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Links and Guides to Custom Shaders for Pete's OpenGL2 plugin

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#1 · (Edited)
Links and Guide to Custom Shader for Pete's OpenGL2 PLugin

First of all, what are Shaders? Well for a simplified term, its a graphics hardware feature that enables more complex special effects to be implemented into games by developers, a succesor to the old Hardware Transform and Lighting that were present during the days of Direct X 7 GeForce 2 series and Radeon 7xxx series. But this is OpenGL you say, well lets just say that OpenGL also use the similar feature with some minor differences.
For a more technical terms regarding shaders, you may wanna look at this or this

In this case for Pete's OpenGL2 graphics plugin, the shaders acts as a "post filter" effect wherein it mostly modifies the stuff you see on screen after its already rendered by the PlayStation itself (such as sprites and polygons). That means you can't modify individual effects since you would have to modify the game itself.

Note before using the shaders: These custom shaders, depending on its function, requires a DirectX 9 Fragment(Pixel) and Vertex Shader 2.0 capable card mostly found on newer graphics cards. Make sure they have the recent drivers for them to support newer shader features/extensions needed for ARB/GLSLANG.(Click ATi or NVIDIA for driver updates for Windows XP)

For AMD ATi
Radeon 9500 cards and above

For NVIDIA
GeForce FX 5200 and above


other card manufacturers might also be supported provided that they can do DirectX 9 Shader Model 2.0, but this is not guaranteed.Also,
Pete noted that its better if your card has at least 8 rendering pipelines to get a good speed in higher settings, although it will still work with cards with lesser pipelines. Cards such as the GeForce FX 5200 and 5600 may suffer in terms of performance when shaders are used. At least a GeForce FX 5900 series/ GeForce 6/7 series or Radeon 9600XT and above/Radeon X and X1K series is recommended to play most options enabled as well as shader level/internal X and Y resolution set at very high.

If your not sure if your card support shaders, you may wanna check kenmasters' thread
regarding checking OpenGL shader capabilities of your card
(afaik, if you were able to test OpenGL 1.4/1.5/2.0 tests then your fine).
Note:GeForce FX cards might be inferior to their Radeon Counterparts in terms of performance though, as they are weak in high level shaders.
Also integrated DX9 cards such as the Radeon X300 and GeForce 6100 and above may also support the shaders but it may give poor performance.

LINKS

Most of the custom shader links are available at Pete's Website along with Guest's Shader Collection

Guest's Shader Collection: Contains many custom shader files including both Cartoon Shader and StoryBook Shaders, included is a readme on what the shaders or what effect they produce.
Guest's Shader Pack 2.2+ can be downloaded in his site here.

ShadX's Natural Vision Shader (Modded by SimoneT): This one is originally done by ShadX and was modded by SimonT for better speed.The shader intensifies colors/makes them more vibrant than normal as well as gives an anti-aliased look. This custom shader is better suited for cards which support 4096x4096 rendering resolutions (Very high X/Y internal resolution) such as GeForce FX cards and above and Radeon X1300 and above. (although higher end cards is recommended for more consistent speed)


SimoneT's Bump Map Shader: as stated, produces a nice bump effect/glass look on PlayStation games. Note that in some situations it will look weird and some it will look awesome depending on the game.

Steps in using the custom shaders:

1.After downloading the shaders, unpack or unzip them if they are compressed, and place them on the Shaders folder in ePSXe (or any other folder)

2. Start Pete's OpenGL2 configuration, check the Shader effect option and select click the button provided in the pic. Point to the location on where you placed the shaders(the unziped/unpacked ones) .Note that some shader such as the stroybook shader needs an additional file that must be placed along with the main shader files.


3. After selecting the location, select if the shader is in GLSlang format(gpuPeteOGL2.vp and gpuPeteOGL2.fp) or in ARB format(gpuPeteOGL2.slv and gpuPeteOGL2.slf)


4. Select the shader intensity level, the intensity level will depend on the shader, example having a Level 4 (Max) level for cartoon shader will give a thicker black boders on polygons while lesser levels is thinner.


5. After setting up the other options such as resolution and filters, click OK and your good to go.

If you folks have any other additional info, corrections and shader links please Inform me through PM's or posts .

SAMPLES

These screenshots are taken on my PC
Specs:
AMD AthlonXP 2500+ @ 1.95Ghz
1024MB DDR400 Ram
nVidia GeForce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3

Omega Boost ShadX's Natural Vision Shader (modded by SimoneT)



Final Fantasy VII Guest's Cartoon Shader


Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout Guest's StoryBook Shader (Colored)


A video of FF7 using Storybook shader

Final Fantasy IX SimoneT's Bump Map shader
 
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#4 · (Edited)
^is this new? i guess ill try it, thanks for the headsup (ill add it in the links)

@SimoneT: Hi again, it seems that the new shader had some issues at least on my card (GeForce 6600GT 128MB, ForceWare 91.33) on the GLSL one, the ARB one works fine. GLSL variant produces some unusual "violet" colors in the whole screen.
 
#6 ·
REally cool looking! Anyway to use these in other Opengl applications such as pc games or other emulators?
 
#7 ·
^i think you can have some post process filters similar to this for ATi video cards in their control center, mostly for OpenGL applications too (not sure about D3D). Im not also sure if you can make your own custom filter, that would be nice though.
(also, i think its mostly for radeon 9500 cards and above only)
 
#13 ·
When loading up my game I come across an error.

"Shader effects:missing custom file!"

Does anybody know what I'm doing wrong? And is my nvidia shader good to run this?

Also I have set the directory of the shaders but don't know to go from there.

Specs:
Nvidia 5700 FX
AMD 2800
512 DDR SDRAM
 
#14 · (Edited)
its in step 2 of the guide, you need to point out where you extracted the shader files(the red circled in the image) and what type of file they are.
(btw, did you try extracting the contents of the file?)
hmm, i think the guide needs some more stuff, will make some revisions soon...

also, your video card can do shader 2.0, but in terms of speed, ill say its inferior to its radeon 9xxx counterpart

@hushypushy: thanks hehe, ive forgoten about it also...

@SimoneT: the last one (NV shader)seemed to worked on my 6600GT now, as well for some FX5700 and regular 6600 cards in GLSLANG mode, the previous one worked fine on a radeon 9600 and X700SE though.
 
#18 ·
Ciao a Tutti.
I have created a new shader for do an "edge dependent blur".
It look good with most games.
Here the comparison screenshots:
1) shader + "screen filtering".
2) only "screen filtering".
3) no shader no "screen filtering".
Please report to me your possible problems.
Have fun.
Ciao.
 
#19 ·
hey i like your shader simoneT. I have an nvida card, is there an equivalent program like on ati cards for nvidia cards to use shaders?
 
#24 · (Edited)
i have a dreaded "missing custom file problem" with opengl2 plugins.

before you point me to the faq...i use linux.the plugin has no file selection dialog.

i put slf/slv files into ~/.epsxe/plugins/shaders dir. i changed attributes so that files can be read/written (just in case).

when starting epsxe i got message about parsing errors.
Code:
ERROR: 0:13: 'pre-mature EOF' : syntax error parse error
ERROR: 1 compilation errors.  No code generated.

ERROR: 0:39: 'pre-mature EOF' : syntax error parse error
ERROR: 1 compilation errors.  No code generated.
okay, this means that the shaders are in a good place, right? i just converted them with dos2unix because of CR/LF problems. then i got this

Code:
 * Running ePSXe emulator version 1.6.0. 
 * Memory handlers init. 
 * ePSXe: PSX BIOS loaded [bios/scph1001.bin]. 
 * Loading ISO Format [BIN/IMG2352] (+subchannel) ok
 * Force NTSC cdrom detected. 
 * Init gpu[0][libgpuPeteXGL2.so.2.0.8] 
Shader effects: missing custom file!ATI Technologies Inc.
Radeon X1300 Series Generic
 * Open gpu[0] 
 * Init spu[0][libspuPeopsALSA.so.1.0.9] 
 * Open spu[0] 
(....)
what else could be the problem?
 
#26 · (Edited)
there is no such setting in the linux plugin, here is a screenshot from 2.8 (or is it 2.0.8) plugin settings :



i think that if there are parsing errors, that means that the files are in a right place, right?

i'll try with ~/.epsxe/shaders now
edit: okay, i found it - i had to edit config files by hand. now i'm looking for some working shaders, since i'm getting even more parsing errors.

edit2: works. most shader files need to have a final empty line, no blank lines in the middle, and main(){ has to be changed into

main()
{

aside from converting line ending codes with dos2unix tool. weird.
 
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