Screenshot thread

[Stella Brando]

 

[e-mailio estevez]

Going through Bear's Gay 1 for the first time in a long time using the windowcast retroarch core. Playing as a Cleric/Thief also for the first time. Reminds me a lot of my Warhammer: Online runepriest, if he could backstab with a big quarterstaff.

Screen curvature aside, it seems like there's too much blurring in the displayed image. Some C.R.T. shaders incorporate bilinear filtering, but this seems more like it might be due to filtering applied by the wrapper on upscaling the resolution, perhaps? I think those shaders are intended to be used with unfiltered upscaled image, so nearest neighbour scaling, and preferably integer scaling to avoid uneven distribution of the pattern or additional blurring.

CNC-DDraw seems to handle Infinity Engine games very well. It comes with all the elementary scaling options and compatibility fixes, and it has some of the popular C.R.T. shaders bundled. Some of them apply bilinear filtering, while others don't, but it feels to me—without having a real C.R.T. monitor with which to compare them—that a very modest amount of blurring is welcome if the real monitor's size is much larger than that of a 15–17" C.R.T. monitor.

It may be possible to use CNC-DDraw as a basis for other shader injectors too, as it doesn't seem it's compatible with just any other GLSL shaders if they're placed in its shaders folder.

I've taken some screenshots using a variant of Lottes's shader and just two at the end with yee64. Inserting just two because of their size, the rest is available from the links below:

modified Lottes

yee64

I'll give it a looking into. Really it's my first time messing around with the Windowcast core. I'm predisposed to the bezel-type shaders in retroarch, and have in more recent days been using Zomb's Bezel Megapack. But it just looks completely wrong in BG1, the text is very tiny.

I didn't think my current setup looked *that* bad, but then again I am a retard. It's been a fun exercise to tinker around with regardless.

 

[schru]

Going through Bear's Gay 1 for the first time in a long time using the windowcast retroarch core. Playing as a Cleric/Thief also for the first time. Reminds me a lot of my Warhammer: Online runepriest, if he could backstab with a big quarterstaff.

Screen curvature aside, it seems like there's too much blurring in the displayed image. Some C.R.T. shaders incorporate bilinear filtering, but this seems more like it might be due to filtering applied by the wrapper on upscaling the resolution, perhaps? I think those shaders are intended to be used with unfiltered upscaled image, so nearest neighbour scaling, and preferably integer scaling to avoid uneven distribution of the pattern or additional blurring.

CNC-DDraw seems to handle Infinity Engine games very well. It comes with all the elementary scaling options and compatibility fixes, and it has some of the popular C.R.T. shaders bundled. Some of them apply bilinear filtering, while others don't, but it feels to me—without having a real C.R.T. monitor with which to compare them—that a very modest amount of blurring is welcome if the real monitor's size is much larger than that of a 15–17" C.R.T. monitor.

It may be possible to use CNC-DDraw as a basis for other shader injectors too, as it doesn't seem it's compatible with just any other GLSL shaders if they're placed in its shaders folder.

I've taken some screenshots using a variant of Lottes's shader and just two at the end with yee64. Inserting just two because of their size, the rest is available from the links below:

modified Lottes

yee64

I'll give it a looking into. Really it's my first time messing around with the Windowcast core. I'm predisposed to the bezel-type shaders in retroarch, and have in more recent days been using Zomb's Bezel Megapack. But it just looks completely wrong in BG1, the text is very tiny.

I didn't think my current setup looked *that* bad, but then again I am a retard. It's been a fun exercise to tinker around with regardless.

I suppose CNC-DDraw doesn't offer anything different, if you know what you're doing with Retroarch. It's just a question of choosing the right shader and tweaking it, if necessary. It seems like console emulation has been receiving much more attention in that area so far, so we just need something like preconfigured shaders that work well with specific resolutions. As regards the screenshots you've uploaded, I would just try setting the scaling resampling to nearest neighbour, or turn off bilinear filtering, if possible. As for curvature, it's a matter of preference, as I don't think it contributed anything to the presentation and the ultimate aim was to reduce it as much as possible.

 

[Rincewind]

doesn't doubling the number of horizontal pixels in addition to the the number of the vertical cause C.R.T. shaders to produce a picture with more horizontal definition than there should be, since it has more pixels to work with this way? The result looks a bit ‘chunky’, with the nearest neighbour interpolation sort of showing through the pattern more than perhaps it should?

The VGA double scanning of 320x200 content does look chunky. That's how all VGA cards in existence work.

The VGA hardware effectively does a 2x upscaling. Think of it this way: there is no true 320x200 mode on VGA. Zero. Nada. All VGA hardware in existence, *all*, emulate 320x200 by 2x upscaling it to 640x400.

Technically, the three "native" resolutions of VGA boards are 640x400, 640x350, and 640x480. Plus their 720 pixel wide variants for the standard text modes. Then there are higher resolutions on SVGA/VESA, yeah, but as a rule of thumb, all standard resolutions below 640x350 are width and height doubled *in hardware*. You cannot disable it, you cannot turn it off, it is done, period. That's how VGA was designed, end of story.

Yeah, that makes 320x200 chunky as fuck, and pixels look like sharp rectangles. I used to have an Amiga until 1995, and Commodore monitors can display "true 320x200" resolution which doesn't look chunky. Then when I bought my first PC, I was dissapointed how chunky lowres gfx looked on my PC SVGA monitor. My disappointment lasted until 640x480 Windows games became the norm...

So we're emulating what's authentic. And low-res VGA *is* chunky and looks blocky as fuck. Check out photos online, "CRT monitor VGA photo" into Google, etc.

I explain all this in my DOSBox Staging getting started guide. Read the whole thing, carefully. You'll learn a ton of things not just about Staging, but also about PC and DOS gaming history. If you're impatient, start with this... then read the whole thing.

https://dosbox-staging.github.io/getting-started/passport-to-adventure/#true-ega-emulation

 

[Rincewind]

Also, you guys confuse these three things and use them interchangeably, which I found super confusing:

- nearest-neighbour interpolation (can result in uneven scaling)
- integer scaling (a special case of nearest neighbour)
- bilinear sharp interpolation (which is not plain bilinear, far from it)

 

[Rincewind]

Also, you guys confuse these three things and use them interchangeably, which I found super confusing:

- nearest-neighbour interpolation (can result in uneven scaling)
- integer scaling (a special case of nearest neighbour)
- bilinear sharp interpolation (which is not plain bilinear, far from it)

Dear ds. Since when does the ability to understand somewhat subtle but important differences equal to "autism"? Please use a dictionary and learn the definition of the term

 

[Fedora Master]

 

[Kabas]

KLOINKS!

More

 

[Ezekiel]

I don't know why RetroArch leaves those letterboxes at the top and bottom. Also, seems like I'll have to find a new image host, because imgbb's servers are constantly overloaded.

 

[Ezekiel]

Not really a good game. But it is likable. Not suicide Bond like those new movies. I don't know how I aimed so well in the tank level with that dinky C-stick of the Gamecube controller as a kid.

Spoiler for too many images.

Spoiler

 

[Ezekiel]

I can't even remember the last expensive action game that had simultaneous face button presses for additional actions, like in Streets of Rage. The diamond arrangement of modern controllers would allow easy presses of the top + right and bottom + left face buttons.

X + Y = throwing attack

A + Y = counter

 

[Darth Roxor]

it's the giant enemy crab!

Spoiler

fortunately piloting an agile airkraft lets us fly around it while shooping its legs to destabilise it

once it's on its face, it can't circle around anymore, so we can shoot in in the ass

this for some reason opens its krew kompartments

PREPARE TO BOARD

outta my way nerds

all that's left is to wreck its reactor

and watch the fireworks

HOORAH

 

[Darkozric]

Spoiler

 

[Rincewind]

HorrorSoft/AdventureSoft rulez!

 

[Rincewind]

Darkozric Not sure which versions you're playing, but the Amiga originals have either better (IMO) or totally different music, so I recommend them. Elvira 1 in particular has a totally different soundtrack on the Amiga which is way darker than the MT-32 and AdLib versions.

 

[Darkozric]

Rincewind The Amiga version has a red cursor, and yes the music is superior in every way, especially those tunes with the slap bass phrasing.

 

[Rincewind]

Rincewind The Amiga version has a red cursor, and yes the music is superior in every way, especially those tunes with the slap bass phrasing.

Oh right, I missed the red Workbench 1.3 cursor.

 

[Jason Liang]

 

[Lhynn]

Why is echo a nigger and loki a woman? What did I miss?

 

[d1r]

Darkozric
man, that Elvira game had such a banger

 

[Jason Liang]

Why is echo a nigger and loki a woman? What did I miss?

I mean, it's Echo by David Mack and he's Echo's creator so I'm not going to argue. He's painted Echo dark-skinned previously though, as well as Echo's dad Crazy Horse, and paints her with mulatto/ quadroon facial features more often than asiatic.

Color doesn't exist in the world, it is how light appears in our mind. We are all black at midnight.

Female Loki was written by J. Michael Straczynski from his Thor run after Ragnarok happened in Avengers Disassembled. Loki takes Sif's body to provoke Thor. But sure, there was probably some trans subtext to it since JMS would go on to write and produce Sense8 with the Wachovskis (as well as Delenn's androgyny/ originally conceived gender change in Babylon 5).

 

[Rincewind]

Color doesn't exist in the world, it is how light appears in our mind. We are all black at midnight.

Explain that to low-brow people...

 

[Darth Roxor]

spooky!

this frozen corridor is also the best place to find...

Spoiler

THE FLAMMOR

PAIN IS FOR THE WEAK

roast alium, my favourite

breakin' da laaaaaw

knock knock

wow very rude

HOORAH

bruh

 

[Darkozric]

man, that Elvira game had such a banger

The music is made by Gerald Woodroffe - a session musician who played on Black Sabbath's "Technical Ecstasy" album, and Robert Plant's debut solo album "Pictures of eleven".

Anyway, if anyone interested I posted a review for the game here, https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...re-recommendations.147937/page-3#post-8972491

 

[Blutwurstritter]

The dwarves of SpellForce - Conquest of Eo are a little unwelcoming.

Strap yourself in - ready for take-off

Lovely artworks

Great game so far. Starts a little bit slow but becomes addictive after a short while.