Emulation Colour Correction / Filter Use Survey

So, I was thinking about the kind of ‘intended look’ for the gba fe titles, as gba is kind of infamous for being dark, with most developers compensating by making their games highly saturated and so it got me thinking.
I’d wager most romhack players tend to play on emulator, but how many of them use filters or colour correction? Should we be designing the art of our hacks around the idea people play with native emulator settings or use colour correcting filters?
Hopefully this survey can get enough answers that it might give hack creators some insight into the kind of palettes they should be building their game around and serve as a reference point.

  • GBA
  • GBA SP
  • Emulation - No Filters
  • Emulation - Colour Correction
  • Emulation - Other (e.g. HD Filters)
0 voters

If you use filters besides what’s mentioned here, please mention below!

1 Like

i think standard GBA no colour correction on a emulator colours hurt my eyes

1 Like

i don’t even know where they are in my emulators, no$gba seems to have something by default though and I does like how that ends up looking, but the brighter works.

1 Like

MGBA default which AFAIK doesn’t do anything.

Look, the main thing is that whatever that filter is that smooths over all the pixels and makes the entire game look like it’s coming through a glazed bathroom window looks fucking terrible.

9 Likes

No filters. And I prefer nearest neighbor scaling over bilinear when it comes to GBA.

2 Likes

I don’t use any colour correction or any filterrs. I like my pixels how the sprites are made.
I play on my tv via a hdmi cable. big screen and nice colours and everything

2 Likes

Romhacks will typically have been developed around the color you see without correction so unless you’re replayin FE6/7 over and over you’re probably going without color correction more than you’re going with color correction regardless

1 Like

Color correction filters are great for a few games (Harmony of Dissonance is the classic example) but otherwise it’s usually just a novelty. Especially when playing hacks which, as bas already been stated in this thread, are usually designed around the “incorrect” colors displayed in an emulator normally.

2 Likes

It depends on the game, but for the very bright and saturated games like FE6 & FE7, I prefer to use color correction to simulate the darker gba screen.
I think the Switch online version of FE7 is color corrected, so I tend to aim to a look like that, but no default on&off filter gets the same look.

But for romhack it depends on how bright they are so is a case by case thing.

Also, adding inter-frame blending to emulate the ghosting effect of the lcd screen.

1 Like

No, and honestly, I don’t think anyone makes art for a game with the assumption that someone will run it through an external filter. I personally would find it a bit disrespectful if I made something, then someone says it looks better with x filter.

1 Like