vkBasalt is a Vulkan post-processing layer for improving the visuals of games. Expect bugs from it as it is one of my first projects. Use it at your own risk.

Currently, the built-in effects are:

• 3D color lookup table
• Contrast Adaptive Sharpening
• Denoised Luma Sharpening
• Enhanced Subpixel Morphological Anti-Aliasing
• Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing

It is also possible to use ReShade FX shaders.

sudo apt install vkbasalt

sudo dnf install vkBasalt

sudo xbps-install vkBasalt

You can enable the layer with an environment variable.

Follow these steps with Lutris:

1. Right-click a game and click Configure.
2. Go to the System options tab and scroll down to Environment variables.
3. Click Add and add ENABLE_VKBASALT under Key and 1 under Value.

When using the terminal or an application (.desktop) file, run:

ENABLE_VKBASALT=1 yourgame

With Steam, edit your launch options and add:

ENABLE_VKBASALT=1 %command% 

Settings, like the CAS sharpness amount, can be changed in the config file.

The config file will be searched for in the locations:

• $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/vkBasalt/vkBasalt.conf or ~/.config/vkBasalt/vkBasalt.conf if XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set
• $XDG_DATA_HOME/vkBasalt/vkBasalt.conf or ~/.local/share/vkBasalt/vkBasalt.conf if XDG_DATA_HOME is not set
• /etc/vkBasalt.conf
• /etc/vkBasalt/vkBasalt.conf
• /usr/share/vkBasalt/vkBasalt.conf
• A file set with the environment variable VKBASALT_CONFIG_FILE=/path/to/vkBasalt.conf
• vkBasalt.conf in the game's working directory

You can create a file named vkBasalt.conf in the game's working directory and change the values there if you want to make changes for only one game.

You must set reshadeTexturePath and reshadeIncludePath to the matching directories from the repository to run ReShade FX shaders, like shaders from the ReShade repository. You must set a custom effect name to the shader path then add that effect name to effects like every other effect to use a specific shader.

effects = colorfulness:denoise

colorfulness = /home/user/reshade-shaders/Shaders/Colourfulness.fx
denoise = /home/user/reshade-shaders/Shaders/Denoise.fx
reshadeTexturePath = /home/user/reshade-shaders/Textures
reshadeIncludePath = /home/user/reshade-shaders/Shaders

The Home key can be used to toggle the applied effects. The key can also be changed in the config file. It will not work on pure Wayland as it is based on X11, but should not crash without X11.

The amount of debug output can be set with the VKBASALT_LOG_LEVEL environment variable, like VKBASALT_LOG_LEVEL=debug. Valid values are: trace, debug, info, warn, error, none.

The logger outputs to stderr by default. A file as output location can be set with the VKBASALT_LOG_FILE environment variable, like VKBASALT_LOG_FILE="vkBasalt.log".

Before building, you will need:

• GCC ≥ 9
• glslang
• SPIR-V headers
• Vulkan headers
• X11 development files

These instructions use --prefix=/usr, that is not recommended in general as vkBasalt will be installed in directories that are meant for the package manager. An alternative is not setting the prefix, so it will be installed in /usr/local. But you must ensure the ld finds the library; /usr/local is probably not in the default path.

Prefer to use distro-provided packages in general.

git clone https://github.com/DadSchoorse/vkBasalt.git
cd vkBasalt

Ensure the PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib32/pkgconfig and --libdir=lib32 are right for your distro and change them if needed. E.g., you must replace lib32 by lib/i386-linux-gnu on Debian-based distros.

ASFLAGS=--32 CFLAGS=-m32 CXXFLAGS=-m32 PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib32/pkgconfig meson setup --prefix=/usr --buildtype=release --libdir=lib32 -Dwith_json=false builddir.32
ninja -C builddir.32 install

meson setup --buildtype=release --prefix=/usr builddir
ninja -C builddir install

It is a joke: Vulkan post-processing → after vulcan → basalt.

Yes.

Maybe. It has not happened yet to my knowledge, but do not blame me if your frog dies.

No. I do not know anything about OpenGL and I do not want to either. Also, OpenGL has no layer system like Vulkan.

Maybe, but not soon.

Not really. The code was mostly written from scratch. vkBasalt directly uses ReShade source code for the shader compiler (thanks @crosire), but that is about it.

No. Depth buffer access is not ready yet, shaders that need many techniques do not work and there might still be issues with blending and stencil.

There is a WIP version you can enable with depthCapture = on. It will cause many issues especially on non-Nvidia hardware. Also, the chosen depth buffer is not always the one wanted.

There is some support for it #46. An easy way to do it is to simply edit the shader file.