Found out why MAME's HLSL always looked like shit

[bulbousbeard]

Open your prescale.fx.

Find this:

Texture = <Diffuse>;
MipFilter = LINEAR;
MinFilter = LINEAR;
MagFilter = LINEAR;

That's why MAME's HLSL always looked like blurry shit. It's using blurry, crappy linear filtering on everything. I'm not sure if the HLSL author actually realized that arcade monitors are crisp and sharp and don't look like N64 games, but here we are. Settings like defocus are USELESS when you're STARTING from N64 textures.

To fix it, all you have to do is change it to this:

Texture = <Diffuse>;
MipFilter = NONE;
MinFilter = NONE;
MagFilter = NONE;

Here's a comparison for you using the SAME settings. Standard prescale.fx with linear filtering:
http://i.imgur.com/cPDH6PU.jpg

After the tweak:
http://i.imgur.com/oQVazn4.jpg

Hi. It's actually sharp. Like a real arcade monitor. Yeah. Yeaaah!

There is no way HLSL could have EVER looked good with that prescale.fx. You're STARTING with shitty linear filtered graphics. You WANT to be able to tweak the defocus settings to make it slightly less sharp than a PC monitor. With linear filtering, you START with N64 filtering, and defocus only sends you into "gouge your eyes out" territory.

WOW this is fresh. I can actually use HLSL without wanting to vomit now.

Here are some more random shots:

http://i.imgur.com/PrQ3MTp.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/pG4oMoU.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/3fcItKP.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/lEDzFyh.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/B1VPyFe.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/wNlg83e.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Rs67ZUr.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/bs7c6Ai.jpg

[chempop]

I'd rather play a port on my genesis or saturn.

[Udderdude]

Nice tips, thanks.

[Domino]

I really think this needs to be posted on here:

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=45026

This fix did fix my blurry graphics problem on the latest version of MAME. Now it looks just as good as ShmupMAME.

[heisenbergman]

I'm already using shmupmame. Do I need this?

[Domino]

I'm already using shmupmame. Do I need this?

Only if you want to use the newer versions of MAME. Like the latest version of MAME the NMK games received a good improvement over the sprites priorities and also NMK's Rapid Hero has its music fixed.