Feature idea: Shader/scaler injector for 2D indie games

RetroArch General
#1

Hi ! I wanted to know if RA could be used to enhance “neo retro pixelated indie games” such as “shovel knight” as a prescaler/shader injector. A lot of theses games have a typical low def internal resolution. I love 2D pixel art but i hate modern homogenous square pixels.

It’s quite frustrating for me to play such good games without the crt feeling. And since RA offers a good experience for that… I think i’m not the only one to be interested in a feature like this.

Is it a realistic idea to create a core for that ? It could for example capture a windowed 1:1 pixel output then apply shaders on the fly.

here’s some simulations using PS to make an idea

thanks

PS: I’m aware of sweetfx but i have crashes or poor results

Chasm http://www.chasmgame.com/ Freedom Planet http://freedomplanet.galaxytrail.com/ Shovel Knight http://yachtclubgames.com/shovel-knight/ Oniken http://www.oniken.net/ Ultionus http://darkfalzx.blogspot.fr/p/ultionus-tale-of-petty-revenge.html Odallus http://joymasher.com/odallus/ Legend of Princess http://www.konjak.org/index.php?folder=4&file=11 Maldita Castilla http://locomalito.com/maldita_castilla.php

#2

Wow, lovely screens, put the game names to have them a look. I think this could be a great idea, actually for me the strongest point of RA is actually shaders, and the main reason RA is currently so big.

I’m also using SweetFX for emus, like SSF, but even with the Boulatours’ build I get black interlacing glitched, on 2D games and video cutscenes. I wonder if the Saturn core is at an useable state, testing now…

#3

Edited with new screens, names and links. But there’s so many others ! I have really good results ( depends on the game ) with the Saturn core now since i use a recent nightly build.

#4

For some reason I can’t emulate Saturn. Not sure if it has conflicts with Daemon or CUE loading is completely broken (using last nightly RA and cores)… Anyways it’s only a few games that I want to play both Clockwork Knights, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Astal, and Sonic R.

#5

I believe ArcanFE can do this, but only in Linux, maybe…? It does a hijack of video output contexts and can do whatever to it, including apply RA-compatible shaders. It has a steep learning curve but is capable of some pretty amazing things.

#6

Thanks ! I’ve just checked this. Indeed this could have been the answer to my problem but, the video hijack feature doesn’t seems to work under windows… :frowning: "The library and injection mechanism used to hijack 3rd party targets have not been ported to the windows platform. Due to the limited number of OpenGL and/or SDL compatible applications it would make more sense to develop a similar one for Direct3D/Direct Input using the support functions part of the frameserver as a template, or make a specialized SDL build altogether.

As the current dev-team has little access or use for Windows outside of VirtualBox and VMWare, which doesn’t support enough OpenGL features for this to be successfully developed, it would be a good starting point for any senior/master w32 developer to help out. "