Favourite shader?

General chat related to ScummVM, adventure gaming, and so on.

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Alexlotl
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Oct 16, 2023 12:30 pm

Re: Favourite shader?

Post by Alexlotl »

Definitely the mdapt shader, which blends the checkerboard dithering in EGA Lucasarts games without otherwise compromising sharpness. Some comparisons from Loom below:

No shader:
dithered portrait.png
dithered portrait.png (16.31 KiB) Viewed 7015 times
mdapt:
mdapt portrait.png
mdapt portrait.png (19.13 KiB) Viewed 7015 times
Notice how it doesn't affect the sharpness of the text. I did find that it slightly blended the lower-case 'x' characters in the dialogue picker in Monkey Island EGA, presumably because they have a checkerboard pixel pattern.

No shader:
dithered village.png
dithered village.png (31.16 KiB) Viewed 7015 times
mdapt:
mdapt village.png
mdapt village.png (37.27 KiB) Viewed 7015 times
Look at the lighting effects on those tents! Ferrari was a genius.

I played through Monkey EGA using mdapt while running an older version of ScummVM via Retroarch, but it was a bit of a nightmare to get working via that route. Really glad we have native shader support now. I know Loom EGA gets a lot of love, but it's really worth revisiting Monkey EGA too, the animated Steve Purcell close-up portraits are (IMO) superior to the digitised-style ones from the VGA version.
hpp134
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun Dec 17, 2023 1:03 pm

Re: Favourite shader?

Post by hpp134 »

Nails that sweet spot between sharp and not too pixelated. The rounded corners add a nice touch, especially on a 16:9 screen. Reminds me of the good ol' Phillips Amiga days. Haven't tried them all, but I hear 'crt-hyllian' and 'sabrina' are worth a shot.
Taiyaki
Posts: 31
Joined: Mon Jun 01, 2020 5:11 am

Re: Favourite shader?

Post by Taiyaki »

EstelRandir wrote: Wed Mar 29, 2023 7:30 am I really like the crt-consumer overall, but I do not like the rounded corners. I wish I knew how to make it flat instead.

Sev showed me how to remove the warp! (viewtopic.php?p=98200#p98200). Try this shader without the warp on Discworld I. It is beautiful to me.
Would you (or anyone else willing) be able to teach me how to alter the shader? For one I can't find the original location for the built in shaders like crt-consumer, but even when I go to download shaders with curvature and open them in a text editor I don't see any info on warpy or warpx for example. What's more aside from the bundled shaders I seem unable to get ScummVM to load additional ones (they just fail to work upon starting a game).

I'd love to learn how to make changes and how to get all this working (aside from the built in ones).
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