CRT-Guest-Advanced, HD and NTSC for ReShade!

[AliAkbar]

Dear @guest.r,

Thank you for your swift response!

[quote=“guest.r, post:97, topic:41880”] Not all changes are viable to a ReShade port, especially those related to input resolution changes on-the-fly. [/quote]Understandable.

[quote=“guest.r, post:97, topic:41880”] If, then filtering (HD, NTSC, small changes) and the corner function could be updated. [/quote]Yup, when I read the changelog that you updated/improved the NTSC (and HD) filtering, I was hoping that the ReShade port could be updated to include those, since I always use the NTSC shader, and as with everything, any improvement is always welcome.

The thing is, I don’t use RetroArch since I don’t play games on emulators. But I found one very convenient program called ShaderGlass that lets you use those shaders on the whole screen, but the problem is that the shaders & program were last updated on August 10, 2023, and it does not seem like the author will be updating it anytime soon.

But since it is open source, I thought I could implement/update the crt_guest shaders myself following these steps https://github.com/mausimus/ShaderGlass?tab=readme-ov-file#code, and well, it turned out I had no idea what I was doing, and was an overall disaster. So I used the ReShade port as a last resort and was hoping could be brought on par/up to date to your latest release of the crt_guest shaders (2024-05-18-r1).

Again, thank you for the amazing shaders and the swift reply!

With Gratitute, Ali Akbar

[GennadijK1987]

Please tell me which of the presented shades is best to use for Snes and Mega Drive 2. I use the shader from crt-guest-advanced-2024-05-18-release1 , namely crt-guest-advanced-hd

Please tell me, isn’t a Preset file needed to use the reshade? I want to use it for Snes and Sega Megadrive

[ROBMARK85]

Hello everyone, I had the pleasure of testing the CRT Guest Advance through Reshade, and I asked myself some questions that I kindly ask for an answer to:

1 - What is the difference in usage between the normal and HD version of Guest Shaders?

2 - I love to associate CRT shaders with pixel smoothing ones, in fact on Retroarch I use Mega Bezel Smooth Advance a lot to find what I’m looking for. Is it possible to associate a smoothing shader within Reshade, such as ScaleFx, together with the Guest CRT, or are there any tricks to make the image as less “crunchy” as possible?

3 - What program or site do you use to find out for sure the resolution of the game you are playing? Sometimes I have trouble finding the exact resolution of what I am playing for a correct setting of the CRT Guest Advance.

Many thanks in advance for your help and thanks to the one who brought all this to the Reshade environment.

[guest.r]

Hey!

@ROBMARK85

What is the difference in usage between the normal and HD version of Guest Shaders?

HD version is much better if you don’t want scanlines, with increased internal resolution etc.

@ROBMARK85

I love to associate CRT shaders with pixel smoothing ones, in fact on Retroarch I use Mega Bezel Smooth Advance a lot to find what I’m looking for. Is it possible to associate a smoothing shader within Reshade, such as ScaleFx, together with the Guest CRT, or are there any tricks to make the image as less “crunchy” as possible?

With Reshade there are some smoothing shaders you can use prior the crt passes, i think xbrz has been ported. You need to adjust crt-guest input resolution to like 3x for the smoothing effect.

@ROBMARK85

What program or site do you use to find out for sure the resolution of the game you are playing? Sometimes I have trouble finding the exact resolution of what I am playing for a correct setting of the CRT Guest Advance.

Mega Bezel displays internal resolution of a game if the feature is enabled, otherwise it’s like general knowledge of the emulated system, sometimes googling helps for specific games.

[ROBMARK85]

Thank you so much for your reply. In the end I opted to use Guest HD with mask number 1 (Lottes) and use the “Fake HDR” function with excellent results, managing to remove but not excessively the image (I opted to respect the idea of image that the developers have). All this by testing it on the game “Okinawa Rush” (I recommend it, spectacular). A problem arises however when I tried it with “Nitro Kid” (another great indie) - here the resolution is 1920x1080 and the Lottes mask becomes huge, cumbersome and extremely pronounced, also darkens the image too much. I have no way to post screenshots, but what value should I adjust to shrink correctly as it happens when using it with “Okinawa Rush”? Thanks for the help, solved this point I’m really fine. Thanks

[ynnad4]

Hello. I’ve recently tried CRT guest NTSC for ReShade project by using it on Sonic Mania.

Are there some missing files or updates in that package in order to get the same Dithering nor Rainbow banding such as the Genesis/MegaDrive Sonic games ? … or is this an issue being related to how Sonic Mania was actually drawn with its waterfalls?

I just end up getting:

[Keysandrew]

On another note, I have been having an issue with DX9 games where the resolution will not scale correctly unless I use downsampling. For some reason, games like Sonic Mania, Sonic Forever, and Sonc 2 Absolute will have a line of distorted pixels in the center of the screen when they are set to their base resolution of 424 x 240. Setting a multiple of 240 and using y-downsampling fixes this issue, but it can interfere with blending. Lowering the resolution scaling of the x and y resolutions can fix that, but be gentle with it. You can easily over-blur the image. Go little-by-little until things like the waterfalls look right.

[Keysandrew]

The same issue has been happening to me whenever I use the most up-to-date version of the DX9 shaders and have phase set to auto or 2-phase. Manually switching to 3-phase or mixed phase fixes the issue. I do not have the same problem when I use the other version.

[ynnad4]

What I was trying to say is the fact, I can’t replicate the Sonic Rainbow + Dithering on Sonic Mania. These small rainbow artifacts on the vertical blue shades in Sonic Mania are so wrong.

Either Phase 2 or 3 don’t fix the issue to me.

What other version are you referring to? Please

[Keysandrew]

OK, for the rainbow effect you are meant to use the the “ntsc coloring/rainbow” setting near the bottom of the ntsc settings at the top of the guest-nstc shader settings (it’s a bit confusing, I know). If that is not enough, you can use the custom nstc fringing and artifacting values at the top of the settings. Apologies for the delay, I have been swamped with school . Let me know if you have any other questions.

[ynnad4]

thank you. Enabling ntsc rainbow in options its exactly what i show in 2nd picture:

CRT-Guest-Advanced, HD and NTSC for ReShade!

Hello. I’ve recently tried CRT guest NTSC for ReShade project by using it on Sonic Mania. Are there some missing files or updates in that package in order to get the same Dithering nor Rainbow banding such as the Genesis/MegaDrive Sonic games ? … or is this an issue being related to how Sonic Mania was actually drawn with its waterfalls? I just end up getting: [sonicMania1] [sonicMania2]

[Defreezer]

Still waiting on a Gdapt/Mdapt Reshade conversion to compliment these CRT shaders. NTSC and GTU shaders blur the image far too much to achieve any desirable level of dither blending.

[Cyber]

@Defreezer

NTSC and GTU shaders blur the image far too much to achieve any desirable level of dither blending.

I’m not familiar with the differences between the Reshade versions and the RetroArch/Slang versions of CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC in terms of output and functionality but if it is essentially equal and you’re not able to achieve blending and transparency without excessively blurring the image then perhaps you’re doing something wrong?

It might help all stakeholders if you would post some screenshots as well as the parameters you’ve tried so far.

[Jobima]

Hi, I think it’s worth update to CRT-Guest-Advanced (2024-12-05-r1) since it get some good features

[cncz42]

For some reason running the shader in 320x240 RESOLUTION_X and RESOLUTION_Y mode looks radically different in high resolution scenes between using it in native reshade vs duckstation’s built in reshade even though both scenes tested are running at 1440p, mainly that running it in reshade native will produce an extremely undesirable blocky effect (notice the pole in the attached image). Any clue what’s going on and how I can configure native to look better in high-res games while still having 240 scanlines? Duckstation Reshade on the left with native on the right:

[cncz42]

Actually was able to find a solution (for 1440p) but it’s very odd considering duckstation doesn’t touch the settings, set RESOLUTION_X and RESOLUTION_Y to 2560 and 1440, set NTSC Resolution Scaling to 0.2, and set Internal Resolution Y to 6.0

[Jobima]

I did try to update this since DevilSingh seems offline since oct of 2024

here CRT-Guest-NTSC for now https://github.com/Jobima1st/CRT-Guest-ReShade/blob/Jobima1st-backport-attempt/Shaders/CRT-Guest-NTSC.fx

others will be done later after more tests and maybe feedbacks since I am new to shaders programing and I am not a programmer in first place

I will do PR to DevilSingh later after fishing all the work

[HitByBricks]

Having updated Reshade to 6.4.1, persistence doesn’t seem to have any effect anymore? I’m playing on a Steam Deck OLED, to clarify.

[Jobima]

More updates https://github.com/Jobima1st/CRT-Guest-ReShade/tree/Jobima1st-backport-attempt/Shaders

Backport done for CRT-Guest-HD.fx and CRT-Guest-Advanced.fx, and fix for CRT-Guest-NTSC.fx

Next CRT-Guest-DX9 and NTSC-Adaptive.fx

[Cyber]

Can you explain what this is?