Blargg NTSC filter

Warp · Post by **Warp** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 6:07 am

Would it be possible to implement this filter in Scummvm?
It is currently used in zsnes (amoung others) and looks really great in RGB mode (way better than any filters currently used in scumm imho).

http://www.slack.net/~ant/libs/ntsc.html

fingolfin · Post by **fingolfin** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 10:44 am

I am not speaking as a lead dev here who's trying to veto anything, rather I am merely voicing my bewilderment here: Those games where never made to be run on a TV, why should we try to emulate the looks of one? And why do some people find that appealing? It's a rerto look, OK, maybe it reminds you of your childhood days -- but it seems unlikely that you played e.g. Monkey Island on a TV...
(Yeah, we already have those odd tv2x and dotmatrix scalers in -- IMHO, that was a mistake from the beginning and we should just drop them

.

Laserschwert · Post by **Laserschwert** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 12:35 pm

I still think IF you implement a new resizer at all, it should be some real-time scaler to freely scale the ScummVM-window (which would technically make it resolution independent in full-screen as well).

All those TV-scanlines filters, I never understood what they were good for, darkening the image and stuff.

Warp · Post by **Warp** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 2:40 pm

fingolfin wrote:I am not speaking as a lead dev here who's trying to veto anything, rather I am merely voicing my bewilderment here: Those games where never made to be run on a TV, why should we try to emulate the looks of one? .

It's not about making them look like on a TV per see, but about making them look better. Less jagged. But yeah I guess some prefer the original grainy dos-look. I don't. It was just a suggestion. But the filter in question really doesn't look like a TV at all, more like a high end RGB monitor. Like those used on the Amiga.

Tramboi · Post by **Tramboi** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 2:50 pm

Warp wrote:
fingolfin wrote:It's not about making them look like on a TV per see, but about making them look better. Less jagged. But yeah I guess some prefer the original grainy dos-look. I don't. It was just a suggestion. But the filter in question really doesn't look like a TV at all, more like a high end RGB monitor. Like those used on the Amiga.
Agreed, ST and Amiga default monitors were much less blocky than PC ones...
Of course later games did only exist on the PC but I kinda like the CRT filtering, so I'm not against plugging this kind of post process.

zorbid · Post by **zorbid** » Sat Dec 22, 2007 11:25 am

CGA and EGA screens had scanlines and not-that-blocky pixels too...

A bilinear filter plus scanlines makes those games look better than smart scalers, IMO (and it's much cheaper to implement than the NTSC stuff)...

For the arbitrary scaler, Moe's OpenGL HQ version of SDL is a good option. It requires an recent graphic card, though, since it implements an HQnX-like scaler (for any arbitrary value of x) using pixel shaders.

Freddo · Post by **Freddo** » Sat Dec 22, 2007 5:49 pm

fingolfin wrote:but it seems unlikely that you played e.g. Monkey Island on a TV...

I did

My Amiga was hooked up to my TV, and I played Monkey Island and other Amiga games using that TV. Most people around here hooked up their computers (C64 & Amiga) to TVs, until PCs boomed around 93-94.

That said, I still don't really get the point of adding a filter like this.

Raziel · Post by **Raziel** » Sat Dec 22, 2007 7:45 pm

A less cpu intensive than but as high quality as HQ2/3 would be more like it