CRT-Geom-flat (linear vs nearest)

RetroArch Additions Shaders
#1

I’ve downloaded CRT-geom.cg from the common repo.

Following instructions from http://emulation-general.wikia.com/wiki/CRT_Geom

To make it flat, just set cornersize (line 107) to something small, like  0.001 and cornersmooth (line 110) to something large, like 8000.0.  Then, comment out (i.e., put two slashes in front of it, like this: // )  line 141, #define CURVATURE.

I’ve flattened it out. However, RetroArch is expecting .cgp files instead of .cg files, at least in RGUI.

I wanted to create one but was unsure whether to specify “linear” or “nearest” in the options?

#2

As for your actual question, that shader looks the same with either nearest or linear. However, you can load single-pass Cg shaders by going into the options > shader options and then changing the number of passes from 0 to 1, which will open up some more fields where you can browse regular Cg shaders, set the scaling method and/or set deliberate scale factors.

If you decide to keep going with the cgp thing, you can pass parameter values to the shader from there (you can look at the cgps in my phosphorLUT subdir for examples of how it works) so you don’t need to have a modified version of the shader around.

#3

Okay – thanks, that helped!

Now considering the scale factor, I’ve left it to “Don’t care” but I am not sure…

I use integer scaling, but the SNES resolution is a complicated thing to me. Games I use are Zelda 3 & Metroid 3. Am I safest with deliberating it to 4x, for example? Which produces a darker output which I don’t dislike, although I am wondering which kind of output the authors intended, and what setting they are expecting us to set there.

#4

Usually, “don’t care” is the way to go unless they’re a specific scale factor mentioned in the name, like 2xBR, etc. If you set a specific scale factor, it will then use blinear/nearest to scale up/down to your final resolution. In the case of crt-geom, that usually results in an ugly dotmask that gets warped in secondary scaling.

#5

i’m noticing retroarch is getting simple when one gets used to it…

in case someone needs it in the future: http://kopasite.net/up/0/crt-geom-flat.cgp – compatible with the crt-geom.cg of the common repo –

#6

Yeah, for all the shit people give us about RetroArch being so obtuse, it’s really internally consistent and based on workflows of power-users. I do understand that it can be hard to get the hang of everything, though, if you’re accustomed to (and would prefer to continue using) something like ZSNES.

#7

Internally consistent --> very much!

Many things to learn in order to make it work as it should? it depends. The good point is the great, carefully-thought default settings. But currently, while applying shaders there are still some things one should know, being turning on point filtering and, oftentimes, integer scaling – things only power users might know.

However, I still question the necessity of that. For example, carefully-crafted cgp files might force both of those options on? Besides these two grains of sand, and a few more which I’m sure will get fixed in the future, there wasn’t much I had to look up for, except hard_gpu_sync, but even that is explained in RGUI.

The next challenges developer face might be optimal, intuitive placement of options. But that cannot be anything but a work in progress, due to the large amount of features implemented. And even there, it seems progress is being made every month. It works great; I’ve just played SMB2J for the first time with shaders a moment earlier and I think here lies a big part of the appeal. And for those who want that, the learning RetroArch requires is justified plenty!

#8

For a good source of info about the Retroarch cg specs and its meta data (those cgp presets), read this: https://github.com/Themaister/Emulator-Shader-Pack/blob/master/Cg/README