UPDATE (8/23/24): 1. Duckstation's UI has been updated. The "Enhancements" tab in the video is now the "Graphics" tab. 2. There is another version of the shader that also works but does not need the Preshader to be included in the post-processing menu. You can find it here: CRT-Guest-Reshade github.com/HelelSingh/CRT-Guest-ReShade 3. Some commentators said it didn't work until the files were put in "Duckstation/resources/shaders". If you are having problems, try putting the files there. 4. I missed a setting in the video. For the very first shader option "NTSC Custom Artifacting Value," I recommend turning it all the way down. 5. In Final Fantasy 7 I noticed a strange red line going down the middle of the screen. Increasing the setting "(Transform to) Shadow Mask" to 0.5 fixes the problem.
These settings and a couple more tweaks to reduce the blur gets it looking 95% the way there. Running FF7 next to each other, my 20" crt still looks more crisp and vibrant than the 20" oled space of the monitor. I tried lowering the saturation a bit, but the colors are just a bit off. Duckstation is a little more green in areas like the battle area floor in reactor 1, and the menus aren't the same blue. Anyway. Thanks for this. It helped a lot.
@@ggdeku Nothing crazy. Literally just a couple. lol. guest-hd horizontal blur sigma .025 vertical blur sigma .025 guest-ntsc FS sharpen Deblur Strength 7 I changed a few more that deal with color, but I still can't get it right. The colors look most correct with the crt filters off. The crt still has sharper text. Not sure at what points its just never going to be exactly the same. lmao.
Oh, god. If it wasn't for this video I'd never know this shader was also made for Duckstation. This shader was the only reason I ever used retroarch for ps1 games. Thank you so much.
I'd like to have some crt filter for some games, and yes - your option is very light, but in the same time so effective, i like it, thanks dude. I wish one day they will make overlay masks for black borders as in retroarch, which i don't want to use either :)
Thanks for the vid bro. Finally gave up on trying to find an easy solution that’s fault-free for all my hardware needs regarding ps1/ps2 games - so I’m defaulting to emulation.
One thing that always gets me about "scanlines" is the fact they never seem to change. The fields are alternating, so I feel that scanlines should as well. But that's probably just me since no one seems to have the scanlines shift/animate.
Thank you for making this video. This CRT stuff is pretty hard to get into with so many different options, and the curveball for how different it looks on every monitor, but you did a great job making this manageable. I had a question and a tip for others: Duckstation now has the shader by default in their post processing menu (besides the preshader). It looks like it has all the same settings as you showed in the video and description. Do you know or recommend if there's a difference between the download and the one that's pre-installed? And for anyone else, the CRT Mask 6 option looked really bad on my monitor... something wrong with the colors. Looked completely different than what's in this video. If you try out this shader and think it looks off, try messing with the CRT Mask. It's a pretty big difference between the options.
I'm really struggling to download them from the links, no download option and when I click on the shader it just opens a long text file, any help will be appreciated.
on the github page, click the green "Code" button and select "Download ZIP" Then all you have to do is unzip the files, and put the two folders "Shaders" and "Textures" in your folder path: Duckstation/shaders/reshade. (you can make the folders if they aren't there already.)
@@Moonwalker86 yeah, no problem! I should have described that more clearly in the video, so I've updated the description with some more detail as well.
I'm new to DuckStation and i'm having trouble making it work with the .glsl shaders. I just got the file from the libretro/glsl-shaders and put it in the same folder where the built-in .glsl shaders are, but it shows failed to compile shader. What am i doing wrong? I want to try the crt-aperture shader from the libretro's crt docs.
Thanks a lot! I'm using an iGPU and adding this shader makes the game really stutter. Is the shader GPU heavy and it's normal or is there a wrong setting you think?
I'm not sure exactly, but I think you've got it right. If it's giving you problems, it must be a bit heavy on the GPU. I'm not sure of any settings in duckstation that could help with that.
Thanks for this. If one were to try this on a 1080p display, would it be necessary to lower the internal resolution scale value to 5x (the value for 1080p)?
Maybe you are using a slightly older version? Duckstation was recently updated to support .fx files. You should be able to put the files in the folder: Duckstation/shaders/reshade
@@ggdeku that folder didn't work for me, but I put them in resources/shaders instead and then it worked just fine, also had no idea you had to download the textures too, I thought that was something different
@@coolen mine doesn't work, it says 'failed to load preprocessed shaders' everything is in the correct folder and I tried different renders like dx11, 12, vulkan etc. same error.. I noticed the download says dx9 in the title, maybe that's why, but no DX9 option exists in duckstation
hey thanks for the tutorial! I am using mac m1 I was able to run CRT-Guest-NTSC but the CRT-Guest Preshader fails to compile. the CRT-Guest-NTSC on its own looks pretty good but my mac was running so slow and the fans are getting loud any idea how to fix it ?
I don't know, sorry! I've linked the libretro thread in the description if you want to learn more from the creator of the CRT-Guest for reshade port. They may be able to answer your question there.
I'm not sure about Geom. Guest was ported to Reshade, which is why it works here. I'm not sure if Geom has been. I've linked the libretro thread in the description if you want to learn more.
Lol why this so heavy? This CRT-Guest effect drop my FPS from 60 to 50 on GTX 950M on Silent Hill Origins PCSX2, but another 10 fx did absolutly nothing, 60 is still 60.
About PGXP not being acurate to real psx tbh when i was a kid playing ps1 the wobblying graphics never was a problem or i never cared about , plus playing in low resolution with composite in a crt tv makes this much less noticble vs playing in a LED monitor with internal high resolution. so PGXP just make us see the game how we used to see as a kid.
Lucky you, I noticed them very much, like the Tomb Raider games flickered and wobbled so much that you had to stand still for a couple seconds and wait for it to stop to actually see where you should go in some levels (the start of Tomb Raider 2 is downright ridiculous when it comes to flicker and wobble). Die Hard Trilogy was absolutely extreme in terms of wobbling and generally, none of the games - bar some 2D ones - were particularly nice to look at.
Not sure why but whenever I add the "CRT-Guest Preshader" into the post-processing chain in duckstation it seems to cancel out whatever CRT filter i add (NTSC/HD/Advanced). The filters seem to work fine when I don't add the Preshader but stop working as soon as i do. Any reason I can't just have the NTSC reshade filter in the post-processing chain without the Peshader above it?
This creates an amazing look but has anyone had luck running it with Xenogears?. I'm specifically on steamdeck but the game will run fine for a bit before going into a white screen(Which also oddly tilts the filters menu white in the settings too), i think with specific triggers throughout the game. Seems to happen with default settings on the filters as well. Really hoping i can make it work because i've not found a crt filter to look this good before.
I don't have a Steamdeck, so I'm not sure about this problem, but does it work well for other games on Duckstation? Is it just Xenogears giving you this problem? I'm really curious if it worked well on steamdeck.
@@ggdeku I don't have any other psx games on the deck rn aside from pandemonium which seemed to run fine with limited testing(only noticed this yesterday). But i'm gonna DL Crash Bandicoot 2 tonight to test a play-through of it, so I'll get back to you after trying that. My current theory is that it might be something to do with bright flashing lights on screen, it usually sets it off when a healing spell or item is used or there was one consistent moment were a pendant flashes that seemed to cause it. Deleting the filters or turning the game on and off again(not resetting but quitting out), seemed to be the only ways i could find to fix it. I've posted in the reshade devs thread bout it too in case they have any answers, also i should note I'm not using the full settings from the vid, i only turned on the hd scanlines and set the res to 2.
Ok can confirm it happens with Crash 2, like i didn't even get past the intro cutscene lol, it seems to consistently change white whenever it goes from the transition between cortex saying an enemy and the scene cutting to Crash and coco. I'll try it on desktop as well, see if it is a problem with the deck. edit: worked fine via desktop so yeah i'm guessing it's a deck problem sadly.
Looks like I linked the wrong one! I'll update the description with the right link. Here's the version you should be using: github.com/HelelSingh/CRT-Guest-DX9
@@ggdeku thanks a lot! I have it all setup now. Makes these PS1 games look like remasters, I actually played RE2 back in 1999 butnever finished it because I felt the graphics were a little outdated since I first played RE3. But I've always regretted that as I would come to learn of it's legendary status. Finally playing it and ironically, with these settings and filter, I think the graphics are great. I have a bunch of PS1 games including this one, and a PS2to play it on, but I can't stand the way it looks on an LCD. I even bought a 27" TV so that the display would be smaller and it still looks bad. I was heavily considering buying a CRT but don't have the space for it. When I finally decided to give emuation another shot after building a PC, this video was the only place I could find a tutorial on shaders for duckstation. Anyway, it really does mean a lot. Thanks!
Curious why you avoid using Retroarch. I use it myself but have never been as satisfied with it as stand alone emulation programs. Just wondering if there is more to it
I think it has really bad usability as a front end and overcomplicated the emulation process. I've always had a significanty better experience using the emulators directly. There are also other controversies due to the people behind RA that I find very off-putting.
UPDATE (8/23/24):
1. Duckstation's UI has been updated. The "Enhancements" tab in the video is now the "Graphics" tab.
2. There is another version of the shader that also works but does not need the Preshader to be included in the post-processing menu. You can find it here: CRT-Guest-Reshade github.com/HelelSingh/CRT-Guest-ReShade
3. Some commentators said it didn't work until the files were put in "Duckstation/resources/shaders". If you are having problems, try putting the files there.
4. I missed a setting in the video. For the very first shader option "NTSC Custom Artifacting Value," I recommend turning it all the way down.
5. In Final Fantasy 7 I noticed a strange red line going down the middle of the screen. Increasing the setting "(Transform to) Shadow Mask" to 0.5 fixes the problem.
its not work
These settings and a couple more tweaks to reduce the blur gets it looking 95% the way there. Running FF7 next to each other, my 20" crt still looks more crisp and vibrant than the 20" oled space of the monitor. I tried lowering the saturation a bit, but the colors are just a bit off. Duckstation is a little more green in areas like the battle area floor in reactor 1, and the menus aren't the same blue. Anyway. Thanks for this. It helped a lot.
@@bacontater1664 I'm curious as to what other tweaks you've done. I'd love to try them too.
@@ggdeku Nothing crazy. Literally just a couple. lol.
guest-hd
horizontal blur sigma .025
vertical blur sigma .025
guest-ntsc
FS sharpen Deblur Strength 7
I changed a few more that deal with color, but I still can't get it right. The colors look most correct with the crt filters off. The crt still has sharper text. Not sure at what points its just never going to be exactly the same. lmao.
Thanks a bunch for this, im playing through castlevania for the first time after watching the anime,
Thanks! I actually just pinned an update comment for another setting change, so check it out if you are interested.
These look great! Perfect mix of retro style, but without obscuring too much of the graphical improvements from upscaling.
Oh, god. If it wasn't for this video I'd never know this shader was also made for Duckstation. This shader was the only reason I ever used retroarch for ps1 games. Thank you so much.
I avoid Retroarch as much as possible - it needs a major UI overhaul before I ever touch it again.
I'd like to have some crt filter for some games, and yes - your option is very light, but in the same time so effective, i like it, thanks dude. I wish one day they will make overlay masks for black borders as in retroarch, which i don't want to use either :)
Thanks for the vid bro. Finally gave up on trying to find an easy solution that’s fault-free for all my hardware needs regarding ps1/ps2 games - so I’m defaulting to emulation.
One thing that always gets me about "scanlines" is the fact they never seem to change. The fields are alternating, so I feel that scanlines should as well. But that's probably just me since no one seems to have the scanlines shift/animate.
crazy to think that duckstation was capable of getting rid of the warping effect in playstation emulation, while others couldn't decades ago
Thank you for making this video. This CRT stuff is pretty hard to get into with so many different options, and the curveball for how different it looks on every monitor, but you did a great job making this manageable. I had a question and a tip for others:
Duckstation now has the shader by default in their post processing menu (besides the preshader). It looks like it has all the same settings as you showed in the video and description. Do you know or recommend if there's a difference between the download and the one that's pre-installed?
And for anyone else, the CRT Mask 6 option looked really bad on my monitor... something wrong with the colors. Looked completely different than what's in this video. If you try out this shader and think it looks off, try messing with the CRT Mask. It's a pretty big difference between the options.
This video was made before the Duckstation update, but all of the settings should be exactly the same. Thanks for the heads up!
This is really nice! They've included CRT Royale too, which looks great also.
For 3D games i really like the crisp raw image duckstation provides, but for 2D sprites the crt filter looks really good as well
Thank you very much, great help
Could you make one but with pcsx2?
Can also use ReShade to inject CRT Royale from Retroarch. It requires a somewhat decent gaming GPU, but it's *very* accurate and customisable.
PGXP is by far one of the greatest inventions to PS1 emulation!
Thanks 🎉
I'm really struggling to download them from the links, no download option and when I click on the shader it just opens a long text file, any help will be appreciated.
on the github page, click the green "Code" button and select "Download ZIP"
Then all you have to do is unzip the files, and put the two folders "Shaders" and "Textures" in your folder path: Duckstation/shaders/reshade. (you can make the folders if they aren't there already.)
@@ggdeku Thank you so much.
@@Moonwalker86 yeah, no problem! I should have described that more clearly in the video, so I've updated the description with some more detail as well.
I'm new to DuckStation and i'm having trouble making it work with the .glsl shaders. I just got the file from the libretro/glsl-shaders and put it in the same folder where the built-in .glsl shaders are, but it shows failed to compile shader. What am i doing wrong? I want to try the crt-aperture shader from the libretro's crt docs.
I've only looked into adding these .fx shaders to duckstation. I'm not sure about the the glsl files. Sorry!
I can't wait to put Res scaling 2 on mgs1 with hd textures and widescreen fix in 4k
i prefer res scaling 1, it look more nostalgic tbh
Thanks a lot! I'm using an iGPU and adding this shader makes the game really stutter. Is the shader GPU heavy and it's normal or is there a wrong setting you think?
I'm not sure exactly, but I think you've got it right. If it's giving you problems, it must be a bit heavy on the GPU. I'm not sure of any settings in duckstation that could help with that.
Retroarch is great, and duckstation exists as a core in it
megaman legend legit almost looks like a 2d anime in crt TV's
Thanks for this. If one were to try this on a 1080p display, would it be necessary to lower the internal resolution scale value to 5x (the value for 1080p)?
How much in numbers that 5× value?
I've looked all over and can't find a way to make Duckstation even see the .fx files, all it recognizes is the .glsl ones
Maybe you are using a slightly older version? Duckstation was recently updated to support .fx files. You should be able to put the files in the folder: Duckstation/shaders/reshade
@@ggdeku that folder didn't work for me, but I put them in resources/shaders instead and then it worked just fine, also had no idea you had to download the textures too, I thought that was something different
@@coolenthanks that worked for me too
@@coolen wanted to thank you too, was tearing my hair out trying to figure out what I was doing wrong until I read your comment, a thousand thanks
@@coolen mine doesn't work, it says 'failed to load preprocessed shaders' everything is in the correct folder and I tried different renders like dx11, 12, vulkan etc. same error.. I noticed the download says dx9 in the title, maybe that's why, but no DX9 option exists in duckstation
hey thanks for the tutorial! I am using mac m1 I was able to run CRT-Guest-NTSC but the CRT-Guest Preshader fails to compile. the CRT-Guest-NTSC on its own looks pretty good but my mac was running so slow and the fans are getting loud any idea how to fix it ?
I don't know, sorry! I've linked the libretro thread in the description if you want to learn more from the creator of the CRT-Guest for reshade port. They may be able to answer your question there.
Hey man, great video, unfortunately the CRT Guest its a lot to my machine 😂, do you know if there is a port of the CRT Geom for Duckstation?
I'm not sure about Geom. Guest was ported to Reshade, which is why it works here. I'm not sure if Geom has been. I've linked the libretro thread in the description if you want to learn more.
I have the Duckstation for Xbox series, and when applying any shader, it does not undergo any change, there is no effect.
Lol why this so heavy? This CRT-Guest effect drop my FPS from 60 to 50 on GTX 950M on Silent Hill Origins PCSX2, but another 10 fx did absolutly nothing, 60 is still 60.
About PGXP not being acurate to real psx tbh when i was a kid playing ps1 the wobblying graphics never was a problem or i never cared about , plus playing in low resolution with composite in a crt tv makes this much less noticble vs playing in a LED monitor with internal high resolution. so PGXP just make us see the game how we used to see as a kid.
Lucky you, I noticed them very much, like the Tomb Raider games flickered and wobbled so much that you had to stand still for a couple seconds and wait for it to stop to actually see where you should go in some levels (the start of Tomb Raider 2 is downright ridiculous when it comes to flicker and wobble). Die Hard Trilogy was absolutely extreme in terms of wobbling and generally, none of the games - bar some 2D ones - were particularly nice to look at.
I never knew that it was a thing until I used emulsion on lcd. Maybe different TVs produced different results?
Not sure why but whenever I add the "CRT-Guest Preshader" into the post-processing chain in duckstation it seems to cancel out whatever CRT filter i add (NTSC/HD/Advanced). The filters seem to work fine when I don't add the Preshader but stop working as soon as i do. Any reason I can't just have the NTSC reshade filter in the post-processing chain without the Peshader above it?
If it works for you it's all good. I have no idea why that would happen, but hey, if it works it works.
how i add shaders to duckstation? i try drag theme but nothing happend !
what about CRT guest HD?
Can someone pls explain how to add these shader to duckstaion i aded to duckstation/resourses/shaders but nothing appears
Try Duckstation/shaders/reshade. That's where it should work.
can i make post processing for every game separated??
How did you add that to your duckstation?
where to find enhancement tab?? I don't have it
Duckstation's UI has been updated. The "Enhancements" tab in the video is now the "Graphics" tab.
@@ggdeku oh! thanks
i feel like an idiot and i usually have this issue with github links but, i don't understand how to download the shaders
Click the green Code button, then select "Download ZIP"
This creates an amazing look but has anyone had luck running it with Xenogears?.
I'm specifically on steamdeck but the game will run fine for a bit before going into a white screen(Which also oddly tilts the filters menu white in the settings too), i think with specific triggers throughout the game. Seems to happen with default settings on the filters as well.
Really hoping i can make it work because i've not found a crt filter to look this good before.
I don't have a Steamdeck, so I'm not sure about this problem, but does it work well for other games on Duckstation? Is it just Xenogears giving you this problem? I'm really curious if it worked well on steamdeck.
@@ggdeku I don't have any other psx games on the deck rn aside from pandemonium which seemed to run fine with limited testing(only noticed this yesterday). But i'm gonna DL Crash Bandicoot 2 tonight to test a play-through of it, so I'll get back to you after trying that.
My current theory is that it might be something to do with bright flashing lights on screen, it usually sets it off when a healing spell or item is used or there was one consistent moment were a pendant flashes that seemed to cause it.
Deleting the filters or turning the game on and off again(not resetting but quitting out), seemed to be the only ways i could find to fix it.
I've posted in the reshade devs thread bout it too in case they have any answers, also i should note I'm not using the full settings from the vid, i only turned on the hd scanlines and set the res to 2.
Ok can confirm it happens with Crash 2, like i didn't even get past the intro cutscene lol, it seems to consistently change white whenever it goes from the transition between cortex saying an enemy and the scene cutting to Crash and coco.
I'll try it on desktop as well, see if it is a problem with the deck.
edit: worked fine via desktop so yeah i'm guessing it's a deck problem sadly.
last update on this but with help from the shaders creator I managed to fix it via changing Vulkan to OpenGL. Haven't had any issue since.
You are a literal life saver. A hero, Question though, I downloaded the CRT guest reshade but I don't see the preshader. Only HD and advanced.
Looks like I linked the wrong one! I'll update the description with the right link. Here's the version you should be using: github.com/HelelSingh/CRT-Guest-DX9
@@ggdeku thanks a lot! I have it all setup now. Makes these PS1 games look like remasters, I actually played RE2 back in 1999 butnever finished it because I felt the graphics were a little outdated since I first played RE3. But I've always regretted that as I would come to learn of it's legendary status. Finally playing it and ironically, with these settings and filter, I think the graphics are great. I have a bunch of PS1 games including this one, and a PS2to play it on, but I can't stand the way it looks on an LCD. I even bought a 27" TV so that the display would be smaller and it still looks bad. I was heavily considering buying a CRT but don't have the space for it. When I finally decided to give emuation another shot after building a PC, this video was the only place I could find a tutorial on shaders for duckstation. Anyway, it really does mean a lot. Thanks!
res scaling 2 looks like gamecube
Curious why you avoid using Retroarch. I use it myself but have never been as satisfied with it as stand alone emulation programs. Just wondering if there is more to it
I think it has really bad usability as a front end and overcomplicated the emulation process. I've always had a significanty better experience using the emulators directly. There are also other controversies due to the people behind RA that I find very off-putting.
what's the best shader for a low end machine?
Try CRT-Guest-HD, it's already in emulator.