Some pixel filters I made for GBA emulation (and KEGA too)

[nimitz]

I was trying to emulate some GBA stuff and quickly realized that no matter what emulator/settings combination I used it always looked awful. And there wasn't a single emulator out there with proper scanline intensity settings so you either had full dark scanlines or none at all.

I then realized VBAm http://sourceforge.net/projects/vbam/ supported pixel filters (plugins) so I made a few plugins to solve the problem.

I used the source of the ScanLineTV filter by "Forgotten" as a base.
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All of these are "unfiltered"/nearest neighbor plugins, just scanlines/aperture type effects, which I find looks the best and don't blur the f*ck out of the already stretched output.

Download link: http://stormoid.com/stuc/nimitz_rpi_plugins.zip
(just create and unzip to vba\plugins or kega\plugins)
(now updated to version 2: 6 types instead of 3, more intensity choices and fixed a hue shift bug on some of the filters of v1)

these plugins are also perfectly compatible with KEGA fusion.

Code: Select all

The filers are split into six groups:
	-ScanlinesXX (fat scanlines)
		this is your basic 2x scanlines filter with half the lines being darker.
	-ThinScanlinesXX (thin scanlines)
		basic 4x scanlines filter (often just ends up making the overall picture darker).
	-14scanlinesXX (1/4 scanlines)
		only one line out of four is darker.
	-GrilleXX (aperture grille)
		same idea as 14scanlines but on both axes, mimicking an aperture grille.
	-DotsXX
		the aperture grille without horizontal "scanlines"
	-MeshXX
		Somewhat experimental pattern, much less of a "pixel crawling" effect than conventional "shadow mask" type filters

a few preview images (made using VBAm):
1/4 scanlines 75

Aperture grille 81

scanlines 81

[nimitz]

Also, I'm really not familiar with the VBA/Kega scene, so if anyone wants to post these on relevant forums or add these to any sort of pluging bundle/repo you can do so no problem, just give proper credit.

[GaijinPunch]

Wow, these look nice. I'm not familiar w/ GBA emulation these days. I played some ages ago. Are these generally meant to be played on a high res screen, doubled (or quadrupled)? Guess so. I do remember one that would play on a low res monitor that looked okay, but not great.

[nimitz]

Well, they work pretty well in 2X,3X,4X,5X (haven't tried 6X)

I just used 4X for the screenshots since that's what I personally use (3X is too small on my screen).

And obviously the best would be to play in 1x/2x on a low rez CRT, these plugins are for modern pc screens.

[GaijinPunch]

Yeah, I should get my emulation machine working again...especially considering how much I'm not into the current gen. Just playing one on a window is sometimes what I need though, rather than cranking up the clunky CRT.

[nimitz]

Just uploaded version 2. (see first post for link)

In version 1, the 81 and 87 intensity settings had a slight hue shift "bug" due to the way I was computing the brightness values, it is now fixed since I switched to the proper way of extracting RGB values (instead of using a not so great shortcut) which also means I can have arbitrary intensity values, so I added more choices to all filters (60,73,80,85,90 and 95 for the darker ones).

I also added three more filters: Mesh, Dots and Thin Scanlines

This is most likely the final version.

[genecyst]

very nice stuff, i'll try it out with my games. it makes me really curious.

[Ironhide]

Hi nimitz!

Thank you for this plugins. Looks awesome in full screen mode.

[BPzeBanshee]

Very nice indeed!

I don't suppose there's a way for implementation into Shmupmame is there what with nearly all affects being picture stuff now?