So I've been trawling through steam and quite a few newer and upcoming games are in 2D as well as some older classics. What I was wondering was about getting the best image from these games. While pixel art can look good on your PC monitor it can look fantastic if some thought is given to the way it is displayed. Some like Metal Slug 3 have built in scanlines. Some games can use Sweet FX's CRT filter but I've found it to be incompatible with most Steam 2D games. Another option I was thinking about is to just run a VGA cable to a CRT monitor but this is complicated because getting the resolution down low enough might not be possible without additional software. Does anyone use anything like this and what success have you had with it?
I've run emulators with custom resolutions to a CRT in the past with success but so far I haven't seen anyone messing with this stuff in steam.
Playing 2D Steam games on a CRT or scanline filters
Re: Playing 2D Steam games on a CRT or scanline filters
I've tried a few times to find a "wrapper" program or mod for Win32 programs to allow their low resolution output piped into D3D with shader plugins and turned up nothing. I would also love to make my games output at high resolution (1080P HDMI) by piping the original 320x240 or whatever original resolution the game renders at through a shader to have scan lines and window-box video. All my searches found were references to resolution hacks and implementation routines for various programming languages.
My next attempt was going to involve new threads at Wide Screen Gaming Forums - http://www.wsgf.org/ and Qhimm Forums - http://forums.qhimm.com/
I planned to inquire about the feasibility of such a program or hack from the gurus that hang out at those forums. What the guys on WSGF and Aali managed to do with windows games is interrupt the program before it gets rendered and manipulate it in Direct-X to allow a different resolution. In addition, they've manipulated all kinds of internal processing to compensate for the new screen real-estate and even fix other problems and bugs that pop up. I think it's at this point that forcing a shader plugin would be able to be activated as well.
I never actually signed up to those forums but it's a good idea.
The only other way I can think of is to downscale the output using hardware to a low resolution display. Fudoh discussed that on his page a while back. He seems to have been successful so it's another option.
My next attempt was going to involve new threads at Wide Screen Gaming Forums - http://www.wsgf.org/ and Qhimm Forums - http://forums.qhimm.com/
I planned to inquire about the feasibility of such a program or hack from the gurus that hang out at those forums. What the guys on WSGF and Aali managed to do with windows games is interrupt the program before it gets rendered and manipulate it in Direct-X to allow a different resolution. In addition, they've manipulated all kinds of internal processing to compensate for the new screen real-estate and even fix other problems and bugs that pop up. I think it's at this point that forcing a shader plugin would be able to be activated as well.
I never actually signed up to those forums but it's a good idea.
The only other way I can think of is to downscale the output using hardware to a low resolution display. Fudoh discussed that on his page a while back. He seems to have been successful so it's another option.
