Scanline Stack Lite - Free Retro CRT Shader for Godot 4

Put your Godot 4 game on a curved CRT screen for free: add one node, pick a preset, done.

Want all 10? Get the full Scanline Stack for $6.

Scanline Stack Lite is the free sample of Scanline Stack: the same RetroScreenFX node and the same shader code, with 3 of the 10 presets and 3 of the 8 passes. Use it in your released games, commercial or not.

Works in the Compatibility, Mobile and Forward+ renderers (Godot 4.4+). Only canvas_item screen shaders, nothing Forward+-only.

What's inside

• 3 presets: Arcade CRT (curved glass, scanlines, RGB phosphor mask, light colour fringe), Cinema Fringe (strong lens-style colour fringe, film grain, vignette) and Off. Plus Custom to build your own look.
• 3 passes, each also usable as a plain .gdshader: CRT (curvature, scanlines, scanline count, RGB phosphor mask, vignette, beam softness, brightness, flicker, rounded corners), Chromatic aberration (sideways or lens-style) and Film grain (animated).
• A demo scene (art drawn by code, no third-party assets), a smoke test scene, README.txt, LICENSE.txt and a link to the full pack.

Drop it in (about a minute)

1. Copy addons/retro_screen_fx into your project (no plugin to enable) and add a RetroScreenFX node to your scene.
2. Pick a preset in the inspector. Tweak any value in the CRT, Chromatic Aberration and Film Grain groups.
3. Optional: drive it from code.

$RetroScreenFX.apply_preset("Arcade CRT")   # by name or by enum value
$RetroScreenFX.crt_curvature = 0.2           # every value stays editable
$RetroScreenFX.enabled = false               # master switch

What the full Scanline Stack adds

• 7 more looks: Handheld 4-Color, PS1, VHS Tape, Dither 1-Bit, Amber Terminal, Comic Poster, Retro PC Dither.
• 5 more passes: PSX, VHS, Posterize, Dither (Bayer 2x2/4x4/8x8, 2-4 colour palettes) and Game Boy.
• A browser demo of all 10 presets on its page.

Upgrading keeps your work: the full pack uses the same folder, node name and preset values. We saved a Lite scene set to Cinema Fringe, swapped in the full addon, and the scene loaded with the same preset and values.

Tested on

Our Lite smoke test (79 checks) passes on Godot 4.4.1 in the Compatibility, Mobile and Forward+ renderers, windowed, on one Windows desktop GPU. Not tested: real phones, a web export of Lite, other GPUs, other Godot versions.

License

Same license as the full pack. Commercial use is OK in your own games and projects, no credit required. You may change the files. You may not resell, share or redistribute the files (modified or not), alone or inside another asset pack, template or plugin. Shipping the effects inside an exported game is always allowed. Full text in LICENSE.txt.

Made with AI help

Made with the help of an AI coding assistant. The shaders were written from scratch from the underlying maths; no third-party shader code was copied. The demo visuals are procedural.

Want all 10? Get the full Scanline Stack for $6.