The Big Ol' Retroarch Shader Thread

[Paultimate]

Youre a god damn hero. Between you and Analog Shader Pack version 3, most of the quality shaders not made by me are in CG! Crazy how this isnt in the default compile! Thanks!!

[Lordmonkus]

3 hours ago, Paultimate said:

most of the quality shaders not made by me are in CG! Crazy how this isnt in the default compile!

From what I remember and I could be remembering wrong CG is an Nvidia proprietary shader language where the devs and most people prefer open source cross platform which is why OpenGL and Vulkan is the more preferred shaders.

[Paultimate]

8 hours ago, Lordmonkus said:

From what I remember and I could be remembering wrong CG is an Nvidia proprietary shader language where the devs and most people prefer open source cross platform which is why OpenGL and Vulkan is the more preferred shaders.

Seems reasonable enough, but it  people would naturally go that direction over time. Abandoning large and useful shader packages to try and force it instead of regulating it to legacy seems weird to me. All good though.

[Zombeaver]

I've been going down a rabbit hole for the last week working on a new set using HSM. Pretty happy with how it's going so far. A few preview pics:

[Drybonz]

I like that JVC frame.  I had one of those TVs, at one point, years ago.

[Zombeaver]

On 10/21/2022 at 11:20 PM, Drybonz said:

I like that JVC frame.  I had one of those TVs, at one point, years ago.

Yeah I have a couple CRTs for my retro consoles - a JVC and a Sony Trinitron. I prefer the JVC between the two and that's my daily driver, so this is a little nod to that.

I'm still working on these. I've made a lot of improvements since posting previously and made a bunch of additional variants to play around with (alternate masks, alternate levels of halation, alternate color LUTs, etc.). I just want to make a few more platform-specific backgrounds first. SNES, Genesis, PSX, Neo Geo, CPS2 (horizontal and vertical), and MAME (horizontal and vertical) are done. I want to at least have CPS1, NES, Saturn, and PC Engine done as well before the initial release.

[Zombeaver]

Getting pretty close to having these done for an initial release. I finished the ones I mentioned wanting to do previously plus N64 on top, but decided I'm also going to do 2600, x68k, and Dreamcast. After that I'm calling it good enough for the first release.

[Zombeaver]

Alright, these are pretty much done for now. I still want to do a little bit of cleanup first but I should have these out in the next day or two.

[Zombeaver]

Okay so below you'll find the release candidate for v1.0 of this pack. It's currently missing a 4k variant (1080p and 1440p are included) so I'm hoping someone with a 4k monitor is willing to help me do a bit of testing as I don't have one at my disposal. If anyone wants to volunteer to do this please let me know and I can walk you through how to test, it's quite simple. The differences between them is minor and essentially just amounts to slightly altered values for scanlines in specific situations.

You will need Retroarch 1.11+ and Mega Bezel V1.5.0_2022-10-11 which you can find here. The video driver in Retroarch needs to be set to Vulkan and aspect ratio needs to be set to full.

Installation:

1) Extract Mega Bezel V1.5.0_2022-10-11 to Retroarch in the shaders\shaders_slang\bezel folder (create a folder named "bezel" if you don't have one already). So once extracted you should have a path of Retroarch\shaders\shaders_slang\bezel\Mega_Bezel
2) Extract the attachment below to your Retroarch folder following the path included in the archive. So once extracted you should have a path of Retroarch\shaders\Mega_Bezel_Packs\Zombs Mega Bezel

Zomb's Mega Bezel 11-13-2022.7z

Usage:

Hopefully this is fairly self-explanatory, but it basically follows a waterfall. First you choose the preset folder based on the content type (in most cases you would want one of the non-HiResContent ones):

Presets-1080p (standard resolution content at 1080p)
Presets-1440p (standard resolution content at 1440p)
Presets-HiResContent-1080p (this is for content where you're using upscaling above the platform's native resolution, like you might be doing with say Dreamcast for example; on a 1080p display)
Presets-HiResContent-1440p (same as above but on a 1440p display)

Then you choose whether you want curvature or flat.

Then you can choose any of the presets in this folder if you want the non-platform-specific (wood) background or you can proceed to the platform specific folder to choose a platform-specific version of any of those presets. Alternately you can navigate to the Rotated folder for a list of rotated presets (for vertical shmups) which use the non-platform-specific background unless you navigate to the platform-specific subfolder. The LUTech folder is sortof an experiment with using custom LUTs which alter the colors for fun. Think of these as essentially color-grading for video games.

[Zombeaver]

New version: 11-15-2022

Zomb's Mega Bezel 11-15-2022.7z

• Added bezel variants for 3DO, Sega CD, and Sega Master System

• Corrected LUTech presets for Dreamcast and x68k to use the correct background X scale value
• Moved assets that are part of the base Mega Bezel package to an internal folder and updated references in presets accordingly
• Added new preset to Presets-HiResContent (both 1080p and 1440p) called CPYN-Cypher-NoScanlines - this is designed for high res/upscaled content where you don’t want any scanlines/mask at all; it is not intended for sprite-based content

[Zombeaver]

New version: 11-16-2022

Zomb's Mega Bezel 11-16-2022.7z

• Added bezel variant for PC Engine CD

Added new preset family - Scanner

I quite like the way this one look and it’s become my new favorite.

The below are all using SCA1-Scanner for reference:

[Zombeaver]

Update 11-18-2022:

Zomb's Mega Bezel 11-18-2022.7z

• Fine tuned Sharpsmoother values in Scanner presets. The end result being a slightly sharper image overall while still blending the most problematic bits.
• Made some slight changes to scanlines, brightness, contrast, and saturation in Scanner presets. There were a few situations where contrast could be slightly harsher and scanlines more aggressive than I wanted them to be.
• Added bezel variants for Atari 8-bit computers and DOS

[Zombeaver]

Update 11-20-2022:

Zomb's Mega Bezel 11-20-2022.7z

• Made a few adjustments to NTSC brightness and saturation in Scanner presets - very bright areas could sometimes appear a bit brighter than they should
• Added missing presets for LUTech for Atari 8-bit, DOS, and PC Engine CD
• Remade/improved MAME bezels (I was never really happy with the previous version)

It’s probably worth noting here that there are actually a couple alternate background versions available for rotated MAME (and a few others like Neo Geo and CPS1) as well. If you navigate to Zombs Mega Bezel\Resources\Images\MAME you’ll see a couple subfolders with alternate versions which you can copy out and replace in the MAME folder if you want to change it.

• Added preset variants for double and triple-screen arcade games like Warrior Blade and Darius respectively. These are available in the "Special" subfolder and then subdivided into "Arcade Dual Screen" and "Arcade Triple Screen" folders.

• Added bezel variant for Atomiswave

[Ateb]

@Zombeaver 

Thanks for sharing these and making it easy to setup!

Question about the PCSX2 core,  the bezel is reversed/rotated.  The other cores (Stella, Beetle, Flycast, etc) show fine.

The JVC label is at the top and reversed.  Its not a big deal, just wondering if there is an option to correct it.

 

[Zombeaver]

15 hours ago, Ateb said:

@Zombeaver 

Thanks for sharing these and making it easy to setup!

Question about the PCSX2 core,  the bezel is reversed/rotated.  The other cores (Stella, Beetle, Flycast, etc) show fine.

The JVC label is at the top and reversed.  Its not a big deal, just wondering if there is an option to correct it.

 

This is really bizarre. The PCSX2 core is a mess so I guess this shouldn't surprise me. But yes, you could fix this. You'd need to make a custom core preset for it. Start up the game, then go to Quick Menu > Shaders > Shader Parameters then scroll down until you get to "Flip & Rotate" and set "Flip Viewport Vertical" to 1. Then go back > Save > Save Core Preset.

[Ateb]

27 minutes ago, Zombeaver said:

This is really bizarre. The PCSX2 core is a mess so I guess this shouldn't surprise me. But yes, you could fix this. You'd need to make a custom core preset for it. Start up the game, then go to Quick Menu > Shaders > Shader Parameters then scroll down until you get to "Flip & Rotate" and set "Flip Viewport Vertical" to 1. Then go back > Save > Save Core Preset.

Thank you!  That did the trick, and yes, that core is a mess.  😆

[Stevie Mac]

Ok I've just found this thread as I'm looking for some simple shader setup stuff for RA & MAME but looking through all this I'm a bit confused what I need to download & put where?
I'm not interested in Bezels just the scanline/shader presets 

Do I just need the Mega Bezel zip & that has all the scanline shader presets in it or do I go back to page 10 where the other shader zips are?
Can anyone do a post that just quickly states what folder to put the zips in in RA/MAME & where to set them up? 
There's a lot of files in the zips so I'm not really sure what I would choose when in RA to set them.
I liked the Esper + Reshade:  stuff but not really sure how to set that up.

Thanks

[skizzosjt]

5 hours ago, Stevie Mac said:

Ok I've just found this thread as I'm looking for some simple shader setup stuff for RA & MAME but looking through all this I'm a bit confused what I need to download & put where?
I'm not interested in Bezels just the scanline/shader presets 

Do I just need the Mega Bezel zip & that has all the scanline shader presets in it or do I go back to page 10 where the other shader zips are?
Can anyone do a post that just quickly states what folder to put the zips in in RA/MAME & where to set them up? 
There's a lot of files in the zips so I'm not really sure what I would choose when in RA to set them.
I liked the Esper + Reshade:  stuff but not really sure how to set that up.

Thanks

Retroarch shaders are in your \Retroarch\shaders folder by default. there are more subfolders there to further organize everything. you can download shaders from within Retroarch, it downloads a lot of included shaders and presets which now does include Mega Bezels (the original project that is. there are other projects that branch off using the original project as the base). Use Main Menu > Online Updater > Update Shaders to download this standardized pack of shaders if you haven't already done this. There are more to download all over the forum and internet should you want them, google "Mega Bezel github" to find more Mega Bezel stuff for ex. But you likely don't need/want them as most would focus on bezel and overlays since you said you just want scanline type stuff. So if I were you I would try out the included ones first before searching for and setting up others

 

To use them, when in game open the quick menu, go to Shaders and turn ON shaders if needed. Then go to Load and navigate to the shader preset you want to use and select it. the shader is now loaded if you go back into playing the game. If desired you can then save the shader from within the shader menu to load when you would like it to much like an override. meaning you can load shaders at a core, directory, or game level.

 

You mention both Retroarch and MAME. this advice is for Retroarch only.

[GenoCL]

Can someone help me with the 199x shaders, please? I can't get them to show on Retroarch and I have no idea why.