Oh no, I'm downloading Unity on my personal computer

Let's see if I can get this type of rendering out of their built in tools

The plan right now:

Render at 320x180 with render to texture and no anti-aliasing
Tint RGB color channels to appropriate CGA colors
Upscale to 1280x720
Apply post blur, bloom, phosphor pattern, and scanlines

Can I do it? NO IDEA

oh no game development is hard

(I got render to texture working, but... only just)

Ok, but seriously

Even though I have no programming experience, this is already better than Unreal because I have more access to parts of the rendering pipeline

I didn't WANT to use Unity because it doesn't have good visual scripting tools, but that's where I'm weak anyway

Welp

It took four hours and I had to buy a package of scripts from the Unity store, but I finally got pixel-perfect upscaled rendering working

This screenshot doesn't look like much, but it's actually the most important part of getting proper post-processing working

I can't wait to figure out which cleverly hidden checkbox I need to hit so post processing will start functioning

After two hours of trying to get it working last night, I'm not unconvinced that the cleverly hidden checkbox is the one that rolls me back to the previous Unity release

Me, attempting to use node-based shaders on a post process script in unity:

Me, realizing that Amplify has the exact post processing tools I want, AND it's on sale right now:

Gee whiz, I sure am glad these example assets are working perfectly

Test something on work computer

Works perfectly

Yay!

Test on personal computer

Doesn't work

Boo

Probably messed something up

Make fresh Unity project

Reimport necessary assets

Try same stuff

Still doesn't work

Pull out hair

Drink heavily

Move to woods

Die quietly

Why did it function perfectly on my work computer?

Because fuck you, that's why

Ah good, still definitely working as intended

So...

Should I roll back to one of the 2018 versions of Unity if I actually want to get post processing materials from Amplify working properly?

I have no idea what the fuck is going on, and I've spent about four hours trying to figure it out

HA! IT WORKS

Big thanks to @FoxBuchele for the suggestion to change to the standard renderer; apparently there are lots of unsupported features in the other render setups.

Now I can once again keep moving on my own post process stuff.

Update:

Before and after the current iteration of post processing

Next step is adding phosphors, scanlines, and a blur to the pixels to make them feel like they're little glowing dots rather than chunky squares

The colors come from the standard CGA palette, by the way

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter

I want this to look like a really pretty version of something that could've come out in 1983

Here are some screenshots from the Unreal version of this project that show a little of how the final is supposed to look

I want a very analog/CRT look

The last screenshot shows something I was never happy with in Unreal, now that I think about it

The cast shadows had very crisp edges that split individual "pixels" of the final render

Now that I can more easily render low res and upscale, this shouldn't be a problem

it

fucking

works