the ice blocks while in a fight, preferably with some blood on the ground...


The funny thing is, this slowdown doesn't occur if you set up your xbox dashboard to "no", when asked if your TV supports 480p..

I found this out when some people on other boards started inquiring about slowdown in the xbox version (including myself). It turns out, that it was the people with HDTV's that were asking the questions about slowdown..

So, while it might not be the best solution, at least their is a way to get rid of the slowdown.. Also, staying in 480p and turning down the blood helps as well, but you loose some detail, and it's not as good of a fix as switching over to 480i..

On a side note, I believe the xbox version is the only one with AA enabled, and the game still looks pretty nice, even in 480i on my CRT 32" HDTV..

Sorry to bring the bad news... Game on.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

Funny, I thought the XBox rendered everything to a 640x480 (or greater) progressive frame buffer no matter what. Mortal Kombat must use a half-res 240-line frame buffer in 480i and is able to boost fill rate in doing this.
AA on the XBox is obviously not 'free', as hosting an Unreal Championship game disables this to recover decent performance under the load of hosting.
Looks like either MK has hit the graphical limits of the XBox....or just isn't coded that well.
They should probably give an option to turn the AA off in any game that has it.
Here's to hoping that XBox 2 does AA for 'free' in hardware.

 

[Tony_I]

"or just isn't coded that well. "

I chalk it up to poor QA on both MS and Midway.. Nothing more.

This game certainly isn't pushing the Xbox, graphically to where it's a hardware issue...

 

[Michael St. Clair]

Tony,
'Not coded well' is certainly what I expected, hence the smiley.
I'll change it to a winking smiley.
To be honest, Midway rarely impresses me with technical prowess on the 'home' side of their business.

 

[Tony_I]

Hehe..I Guess I am too use to people actually being serious when saying things like that Michael...My bad. :b
As far as Midway and their technical prowess, I expected more polish since they moved to "home" only, but that didn't happen in this case.
Ahh well. Perhaps Midway will get it right next time..
I'm still in shock that the game plays as well as it does. So in the end, I'm happy that Midway at least got the most important aspect of the game done right..