Any update on shaders?

[AgustinCordes]

As you can see, neither look particularly good for a hi res game like Curse of Monkey Island. I get a patchwork shadow mask effect and not much else. Again, this is how it looks in 5k and it might be more tolerable on a lower resolution display.

If I come across some shaders that are good for hi res, I will let you know and perhaps we can try patching them into the braindx branch.

Agreed, the shader looks pretty awful in COMI. I'm sure there must be a way to scale the shader accordingly. BTW I also have a 5k monitor here, so we're essentially seeing the same. How about you test COMI with DOSBox SVN? I'm sure you'll get a similar effect with the tyrells shader. These were all designed for lo-res games.

[almeath]

Agreed, the shader looks pretty awful in COMI. I'm sure there must be a way to scale the shader accordingly. BTW I also have a 5k monitor here, so we're essentially seeing the same. How about you test COMI with DOSBox SVN? I'm sure you'll get a similar effect with the tyrells shader. These were all designed for lo-res games.

I did want to try that but I have not yet attempted to get Windows 95/98 working in DOSBox. Apparently it is still not a great experience. And DOSBox-X is not an option for macOS because it only supports Direct3D shaders. I will look into it.

COMI runs in 640x480 resolution, so I used a Windows 3.x game that uses the same resolution, The Lost Mind Dr Brain.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d8kw7zqu2nd9v ... 1.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/u1fph98fy7tpf ... 2.jpg?dl=0

These actually look quite decent in my opinion .. a whole lot better than COMI did in the braindx build.

[almeath]

I have been testing this further, and my conclusion is that the differing results I am seeing between ScummVM (braindx CRT fork) and DOSBox SVN (using the tweaked lottes shader) is most likely due to differences in how DOSBox and ScummVM handle scaling.

For example, in DOSBox SVN I can get the CRT lottes shader looking very good (as noted in the post above) in both 320x200 and 640x480 because I can use scalers simultaneously with the shader setting.I noticed that if I set the scaler in DOSBox to 'none', it did not look as good. Also, manually setting my full screen resolution as my native resolution (i.e. fullresolution=5120x2880) gives the best result. If I use 'desktop' for full resolution then again it looks blurry and not very nice.

So, if there was a way to achieve a similar setting in ScummVM to the following DOSBox settings, then I might get a better result.

fullresolution=5120x2880
scaler=normal2x
glshader=lottes

However, it seems that in ScummVM (braindx fork) it will use either the shader or the scaler, but not both at the same time.

[Taiyaki]

Wow Almeath how did you get a shader running on ScummVM? I'm not a programmer and have no idea on how to do compiling. Getting a CRT shader working on Scummvm has been a dream of mine for a long time. I've even kept a classic 1600x1200 monitor at hand at all times to be able to play classic games on it since it scales so nicely.

I'm a new user after years of just reading and not participating I had to create an account when I saw this thread.

[almeath]

Wow Almeath how did you get a shader running on ScummVM? I'm not a programmer and have no idea on how to do compiling. Getting a CRT shader working on Scummvm has been a dream of mine for a long time. I've even kept a classic 1600x1200 monitor at hand at all times to be able to play classic games on it since it scales so nicely.

Thanks, but I was not the one who got it running. It was the person who maintains this fork of ScummVM:

https://github.com/braindx/scummvm

It contains code necessary to load a pre-set shader into ScummVM when it is manually compiled. This thread has seen discussion about adding different shader options to this build, with varying degrees of success.

I do not know enough about programming to advance things any further at this stage, but it is good to know that some technical hurdles have been addressed and there is hope for inclusion of this feature in future releases. Maybe there is more incentive to do so, now that DOSBox SVN has introduced shader functionality.

I briefly considered looking at the ScummVM core in Retroarch, but I gather that it does not offer the same functionality, easy interface, or compatibility of the ScummVM app. It might not be worth the learning curve.

[Kasenshlogga]

Wow Almeath how did you get a shader running on ScummVM? I'm not a programmer and have no idea on how to do compiling. Getting a CRT shader working on Scummvm has been a dream of mine for a long time. I've even kept a classic 1600x1200 monitor at hand at all times to be able to play classic games on it since it scales so nicely.

I'm a new user after years of just reading and not participating I had to create an account when I saw this thread.

As I said on the first page if you're on Windows you can use ReShade. There's various popular CRT shaders that work in Reshade such as Hyllian, Lottes, Caligari and more.

[Taiyaki]

Almeath> Thank you for sharing. You're pretty good, looking at the instructions it looks pretty complicated to me as a non programmer.

Kasenshlogga> Thank you so much! I downloaded Reshade and even using the default crt shader I'm already having a good time. Having selected OpenGL the only downside is that the launcher is hard to read, even when increasing the resolution of the crt.fx shader. I'm going to look for the other shaders such as Hyllian, Lottes, Caligari etc to experiment more.

[Taiyaki]

Kasenshlogga> I found all those shaders (Lottes, caligari) etc for download but figure out how to get Reshade to load them. For Scummvm which did you find most suited to emulate 90's computer monitors (minus the curvature)

[vanfanel]

Is there a reason for not merging braindx shader support to mains Scummvm code?
I also love shaders. As Scummvm is now, games don't look as they did back in the day. With shaders, they would.

[AgustinCordes]

I think the braindx branch needs more polish and work to be merged with the main one. It's not clear how to enable the option as it depends on OpenGL right now. It can only be toggled while in fullscreen, there's no support for different shaders, and the effect is very poor with hi-res games.

Plus, there are many conflicting views about CRT shaders. It would have to be a big decision between key devs in the team.

[almeath]

Plus, there are many conflicting views about CRT shaders. It would have to be a big decision between key devs in the team.

Appreciating the amount of hard work and testing that has to go into adding new features, if it does happen, I think giving users more choices is the key here.

There are completely valid reasons for using or not using shaders. My view is that any feature that simulates a reasonably accurate experience of what it was like to play a game in its heyday is well worth it. For those who are younger or less nostalgic, by all means please play the games scaled up and pixel perfect. As with everything it comes down to personal tastes and prior experiences.

[NLS]

Agreed.

[KainXVIII]

Still dreaming about something like Sharp or Pixellate shaders (like in Dosbox), so you can receive almost pixel-perfect image, but without horizontal black borders
https://github.com/tyrells/dosbox-svn-shaders

[almeath]

Out of desperation ... ScummVM 2.1 running in Windows 98 SE in a self-patched DOSBox SVN with a 384MB RAM limit, 8GB+ image sizes and MT-32 support, built for macOS.

At least I can now use my favorite CRT DOSBox shaders..



https://www.dropbox.com/s/mp936ts5eu26r ... y.png?dl=0

Incidentally, the performance is good, but I am using a 9900k so "results may vary" as they say.

[almeath]

Beneath a Steel Sky with the enhanced soundtrack, also working well.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zbsuxhngna69aul/sky.png?dl=0

These screen caps can't really do the shader justice, as it is designed for 4k+ with halation effects etc. that cannot show up in a static image (CRT fake-lottes tweaked).