Tired of Pixels? Try this fix for perfectly smooth looking graphics!

[v00d00m4n]

This is just a mirror for thread on Shantae Risky's revenge
http://steamcommunity.com/app/277890/discussions/0/611704730315321516/

Please leave comments in original thread only, i dont want to fragment discussions at least until pirates curse specific version will be made once ill have the game.


Disclamer: This fix is my configuration for Reshade, SweetFX 2.0 and Framework effects. Some shaders (such as CRT, ordering of effects) was a little bit altered by me to suit Shantae and other pixelated games, rest of credits goes to authors of mentioned shaders and injectors, which are displayed once you start game.

Some history:
Ok, so game as we see it not supposed to be pixelated, actually this pixelated look is direct result of lazy porting, on original Nintendo platforms thanks to small screen, scanlines and natural interpolation it actually looked smooth.

I was messing with old and even new versions of SweetFX but still had bad results, since CRT shader was not really that good for CRT emulation, it still missed smoothing, but recently gauss shader was added to framework and i decided to try it with Shantae. As expected Gauss shader fully removed pixels and smoothed out everything, but game was looking not right, so i decided to combine gauss and CRT shader, spent few days configuring and testing, until i achieved best look, with scanline configuration that perfectly match original Nintendo resolution.

To compensate a little bit of bluriness and keep texts readable i played a little with luma sharpen configuration and order of effects applied, and this gave me good results as well, and in the end i decide to apply a little bit of chromatic abberation to achive that color shift seen on tvs, and this also smoothed out scanlines.

So, after all this:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=431159960


turned into this:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=431161238

WARNING: this is screenshot from old pre-release version, it does not represent current version results, i just have no time to mess with steam to upload externally capture post-effects screenshot that steam cant capture.

Most recent version looks like this:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/128994


and thats how this game is supposed to be played!

With all the shaders applied menues now also have similar low res but yet smooth look, so it kind looks in one consistent style not like original high res cutscenes art and pixel art in game sequences.


Download preconfigured modded pack here:
https://mega.co.nz/#!NNIT1RKL!YfMlnXruqykqec6d-IsvNqejt5O5-K_3YFH2Yc9CAEA

(before you can download file, press SKIP button in RIGHT-UPPER corner, dont download anything until you skip ads twice. File you need will be displayed as Shantae_Riskys_Revenge_Reshade_Frame…tly_Smooth_GFX.zip not anything else, not exe or stuff like, dont let ads to cheat you by pretending as download link!)

Unpack to:
SteamApps\common\RiskysRevenge\executable


To save you from messing with configs i bound each effect on separate button, so you can toggle any of them and achieve preferable look (keep in mind that this is order in which they are applied):

F9 - Gauss
F10 - Sharpen
F11 - Scanlines
F12 - Chromatic

you can use only one effect, 2, 3 or 4 of them in any combination. I prefer to press F10 to turn off sharpen since while it makes more detailed look, it makes some some gradients and edges not so smooth as i prefer,

If default look is not so smooth for you, open Reshade\CustomFX_settings.cfg in Notepad and change this

#define GaussQuality 0

to this
#define GaussQuality 1


P.S - you can try this pack with more pixelated games, but you have to know their pixel perfect original resolution and set correct one in SweetFX_settings.cfg via these values

#define CRTResolutionY 192 //[1 to 2048] Original input height of the game (ie. 240)

Shantae original resolution is exactly 256x192, for other games it could be different. Wrong resolution for scanlines will look wrong. so just use google to find out original resolution.

For Shantae Pirates Curse (does not work at the moment, waiting for Reshade fix, please read page 3 post about this issue!) you have to change resolution of CRT to this:

#define CRTResolutionY 240 //[1 to 2048] Original input height of the game (ie. 240)

Also keep in mind that reshade require good video card and cpu, so it may be slow on old pc. Another thing to keep in mind in case of usage in other pixelated games or emulators - reshade32.dll (in case of x86) or reshade64.dll (in case of x64) can be renamed to d3d8.dll d3d9.dll dxgi.dll d3d10.dll d3d11.dll and OpenGL32.dll - all of these apis supported.

I have tried all known CRT injectable shaders, including stock sweetfx, gedosato, dosbox and few more, and none of them gave properly looking results, so this little modification to existing shader packs and combination of gauss and crt is probably the best you can find. Try it with other games (especially those retro indie games from devs who still dont get idea how retro games actually looked and that they looked smooth on old displays and tvs) and tell me how it looks.

[Garlboh]

From clear as day to blurry as hell!

Try this new fix which will make you think you need glasses!

[sawanoguchi]

Here is one vote for Voodooman's opinion. When I was a kid, I played space invaders on the Atari 2600. Do I know what pixelated games look like? Uh...yeah. Not everyone needs to play Shantae with a smoother. But I'll be more than happy to. I should also note that Sega put a smoother on their Sega Genesis collection. It would have been a nice option to have that on Shantae games straight from the developer. But, as Voodooman and Crosire will tell you, it's not that easy to smooth Shantae games. So I know why WayForward decided not to spend the extra time required to put the extra option in the game.

[Florence]

I think OP may be confused... The Nintendo DS' screen wasn't a CRT. It never had scanlines. You are not getting any sort of "authentic" experience by using a scanlines filter. The Nintendo DS doesn't magically apply some sort of "smoothing" filter, games just ran at a cramped 256x192 that didn't allow users to appreciate much detail. By running RR in a resolution higher than 256x192, you are already forgoing authenticity in favor of modern conveniences.

Even if you insist on using a scanlines filter, the example you provided is horrible. Scanlines are a tricky business; while someone's eyes usually won't be irritated if a sprite is blown up despite a lack of detail, many people will get eye strain and headaches if you introduce noise or nothingness where detail is supposed to be. Not everyone feels this way and scanline tolerance varies from person to person, but yeah.

To be super hyperbolic about this so you'll understand, check out my hot new graphic filter for Risky's Revenge![i.imgur.com] You'll notice that you can't see those pesky pixels and that the colors blend together very smoothly. :^p

[Syragar]

Not trying to stir crap or anything, but if you want the honest opinion of a man over 40 years old who has played games since the Atari 2600 and the Commodore 64, played many games at the arcades, and has a 3DS with a large library of games (including all Shantae games)... I think the first image looks better. That bottom image just looks way too blurry to me.

[v00d00m4n]

Flotilla の投稿を引用：

I think OP may be confused... The Nintendo DS' screen wasn't a CRT. It never had scanlines. You are not getting any sort of "authentic" experience by using a scanlines filter. The Nintendo DS doesn't magically apply some sort of "smoothing" filter, games just ran at a cramped 256x192 that didn't allow users to appreciate much detail. By running RR in a resolution higher than 256x192, you are already forgoing authenticity in favor of modern conveniences.

Even if you insist on using a scanlines filter, the example you provided is horrible. Scanlines are a tricky business; while someone's eyes usually won't be irritated if a sprite is blown up despite a lack of detail, many people will get eye strain and headaches if you introduce noise or nothingness where detail is supposed to be. Not everyone feels this way and scanline tolerance varies from person to person, but yeah.

To be super hyperbolic about this so you'll understand, check out my hot new graphic filter for Risky's Revenge![i.imgur.com] You'll notice that you can't see those pesky pixels and that the colors blend together very smoothly. :^p

I think you are the one confused here because you still think that scanline is crt exclusive term. This term originates from crt, but scanline is basically A LINE, OR ROW on screen.
You can see scan lines even on lcd screens in case this screen is quite a low res and has notticable GAP between lines of pixes, which creates this CRT kind of scanline look, and NDS screen and even N3DS screens are exactly that kind of low res lcd screens there you can see gaps between lines of pixels, even PSP 3000 despite it was not crt, had scanlines which made a lot of people angry a while ago.

NDS itslef does not apply any software filtering, there is no need for filtering, because display itself shows image that looks like filtered. And you clearly dont understand how and why this happens. Let me explain you simple things:
Grid of LCD consist of pixels that composed of RGB components that combined together with different properties gives pixel a different colors.

Low res displays like NDS or N3DS, while they are small has huge size of these RGB components and pixels, which you can notice until you are blind, and as well it has a huge size of GAP between them, and these pixels not really of SQUARE shape, they have sort of of SMOOTHED corners that makes pixel look more or less oval\circle looking. And whenever graphics assets that was designed for this resolution and screen, has their pixel, which are SOLID SQUARE on software level, perfectly matching CELLS of screen GRID, each cell with that pixel draw not look square anymore on hardware level, visible rgb components and gap between them makes image looks way smoother than it was on software level.
So actually one sofware pixel of solid color getting splitted into about 3 hardware sub-pixels of RGB that glows with different intensity that makes illusion of solid color at distance and in same time make image fuzzy and smothed, also additional smoothing happens because when light of pixel inside greed goes out, it "bleeds out" and sort of blooming out of its cell, and this natural bloom covers part of that grid gaps betwen pixes, which gives them more circular look (if you have any lamp and cardbox, make a square hole inside it and put you lamp inside, turn of lights everywhere, and turn lamp inside this hole, and you will see this effect of light bleeding from square hole and making light look not so square, thats how it happens on LCD screens).

Fuzziness of pixels split into 3 components + bleeding of light out of grid cell + grid gap between cells + low resolution and big size of cells that makes it all visible = smoothed look that reminds gauss filtered image with greed applied about it.

And these GaussCRT\SCanline\Chromatic, despite their name (which i see confuses you, since you dont get that origin of name does mean its exclusive to that origin) simulates this process, they taking solid pixel, interpolate pixels between each other, applying grid (which after my modification of original shaders perfectly match NDS display grid) and applying light bleed on top of each cell and segmenting results to visible RGB components, and this give game a smoother look almost like on original NDS screen.

But surely when pixel size getting 4+ times bigger, low resolution upscalled to modern displays resolution makes it look bllury. Its stupid to expect NOT BLURY image when 256x192 resolution-centered game rendered on higher resolutions. Resize your 256x256 steam avatar to 2048x2048 and try to cry about how its blurred now.
Yes simulation of how NDS screen looks is not perfect, but its way more close to it thant default rendering of square razor sharp unfiltered pixels.



On high res screens like PC displays, you can not see these pixels and components and gap between them, because they are very small, and you would not be able to see them even if you use low software resolution, since it will be upscaled to fill entire screen's native resolution and pixels will not match display pixel grid and you will not see how they bleed out and will not see any gap between them.
And when this happens with games like Shantae that supposed to be rendered on low res screen. they looks blocky and thats not how they supposed to look.

TLDR simplified version:

NDS display pixels match game pixels and they are huge visible fuzzy circles with visible gap between them, and they bleed light which makes image smoothed, PC display pixels are very small, and with upscalled game pixels that does not match display pixes effect of smoothing is gone, no gaps, and game pixels are square - this is not how game supposed to look.

And before you start arguing and spreading false information again that NDS has no scanlines, this is photo of NDS screen where you can clearly see scanlines with gap between them, and circular shape of pixels, rgb components of each pixels and everything i described, and this is what shaders try to simulate.
Now talk about how horribly blurry\fuzzy true NDS screen looks close up, and please dont tell me you dont see scan lines:

http://imgur.com/Qqsaz9W

P.S. - i cant find similar photo of DS screen, bug since it has even lower resolution, scan lines and non square pixels there even more noticeable than on 3DS screen.

And if you have notice that - this thread is a mirror that links to original thread, why do you keep posting here, people, instead of following original thread link?

[v00d00m4n]

ShenWolf の投稿を引用：

@Voodooman;

As I said before, I respect your enjoyment from scanlines but you are so focused on defending your tastes that you misunderstand certain stuff and trying to force it on everyone.

Scanlines are CRT specific, or rather a monitor technology that draws stuff using a beam that travels through the screen, in other words "scans" the entire screen area. LCDs don't have such beam thus no scanlines. AFAIK gaps between LCD pixels aren't considered scanlines.

Voodooman の投稿を引用：

Resize your 256x256 steam avatar to 2048x2048 and try to cry about how its blurred now.

Look, this depends on which resizing algorithm you use. Try using "nearest neighbour", it won't look blurred at all. Windows image viewer uses bicubic or something like that which blurs but that doesn't mean it's the ultimate correct algorithm.

Similarly, a game is supposed to look like how your monitor draws it. There's no ultimate correct monitor technology.

Like i said - term scanlines originates from CRT, but this terms applies to effect of visible separated lines at whole ad this effect could be present on LCD and any other screen, and everyone calls it a scanline, even if there is no actual scan, because it looks just like CRT scan line when actual scan was present.

Did you actually reed my whole post or replied after reading just first few lines?

Because you keep saying "there is no scanlines and no gap on LCD" despite QUITE OBVIOUS PROVE - ACTUAL PHOTO OF 3DS SCREEN WITH QUITE NOTICEABLE SCAN LINES was present in the end of my post, in case you missed here this part again:

And before you start arguing and spreading false information again that NDS has no scanlines, this is photo of NDS screen where you can clearly see scanlines with gap between them, and circular shape of pixels, rgb components of each pixels and everything i described, and this is what shaders try to simulate.
Now talk about how horribly blurry\fuzzy true NDS screen looks close up, and please dont tell me you dont see scan lines:

http://imgur.com/Qqsaz9W

P.S. - i cant find similar photo of DS screen, bug since it has even lower resolution, scan lines and non square pixels there even more noticeable than on 3DS screen.

Open photo and tell me again that there is no scan line and gap on LCD of N3DS and that scan lines are only CRT specific (i think people nowadays dont use their mind, and only repeating what wiki says, and if wiki forgot to say something, than people believe it never happened). Also if you insist its not called scan lines on anything other but CRT, that what is the term you think for same effect on LCD? Did you ever heard any other names besides snanline? Until you know exact term of lcd analogy of crt scan lines, you can not say its not called scan line. Learn actual terms if it even exist, then start telling everyone its not scan lines, but until that moment everyone will call it a scan line.

Also, to prove its not only NDS specific and other LCD screens has scan lines, here is a photo of PSP 3000 screen with infamous scan lines http://smg.photobucket.com/user/D-Wiz/media/PSP_Scanlines2.jpg.html . if you will google on that subjects you will find no other term than scan line.

So lets stop arguing about that, everyone call it scan line, besides very few people who dont know any other term for this but insist its not scan line only because logic tells them there is no scanning on LCD, and yet their logic forgets to tell them that established terms does not always represent actual origin logic behind them and that meaning of terms tends to change over time.

[Seraphita]

Fuchs の投稿を引用：

From clear as day to blurry as hell!

Try this new fix which will make you think you need glasses!

Enough said... This thread is a joke. Inb4 OP calls me a troll. I laughed mostly at the "and that's how this game is supposed to be played" part. No thanks, I don't like ♥♥♥♥ in my games.

@OP, you talk too much and you only show retrogression, not improvement. Not impressed...

[v00d00m4n]

Sera の投稿を引用：

Fuchs の投稿を引用：

From clear as day to blurry as hell!

Try this new fix which will make you think you need glasses!

Enough said... This thread is a joke. Inb4 OP calls me a troll. I laughed mostly at the "and that's how this game is supposed to be played" part. No thanks, I don't like ♥♥♥♥ in my games.

@OP, you talk too much and you only show retrogression, not improvement. Not impressed...

You are the joker. Enjoy your pixelated game then and get out of this thread. Its seems your lacking logic fails to understand title of thread "Tired of Pixels? Try this fix for perfectly smooth looking graphics!" , you are not tired of pixels, dont like smoothed graphics or stupid enough to expect that low res sprites will magically turn into high res with help of shader and not happy about obvious and unavoidable blur of filtering? Then this thread is not for you!

Simple! This thread has its target audience and name to thread directly appeals of to TA, and since you are not target audience dont waste my and your time, until you are time-wasting troll, which, judging by your rude tone and lack of constructivity in your posts, you obviously are.

Im so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tired of trolls and ungrateful jokers like you.

[☠Stumperman☠]

How to fix the simple way: Play at lowest resolution play from a far distance. Wow those pesky pixels on A PIXEL game are now gone! Simple like that it's like magic! Who knew resolution was the answer. How I know this is the answer: Compared 3DS screen and both PC screens. Same amount of pixels just different resolution. No need for super close up cell phone picture cause there is this thing it's called the human eye it's a cool thing I don't know if you heard of it, but it's what I use to play my games.

Sera is right this thread is now a joke and was to begin with. Sorry to say that but it's true. Like I am really sorry.

Voodooman の投稿を引用：

dont waste my and your time

Well it does seem you wasted your time on that cause: You replied.

If you don't want your time wasted again the best thing you can do is close the thread. No more replies, no more fights, no more problems. It saves time for me, you, all other posters, Wayforward dev team that can moderate their game threads, and the steam discussions mod team and there's only like 40 moderators that have to look at every single game on steam's discussions when a report is made.

Sorry for the long post so have a pixel shantae smile

[Broscar]

Voodooman の投稿を引用：

I see a modern kid here who never played real retro games an never saw how Nintendo DS games looks like.

Oh, that's just hilarious. So someone can't have an opinion without immediately being disregarded as a "modern kid"?

And you of all people should know that tastes differ, considering you prefer to change how the game looks as opposed to playing it the way the developers shipped it, so it'd be wise to respect that others have a different opinion of your so-called "fix". Some people like to add scanlines, some prefer to play it vanilla and insulting someone just because "they're not playing it right", tells me you yourself have some growing up to do.

My two cents: spend less time making ♥♥♥♥♥♥ CRT filters, go out and buy Pirate's Curse.

[robomagon]

Broscar の投稿を引用：

Voodooman の投稿を引用：

I see a modern kid here who never played real retro games an never saw how Nintendo DS games looks like.

Oh, that's just hilarious. So someone can't have an opinion without immediately being disregarded as a "modern kid"?

And you of all people should know that tastes differ, considering you prefer to change how the game looks as opposed to playing it the way the developers shipped it, so it'd be wise to respect that others have a different opinion of your so-called "fix". Some people like to add scanlines, some prefer to play it vanilla and insulting someone just because "they're not playing it right", tells me you yourself have some growing up to do.

My two cents: spend less time making ♥♥♥♥♥♥ CRT filters, go out and buy Pirate's Curse.

Considering the very first reply he got was insulting, I can completely understand the OP going into defensive mode.

[Spartan]

Ah, looks like Rotty has a new friend! ^^;

Sorry for the necro, but has anyone gotten this to work for Pirate's Curse?

It worked great with Risky's Revenge which I played a few months ago and I loved the CRT look which softened everything up. But it doesn't seem to work here, even with the #define CRTResolutionY 240 //[1 to 2048] change to the SweetFX settings ini like OP said.

Either way, thank you OP for making these. It seems a few people really dislike the way it looks, but I personally love it. Makes everything easier to look at since all the pixels and edges are softer and blend better, like I'm playing on a real CRT or an actual DS/3DS, the way it was meant to look.

[tomatohorse]

It seems the link was removed.

Anybody have a duplicate link? Also, like the above poster, I'm interested in whether Pirate's Curse is possible...

[Syragar]

tomatohorse の投稿を引用：

It seems the link was removed.

Anybody have a duplicate link? Also, like the above poster, I'm interested in whether Pirate's Curse is possible...

I don't know if it's possible for Pirate's Curse... but the original link can be found by clicking on the first link in the OP's post. It takes you to the original post that still has the link. I don't want to copy the link and paste it here. It was already censored on this thread for some reason. I don't want to take a chance.

[Spartan]

tomatohorse の投稿を引用：

It seems the link was removed.

Anybody have a duplicate link? Also, like the above poster, I'm interested in whether Pirate's Curse is possible...

Syragar の投稿を引用：

I don't know if it's possible for Pirate's Curse... but the original link can be found by clicking on the first link in the OP's post. It takes you to the original post that still has the link. I don't want to copy the link and paste it here. It was already censored on this thread for some reason. I don't want to take a chance.

What Syragar said.

The first link in the OP goes to the Risky's Revenge version. It should be the same exact set of files you dowload from that thread. Just read it and scroll down and the download link will be there. It goes to Mega, so you'll run into ads that can always be potentially insecure which is probably the link was taken down here?

There's only one change you make to one of the files, which is the CRT's Y set of pixels which you can read about in this thread. But either way I don't think it works. Just did some more research and it looks like it was never able to work even though it could run as a post process. And then after some official patches to Pirate's Curse, the files don't even run anymore. :(

I think I'm just going to turn down the sharpness of my monitor and play at a lower resolution instead.