gbdev / gbdev/pandocs

A section on LCD artifacts may be useful

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Description

This would cover things such as blur/smearing/etc, including simple 2-frame blending effects, but also more complex behaviors. One of the more complex behaviors is as follows.

ISSOtm noticed an unexpected artifact in [The Forest Hero](https://geckoball.itch.io/the-forest-hero), as described here:

> Go into the hole shown at the beginning, then go up and down the stairs
My DMG shows a bunch of vertical lines for some reason

Based on the belief that it was due to the brick tiles effectively toggling pixels between black/white on alternating frames I created the following test ROM. If you press A when this ROM is running the stripped tiles will essentially be xor'd every other frame, leading to a similar effect, which gets worse as there's more white in a given column.

It's not quite the same as the game because this is 50:50 white/black, but I believe it's the same effect.

(**FLASHING WARNING: You probably don't want to press A with this ROM without frame blending enabled in an emulator, as it will flash very quickly.**):
[vertical_smear.zip](https://github.com/gbdev/pandocs/files/7824817/vertical_smear.zip)

LIJI produced mockups of the resulting effect on their GB Light with normal contrast:
normal contrast

as well as high contrast:
high contrast

I'm unaware of an emulator which attempts to emulate this behavior at this time.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start with the issue body, the linked vertical_smear.zip test ROM, and the cited Forest Hero reproduction steps. Establish which LCD artifacts are in scope, then document the observed smear and blending behavior with appropriate flashing warnings; done means the proposed LCD-artifacts section is complete and technically grounded.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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