Opium2k Border Shaders Collection

RetroArch Additions Shaders
#1

Howdy all,

Searching for Retroarch on youtube, I came across this mind blowing video

I don’t remember seeing these shaders mentioned anywhere here or on byuu’s forums (and search didn’t turn anything) but Opium2k seems to be a member here with one post.

His original post can be found in the General Gaming/Off-Topic section of a website called Tortuga-Cove where his post only got 1 criminal reply.

I just thought this deserved much much more attention. Both for Opium, (if you are reading this: you are a freaking genius!) and for RetroArch. Those are a fantastic showcase of what RetroArch can do. I remember when Themaister introduced the functionality but I thought it had been nothing more than an experiment.

And just to be clear: I am in no way affiliated with Opium2k, all credits goes to him. If people know how to reach him, make sure he knows his work does not go unappreciated!

EDIT: Here is his twitter, just in case https://twitter.com/opium2k

EDIT2: The project has its own googlecode page with a handy “all-in-one” download: http://code.google.com/p/retro-arch/

3 Likes
#2

Yes, I’ve known about that pack ever since the first release of RetroArch PS3 0.9.6 - in fact he mentioned it to me right before the release and we tried to launch it at the same time, but that kinda fell through due to delays on my part - and it’s definitely a great pack - he took Themaister’s manual shader and really went wild with it.

I too agree that it should get far more attention and traction - sad thing is that the 360 port right now lacks some of the features from the Cg shader code needed to make these shaders work on there as well - perhaps this is a good reason to finally add complete Cg shader spec support to 360.

But yeah, I’ve always thought that the opportunity to be not only a skinner but a shader tweaker would be an enticing idea for user-created content in RetroArch - it’s a shame that only opium2k so far has really pushed those boundaries. Game aware shading definitely needs another ‘big idea’ like a manual shader to really put it on the map. All it takes is for somebody to go look at the Mario World ‘water splash’ game aware shader and the manual shader and based upon that go into an entrely different direction.

Perhaps we need better PR on that front - instead of dozens of posts whining about the ‘lacking’ GUI - instead point them to some example where eycandy really does matter, and it can only be done with RetroArch right now.

Perhaps I should start right now with that ‘better PR’ and sticky this thread instead so that people can see what it is and try it out.

#3

So this came from the PS3 scene? No wonder I hadn’t heard about it!

Ah yes, I still long for the real-time Super Metroid map concept you guys tossed around a while ago! That was a beautiful thing.

Not a revolutionary idea but all the portable systems could use a high resolution “bezel” of the original machine with the screen cut out. I nedd to go on a hunt for high res images.

#4

We’re starting to do some interesting stuff on PSP right now - you’ll see soon enough what it amounts to.

#5

Hi, thanks for the kind words. I first found out about game aware shading and manual readers in this thread on psx-scene and in this video on youtube and figured I’d see all sorts of cool stuff being released. Sadly that wasn’t the case so I made a few hoping that would remind people about it. As far as I know, the only other person to make any DLC for emulators on PS3 is condorstrike with this.

I actually originally made them for the PC version since it was more convenient as far as testing was concerned and then edited them to work on the PS3 by shrinking some dimensions due to the limited available resources on PS3. I assume that once the 360 version has full shader support the PS3 versions will work on that as well but Squarepusher would know more about that than myself. My 360 isn’t even jtagged so I know very little about that system. I’d probably have to upload them again since (if I remember correctly) I posted the PS3 ones as .PKG files.

Huge credit to Squarepusher and Maister for all the help and putting up with all my questions in IRC lol.

P.S. thanks for reminding me to post them on here. I’ll get around to it eventually but I’m having severe issues with my home PC at the moment so right it’s not even usable (which is also why I haven’t been on IRC lately) As far as byuu’s site, I’ve heard of him but I’ve never really checked out his site before so it’s doubtful that I’ll be posting them on there. If anyone else wants to then feel free but I don’t feel like making an account there just for 1 post.

#6

Sad to say but none of these shaders seem to be working right now on RetroArch 0.9.7 PS3 - I just get a black picture and I have to then select a different shader to get a picture again.

I’ll look at what is up.

#7

Cross-posted from byuu’s forum:

On the topic of background shaders (this time XML instead of Cg), maister posted some info about lookup textures in the XML shader format thread on byuu’s forum and I thought “hey, I should use that to make a border shader!”

After a couple of days of fiddling around, I got something that works, so I went digging to see if it would work with FirebrandX’s sweet pixel-art borders. It was then that I noticed that this had already been done (and way better, I might add) by maister, and I had even commented on it and done shit with it at the time! :open_mouth:

Oh well. That said, I know a lot more about shaders these days and combined my super-basic border shader with cgwg’s CRT shader and had some more fun with different borders. Here are some examples (note: the way I took the screenshots messed up the vertical placement of the borders; they normally match up quite well and don’t cut off much–if any–of the game):

If anyone would like these backgrounds or the shaders, you can get them here: http://www.mediafire.com/?1bss7814eupav1b Thanks to FirebrandX for letting me include his awesome borders in that pack.

Btw, it’s extremely easy to make these kinds of borders and I included a template (PSD format) for making 1080p borders in my pack. For more information on using the shader, you can hit up my blog post about it:

#8

I’ve plugged your blog article on the Twitter feed - about time people are reminded of some of the nice things you can do with shaders - I think it isn’t being promoted enough TBH - most don’t know it’s even there.

#9

hunterk, those are sweet! Thanks a lot.

I have two very basic borders ready for gameboy and gameboy color I put together from high res vector images and Opium2k’s shaders. I’m trying to get in touch with the authors of the images to see if it would be alright to distribute but I’m still waiting on replies from them…

Also, I would like to know it is possible to apply the dot.cg or quilez shaders only the 4x scaled GB window (640x752) that is centered in the middle of the screen?

#10

@Tanuki Sounds good! I look forward to seeing those images :smiley:

I believe you can chain Cg shaders using a cgp configuration file, though I don’t know any of the details. I believe maister posted an example of one in the metroid backgrounds thread I linked from byuu’s forum.

#11

I tried with Zelda for SNES and it works, though with D3D it immediately returns to Phoenix. Displaying the manual is a lot more taxing on the cpu than I had expected. Goes from perfectly smooth to too slow to play. (As mentioned in another post today, I’m running on a slower cpu, so results will vary.)

One question though, is there an easy way to make the manual shaders launch for the respective games without individually configuring each one?

Only thing that comes to mind is to name the directory the shader is in the same as the rom and have launch script check for presence of the directory and include the shader if it exists.

#12

GPU power is what is important here though and the main bottleneck - your CPU doesn’t even factor much into this when it comes to shaders. I think the target for these shaders is a GPU about equal to the RSX in the PS3 (ie. Geforce 7800). Using something far lesser specced than that is going to lead to disappointment with these shaders.

#13

Once R13 for Android is out, I’d like to start making some cool menus with custom graphics and such. I need to adjust the game viewport size and position. Is a shader like these the best way to do that? I will fill the empty space with graphics from the overlay, so a simple empty background with custom viewport size/position is all I need. Any ideas on how to accomplish this?

#14

Do these still work or anyone using them?? They are amazing