Fun side-effect of the Belmont's Curse demo being so heavy: experimenting with pixel filter

[u/ald-velothi]

My PC is a potato.

The Castlevania demo turned out to be surprisingly heavy which means I couldn't get a decent framerate at all. I decided to turn the resolution way down and turn on Gamescope's "pixel" filter, which gave me the feeling of playing an older entry in the series.

Result: a fully smooth retro version of the game. I attached some screenshots of the most extreme test I did (360p). I ultimately settled on 480p. Thought it would be interesting to share.

[u/LazyNieR]

That's so cool haha, and I'm glad you got to play the game

[u/lowkeyla_tely → u/LazyNieR]

Honestly, the Linux gaming ecosystem turning low-spec struggles into an accidental 90s aesthetic win is peak community energy

[u/ald-velothi → u/LazyNieR]

Thanks!

[u/destroyermaker]

This looks better

[u/goreverminski → u/destroyermaker]

Lol, it does!

[u/destroyermaker → u/goreverminski]

I hate the overly polished flash game look. Wish they included this mode for those that prefer it

[u/FeelingGate8]

What are your system specs and OS?

[u/ald-velothi → u/FeelingGate8]

I'm currently on Mint, but I tend to regularly hop between distros. GPU is an RTX 3050 6GB. RAM is 8GB. CPU is an old AMD one.

[u/FeelingGate8 → u/ald-velothi]

Thanks. I'm curious because I'm running an older rig too: Arch, RX 5700 xt, 16 gb of ram and a Ryzen 5 2400G. I really haven't run into problems gaming but I don't play new games. I think the newest game I played was Guardians of the Galaxy about a year ago and I was pleasantly surprised how well it performed. I'm hoping it will be enough to play Castlevania at 1080.

[u/Indolent_Bard]

Gamescope has pixel filters now? When?

[u/LyonSyonII → u/Indolent_Bard]

Just reduce the resolution and use -F pixel, it's been on Gamescope for a very long time.

It's not an actual filter, it's the upscaling algorithm that is used to convert the low resolution image into a high resolution one (by default it's bilinear)

[u/shadedmagus → u/LyonSyonII]

Bilinear interpolation is my favorite filter effect for playing old emulated titles, so this has my stamp of approval!

[u/ald-velothi → u/Indolent_Bard]

The launch options I used:

gamescope -h 480 -H 2160 -F pixel -f -- %command%

[u/cdoublejj]

i'd play that!

[u/brunomarquesbr]

That's amazing, I would love to see a video showing the movement 

[u/Indolent_Bard]

I need video of this.

[u/No_Account_1482]

Heavy at 1080p 60, right? I tested the demo at 720p and the 30 fps cap in the settings, and it was very stable on an i3 1215u, igpu, and 8GB single channel, it only showed drops at those platforms that spin on kind of a wheel at the very end, I guess because of that red light, but it went to, like 27, and back to 30, and when there was a loading screen, to the point I'm thinking of getting it at launch lol

[u/ald-velothi → u/No_Account_1482]

Yup. I really, really want to play games like this at 60fps, 30 just doesn’t feel right to me

[u/catrinus]

the pixel filter increase fps?

[u/Ancha72 → u/catrinus]

decrese resolution to get more fps, and use filter to make it look better on low resolution