The easiest way would for it to be turned on by default, which probably won’t happen. It would be fairly easy to modify my base references though. I will post instructions when I get home.
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Guys, I finished my Rastan Warrior Blade preset… I’m happy with it and I thank you all for your advice.
Check out, though, where the two screens come together (circled area), the difference in color of the two screens… almost creates a shadow effect. I would like to get rid of it if it were possible, but it’s pretty minor.
How did the Conan guys not sue Taito? lol
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Yeah, this is the vignette, if you turn off the screen vignette it will disappear
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Thanks, I removed the vignette and it did take away that effect. Interestingly, though… notice this screenshot, after the vignette is gone, you can really see, especially if you look at the ground areas, that the second screen has a different color.
Also… I feel like they ran out of cool names with Rastan. Player 2 is Dewey.
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That’s interesting, and unexpected, I’ll check it out why it’s like that,tgere are some parameters which control if a feature is applied on the second screen, but I’m not sure what it would be yet.
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So I updated the shaders and everything on Retroarch in general to see if that would equalize the performance of Smooth Glass and Smooth, and it didn’t, but they both look worse now? Here’s the before and after:
I only suspect updating did this because I didn’t do anything else. I thought the way it looked before was perfect. None of these little issues I’m having make any logical sense.
Hmm, doesn’t look worse to me, the mask is slightly stronger on the one on the right, mask settings are really more about taste than if one is objectively better than another.
If you would like a softer mask you can adjust it in the Guest Advanced settings (at the bottom of the parameter list) , there is even a no mask setting you could use if desired.
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Have you given any further attention to NTSC presets? I’m not really satisfied with the current state of NTSC shading despite the best efforts of the brightest minds around here, and I’m starting to think that maybe what we currently have is as good as it’s going to get. I wonder if a completely new approach is needed. Of all the options available, the default output is too blurry compared to real hardware and all the tools we have to sharpen the image come at the cost of unsightly artifacts that aren’t present on real hardware.
I’ll try messing around with masks, then, thank you. And it’s the pupils that bother me the most. I was initially really impressed with how that particular sprite looked, so it stood out to me when I tested it again and it wasn’t quite the same.
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@Wally and anyone else interested.
You need to edit the base presets in my “Duimon-Mega-Bezel\zzz_global_params\Base_Shader” folder. There are 6 subclasses for each class.
e.g.
- ADV.slangp
- ADV_Bezel.slangp
- ADV_Bezel1.slangp
- ADV_Bezel2.slangp
- ADV_PVM20.slangp
- ADV_TM20.slangp
for the advanced presets.
So to turn on magic glow for all the Advanced “Bezel” presets, edit “ADV_Bezel.slangp” and add the following lines at the end of the file.
m_glow = "1.000000"
glow = "0.500000"
I turned up the glow in my example (From the default 0.080000 to 0.500000.) but you can choose whatever value you like.
I will not be making any changes to these files myself AFAIK so the changes will survive a regular pull if you are updating using the Git method. (You would need to do a “force” pull to overwrite them.)
Just an FYI to those reading this post. I posted an updated set of instructions on my thread.
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Well, not even turning the mask off restored the original look. Most perplexing.
Which preset are you using specifically?
MB ADV Smooth Glass. MD AVD Smooth looks identical aside from lacking the reflections (and distorting the audio for some reason, but that original concern of mine doesn’t make a difference, since I just manually turned off the Glass version’s reflections in the parameters). All that has changed is that I updated the shaders (and the other Retroarch options that can be updated online), but I don’t really see how that could mess with the output without me going in, making tweaks myself, and saving them. Even the default presets have the slight visual downgrade now.
Ah I see your tactic: instead of trying the brightest minds you thought you’d try the dimmest - great idea! So in answer to your question no I havent as Im off trying to build a business at the moment. ‘Trying’ being the operative word.
If it really is not up to snuff (Ive not put stuff through composite or RF at home to know) then arguably a better simulation of the hardware at the component level is involved much like people do for software synthsizers replicating old hardware synthsizers. But dont know Ive not really looked into much past shoving one of the pre-existing NTSC shaders in front of my stuff.
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The eye of the picture in the right, looks like if it’s got a blind eye… 
It does! It’s a silly thing to get worked up about, but the way the game looked with that preset before the update was the way I’ve tried to make it look for years! I’m not even sure updating all the Retroarch components and shader folders would have even done anything to cause the change in output, but what else could even be responsible? Is there a troubleshooting-oriented place for Mega Bezel feedback? I’ve hit up some shader threads elsewhere, but no one seems to know anything more about it than I do.
Do you know that updating the Slang_Shaders also updates Mega Bezel Reflection Shader?
All you might need to do to get back your old look is just download some older versions of Mega Bezel from the repo then install them one by one until the output looks the way you had it before.
If you used to read these threads more you wouldn’t have been surprised that a shader preset that looked a particular way doesn’t look the same way after updating shaders. Some shaders are actually updated pretty frequently and with each update comes the potential for default settings, parameter behaviour and other things to have changed which might alter the way a particular preset looks.
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This is the place for feedback & asking questions
If you want to get a previous release, you can go to the github release page, all the releases since last August are there.
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I tried a slightly older release, the December 11th one, and Bowser’s eye is in an in-between state compared to the old and new eyes I posted earlier, like the objective of the preset is to gradually advance his cataracts: 
I’m sure I’ll eventually l be able to restore his vision through this method now, but I’m wondering what it is that’s doing this? Adjusting and disabling the mask didn’t revert the presentation of the eye, as sensible as that sounded. And what could the tradeoff be? An updated preset is logically going to be generally better than earlier versions, but maybe things like pupils are a bit tricky and can get sifted out during fine-tuning. Regardless, I think I’ll be satisfied here, thank you! My original issue with the less-intensive Smooth preset being more taxing on my device will probably remain an enigma, but it’s getting time for an upgrade anyway.