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

Daffy Duck

Member
Not making any promises but I'm trying to hook this up

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Your image isn't working for me.
 
While I am playing or in the menu if anyone hits any button on the FireStick remote I see a quick yellow text on the lower left side of the screen and the FireStick remote takes over. After that happens I can no longer control the game or the menu with my Bluetooth SNES controller.
This happens on both 1.5 and 1.6.
How can I prevent this from happening?
If I cannot prevent it then how can I fix it without having to relaunch RetroArch?
 

Zushin

Member
Just new to retroarch, set it up with the Beetle core HW for PSX. Set internal res to x2 and video driver to Vulkan but game crashes on any internal res other than native. Any possible solutions?
 

KainXVIII

Member
Just new to retroarch, set it up with the Beetle core HW for PSX. Set internal res to x2 and video driver to Vulkan but game crashes on any internal res other than native. Any possible solutions?

Also crashes on standard Beetle PSX core (not HW) with GL renderer when changing internal resolutions..
 
Just new to retroarch, set it up with the Beetle core HW for PSX. Set internal res to x2 and video driver to Vulkan but game crashes on any internal res other than native. Any possible solutions?

did you set the video driver to vulcan in the main driver menu (then exit retroarch to save the change) and in the psx hw core options as well.
 

KainXVIII

Member
Yeah, Beetle HW core works fine with Vulkan and 4x internal resolution (for example)
What are best setting for core? Or at least setting explanation (because there is no any)
 

fester

Banned
I don't see the option in the PSX core?

Those options might not be available until you've loaded the game content. Try changing the "Driver" setting to vulkan first, then load the game -> F1 and go to options to check that vulkan is set there, too. Also would be a good idea to update video drivers if it's been a while for you.

Also which CRT shader is best suitable for PSX games?

Personally I'm a big fan of crt-royale.
 

Zushin

Member
Those options might not be available until you've loaded the game content. Try changing the "Driver" setting to vulkan first, then load the game -> F1 and go to options to check that vulkan is set there, too. Also would be a good idea to update video drivers if it's been a while for you.



Personally I'm a big fan of crt-royale.

This is my driver window:


This is my option window when in MGS

Not seeing any option to change driver there?
 

KainXVIII

Member
I thought I had that selected so I deleted and redownloaded just that core and it worked! Thanks heaps. Crazy how much better it looks.

Have you managed to get Texture Filtering option to work? Change every setting and textures still looks unfiltered =(
PS - also PGXP (Parallel/Precision Geometry Transform Pipeline) is supposed to be look so glitchy?
 

fester

Banned
So I've tried the new MelonDS core and have games loading nicely, but for some strange reason none of my key/button bindings are working. (I can't even exit the game, I need to kill RetroArch just to end it.) Every other core works fine and I feel like I'm overlooking something really dumb - any thoughts?
 

Zushin

Member
Have you managed to get Texture Filtering option to work? Change every setting and textures still looks unfiltered =(
PS - also PGXP (Parallel/Precision Geometry Transform Pipeline) is supposed to be look so glitchy?

Not sure about texture filtering, but textures were still warping when PGXP was switched on for me. Not sure what the go is. Doesn't bother me too much because warping textures kinda is a part of the PS1 experience for me lol.
 

daninthemix

Member
Have you managed to get Texture Filtering option to work? Change every setting and textures still looks unfiltered =(
PS - also PGXP (Parallel/Precision Geometry Transform Pipeline) is supposed to be look so glitchy?

Texture Filtering doesn't work in the Vulkan Beetle driver.
 

Garcia

Member
Can anyone help me with this aspect ratio issue when using borders on GB/GBC games? I've been wrestling with this problem for nearly a year. Any time I use one of the handheld borders with Gambatte the aspect ratio for the game itself appears to be set to 16:9. I tried using the Sameboy core instead and the aspect ratio was 4:3, but the audio was all messed up. I would prefer to use Gambatte but I can't figure out how to fix the aspect ratio of the game.

Edit: TGB Dual gives me the same issue.

TrGtDRa.png

You can try editing your config file and add these parameters:

For retroarch.cfg:

custom_viewport_width = 710
custom_viewport_height = 640
custom_viewport_x = 600
custom_viewport_y = 220
aspect_ratio_index = 22

Btw, I found those yesterday on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdSpTUHIGgw&t=0s

They worked for me and I hope they do work for you too. It only applies to 1080p resolution btw.
 

hlhbk

Member
I just tried downloading the cheats zip file through the retroarch interface and every time it gets in the 80 percent range and the download fails. Anyone know how to fix this?
 

Tizoc

Member
Apologies if I asked this before (I searched my posts in this thread but seems I hadn't but still...), I'd like to know fi there are any emulators that can remove slowdown and/or sprite flickering, far as SNES, NES and Gen/MD games are concerned.
 

Awakened

Member
Apologies if I asked this before (I searched my posts in this thread but seems I hadn't but still...), I'd like to know fi there are any emulators that can remove slowdown and/or sprite flickering, far as SNES, NES and Gen/MD games are concerned.
Nestopia and probably FCEUX have options to disable the 8 sprites per scanline limit to help with flickering. BSNES-Mercury and SNES9x have a SuperFX overclock option to help with slowdown/general framerate in Starfox and the like. People have asked for an overclocking option in Genesis Plus GX, but it hasn't been added yet.
 

Lettuce

Member
Nestopia and probably FCEUX have options to disable the 8 sprites per scanline limit to help with flickering. BSNES-Mercury and SNES9x have a SuperFX overclock option to help with slowdown/general framerate in Starfox and the like. People have asked for an overclocking option in Genesis Plus GX, but it hasn't been added yet.

What about an overclock for normal SNES games??.....Super Ghouls & Ghosts im looking at you!
 

Rufus

Member
On Windows, you can just replace the executable, then download cores from within Retroarch. Update the core info file first, so you see the proper names. Any other entry in that that list should be self-explanatory.
 

Radius4

Member
Just a heads up
As of today, the "saves in content dir" functionality has changed. It's for the best, it will allow us to ship without a prebaked cfg on windows, and it will prevent the "my saves are gone" issue on android.

That said it does pose a problem for people who relied on this feature so if you want to use content dir after 1.6.3 do the following:

  • Navigate to Settings / User Interface
  • Enable Show Advanced Settings
  • Navigate to Settings / Saving
  • Enabled the respective settings for the stuff you want to reside with your content

 

Awakened

Member
The Mednafen Saturn core now has working 3D Pad support thanks to rtissera! You can press select to switch between analog and digital and there's even a deadzone adjustment core option. And CHD support was added so you can compress your Saturn dumps using chdman from stand alone MAME.
 

Rufus

Member
Eh, so far I'm reading the same old nay-saying that's also commonly found on Reddit.

One thing I can comment on as an outsider is that there is no winning on this point:
It also obfuscates large chunks of the emulator being used from the end user, which I feel is a disservice to the people who worked on that emulator - you should know what it is that you're using so that you know who to give credit to for the hard work that went into it.

Because emulator devs also don't want to deal with bug reports from people who are using a possibly outdated core. That's the reason some were renamed in the first place.

I also wouldn't put it past them to have an end goal of getting it into the Windows app store as a free download with paid in-app DLC.
LOL. The principal devs are hardcore open source advocates. There is little chance of this happening.



OK, got through the whole thing: point me to the clusterfuck please.
 
I downloaded this not long ago because I was thinking of streaming a popular imported music game series for PS1. Turns out, disc swapping PS1 games is broken as of the 1.6.x tree. Whelp, gotta find another emulator then. :/
 

Palom

Member
I downloaded this not long ago because I was thinking of streaming a popular imported music game series for PS1. Turns out, disc swapping PS1 games is broken as of the 1.6.x tree. Whelp, gotta find another emulator then. :/
A quirk I found is that you have to open the tray, go back to the emulator, then go back to the menu and change discs for it to work. Took me a while to figure that out while playing Lunar.

Previously, I'd just open the menu, open tray, change disc, close tray, close menu and it would work. Now it's open menu, open tray, close menu, open menu, change disc, close tray, close menu.
 

Radius4

Member
If you have pause while on menu enabled it is like that, because it's paused... so it doesn't register that you did all those actions.

If you don't have that pause enabled it just works.
 

Paragon

Member
A good thread with the MAME devs explaining why RetroArch is a clusterfuck of a program and shouldn't be supported.
I'll care once any other emulator or front-end has the extensive shader and cropping/scaling support that RetroArch does, along with support for per-game overrides.
As an example, there's no other emulator I'm aware of which will let you play Konami PS1 games in true 4:3 without aliasing or (significant) blurring.
They'll be displayed with borders and in the wrong aspect ratio, and if the emulator has the option to perform aspect ratio correction, it will cause aliasing/flickering when scrolling.
Being able to store profiles for these parameters on a per-game basis is really convenient.

My biggest issue with RetroArch is that there did not seem to be a good way to completely disable the synchronization stuff they're doing with audio/video.
It was amazing being able to finally play games without any dropped/repeated frames on a 60Hz display, but it did not play nicely with G-Sync when I last tried that.

They also seemed to be changing the way they handled shaders, and I've not investigated that yet.
I feat that some of the modified shaders I use may not have made the transition; e.g. shaders modified to handle scaling/blending operations in linear light rather than gamma light.
 

ADS

Member
Just a bunch of FUD.
We're not saints but we're not trying to harm any other projects either.

I love retroarch (and have contributed to it), but I don't particularly like the hard-fork development model for cores.

There isn't a strong focus on pushing improvements/changes upstream, and really poor quality patches are often accepted only to break things and have to be reverted/cleaned up after. There seems to be a strong "hack it now, fix it later" attitude which results in continually degrading code quality on things that aren't core to the project.

Additionally, poor SCM practices make it tough to merge back from upstream. Merges are often done in such a way that history is rewritten or lost and subsequent merges become much more difficult.

I realize that getting functionality out is important, but I think it'd be much healthier to work with upstream to get patches accepted, even at the expense of near term functionality. It hurts, but is far better long term for the success of an open source project.
 
A good thread with the MAME devs explaining why RetroArch is a clusterfuck of a program and shouldn't be supported.

http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthread...34&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1&vc=1

These MAME devs: the Retroarch devs are assholes for building our emulator into their general-purpose IO system that isn't exactly what we use!

Also these MAME devs: sorry folks we can't release MAME Android because we don't have enough dev bandwidth and our UI layer is such garbage it would be a massive rewrite to support.

sjILRZG.gif


I love retroarch (and have contributed to it), but I don't particularly like the hard-fork development model for cores.

This (unlike the linked thread) is pretty reasonable and actionable criticism, which is probably something the project could benefit from addressing.
 

linko9

Member
There are advantages and disadvantages to this program, but as time goes by the advantages have come to far outweigh the disadvantages for me. The obvious one is the convenience of not having 10 separate programs to handle 10 separate systems. More importantly, it standardizes features across platforms so that you're guaranteed to have certain features regardless of what core you're using. Often these features are not present in the standalone emulator, e.g. frame delay for decreasing input lag w/ vsync enabled, support for any resolution and display area you want, support for any shader you want, true fullscreen, and the list goes on. For many systems, retroarch provides the most lag-free emulation possible, and that's a huge deal for me. There are still some baroque design decisions like the way gamepads are handled, but once you get used to them it's not a big problem. I was initially very disdainful of retroarch, but as time goes by I've come to use it more than any other program for emulation, and have really come to appreciate it.
 

Awakened

Member
I love retroarch (and have contributed to it), but I don't particularly like the hard-fork development model for cores.

There isn't a strong focus on pushing improvements/changes upstream, and really poor quality patches are often accepted only to break things and have to be reverted/cleaned up after. There seems to be a strong "hack it now, fix it later" attitude which results in continually degrading code quality on things that aren't core to the project.

Additionally, poor SCM practices make it tough to merge back from upstream. Merges are often done in such a way that history is rewritten or lost and subsequent merges become much more difficult.

I realize that getting functionality out is important, but I think it'd be much healthier to work with upstream to get patches accepted, even at the expense of near term functionality. It hurts, but is far better long term for the success of an open source project.
Twinaphex has been pushing for more upstreamed cores lately though. Redream and the new PPSSPP core he's been working on are examples. Nestopia, Genesis Plus GX and SNES9x have always been upstream friendly AFAIK too. It just doesn't happen for every core. Sometimes upstream isn't interested or doesn't want the extra burden of libretro specific support requests.
 
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