Screenspace General

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Screenspace_General is a Vertex shader available in all Source games since Source 2007.^[confirm] It is most commonly used to draw generic screenspace effects.

Unlike other shaders using screenspaceeffect as its vertex shader, screenspace_general allows developers to easily access and modify its pixel shader, 4 texture samplers and 4 shader register constants.^[Clarify]

This can be useful for quickly iterating and testing screen effects, without having to reload all shaders, or recompile stdshaders to define/modify parameters.

Notable usage

dev/halo_add_to_screen

Used by the TF2 Glow Effect (2013 SDK) to help create an outline around models using stencils. It uses the haloaddoutline_ps20 pixel shader to apply cheap blur. $C0_X controls the glow fade value (restricted to 1.0f in code.)

Todo: Test if changing $C0_X actually does what it says it is supposed to do.

Parameters

$PIXSHADER

$VERTEXSHADER

Custom shader inputs

$c0_x $c0_y $c0_z $c0_w $c1_x $c1_y $c1_z $c1_w $c2_x $c2_y $c2_z $c2_w $c3_x $c3_y $c3_z $c3_w $c4_x $c4_y $c4_z $c4_w $c5_x $c5_y $c5_z $c5_w

$TEXTURE1 $TEXTURE2 $TEXTURE3

Other parameters

$DISABLE_COLOR_WRITES

$ALPHATESTED $ALPHA_BLEND $ALPHA_BLEND_COLOR_OVERLAY

$LINEARREAD_BASETEXTURE $LINEARREAD_TEXTURE1 $LINEARREAD_TEXTURE2 $LINEARREAD_TEXTURE3 $LINEARWRITE

$COPYALPHA

$X360APPCHOOSER

$VERTEXTRANSFORM $VERTEXNORMAL $ALPHABLEND $MULTIPLYCOLOR $WRITEALPHA $WRITEDEPTH

$TCSIZE0 $TCSIZE1 $TCSIZE2 $TCSIZE3 $TCSIZE4 $TCSIZE5 $TCSIZE6 $TCSIZE7

$POINTSAMPLE_BASETEXTURE $POINTSAMPLE_TEXTURE1 $POINTSAMPLE_TEXTURE2 $POINTSAMPLE_TEXTURE3

$CULL $DEPTHTEST

$VIEWPROJMAT $INVVIEWPROJMAT $BlendOpMin

Tools

An SDK to easily create custom pixel shaders for any Source game is available here: ficool2/sdk_screenspace_shaders.

Note:Although not intended. This shader also correctly displays on brushes, info_overlays, decals, and models (requires $softwareskin 1 and $translucent 1)

Todo: Is this sdk_screenspace_shaders exclusive?