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RETROARCH - The all-in-one emulator dreams are made of, son

S

Solid SOAP

Member
I got this up and running on my 3DS, it is a dream! I feel like I'm playing an officially distributed game from Nintendo! No slowdowns, no hiccups, it works perfectly.
 
E

EasyMode

Member
Thanks for the feedback folks.

Lettuce said:
Easymode, any chance you could add (not sure what the effect is called) the fade effect that solid12345 uses all around the edges of the screen in his old school analog crt shader for your next release?
Click to expand...

It looks like a vignette effect that mimics the curvature of the screen. I'm away from my PC this week, but I'll look into it when I get a chance.

Knurek said:
EasyMode, if I may ask - what devilry did you use on your shader. Not only does it look amazing, it also doesn't seem to take any GPU cycles. My GTX970 downclocks to 135 MHz while running your shader, most of other ones need the GPU to run at nominal clock.
Click to expand...

The first 4 shader passes are performed before any scaling takes place. By doing steps like gamma linearization and gaussian blurring at the source resolution (ie. 256x224 for a typical SNES game) you save the GPU from performing millions of calculations versus doing these steps at the output resolution (ie. 1440x1080). Looking at some related shaders, crt-interlaced-halation takes the same approach and should be light on the GPU, while crt-lottes-halation does everything in a single pass at output resolution and is very demanding.
 
A

Aeana

Member
I still don't really understand how to chain shaders together, but is it at all possible to use crt-easymode with tvout-tweaks? I really like the TV color levels and signal resolution options from that shader. I'm using the crt-royale+tvout-tweaks+image-adjustments shader now just because I like that so much.
 
C

charlequin

Banned
Aeana said:
I still don't really understand how to chain shaders together, but is it at all possible to use crt-easymode with tvout-tweaks? I really like the TV color levels and signal resolution options from that shader. I'm using the crt-royale+tvout-tweaks+image-adjustments shader now just because I like that so much.
Click to expand...

QUoQHXe.png
Click to expand...

http://pastebin.com/Y5BAzrkv -- should work if you drop it in the retroarch/shaders folder. Haven't even tried actually tweaking the billions of parameters, but it looks pretty nice already out of the box IMO. Plus it isn't ultra slow so I might wind up using this, just gotta see how it looks on my TV.
 
C

chunk3rvd

Member
Anyone ever run into issues with configuration settings not saving? Trying to setup an Android tablet and want to save the rom paths and button configs so I don't have to change them every time I open it. Settings just won't save though. Is there a particular flag I need to check or something I could be missing?
 
nkarafo

nkarafo

Member
Man, i cannot figure out the control options in RetroArch. I have several issues that i struggle with.

First of all, im using a 360 controller and in the Menu (by default) the "select" key is the B button and the "back" key is the A button. Every other application or game i'm using has A for select and X for back. Is there a way to change the menu controls to that, without messing up the console controller configs?

Also, configuring the buttons for each console is confusing. I don't know what refers to what. I see things like "User 1 B button (down)". What does that mean? Why is the B button connected to "down"? Then all the options are like button 0,1,2 and other numerals that i don't know where they refer to. Maybe i'm stupid but i just can't figure this out. Why can't be something as easy as binding "x" button of the controller to "x" button of the virtual SNES controller or something? Also, a picture of the controller for each core would help a lot.

I don't know, i find the whole button configuration in RA a nightmare and it's the main reason i don't want to upgrade, couse i know i will have to start all over again and it took me days of trial and error configuring the old version (and i still can't figure out how to change the menu button config).
 
nkarafo

nkarafo

Member
Rufus said:
This should clear up the mapping confusion at least:
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/RetroArch-Configuration#super-nintendo-controller

Scroll down to the controller diagrams.
Click to expand...
Thank you very much, i shall study it now

Edit: Still.... i can't figure out how to change the menu controls without messing with the console pad controls :(

Edit 2: It seems that every config i make for each console, affects the UI menu. So whenever i load a core with it's own options, these options transfer to the menu as well. Why can't the menu have it's own input options? Its very confusing and disorienting :(
 
A

Awakened

Member
nkarafo said:
Man, i cannot figure out the control options in RetroArch. I have several issues that i struggle with.

First of all, im using a 360 controller and in the Menu (by default) the "select" key is the B button and the "back" key is the A button. Every other application or game i'm using has A for select and X for back. Is there a way to change the menu controls to that, without messing up the console controller configs?

Also, configuring the buttons for each console is confusing. I don't know what refers to what. I see things like "User 1 B button (down)". What does that mean? Why is the B button connected to "down"? Then all the options are like button 0,1,2 and other numerals that i don't know where they refer to. Maybe i'm stupid but i just can't figure this out. Why can't be something as easy as binding "x" button of the controller to "x" button of the virtual SNES controller or something? Also, a picture of the controller for each core would help a lot.

I don't know, i find the whole button configuration in RA a nightmare and it's the main reason i don't want to upgrade, couse i know i will have to start all over again and it took me days of trial and error configuring the old version (and i still can't figure out how to change the menu button config).
Click to expand...
The parenthesis stuff just indicates where the face button is physically located on the controller. B button is "down" because it's the bottom face button in the Nintendo layout the RetroPad uses. That will correspond to X on a Sony controller or A on a 360 one. Depending on how old your RetroArch setup is, if you load a core and then load a game, the input labels in settings will change to show what the original system being emulated used. For example, "User 1 A button (right)" becomes "User 1 C" in Genesis Plus GX. The inputs for each user (player) were also all put into their own submenu's some time ago. Those changes made remapping a lot easier.
nkarafo said:
Edit 2: It seems that every config i make for each console, affects the UI menu. So whenever i load a core with it's own options, these options transfer to the menu as well. Why can't the menu have it's own input options? Its very confusing and disorienting :(
Click to expand...
There's a separate settings menu for Core Remapping. If you load a core and game, then remap stuff there and save, those mappings will only affect the core loaded. So your menu mappings done in the normal input settings will stay the same. Again, you might not have that menu option if your RetroArch setup is too old.
 
nkarafo

nkarafo

Member
Awakened said:
There's a separate settings menu for Core Remapping. If you load a core and game, then remap stuff there and save, those mappings will only affect the core loaded. So your menu mappings done in the normal input settings will stay the same. Again, you might not have that menu option if your RetroArch setup is too old.
Click to expand...
Ok, i'm using the latest version now (1.2.2) and i found the core input options. Thanks.
 
nkarafo

nkarafo

Member
Ok, i finally fixed any problems i had with the controls. Now one last problem remains, that is the same for all versions i tried so far.

Simply, sometimes scanline shaders don't align properly on the screen. The lines are uneven, making the image look like a mess. Sometimes, changing aspect ratio or using the "integer scale" fixed this. But other times i just can't use scanlines at all because of this. Other times the scanlines even appear vertical for some reason.

So, is there a way to fix/control these issues? Is it maybe my native resolution the problem (1360x768). Are those shaders made with a different resolution in mind?
 
Radius4

Radius4

Member
About the vert scanlines, scale should always be "don't care" for the scanline shader to work.

About uneven lines, the scanlines are not just black lines one pixel appart overlaid on the image, the shader is applied on top of the framebuffer, and that is later scaled to your screen size. So, It's impossible to have even scanlines at non-integer resolutions, for best results you would need either integer scale or get a higher res screen.

On non integer scenarios, changing aspect ratio only changes the horizontal aspect anyway...
 
nkarafo

nkarafo

Member
Radius4 said:
About the vert scanlines, scale should always be "don't care" for the scanline shader to work.

About uneven lines, the scanlines are not just black lines one pixel appart overlaid on the image, the shader is applied on top of the framebuffer, and that is later scaled to your screen size. So, It's impossible to have even scanlines at non-integer resolutions, for best results you would need either integer scale or get a higher res screen.

On non integer scenarios, changing aspect ratio only changes the horizontal aspect anyway...
Click to expand...
You are right, i don't seem to have problems with a 1080p display.

Anyway, i stumbled on another issue, so far the cores i'm trying have separate core control settings except MAME. Is there any other way to config MAME controls? Also, i know this wasn't supported a few months ago, but is there a way now to display proper names for MAME roms, for instance "Golden Axe" instead of "goldaxe"?
 
B

bacardi

Member
has anyone managed to get the retro shaders posted earlier to work on OS X using 1.2.2? I can't figure out why they're not working :(
 
T

TheGoddamn

Member
Is there something wrong in how I'm handling my NES playlist (using Nestopia)? For every other core the first option per game is "Start Content", followed by Name, Description, Developer, and so on.

The "Start Content" option for NES games is preceded by seven list items including Name, Developer, Releasedate Month, Releasedate Year, and so on. Its alleviated slightly by pressing right and up (to get to "Start Content"), but it is inconvenient.

EDIT: Updated to a nightly, and the problem's been resolved. Saw this issue mentioned here as well: https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/issues/1921

This thread is encouraging, especially with all the active contributors. I've subbed to it for years, but only just started wading into RetroArch this past week.
 
L

Lettuce

Member
Ok bare with me here, this is a post from Easymode on the libretro forms regarding his new shader, thought id post it here as i think Easymode is more active on this forum and as i find it one of the best CRT shaders id like to figure it out!. Here goes.....

EasyMode said:
In the meantime, I'll try to explain a few quirks:

When the parameters say Min and Max (ie. Scanline Strength Min.), it allows you to set the strength of the effect differently for bright and dark colors. For example, if I want the scanlines to be invisible in white, I would set Scanline Strength Min. 0.0. Conversely, if I I want scanlines to be very bold in dark tones, I would set Scanline Strength Max. 1.0.

The beam parameters are a bit different. Setting the Min. lower (ie. 0.5) will result in a narrower beam for dark colors, while setting the Max. higher (ie. 4.0) will make the beam thicker in bright colors.
Click to expand...

Lettuce said:
You say that to get scanlines to be invisible in bright colour areas you would set the 'Scanline Strength Min' value to '0.0' BUT if you want bold scanlines in bright colour areas you changed the 'Scanline Strength Max' setting to 1.0!!!??............so what happens if you dont touch the 'Scanline Strength Max' setting and just change 'Scanline Strength Min' value to 1.0???, surely that then makes the scanlines more visiable in bright colour areas???, as if setting it to '0.0' makes them invisible in bright areas then setting the value to '1.0' has the opposite effect and makes them very visible??, if this is the case then whats the point of the 'scanline Strength Max' setting??

I basically prefer the more bolder SONY BVM scanline look to my games and want to achieve equal scanline width/strength across the screen, the scanlines in the bright colour areas are the same width/strength as they are in dark colour areas. I finding it hard to understand what i need to set these Scanline Strength setting as!!??. I'll take a stab at it though....

If i want to adjust the strength of the scanlines in dark colour areas i need to alter the 'Scanline Strength Max' setting and to adjust the strength of the scanlines in the bright colour areas i need to adjust the 'Scanline Strength Min' setting, is this correct??, if so is that the same for the beam parameters min and max settings also??. If this IS the cause would it make more sense to change the name of the parameters to something like.....

'Scanline Strength Bright Colours'
'Scanline Strength Dark Colours'

So if i changed the 'Scanline Strength Min' & 'Scanline Strength Max' to the same value, ie.....

'Scanline Strength Min 0.80'
'Scanline Strength Max 0.80'

would this give me equal scanlines in both dark and bright areas, or is it not as simple as that??.

Is there an algorithm that can be use in the shader so it automatically adjust the scanline strength whilst keeping equal scanline strength across the whole screen, so scanlines are the same weather in dark or light areas and call that parameter something like 'Equal scanlines setting' and this can just be turned on and off, so it works out what the Scanline Strength Min & Scanline Strength Max settings need to be to achieve equal scanlines without the user having to do trail and error with the min and max settings to work this out. Maybe look at then removing the Scanline Strength Min and max settings and just have one setting called 'Scanline Strength' or have both settings in (for people who like to manually change stuff) and enabling this 'equal scanline setting' disables the 'scanline strength min & max' settings and enables the 'Scanline Strength' setting . Also have the same type of option for the Scanline Beam parameters

Does any of that make any sense to you Easymode....i know its alot to throw at you, just thinking on how to make it more straight forward to achieve even scanlines or maybe it is and im just not understanding it correctly!?
Click to expand...
 
BONKERS

BONKERS

Member
nkarafo said:
Ok, i finally fixed any problems i had with the controls. Now one last problem remains, that is the same for all versions i tried so far.

Simply, sometimes scanline shaders don't align properly on the screen. The lines are uneven, making the image look like a mess. Sometimes, changing aspect ratio or using the "integer scale" fixed this. But other times i just can't use scanlines at all because of this. Other times the scanlines even appear vertical for some reason.

So, is there a way to fix/control these issues? Is it maybe my native resolution the problem (1360x768). Are those shaders made with a different resolution in mind?
Click to expand...

If your native resolution really is 1360, you have a problem. Your TV is more likely 1366. Which should be detected and used as native.
If not, something is wonky with EDID detection perhaps.
You can get decent integer scaled SL shaders to work at 768p. (Not amazing as higher res will look better but it's still decent).


http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison.php?id=141712
 
BONKERS

BONKERS

Member
You listed the same resolution. But generally all 1366x768 TVs support 1360, but native is 1366.

Some are incorrectly indentified by edid as 1360.
 
K

Knurek

Member
Hmm, I've upgraded to Windows 10 and now I seem to be getting absurd CPU usage with Retroarch.

I'm talking 25-30% utilization spread through all of CPU cores on a i7-4790K with only the menu running.
Even running NDS emulation doesn't budge the number much (goes from 25 to 40%).

Anything weird you have to disable on Windows 10 that could be causing such high CPU usage?
 
A

Awakened

Member
Knurek said:
Hmm, I've upgraded to Windows 10 and now I seem to be getting absurd CPU usage with Retroarch.

I'm talking 25-30% utilization spread through all of CPU cores on a i7-4790K with only the menu running.
Even running NDS emulation doesn't budge the number much (goes from 25 to 40%).

Anything weird you have to disable on Windows 10 that could be causing such high CPU usage?
Click to expand...
I get sound crackling with some cores because it's not utilizing enough CPU unless I have certain processes running in the background. It's weird because one that works for me is Antimicro; keymapping software which uses 0% CPU most of the time. There's an open issue on github about it here: https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/issues/1491
 
R

Rich!

Member
Just tried the android port for the first time in a year or so.

Man. I gotta be honest, the UI is not any good for touch devices. I know Retroarch like the back of my hand and I simply cannot use the menu on my Xperia Z2. Numerous issues include that the touch inputs fail to register most of the time and that what works well as a menu on other devices clearly does not suit mobile. It's at the point where I quite simply gave up. It's near unusable now and trying to load a game is an exercise in frustration. This isn't hyperbole, this is my honest experience with the app. Mobile needs a completely different approach to UI.

I've had a quick look on the android store and it looks like I'm not alone, the reviews have given it an absolute hammering since the revision.

I can see a new menu is being developed, the screenshot on twitter looks significantly more appropriate for touch devices. Good.
 
Radius4

Radius4

Member
Knurek said:
Hmm, I've upgraded to Windows 10 and now I seem to be getting absurd CPU usage with Retroarch.

I'm talking 25-30% utilization spread through all of CPU cores on a i7-4790K with only the menu running.
Even running NDS emulation doesn't budge the number much (goes from 25 to 40%).

Anything weird you have to disable on Windows 10 that could be causing such high CPU usage?
Click to expand...


NVIDIA GPU? I have profiled this issue with verysleepy and it's Nvidia's driver not Retroarch itself...

In the bright side of doesn't affect performance (for me at least)
 
Vorg

Vorg

Banned
Rich! said:
Just tried the android port for the first time in a year or so.

Man. I gotta be honest, the UI is not any good for touch devices. I know Retroarch like the back of my hand and I simply cannot use the menu on my Xperia Z2. Numerous issues include that the touch inputs fail to register most of the time and that what works well as a menu on other devices clearly does not suit mobile. It's at the point where I quite simply gave up. It's near unusable now and trying to load a game is an exercise in frustration. This isn't hyperbole, this is my honest experience with the app. Mobile needs a completely different approach to UI.

I've had a quick look on the android store and it looks like I'm not alone, the reviews have given it an absolute hammering since the revision.

I can see a new menu is being developed, the screenshot on twitter looks significantly more appropriate for touch devices. Good.
Click to expand...

I have to agree. I'm still using version 1.0.0.1 on my jxd s7800b because I simply can't deal with the UI. It's unusable in my opinion. It's a shame to miss out on the updated cores, but I can at least make that version work the way I want it to.
 
Radius4

Radius4

Member
You can just switch to RGUI and use an overlay.
While the GUI might be bad functionally it's waaaay better than 1.0.0.2
 
C

calcetinvolador

Banned
can anyone recommend me some shaders for the game boy advance? im using a crt shader now and although it looks good, it doesn´t look the same as a real game boy advance.
 
R

RedSwirl

Junior Member
Haven't been here or updated RetroArch in a while, but I don't like the look of the main menu it has now. I preferred it when the OS actually had that SNES-style look to it. Is there any way I can change it?
 
A

Awakened

Member
RedSwirl said:
Haven't been here or updated RetroArch in a while, but I don't like the look of the main menu it has now. I preferred it when the OS actually had that SNES-style look to it. Is there any way I can change it?
Click to expand...
Yep, go into Settings, Driver and change the Menu Driver to rgui.
 
C

Copons

Member
Finally got everything back to working condition after a format, yay!

I have a question about borders: as for now, when I load a border, it gets cut off at the emulator screen ratio. Is there a way to allow the border to scale up outside to fill (as much as possible) the actual screen size?

I mean, I'm on a 1080 monitor, and if I use the GB 4x border (this may be incorrect, as I'm not at home, but still) to get the most out of my vertical space, the border is cut off just a bit outside the actual screen and it looks kinda bad, considering that there's so much wasted space.
 
Vorg

Vorg

Banned
Radius4 said:
You can just switch to RGUI and use an overlay.
While the GUI might be bad functionally it's waaaay better than 1.0.0.2
Click to expand...

I tried. Really, I did. It's a mess. What was the point of changing the ui anyway. It's full of pointless stuff. Like you start the app and there's a menu with 2 options. Start retroarch or quit. Why? That's just an example. It's way more complicated than it needs to be.
 
C

Copons

Member
Copons said:
Finally got everything back to working condition after a format, yay!

I have a question about borders: as for now, when I load a border, it gets cut off at the emulator screen ratio. Is there a way to allow the border to scale up outside to fill (as much as possible) the actual screen size?

I mean, I'm on a 1080 monitor, and if I use the GB 4x border (this may be incorrect, as I'm not at home, but still) to get the most out of my vertical space, the border is cut off just a bit outside the actual screen and it looks kinda bad, considering that there's so much wasted space.
Click to expand...

I've solved this, so in case someone else is stuck here too, this is what I did.

I had, cough... cough...
the aspect ratio set to Config instead of 16:9
cough... cough..., so I guess the shader, not knowing better than that, got cut off at the core ratio.
It was a pretty dumb thing, but I didn't think that shaders sizes are bound to the general settings aspect ratio. :(
 
Radius4

Radius4

Member
Vorg said:
I tried. Really, I did. It's a mess. What was the point of changing the ui anyway. It's full of pointless stuff. Like you start the app and there's a menu with 2 options. Start retroarch or quit. Why? That's just an example. It's way more complicated than it needs to be.
Click to expand...

It is, we know, we have been able to kill the native ui entirely yet.
 
nkarafo

nkarafo

Member
Has anyone tried the DosBox core yet? I can't make it work fast enough.... even games like Wolfenstein 3D run at, like, 5 fps and the sound skips horribly. Tried changing the cycles in core options but there's hardly any difference.

Unless i'm missing something.
 
O

omgkitty

Member
Does anyone have a guide to setup this on Mac? I've yet to be able to get a build to load correctly. Almost all of them either crash immediately or won't open at all. I got one to load, but from there it will not load any cores I try to select.
 
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