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  • Hay everyone, I'm trying to use this shader for my game Edelin Tales: Portals of Doom but I can't seem to get it to work properly.

    I keep getting these really nasty looking bulging bands across the screen. Example screenshot below. Anyone have any idea what might be causing this, or how I might fix it? What's shown in the picture is the shader with all atributes on default. But I've tried playing around with the settings and I can't seem to get those bands to go away. Any help would be appreciated.

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  • Hahaha. That is what a CRT monitor does, but only when it gets old an messy. Try adjusting the parameters. Distortion is what is bending the image, so you can set it to 0 (or a very low number like 0.001). Input/Output Gamma affect the way it blends to your image colors. Input/Output Width and Height affect the thickness of the lines. You can also try the horizontal version I uploaded to the thread. It makes more sense if your game screen is wider than tall.

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  • mobichan: Dude! I have actual 3 CRT TVs in my house (I'm not wasting money on a new TV when my old ones work just fine!) and nun of them look like that. Not even the oldest one I inherited from my grandma!

    I think I tried the horizontal one and it gave me the same effect. So, I'm still confused about the hight/width input/output. How dose it effect the thickness of the lines? All it seemed to do was make the bulge and distortion go off to one side.

    Anyway, thanks for getting back to me so quickly.

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  • That's what distortion does. Can you describe the effect you're trying to achieve? Do you want the distortion to effect random areas of the screen instead of only the center? If so, set Input Width to <= 0 (the left edge of the screen) or => 2 (the right edge of the screen) and then change Phase, Distortion, and Output Height in small increments over a period of time.

  • I was talking about CRT monitors (like in arcade cabinets). I have 2 cabinets and they both show the wear of many years of use. But either way, the shader settings are there to display the good and the bad of CRT's. Now that I play more with them, the distortion settings actually look subtle when you run the game with "Resize display to fill window" checked. Kind of unfortunate that just running the frame in a window doesn't get the same results. The thickness change only seems to be in window mode, but I guess it is changing the sharpness of the lines. So if you set both "inputs" to 2 and "outputs" to 1, you can see that the scanlines appear thicker.

    In general, this isn't going to give the results of say, MAME with a scanline overlay. But it does a great job of making it feel like a CRT.

    EDIT: The settings I found pleasing to me were:

    Effect: CRT Hori
    Phase: 0
    Input Gamma: 5.0
    Output Gamma: 5.0
    Distortion: 0.005 (make it 0 if you want a "brand new" monitor feel)
    Input Width: 1.0
    Input Height: 1.0
    Output Width: 1.0
    Output Height: 1.0
    Blend Coefficient: 0 (can't seem to make this do anything)
    RGB Coefficient: 255, 255, 255

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    Edited 2 times, last by mobichan (November 5, 2014 at 6:16 PM).

  • Snail: What I'm trying to do is get rid of those.... black bands that bulge in the centrer of the screen. I've never seen that on an actual CRT, not even in the arcade. In the picture the big red arrow points to it.

    I've discovered that if you set the distortion to 0.00 it will get rid of those lines but the distortion is part of the CRT effect. It would also be good if I could make the scan lines a bit bigger. Since the graphics are 2x to begin with.

    mobichan: I think those lines should be there but they should be a subtle gradient rather than a glaring black line. I'm pretty sure if they were that bad the technology wouldn't have been used.

    Hmm... maybe if I distorted the screen with the lens object or something and then used the CRT shader with no distortion applied? Any idea what a lens picture would look like that would make that kind of distortion? Because it's a pretty subtle curve, or at least I fee it should be.

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  • Maybe post a screen of the effect you are trying to achieve? The distortion needs some pretty tiny adjustments to keep it from getting out of control. I suggested 0.005 and that makes the corners feels a bit of distortion but leaves the center clean. As for the x2 scaling, that is just a limitation of the shader, I think. Maybe try it with Ultimate Walruses fullscreen object and drop your assets back to x1 rez?

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  • Something like the pictures bellow. If you look really close you can see they still have those overlaying bands but they are very subtle. The distortion is a bit more pronounced but not so extreme that the image appears totally warped.

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  • Here is what I meant before. There seems to be a bug where it looks extreme when running in a window. But if you set the project display properties (under Options section) to use "Keep Screen Ratio" and "Resize display to Fill window size" you get the larger image below. It is much more subtle and probably what is the intended output of the shader. This is using the default settings as well.

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    EDIT: Sorry the attachments are getting reduced and turned to jpg. T_T

    EDIT2: Just added Ultimate Fullscreen to my game and it works pretty well with that. The only real issue is that using integer scaling, there is a deadzone around my frame/window. Objects there are stretched really badly from the distortion of the shader. :/

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    Edited once, last by mobichan (November 5, 2014 at 11:01 PM).

  • Ok, for this test I set the distortion to 0.000 and instead used an active with the lens shader on it to distort the picture. What do you think?

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  • Not bad. The only odd thing is that the scanlines are only on the play area and not on the lower borders. Is that on purpose or is it just hard to see them there? I understand the authenticity of curving the corners, but it feels odd when it isn't projected on a curved monitor. Maybe it is just a personal preference, but the curved bits are taking away from the great art you have going on. ^^ BTW, nice promo video on your site. Can't wait to try this out.

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  • @Marv: Thanks a lot. ^^

    mobichan: The borders are the border of the screen. So in the final we will have a texture that looks like a CRT monitor boarder. So it dosen't really make seance to have scan lines on them. I'm also trying to figure out how to make a proper distortion texture for the lense. I know it's a barrel distortion but I'm not exactly sure what the grayscail texture should look like.
    The interface at the bottom should be distorted to conform to the edge of the screen rather than being cut off. I've tried doing searches for examples but everything I think of comes up bupkis.

    Also... what video on my website?! Do you mean the few animated gifs I've done, because I don't recall doing any videos. Maybe it's actually a fan made video?

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  • Oh, I mistook this for Edelin Tales video in your twitter feed (from your signature). This one: Please login to see this link. . Maybe this is something different? I didn't realize that was a bezel overlay, but that is a cool idea. To make that work it would need to cross the black border around the game screen, though. Otherwise it looks like it is part of the monitor image. Cool idea! :)

    Never tried the lens object but maybe there is a shader you can use for the same effect? Not sure where, but it might make things simpler to tweak overall.

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  • Ah, yea, that wasn't a video, or at least not initially. That was a gif I made of some very early gameplay.

    I found out that the lens object only works in the Standard run time. Which means people probably won't be using it much any more. I do have a lens shader, that's what I used in the example, but I don't know where I found it.

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  • Or just apply it to the frame (or on individual layers), as far as I know that should work for most/all shaders. :)

    My Please login to see this link. (which I actually use), my Please login to see this link. (which I mostly don't use), and my Please login to see this link. (which I don't use anymore pretty much at all really). If there are awards for "'highest number of long forum posts", then I'd have probably won at least 1 by now. XD

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