If people like using them, more power to them, but as someone who grew up playing on CRTs, if I could have had crisp pixels instead back in the day, I would totally have chosen that.
“You’re emulating retro games wrong” is not the best title. For example, Dosbox Staging enabled the CRT filter by default at some point; there is no graphical interface, you need to open a file and change a line to revert it. Moreover, there was no indication that the black lines were not a bug but were a filter.
Playing DOS games on operating systems which do not support DOS programs natively is still emulation. However, the number of DOS games which utilised CRT effects are much fewer such that I primarily played DOS games in 2022–23 and none of them made use of CRT. However, the black lines were enabled till I figured it out (because there were no support requests surprisingly, and the default filter being changed was mentioned in an unrelated request regarding bad performance issues—where it was made known and the recommendation was made to change the setting).
The (slight) problem is with the title itself. It is not a big issue for me, but the statement made in the title is the problem because it is only in a comment that it was mentioned not all old games use CRT effects. Clickbait might not be the best word for describing the situation, but the title will be annoying for many who play old games which were not designed for CRT effects. But then, it is not a big problem and I more or less ignored it (to be clear, for being wrong as far as the title itself goes) before seeing this thread. It would’ve been better to state directly instead that many old console games and games of the adventure genre, among others, were designed with these filters in mind and for practical reasons (like actually having the graphics show what they were meant to show) because like in your other comment that specific scene does not show the background at all without the effect, and it will be a fairly common occurrence for games which were designed to use the CRT effect.
Up to a certain point in the early to mid 2000s, virtually all home console and PC games were designed for CRT displays. I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea from that the type of display that was used by 99% of gamers on these systems was somehow not influencing the art design and technology of games.
Might and Magic Book One does not. Heroes of Might and Magic 2 does not. Carmageddon does not. Elder Scrolls Arena does not. (It does, the pixels are designed for CRT effects but the Dosbox staging filter adds black lines to the game still).
I played them. With the filter. That’s where I got the idea from.
Edit: These are pre-2000’s games, sure. It isn’t big enough of a problem for me anyway, I can ignore the title.
Our old friend Mr Dithering makes an appearance once again.
I hope I’ve made my point clear. It’s fine if you prefer the clean pixelated look of LCD displays, but it’s clear that this is not what these games were meant to look like.
Dosbox Staging has one CRT filter which is the one I’ve used. The town wall graphics (edit: In might and magic book one) get completely messed up with it. It is possible the bad effects for each of the 4 games mentioned was caused by a bad CRT filter.
That said it would’ve been better to include screenshots which do use the CRT filter. I have played all 4 of these games with and with Dosbox Staging’s CRT filter and they all have had black lines obscuring the screen. Not having it enabled, on the other hand, the games looked like these screenshots.
No-CRT filter screenshots that I have available. I do not have screenshots for the CRT filter. I suppose I could boot up and try to put the filter for this one; I have Heroes 2 installed too but it is currently a pre-configuration I do not want to mess with in case I possibly mess it up. It feels like a pain to do so though as I’m already occupied for the day, and would like my PC time to, you know, play. Since this is unrelated to help requests, in which case I may have made time for it (I’d usually do it in the past, but not for a while).
However it does not change that the others do not use the effects (there is no indication the pixels in might and magic book one were for the CRT effects, unlike here. The pixels in Might and Magic Book One are also too sharp), and the problem has always, and solely, been the title of the post and nothing more.
And as I stated it is not too much of a problem for me, already. Not something I cannot ignore.
It's not telling me a secret, it's telling me that I'm doing something wrong and that I need to use CRT shaders, which are both wrong presumptions made to make me click on the video to find out why. Whether to use a CRT filter or other things like scanlines is completely subjective and up to a users preferences. There's nothing wrong with sharp pixels over blurry pixels.
The video shows an objective example where square pixels destroy the image, while rearranged subpixels restore it. There are more similar examples here around in the comments.
There is no world in which anyone ever designed a game for anything more powerful than a Gameboy where they expected people to see it as a seemless grid of squares so big you can see them from across the room. That’s just not a real thing outside of badly designed modern “retro” graphics. There’s a reason for that. Seemless square grid is ugly. Like, disgustingly hideous. I do not understand why anyone would ever want to subject their eyeballs to the atrocity that is giant square pixels. If you want to do that to yourself then I can’t stop you. There’s no accounting for taste and all that, but just know that I think less of you for it.
Original hardware, especially CRTs, is increasingly difficult to find and getting more expensive and less reliable by the day (both of my N64 are completely dead right now - just from sitting unused in a dry cupboard for a few years).
Love it or hate it, this is the future of retro gaming.
Honestly, I hate the CRT aesthetic. I grew up with CRTs. Leaving them behind for LCDs was one of the greatest transitions of growing up. By all means, enjoy them if you do, but I don’t.
It’s not just the look of it, but the art and games were designed with the limitations of CRT in mind. Not all games off course. An example is the transparency effect on Genesis / Mega Drive:
There are two variants, one with motion-blur and one without. Besides that, often shaders have additional settings. One can change settings and save it as a new Shader Preset and use that instead. I have described it here: thingsiplay.game.blog/2024/10/19/…/8/#learn-and-e…
Thanks. I shall avoid the motion blur variant as best as I can, because that’s one of several aspects of this device I do not remember fondly.
I borrowed a friend’s Game Boy for an afternoon when I was a kid and I was so disappointed by it (primarily the screen, but also poor ergonomics and the limited nature of its games) that I lost nearly all interest in gaming for a year.
Getting the settings right for video is critically important, too. Scaling needs to be done with the nearest neighbor pixel method, not more modern blend methods.
The benefit of CRTs is most apparent in pre-rendered backgrounds (See Final Fantasy, Resident Evil). These backgrounds look incredible with shaders, and, indeed, on real displays.
Real. Ever since I spent some time setting up good CRT shaders, playing retro games feels a lot cooler. They just give the best feeling and look pretty nice with them on. Sometimes for fun, I leave the shader on for regular Windows usage.
Seems pretty interesting! Not sure how I’ll feel about a roguelike take on a souls game but if the price is right I’ll definitely get it.
Also looks like the Nameless King and the firekeeper (in a cloak) in the trailer! Could be cool if it’s all integrated into the story nicely and not just a lazy way to fill things out
I guess I’m worried it will lose some depth but to be fair I have no reason to assume that. Maybe the movement and new combat mechanics will give it more of a roguelike feel too, seems faster paced
To answer the OP, it’s an expandalone with flight mechanics and new powers. Regular Elden Ring is also a co-op action adventure game, but more notably in this trailer is that none of the other players are phantoms, meaning that, like they said in a previous interview, the “seamless co-op” mod and its popularity has influenced how they’re handling multiplayer going forward.
My big question is whether this can be played singleplayer or if it’s designed from the ground up to be multiplayer, since the trailer put a lot of focus on it being co-op. Man, I’m hyped either way!
youtu.be
Aktywne