TheNamec - Mega Bezel Packs Amiga, Commodore 64, VIC20, CRTgaming soon

[TheNamec]

I can easily confirm your memories, as I also used to play on a c1084. Commodore monitors used to have a little more halation and “light contamination” between pixels and really thin scanlines, resulting in a richer, softer, antialiased image.

Reproducing good old amiga pixels the way they were meant to be is pretty tricky. You should consider integer scaling and deactivating puae core auto centering and zoom, so scanlines get subtle yet visible. Also, there’s the squashed-PAL vs stretched-NTSC problem to consider to get the correct pixel size, this depends on the game version and the simulated Amiga settings. Last, but not least, the actual pixel density of your modern monitor.

Give a look to this article from @Rincewind, lots of precious Amiga love here! I will eventually integrate some of his insights in my presets.

Feel free to share you setting, I’m curious to compare our memories after… 30 years?!

[RuySan]

I had read that article before, but now after using your presets, this image grabbed me:

It shows the same stitched pattern as your curved presets. My brother in law father used to have an electronics repair shop, so not long ago we set to test all the old TVs he still has with an Amiga 500 (through a RGB-Scart connection). All we tested (mostly phillips and Toshibas) have the hive pattern.

As for comparing memories, It’s not new to me, as I have this blog (https://amigamemoirs.blogspot.com/) about sharing Amiga memories

[TheNamec]

@RuySan

It shows the same stitched pattern as your curved presets. My brother in law father used to have an electronics repair shop, so not long ago we set to test all the old TVs he still has with an Amiga 500 (through a RGB-Scart connection). All we tested (mostly phillips and Toshibas) have the hive pattern.

Fine, I’m on the right path then. Of course the effect has to be much subtler in a normal gaming scenario without close-in zooming! This already proven to be a false path when trying to replicate ol’ CRTs.

@RuySan

As for comparing memories, It’s not new to me, as I have this blog (https://amigamemoirs.blogspot.com/ ) about sharing Amiga memories

Ohhh that’s a treasure chest you got there! But… Where’s the Jim Power in Mutan Planet review? And Agony? Can’t wait to read about these

[RuySan]

Sometimes the most durable memories are with the shittiest games. I’m sure you can’t find many articles around about Operation: Cleanstreets

[TheNamec]

@RuySan

Sometimes the most durable memories are with the shittiest games.

I agree, the emotional link it’s pretty subjective. Some “bad” games can suck you in because of the game concept, the scenarios, sometimes even just the music.

Amiga lived in the shadow of great consoles of that age, but was able to nail some masterpieces. As a vintage gamer, I can now see cleary how many shitty games we hailed as classics because of graphic presentation or tech achievement: I mean GODS, BODY BLOWS/GALACTIC, but even AGONY itself were pretty lacking, but still loving. JIM POWER itself has mediocre gameplay but… the music? The parallax? The acid colors? It’s a charm. Sensible soccer? Cannon Fodder? Funny and minimal.

One thing I still can’t forgive: bad controls schemes. And with just one button on original amiga (and few games natively supporting 2 buttons) we had to go thru really bad choices. Fortunately with modern emulation we can map everything to the best.

Perhaps our destiny is to finally get the quality games we deserved 3 decades ago

[RuySan]

I’d like to think of games as a sensorial experience, and each game being more than the sum of its parts. I love all 3 Shadow of the Beast games, Agony and Jim Powers. I will die on that hill:) They all look, sound and feel completely Amiga. And I still play them all regularly. Lionheart, First Samurai and Turrican 2 for me are quintessential amiga trio. They have that same blissful feel that consoles can’t replicate. Just that beat from the First Samurai intro…I’m almost crying. I should go back to writing on my blog:)

And could you imagine something as unique, quirky but also nasty as Moonstone on a console? It could only exist on the Amiga. The ultimate party game!

As for bad control schemes, I agree, emulation is a blessing. Turrican 1 has 2 different keyboard keys for different smart bombs. I can just map them to my Arcade Stick. Lovely

[TheNamec]

One thing is certain: we will always love her dithered makeup.

Can’t wait for the final chapter to be out!

[RuySan]

Lovely. They butchered my Elaine in the remake.

[TheNamec]

Heya brothers in pixels! Following experimentations with CRT shaders, I decided to release an intermediate RC to include a separate chain for slot-mask and aperture-grille.

This includes heavy modified versions of some really nice pixel shaders from the Libretro community:

• Guest.R & Rincewind for CRT-A2080-HiResSmartResShader
• Cyber for CyberLab Death-to-Pixels

Commodore displays are set to Slot-Mask. Procedural bezels make use of Aperture-grille.

Here we go with the changelog:

Mega Bezel Commodore Pack RC3.1 (May 1st, 2022)

Download link

New release for public testing, added a new pixel shader chain to customize displays CRT visuals. BONUS: squashed some minor visual bug.

Software requirements:

• RetroArch v1.9.8 with aspect ratio set to ‘full’
• HSM_Bezel_Reflection_V_0.9.106_2022-03-24_Rev_1

Features:

• Added CRT-TECH CHAIN to get pixel shaders customization according to actual IRL display technology

Enhancements:

• Added CRT-TECH SLOT-MASK COMMODORE for Commodore displays visuals (based off CRT-A2080-HiResSmartResShader by @Guest.R & @Rincewind)
• Added CRT-TECH APERTURE-GRILLE SHARP for procedural bezels visuals (based off Death-to-Pixels by @Cyber)

Fixes:

• Fixed SCALE PRESETS for better visual coherence across curved, flat and integer (tnx @Ruysan)
• Fixed SCENE PRESETS to fix tube reflections texture (tnx @HyperSpaceMadness)
• Fixed GITHUB REPO STRUCTURE to ease out the updating process for advanced users (tnx @HyperSpaceMadness)

[Rincewind]

Naturally, it’s your pack and this might be exactly the look you’re going for, but don’t you find the results a little too dark and contrasty? The green monster thing is quite desaturated too. I definitely liked your previous attempts better.

On the girl with the pink hair I can see some vertical moire stripes too — slot & phosphor mask pixel-width mismatch perhaps?

For reference, here are the same images with my current preset. It’s a bit different to the one from the article; @guest.r was kind enough to backport some improvements from his advanced shaders to the old WinUAE shaders, and I’ve made good use of some of those features (I’ll update the article later). I’ve increased the saturation a bit and the highlights are a lot better; now there is no luminance loss compared the raw unfiltered images whatsoever.

EDIT: One more pet peeve of mine. The Amiga is supposed to have perfectly square pixels in PAL mode; that’s what the OS reports too. That means that 320x256 would fill the screen completely vertically, but it will have very thin black bars on the two sides of the screen. You’ve stretched the 5/4 aspect ratio image to the 3/4 aspect ratio screen to remove those bars, so the image is a little bit stretched horizontally (I know some people did that in the back the day; however, it’s wrong ). It’s quite visible if you compare the pink haired girls image of yours to mine. Anyway, I felt compelled to mention

[TheNamec]

@Rincewind

don’t you find the results a little too dark and contrasty? The green monster thing is quite desaturated too. I definitely liked your previous attempts better.

@Rincewind

On the girl with the pink hair I can see some vertical moire stripes too — slot & phosphor mask pixel-width mismatch perhaps?

Yup, previous screenshots were taken in a “safe” integer scaling contex. Flat and curved presets will need masking/scanlines to be way less pronounced to prevent loss of brightness and artifacts. This has to be done at different levels of zoom for 12 different displays, so a little of tweaking is needed. After all, it’s a “pre-release”

Thank you for your captures, these came out from WinUAE? I’ll use these as reference to better calibrate final brightness, my monitor is aging and I can’t trust it for tuning “by eye”.

@Rincewind

You’ve stretched the 5/4 aspect ratio image to the 3/4 aspect ratio screen to remove those bars, so the image is a little bit stretched horizontally.

This will be easily managed by unlocking the procedural bezels aspect ratio, and let them auto-adapt to the actual core resolution / aspect ratio. Letting the PUEA core manage PAL/NTSC resolution will result in correct pixels, but also produce a less-than-pleasing switching of bezels dimensions to dynamically adapt to resolutions. I don’t like that as it’s pretty disorienting and makes the experience to appear “glitchy”, so I need further investigation. Shaderlord @HyperspaceMadness will enlight my path!

On the other side, “textured displays” need a locked 1,33 aspect ratio as bezels have to stay in place with the graphical assets. I have to do some tests disabling PUAE autocentering and overscan to work with the “native” output. I like your idea to play with the original letterboxes, but this really is a game-by-game scenario. I need a more robust all-in-one solution as I don’t expect users to manage all the PAL/NTSC fuss: to make Amiga gaming more accessible, we absolutely need to develop a “consolized” experience.

Worst case, I’ll have to develop specific presets for PAL and NTSC. But I can get over it for accuracy’s sake!

Thank you so much for your feedback @Rincewind, I really appreciate. I’m sure we can do justice to this Amiga quest!

[Rincewind]

@TheNamec

Thank you for your captures, these came out from WinUAE?

Yep, they’re all WinUAE screenshots.

@TheNamec

I need a more robust all-in-one solution as I don’t expect users to manage all the PAL/NTSC fuss: to make Amiga gaming more accessible, we absolutely need to develop a “consolized” experience.

Luckily, I have no such goal Dunno how that would work, people still need to figure out whether to play a particular game in PAL or NTSC (e.g. figure out who the developer/publisher was, European or from the US, etc… 90% of WHDLoad games are PAL, but most of them can be switched to NTSC mode to play “correctly”).

Anyway, good luck on your quest!

[TheNamec]

@Rincewind

Dunno how that would work, people still need to figure out whether to play a particular game in PAL or NTSC

PUAE core has a specific feature to auto manage PAL/NTSC switching by simply parsing a tag in the ADF/HDF filename.

I just have to complete the circle on my side so I’m pretty confident to get to the point, sooner or later.

[Rincewind]

@TheNamec

PUAE core has a specific feature to auto manage PAL/NTSC switching by simply parsing a tag in the ADF/HDF filename.

Yes, but very few of those releases are the “real” NTSC releases, tagged in the filename. Most US developed titles you can find online are the PAL versions, in fact, but you can run them in NTSC mode to get the correct aspect ratio & gameplay speed (by using the NTSC tooltype in case of WHDLoad conversions). I have a section about this in my article.

By relying on the tags, you’ll play all Cinemaware, LucasArts and SSI games in PAL aspect ratio, among many others… Many of them with the wrong music and gameplay speed.

I guess people can do the research and put the correct tag in the filename, if that’s what you meant.

Anyway, my point is, discerning users will still need manual overrides. But I’m sure most people just don’t care

[TheNamec]

@Rincewind

Anyway, my point is, discerning users will still need manual overrides. But I’m sure most people just don’t care

Ahaha I do. I feel like we’re fighting against “the slings and arrows of outrageous conversions” and this is half of the fun!

[RuySan]

I’m very curious to check this out, but I can’t find the RC3.1 download anywhere.

[TheNamec]

Downloads

Had to update the blog too

@RuySan please report me some references/params on brightness levels for curved, flat and integer. Last time your ending result was pretty good!

[Bliberche]

Courage et merci pour tout ce travail effectuer :cœur:

[TheNamec]

@Bliberche

Courage et merci pour tout ce travail effectuer

Merci mon ami et bienvenue dans mon petit sanctuaire de jeux Commodore!

[SharkaBytes]

Hi Namec! I just wanted to drop in a huge thank you for the efforts you’re going to with this pack. I was already enjoying the 3.0 version and especially love the A1000 ambient desk and Turrican poster overlay (do you have plans for anything like that for other machines?), but incorporating Rincewind’s shader work into it in the 3.1 RC has elevated my Amiga-ing to new levels. Checking out my favourite games to see what they look like now with the shader has been really exciting stuff.