Testing border transparency with vector games and other games that use “blackgrounds”:
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Didn’t know that was a thing!
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New release: Uborder-v0.0.8
- Added new param to allow transparent background over content (black pixels). It turn possible to use with vector games, for example.
- Added newpixie-crt (use base presets to access it).
- Fiz some bugs.
No need to update any packs, the new param doesn’t affect the inner workings of the old ones.
I think the user parameters are solid now, so I’ll freeze them (internal names) as they are, so that packs from other people don’t break on future updates. If a new feature is added, it’ll have its own param and won’t affect the existent ones. I think this will encourage other colleagues to make their own packs without any concerns of being outdated.
The new feature is used by tweaking these two params below:
Using 1.0, 1.0 (fully transparent):
Using: 0.5, 1.0 (so that you blends only half, creating a transparent effect):
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Awesome news, I 'll give it a try later today 
Will this v0.0.8 of Uborder shaders be available also through the updater via RetroArch? Together with the packs only using the github link? (if i got this correctly)
Huge thanks!
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Never mind… got it 
Thank you.!!! 
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Wasn’t already in? coincidentally just yesterday I made the “tv & monitor” presets also for new pixy 
Nice! I will try it! are there any coesive pack of backgrounds to refer to?
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It was, but now it’s oficial! 
You can get many things in this place (look for backdrop and overlay): https://www.mameworld.info/mrdo/mame_artwork_ingame.php
I don’t know a pack that concentrates everything in just one file, though.
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Just tried and it seems to work very well!
here with backdrop
this one stitching (roughly) together: invad169, invadbd and invaders_moon_taito
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That looks excellent and just what I’m looking for! Are you planning to add tilt parameters?
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When I port crt-geom again to uborder. It has built in tilt features.
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again, using resources from mr.do, I just reduced contrast and brightness of the background image
Any suggestion on how to handle vector games? used crt-nobody here just to do a quick try!
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Indeed, a crt shader isn’t recommended for vector games. I’ll see if I can use my lego skills and mount a preset compatible with uborder using libretro’s repo motion blur shaders (glow-trails seems a good candidate for this).
EDIT: I tested glow-trails, but it’s not that simple. It only works with a black background. I’ll have to figure out another solution. Without trails, it works easily with simple bilinear or any other interpolation shader.
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What’s the issue?
Just add game content to backdrop (at least that’s what I did in koko-aio).
From the screenshots, it seems you are doing some kind of mixing/complex compositing instead, but things are simpler than that.
Those games have a black background because they were made to work that way, and black acts a a sort of natural alpha for the game content in an add(+) operation, so try to just sum them.
-edit-
See those fancy transparency effects obtained for free too (picture taken from @estefan3112 github repo)
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Yes, I was coming to the conclusion that adding should be the only solution. It’s that mixing is very easy and I always fall in this pit. 
I’ll change it to adding. It’s just not so simple because I’m doing many checkings in the same shader. Thanks for the tip!
EDIT: maybe letting the user switch the method, as the mix works for some cases.
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I think the following might be missing in uborder-bezel-reflections.slangp to change the base preset:
#reference "base_presets/uborder-bezel-reflections/uborder-bezel-reflections-newpixie-crt.slangp"
It looks super good by the way.
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I’m getting these weird black overlays on the sides:
This happens with this particular preset only, and after the recent updates.
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Which driver are you using? And is it using crt-nobody or other base shader? (I couldn’t reproduce here using vulkan.)
EDIT: Ok, I’ve got it on glcore. On vulkan is OK.
Please, do some test for me (I can’t right now), open “crt-nobody-bezel-reflections.slang” and change this line:
FragColor = vec4(mix(border.rgb, mix(border.rgb, frame_content, baoc), 1.0-step(1.0,fcTex.x*fcTex.y)), 1.0);
by this:
FragColor = vec4(mix(border.rgb, mix(border.rgb, frame_content, baoc), float((fcTex.x*fcTex.y) <= 1.0)), 1.0);
And see if it fix.
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I tried with Vulkan and glcore, both show the same problem, but only on the “Silent Hill TV” preset, not the other Spooky TVs. My default is newpixie, so crt-nobody is not the culprit. I am guessing it’s the background image?
Edit: Something to do with “fr_aspect_y”, since setting it to about 4.400000 makes it fullscreen on my setup. The rest of the params need to be calibrated though
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This is another issue with newpix-crt port. This shader does some internal scalings on its own and is conflicting with uborder. I’ll look into that eventually. The other issue is general and affects all shaders. Anyway, I think that line change fix it.
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Yo everyone, thought I’d join in on the fun by bringing my presets over to the uborder project. I switched some mask settings around to help scale them down to fit better within the screen space for 1080p,1440p and 4k presets, I think things came out pretty good.
Slot Mask:
Aperture Grille:
Shadow Mask:
Download the pack here. Place the unzipped pack in the shaders_slang folder the same way you would my standard pack.
@Hyllian thank you for helping me in putting things together. Thought I’d share the link here first since this is your project.
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