Mega Bezel Reflection Shader! - Feedback and Updates

Little Experiment Cooking taking @BendBombBoom’s Crazy/Cool RESHADE-FX preset into the Mega Bezel

And not to leave out the Glass!

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Free SFX Software Package for the win!

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Not sure where you can download older versions but you probably don’t need it. Since then i also updated the shader myself once or twice and then re-configured it to look similar. I assume you can have the same result with the latest version.

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I’m going to see if I can get the effect of the flares to not just appear and disappear immediately to see if I can get an as beautiful but less seizure inducing effect :rofl:

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@Rincewind @TheNamec I’m probably missing something simple, but how do you get those test images to pull up to test shaders with?

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Just load them as content. :grin: Retroarch has a built-in image viewer core.

Oh… and I converted them to PNG first.

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OK, I was about to say I could not get them to find the files when in IFF format, so maybe I was going to have to convert em :smiley:

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@HyperspaceMadness these visuals reminds me a lot Squaresoft 2.5HD from Octopath Traveler and Triangle Strategy!

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You’ll need to be familiar with the Amiga OS (Workbench) and a few Amiga applications in order to do that. I personally use Directory Opus 4.12, a file manager that has a nice built-in image viewer. Or you could use Deluxe Paint as well.

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@Neofuuma IFF files can be easily converted via Adobe Photoshop or the Gimp, better to use lossless PNG.

RetroArch image viewer also supports images switching via joypad direction, meaning you can instantly test pal/ntsc while tuning the shader.

Of course this is just a test scenario, PUAE introduces a lot of complexity on the output due to centering, overscan and other features that may kill the correct aspect ratio.

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The images look great at 4x3 1.33 aspect in the Mega Bezel. If the images themselves are indicative of the desired aspect then the NTSC should be viewed at 1.6 and the PAL at 1.2. But 1.2 seems weird. :thinking:

Either way I would let the Mega Bezel change the aspect, as opposed to changing them in an editor. (An editor will mess with the perfect pixelation.)

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@Duimon there’s an additional layer of complexity beyond the “low-res” PAL/NTSC with Amiga: additional programmable modes that can significatively alter the aspect ratio of the output multiple times in runtime. In the past we already encountered this on Tekken and Ridge Racer Type 4 on PSX core.

We really need a solution to somewhat “decouple” the procedural bezel aspect ratio (ie. displays form factor is 5:4) from the core output variable aspect ratio: that way we can preserve procedural bezels dimension/position while letting the game doing his own thing as it was meant to be.

Have you already experimented with indipendent bezel scaling applied to DEVICE textures?

Btw, here’s a representative mock-up directly from 1985. Of course, this is on integer scaling :grin:

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i love the reflect from the first image, but now my question is… how can change the black background for a personal image? is posible?

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Oh right, that’s much easier. XNView can convert IFFs to whatever too, or IrfanView that I use. Keep in mind I’m a WinUAE user, so I’m writing from that perspective. I’m mainly hanging around in this forum to chat with @guest.r :slight_smile:

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You are in for a treat!

Load one of @HyperspaceMadness Mega Bezel presets and save it as a new preset.

Navigate to your shaders folder and open the preset in a text editor.

Simply add a path to a new background image.

#reference ":/shaders/shaders_slang/bezel/Mega_Bezel/Presets/Base_CRT_Presets/MBZ__3__STD__GDV.slangp"
BackgroundImage = ":/shaders/images/MyBackground.png" 

Keep in mind that on some platforms the :/shaders syntax will need to be replaced with either a relative or absolute path.

The Mega Bezel has many image layers that can be manipulated in a lot of ways using parameters. You can take a look at my presets or @TheNamec (In the resources link at the beginning of this thread.) for examples.

Here’s a sample of a more complex image path setup.

IntroImage = ":/shaders/Mega_Bezel_Community/Duimon-Mega-Bezel/Graphics/_Backgrounds/Duimon_OSD.png"
BackgroundImage = ":/shaders/Mega_Bezel_Community/Duimon-Mega-Bezel/Graphics/Amstrad_GX4000/GX4000.png"
LEDImage = ":/shaders/Mega_Bezel_Community/Duimon-Mega-Bezel/Graphics/Amstrad_GX4000/GX4000_LED.png"
CabinetGlassImage = ":/shaders/Mega_Bezel_Community/Duimon-Mega-Bezel/Graphics/PVM/PVM20_LED.png"
DeviceImage = ":/shaders/Mega_Bezel_Community/Duimon-Mega-Bezel/Graphics/PVM/PVM20_Bezel.png"
DecalImage = ":/shaders/Mega_Bezel_Community/Duimon-Mega-Bezel/Graphics/PVM/PVM20_Decal.png"
TopLayerImage = ":/shaders/Mega_Bezel_Community/Duimon-Mega-Bezel/Graphics/PVM/PVM20_Extra.png"
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bright

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thank you so much!!! is work!!! Now I can create my own designs and share them with the community. :v:

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It is a long read, but I strongly recommend reading the README.md in the Mega Bezel folder for a description of what the parameters do. (There are a lot of them.)

If you have any questions feel free to ask.

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This shader is wonderful, I absolutely love it! But I’m having a couple of issues.

I’d love to know how I can disable the bloom effect that basically every preset has.

I mean that effect that is visible on every sprite. For example, that little glow around the 1-UP letters. I personally find it hard to play with it, it’s as if my eyes are constantly watered and I’m in tears! It’s especially difficult to look at the screen at night. I keep blinking, and it’s not healthy.

Another problem is the left screen space. I tried manually adjusting it, but it seems some games are fixed and others are not. I’d love to fix it automatically for all! How do I do that?

And I’ve tried many presets, but they all seem to have this bloom to some degree. All I want is to have the beautiful reflective overlay, a correctly positioned screen and no watery eyes!

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Welcome to the forum!

So the way to do this is to go into the shader parameters and go near the bottom of the list and edit some values (pressing up when you are at the top of the list will put you at the bottom of the list)

Basically look for glow and bloom and halation. Turning all of these to 0 will get rid of any glowing effect. I would suggest turning down glow and halation first and see how that looks.

The first thing to try is to turn on Retroarch’s crop overscan option and see if that makes it any better.

If you still have black that you want to get rid of at the side, the way to remove it is to edit the cropping shader parameters. With the default settings, crop values above 0 will immediately crop off pixels regardless of they are black or not. To get the crop to only remove black, set the cropping mode parameter to “only crop black”.

Let me know how these things work for you :slight_smile:

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