What does merge fields do? I never kenw what is it for, and when to use it?
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You can start from this post.
Here are some experts from the above article. The first set of comments are about systems which average colourburst artifacts/merge fields while the second set of comments are about systems which do not.
Colourburst averaging/merging of fields
“The SFC’s composite isn’t that bad, as its PPU cycles around the colour burst artifacts with each frame.”
“These don’t look so bad in composite, thanks in a large part to the colour burst averaging that happens between successive frames on the NES/Famicom/SFC/PCE.”
No colourburst averaging/merging of fields
“Sega’s 8-bit system is pretty notorious for its poor video quality. It smudges horizontal details all to hell, and introduces colour fringing and rainbows even in areas that contain only black & white!”
“Anyway, the NG’s composite video is just horrible. It’s a bit dark and muddy, even greyscale graphics get significantly blurred, and there’s a horrible checkerboard interference pattern around strong colours.”
“The Mega Drive gets its own page because of its notoriously bad composite video. Once I set up my digitizing equipment and took snapshots of a few games, I just got carried away and took pics of many of my favourite games. Or, I took pics of especially egregious examples of just how much the MD muddles, blurs, and confounds the composite video display to the dismay of its hapless users.”
“Dithering: You either love it or hate it. For a low-colour system that can’t do transparencies (like the MD) dithering is a necessary evil, and the composite display of the MD conveniently blurs almost all evidence of dithering.”
“Hyper-saturated colours, especially visible in reds and yellows, cause terrible fringing & colour smear through composite.”
“…unfortunately a side-effect of this vertical-only dithering (“transparency”), besides smearing, is a nasty rainbow effect:”
“That’s all for now! I hope you enjoyed my extended visual rant on the shittiness of Mega Drive composite video!”
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Technically I can’t explain it, but it stops the flickering when activated.
I’d like the option of an attenuator.
I think this phenomenon is caused by Windows configuration or GPU configuration. I’ve encountered it myself. In that case, I changed the mask slot to a different one and the flickering disappeared. The strange thing about this is that the flicker does not record when recording with RA or NVIDIA. It was as if the monitor was physically flickering.
In my case, it was caused by having an Overlay on my desktop that had nothing to do with RA (it was caused by a tool that displays CPU/GPU heat and fan speeds, well, Rainmeter).
this happens on Linux as well across all 3 variants (shadow, slot, aperture)
New Version Release (03-03-2024)
Changes Made
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Uses guest.r shader version 2024-02-29-r1.
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Uses the brand new “Magic Glow Alternate mode (2.0)” setting.
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Magic Glow settings have been retweaked to take advantage of the new Magic Glow 2.0.
Basically we’re going from this:
Previous rgb preset:
to this:
Couple screenies: (Mixture of RGB and composite shots using all 3 mask types)
Download this latest pack in the first post.
I more or less tried to keep the overall look of the glow the same way it looked in the previous pack but with the new benefits of the new magic glow setting which allows me to crank up glow settings without it “smothering” the crt mask as much as before resulting in being able to better see the mask/scanlines a bit clearer. If you liked the previous pack then you should like this one as well.
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Amazing job, sonkun.
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Thank you. This new magic glow is amazing, something about it just hits different from the previous glow. I don’t know how he did it but guest.r is a madman genius.
Edit:
Was messing around with some import games and came across this cool Super Famicom game:
It’s a nice arcade style fast paced action game, coupled with the AI Service translation to help with the story It’s a nice playthrough.
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Hi @sonkun, I am still trying to figure out how a proper VGA preset would look like for Dreamcast and DOS games. I use your rgb preset and activate VGA double scan and set interlacing options to 1.0. Since I don’t have a CRT to compare to I am not sure if that’s authentic. What are your thoughts?
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I’m assuming that should give you the VGA look with what you said you did there. I’ve never played Dreamcast through VGA when I played on real hardware so I’m not too sure how it should look but I think just activating that setting should give the proper look.
Looks like eight man on the neo geo. The second through the fourth picture reminds me of the first level in the same game.
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Wow you’re right. Eight Man was released in '91 and that game came out later in '93, maybe the devs took some inspiration from Eight Man when they made it. One of the best things about emulation for me is discovering hidden gems that I never knew existed back in the 90’s especially on systems like megadrive, snes saturn and ps1.
for dos, Dosbox Staging has added a preset that comes very close
So far your shaders have worked great for every game I’ve play however I recently installed the Zelda Remastered HD Pack in RetroArch (with the Mesen Core) and the screen seems to shake this is especially noticeable at the title screen and the save file selection screen. I don’t see the shaking happen when I turn the filter off. I tested another HD Pack for Megaman and it seems to work fine so the shaking is only happening with Zelda with your shader turned on. Any idea what’s happening?
Zelda Remastered - https://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=31559.0
Megaman Super - https://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=25426.0
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I never played either one of those but I’m gonna assume the Zelda game is probably triggering the interlacing mode which I’ve set to normal which indeed does give that “screen shaking” effect. Try going into the parameters and changing “Interlace Mode” from 1.00 to 4.00 and see if that helps.
Yes that fixed it. So if I want to make that a permanent change I would need to back out of parameters and click the SAVE option correct? Would this change have any negative impact to any other games?
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If you want to save for just that one game, go to save preset/save game preset and that change you made will just effect that one Zelda game and no others on that specific core (Mesen). That works for any other game that you may want to make changes to effect for just that one specific game as well.
If you want that change to take effect for all games on that core (or any other core) then choose “save core preset” and all games loaded on that core will now have the changed setting(s).
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Sonkun, is it ok to use the latest CRT GuestAdvanced along with your last update?
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Sure why not, I’ve been using it since it’s been put up. I’m just waiting on the next update that will have the new “mask mitigation” changes plus any other new features that may be included, I’ll probably release a new pack once that arrives. Hoping guest.r takes his time crafting and putting things together as well, no need to rush.
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Oh, ok, I was just wondering. I didn’t want to mess up your beautiful shaders. I just had that worry.
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