NVIDIA Freestyle support

[Teralink]

TL;DR

Factorio should support NVIDIA Freestyle, so you can adjust the colors of the game in realtime, which has many advantages.

What ?

NVIDIA has a new feature for their gfx cards called Freestyle. It's a software panel to apply visual filters in realtime to a variety of games.

Why ?

Being able to change the visual appearance in realtime adds some nice features to Factorio that would make the game more comfortable and enjoyable for even more people. Here are some use cases:

• Better contrast to fit every need
• Easier to differentiate colors
• Fresh look for long time players
• Challenging color patterns

The result could look like this:

[slippycheeze]

I'm, like, 300 percent certain you know, but maybe someone else doesn't, so: you can use reshade to achieve the same results on Windows. It is basically the same deal, but less user friendly, and more willing to mess with any game whatsoever without bothering about, y'know, excluding UI elements from the effects.

So if you want this sort of graphical changes, it isn't impossible without dev support for the NVIDIA specific thing. Not that I object, just ... figured folks might not know, so now they can.

[Roxor128]

Sounds like what you really want is support for loading custom post-processing shaders. Probably wouldn't be too hard to add a feature to load in a custom .glsl file and run that over the last buffer before the monitor. Don't know if the devs would see it as worthwhile, though.

[Darinth]

Actually... support for a more well known and more easily used application seems like the better option than expecting people to write custom glsl shaders...

[Roxor128]

Actually... support for a more well known and more easily used application seems like the better option than expecting people to write custom glsl shaders...

Well-known? This thread was the first time I ever heard of the program, and I've been using Nvidia cards for years.

There is a precedent for the custom shaders approach: the Windows-only Media Player Classic lets you write custom HLSL shaders to post-process the video it's playing. Hell, it served as a gateway to shader programming for me.

[slippycheeze]

Actually... support for a more well known and more easily used application seems like the better option than expecting people to write custom glsl shaders...

Well-known? This thread was the first time I ever heard of the program, and I've been using Nvidia cards for years.

There is a difference between "I know" and "many people know", which is relevant here, especially in view of...

There is a precedent for the custom shaders approach: the Windows-only Media Player Classic lets you write custom HLSL shaders to post-process the video it's playing. Hell, it served as a gateway to shader programming for me.

...the fact that you would have done much, much, much, better citing reshade / sweetfx as the example of a "well known" tool that allows custom shader injection. Because I'd be good money that a great many more people have encountered the later than the former, a relatively obscure video player compared to "the" solution to injecting custom rendering into games (prior to the NVIDIA feature, at least.)

[Darinth]

<-- Not OP

Also, I don't care which application is used to achieve the effect, but requiring that people learn glsl to achieve the desired effects... seems a bit much. I wouldn't be happy about being required to assist in cooking my meal in order to have a restaurant leave something off of my meal. I'd never go eat there again. I probably wouldn't even stick around to have the meal I went there for. I don't think it's reasonable to ask people to learn about my field and program custom shaders achieve an effect that could reasonably be created through other means.

[Roxor128]

... you would have done much, much, much, better citing reshade / sweetfx as the example of a "well known" tool that allows custom shader injection.

Well, I can't exactly cite those programs as examples when you only just now introduced me to them, can I?

Because I'd be good money that a great many more people have encountered the later than the former, a relatively obscure video player compared to "the" solution to injecting custom rendering into games (prior to the NVIDIA feature, at least.)

Again, I'd never heard of any tool for running custom shaders over games until just now. As far as I knew, if you wanted custom shaders, you had to modify the game itself.

Also, the video player bundled with the ever-popular K-Lite Codec Pack is obscure? Probably 80% of Windows machines I've gotten roped into taking a look at have had a Start Menu folder for that pack. Okay, I'll grant the shader feature of it might not be well-known, but the program itself?

Also, I don't care which application is used to achieve the effect, but requiring that people learn glsl to achieve the desired effects... seems a bit much.

Would you really expect such a feature without a bunch of developer-supplied presets you could study and modify? I know I'd include them, as did the developers of Media Player Classic, and of that emulator I can't remember the name of that came with OpenCL kernels for various effects. Dolphin, maybe? I dunno.

I don't think it's reasonable to ask people to learn about my field and program custom shaders achieve an effect that could reasonably be created through other means.

You mean like installing a mod containing a custom shader someone else wrote and put up on the mod portal? That's pretty-much what I've been thinking of the whole time. Just an expansion of the game's modding capabilities to include shaders.

[Darinth]

You mean like installing a mod containing a custom shader someone else wrote and put up on the mod portal? That's pretty-much what I've been thinking of the whole time. Just an expansion of the game's modding capabilities to include shaders.

That was not at all what I was thinking about when this came up. That actually serves as a really good alternative. A mod could even provide a good frontend for controlling the recoloring, obfuscating all of the shader work in the background. I'd find this a perfectly acceptable alternative. I just don't find it reasonable to expect anybody in the general public to learn how to write (or even modify) shaders.

[slippycheeze]

... you would have done much, much, much, better citing reshade / sweetfx as the example of a "well known" tool that allows custom shader injection.

Well, I can't exactly cite those programs as examples when you only just now introduced me to them, can I?

No, I guess not. It wouldn't be fair to expect you to be familiar with the area you are commenting on. I hope this is helpful next time.

[Roxor128]

No, I guess not. It wouldn't be fair to expect you to be familiar with the area you are commenting on. I hope this is helpful next time.

I'm familiar with programs that support loading in shaders from a file, like the aforementioned video player, tools dedicated to shader prototyping, and of course games themselves. That is well inside the scope of the topic of game development or modding, which it seems I was foolish to assume was the topic of the thread.

[BlueTemplar]

Let me guess - this is a proprietary Nvidia enhancement for their cards only ?
Why would Factorio devs would want to support that ?*
(Especially since, considering the previous comment, an actual standardised alternative seems to be available ?)

*Well, I guess that they do support Razer Chroma / Logitech LED - not sure how standardized those are ?

[slippycheeze]

Let me guess - this is a proprietary Nvidia enhancement for their cards only ?

Well, a feature of their NVIDIA Experience app / in-game overlap, so as much so as sweetfx / reshade...

Why would Factorio devs would want to support that ?*
(Especially since, considering the previous comment, an actual standardised alternative seems to be available ?)
*Well, I guess that they do support Razer Chroma / Logitech LED - not sure how standardized those are ?

I respect your position, and it is reasoned and logical. I think you are wildly undervaluing good UI, UX, and market share. To the specific question:

Main reason: because cooperating means the UI is not post-processed, but the rest of the content is, plus this is a widely available tool requiring approximately zero technical knowledge, compared to reshade.

Which gives you a nice DLL, and some tools to inject it, and then all the gory technical stuff at the level of "edit the shader program if you want to change some parameters".

Also, Razer, Logitech, and the requested Corsair represent ... well, not the entire market for peripherals, but close enough that everything that isn't from them looks suspiciously like measurement error. So not standardized, but approximately 100 percent of flashy distracting peripherals by supporting the three.