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NinjaCatfish · Jul 30, 2013

I gave Retroarch a good try on my Wii, but the pain of setting it up just didn't seem worthwhile compared to just launching into FCEUGX/Snes9XGX/GenPlusGX.

Though, with all the possibilities for custom borders and the like, I'm tempted to set this up on my PC so I can get it running at my TV's native 1080p resolution and playing around with proper scanline effects which seem absent from some Wii emulators.

Great OP btw.

polyh3dron · Jul 30, 2013

Is it just me or does Super Mario Kart not work with the BSNES core?

Seems like all DSP games like Super Mario Kart, Mega Man X2 and 3 etc don't work with it.

alr1ght · Jul 30, 2013

http://forum.themaister.net/viewtopic.php?id=67

polyh3dron · Jul 30, 2013

ahh nice, thanks alr1ght

edit: that modified BSNES core from that thread runs the DSP games, but breaks Xinput controller support (such as wireless 360 controllers). arrrgggghhhh

Awakened · Jul 30, 2013

polyh3dron said:
ahh nice, thanks alr1ght

edit: that modified BSNES core from that thread runs the DSP games, but breaks Xinput controller support (such as wireless 360 controllers). arrrgggghhhh

Getting X2, X3 and Mario Kart to work with the BSNES cores was a pain, but I figured out how to do it with the official latest ones you can download through Phoenix:

1. Get the normal cx4.rom for BSNES 0.87 and up and rename it to cx4.data.rom. That will get X2 and X3 working.

2. Get the normal dsp1b.rom for BSNES 0.87 and up and use dd for Windows with these two command lines:

Code:

dd if=dsp1b.rom of=dsp1b.program.rom bs=256 count=24
dd if=dsp1b.rom of=dsp1b.data.rom bs=256 count=8 skip=24

That will split it into dsp1b.data.rom and dsp1b.program.rom which you'll need for Mario Kart.

3. Put these three files in your SNES system folder. That's it.

polyh3dron · Jul 30, 2013

only special chips I could find for BSNES were DSP1-4 and ST10, 11 and 18... No CX4.

Apparently byuu used to host it until he changed over to that Higan thing he makes now.

kiunchbb · Jul 30, 2013

rockmanjoe said:
So good:

Holy shit that hd filter is amazing.

Awakened · Jul 30, 2013

polyh3dron said:
only special chips I could find for BSNES were DSP1-4 and ST10, 11 and 18... No CX4.

Apparently byuu used to host it until he changed over to that Higan thing he makes now.

You should be able to find all of them in a single archive if you look for dsp roms.

polyh3dron · Jul 30, 2013

Awakened said:
You should be able to find all of them in a single archive if you look for dsp roms.

I guess I'm the worst googler on the planet.

I did get Super Mario Kart working though, so thanks for that

Just working on MMX2/3 now

Dizzy-4U · Jul 30, 2013

polyh3dron said:
been messing around with this and I guess you can just launch games straight from the command line with it! looks like I'm replacing all my SNES9X batch files with RetroArch batch files and then I'm running BSNES and using Big Picture Mode as my frontend for each individual game Starts in fullscreen, no shitty windows menus or mouse cursors, and esc to exit right back to Big Picture Mode. Pure comfy couch console emulation bliss. Also, the Nestopia core in this works way better in this kind of setup than launching the full Nestopia.

Can you show an example of the command line for an individual game? I'm very interested in this.

Edit: Oh wait, I think I found it in the log.

Rich! · Jul 30, 2013

Just a few more screenies, now that I've got FRAPS. I tried doing a video, but the framerate on the resulting files is really bad. Anyway:

I made a new border for Game Boy games.

Sweet DMG filter again!

New SNES border I made. Prefer it to the garish one I had before.

Curved CRT filter!

And just a few GBA games.

right im done for now. its all set up, and it's all looking awesome. fuck yeah

SgtCobra · Jul 30, 2013

The Faceless Master said:
via USB or BT and what Android version and device?

Preferably BT, Samsung Galaxy S4 Android 4.2.2
And wow games like Megaman Zero run horrible on this thing, I'm not really convinced of this emulator yet..

polyh3dron · Jul 30, 2013

Dizzy-4U said:
Can you show an example of the command line for an individual game? I'm very interested in this.

Edit: Oh wait, I think I found it in the log.

here's one of my batch files:

Code:

cd "M:\Emulation\RetroArch"
retroarch -c SNES.cfg "M:\Emulation\Game Systems\SNES\ROMs\Super Metroid (Japan, USA) (En,Ja).sfc"

Keep in mind you need to set up the CFG file properly using alr1ght's directions in order for this to work.

I use a program called "Slimm BAT to EXE" to convert the batch files to EXE files and then I add them as non-Steam games to Steam.

Also, if you go to the Steam Custom Icon GAF thread, you can find custom icons for some games there, or try the Steam Banners site.

SparkTR · Jul 30, 2013

I can probably build a HTPC with C2D e8500 and a Nvidia 9800GTX+. Would that be suitable for this kind of thing? I have so many consoles around my TV, this would be a lifesaver.

efyu_lemonardo · Jul 30, 2013

alr1ght said:
That gameboy filter is nuts. Pretty much spot on.

indeed! Great thread OP!

richisawesome said:
Just a few more screenies, now that I've got FRAPS. I tried doing a video, but the framerate on the resulting files is really bad. Anyway:

I made a new border for Game Boy games.

Sweet DMG filter again!

New SNES border I made. Prefer it to the garish one I had before.

Curved CRT filter!

And just a few GBA games.

right im done for now. its all set up, and it's all looking awesome. fuck yeah

Oh WOW. I need this.

Knurek · Jul 30, 2013

polyh3dron said:
I use a program called "Slimm BAT to EXE" to convert the batch files to EXE files and then I add them as non-Steam games to Steam.

No need to do that.

Rename the game.bat to game.exe, add that to steam, rename it back to game.bat, edit the Steam shortcut to point to game.bat.

Will work then.

plutoknight · Jul 30, 2013

richisawesome said:
Just a few more screenies, now that I've got FRAPS. I tried doing a video, but the framerate on the resulting files is really bad. Anyway:

I made a new border for Game Boy games.

Sweet DMG filter again!

New SNES border I made. Prefer it to the garish one I had before.

Curved CRT filter!

And just a few GBA games.

right im done for now. its all set up, and it's all looking awesome. fuck yeah

Those borders are amazing. Do want!

On another note..I'm trying to get Retroarch on the Wii working....but it refuses to launch

. Oh well, something fun to mess with for the day! That and getting borders to work on my PC version.

TyrantGuardian · Jul 30, 2013

Here's some Steam Icons I made for Big Picture Mode/Grid View, if anyone is interested in them.

Rar File: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/54167836/steamicons.rar

This stuff is amazing, I can just boot these games without even touching my keyboard or any settings at all.

Tain · Jul 30, 2013

I tried this out and didn't have much luck. Too laggy with vsync (both with and without hard GPU sync), and without vsync the screen tearing is... strange. Heavy. All over the place. When the screen scrolls it's almost like entire portions of the screen detatch and jitter, almost like there are multiple tear lines somehow. A far cry from the single tear line I see with the same games in MESS.

Awakened · Jul 30, 2013

Tain said:
I tried this out and didn't have much luck. Too laggy with vsync (both with and without hard GPU sync), and without vsync the screen tearing is... strange. Heavy. All over the place. When the screen scrolls it's almost like entire portions of the screen detatch and jitter, almost like there are multiple tear lines somehow. A far cry from the single tear line I see with the same games in MESS.

Did you make sure to switch to the gl driver? Hard sync only applies to that, not Direct 3D. In my tests, D3D was the laggiest, OGL was better and OGL plus hard sync was the best, particularly with sync frames 0 (which is the default). Even so, input lag varies based on all kinds of hardware and software factors so hard sync might not fix it in your case.

Actually, the lowest I can get input lag is by using my 120hz monitor, but that causes stuttering at a regular interval in every emulator I've tried. I have to switch it to 60hz mode if I want perfect smoothness.

low-G · Jul 30, 2013

low-G said:
How do I actually download a directory of shaders off of github? I want to acquire the GameBoy filters: https://github.com/libretro/common-shaders/tree/master/handheld/gameboy

rockmanjoe said:
So good:

How do I do this?

Tain · Jul 30, 2013

Awakened said:
Did you make sure to switch to the gl driver? Hard sync only applies to that, not Direct 3D. In my tests, D3D was the laggiest, OGL was better and OGL plus hard sync was the best, particularly with sync frames 0 (which is the default). Even so, input lag varies based on all kinds of hardware and software factors so hard sync might not fix it in your case.

Actually, the lowest I can get input lag is by using my 120hz monitor, but that causes stuttering at a regular interval in every emulator I've tried. I have to switch it to 60hz mode if I want perfect smoothness.

I was using GL for Hard Sync, yeah. I was testing this out on my plasma, which I've determined to have two frames of lag from high speed camera testing, and because I don't like to stack vsync lag on of the plasma's lag I default to turning vsync off. I figured I'd turn it back on and try hard sync (since hard sync seems to require vsync?) to see if it was good enough, and it wasn't. It might be better than plain old vsync, I'd have to camera test it on my sub 1 frame lag monitor to see by how much. But for general use on my plasma I need the vsync-free experience to be good.

Hyllian · Jul 30, 2013

low-G said:
How do I do this?

Enter the main repo page: https://github.com/libretro/common-shaders

And look for a button at the right side with this: "Download ZIP". You download all repo in only one zip file.

Awakened · Jul 30, 2013

If you go back to the main shaders page there is a download zip link on the right to download all shaders at once.

Edit: Beaten

Tain said:
I was using GL for Hard Sync, yeah. I was testing this out on my plasma, which I've determined to have two frames of lag from high speed camera testing, and because I don't like to stack vsync lag on of the plasma's lag I default to turning vsync off. I figured I'd turn it back on and try hard sync (since hard sync seems to require vsync?) to see if it was good enough, and it wasn't. It might be better than plain old vsync, I'd have to camera test it on my sub 1 frame lag monitor to see by how much. But for general use on my plasma I need the vsync-free experience to be good.

Yep, it only applies with vsync on. Vsync off really improves latency, but the tearing is so bad I've never been able to leave it off.

I'd like to see 120hz support in emulators. Maybe if byuu or one of the other open source developers get that working it'll propagate into most open source emulators.

IMACOMPUTA · Jul 30, 2013

Found this:
http://forum.themaister.net/viewtopic.php?id=658

Freakin' awesome.

Dizzy-4U · Jul 30, 2013

polyh3dron said:
here's one of my batch files:

Code:

cd "M:\Emulation\RetroArch" retroarch -c SNES.cfg "M:\Emulation\Game Systems\SNES\ROMs\Super Metroid (Japan, USA) (En,Ja).sfc"

Keep in mind you need to set up the CFG file properly using alr1ght's directions in order for this to work.

I use a program called "Slimm BAT to EXE" to convert the batch files to EXE files and then I add them as non-Steam games to Steam.

Also, if you go to the Steam Custom Icon GAF thread, you can find custom icons for some games there, or try the Steam Banners site.

Thanks. I'll try to make it work tonight when I get home.

Awakened · Jul 30, 2013

Squarepusher shot me a PM on the libretro boards about the best way to improve latency, though it's only available in Linux:

you might want to inform them that for low-latency purposes - the best solution right now involves KMS on Linux. Your video card needs to support KMS (Kernel Mode Setting) in order to be able to use this. Using KMS will give you fine-grained control over the front and back buffer and will ensure the smoothest possible gameplay - as well as the lowest input/audio/video latency imaginable.

Note that KMS means that you are not running an X11 server or any compositing manager. Windows and X11 Linux can never really compete with KMS from a latency perspective because the GL drivers have countless hacks implemented in them and do all sorts of crazy buffering schemes over which you have no control over.

So really - latency most of the time is a video driver issue - and the severity of it depends entirely on what kind of black magic is being done inside the video driver. So yeah, it's good advice to suggest to the guy to use either the Direct3D or the OpenGL driver.

Paul_uk · Jul 30, 2013

Thank you for helping me find this, the gameboy is awesome, yet to try others.

One question, is there a tutorial for making my own backgrounds? would love to put my own old crt tv on there for my snes gaming

Thank you again, and please keep updating with pictures everyone... heres my success using your pack

Valtýr · Jul 30, 2013

IMACOMPUTA said:
Found this:

Freakin' awesome.

I'm not understanding how to setup this border. The folder has a png file and a cgp file. What do I do with these?

Rich! · Jul 30, 2013

Valtýr;73823643 said:
I'm not understanding how to setup this border. The folder has a png file and a cgp file. What do I do with these?

Put them into the same folder. Go into input setting in the emulator then overlay. Browse to it and select it.

You can use the equivalent setting in the phoenix program to set it as automatic.

Valtýr · Jul 30, 2013

richisawesome said:
Put them into the same folder. Go into input setting in the emulator then overlay. Browse to it and select it.

You can use the equivalent setting in the phoenix program to set it as automatic.

But the software only sees CFG files. If I type *.* into file name to pull everything up, I can choose either one and it doesnt work when I launch the game.

Sorry for the trouble :\

Valtýr · Jul 30, 2013

Oh, I've been launching retroarch-phoenix the entire time... figured it was what everyone was using by default

zephervack · Jul 30, 2013

This is really tempting but im having trouble leaving behind my hyperspin setup, is there any way to have a GUI with box art and a small video of the games with this???

Awakened · Jul 30, 2013

zephervack said:
This is really tempting but im having trouble leaving behind my hyperspin setup, is there any way to have a GUI with box art and a small video of the games with this???

No, RetroArch by itself only has a simple file list to select games with. But you can just launch into RetroArch using HyperSpin by pointing it to retroarch.exe and adding the config loading parameter to load your system specific config (you specify the core you want to use for the system and everything else in that config file). Turn off HyperLaunch and just use normal launching if you do that.

I NEED SCISSORS · Jul 30, 2013

How easy is it to launch individual games from Steam using this? I don't mind faffing around with custom launch options and command lines, as long as I can press A on the game in Big Picture Mode and have the emulator boot straight into it.

The borders look charming. I would like to switch to this from the cavalcade of emulators I currently use.

zephervack · Jul 30, 2013

Awakened said:
No, RetroArch by itself only has a simple file list to select games with. But you can just launch into RetroArch using HyperSpin by pointing it to retroarch.exe and adding the config loading parameter to load your system specific config (you specify the core you want to use for the system and everything else in that config file). Turn off HyperLaunch and just use normal launching if you do that.

Sweet thanks, can't wait to try those filters!

Rich! · Jul 30, 2013

I NEED SCISSORS said:
How easy is it to launch individual games from Steam using this? I don't mind faffing around with custom launch options and command lines, as long as I can press A on the game in Big Picture Mode and have the emulator boot straight into it.

The borders look charming. I would like to switch to this from the cavalcade of emulators I currently use.

Pretty damn easy to do - just time consuming. You can set it to load a selected ROM by default, and boot straight into it. But if you'd need to do a different shortcut/batch file for each game, linking each one to Steam afterwards.

but if you want just a handful of favourites, then it shouldnt take too long.

Damaniel · Jul 30, 2013

Those curved CRT filters are amazing!

I tried out the GB filter on a couple games and found it almost too realistic, but impressive, nevertheless. I couldn't get the overlays working though (admittedly, I'm running at 1440p resolution and didn't make any attempt to modify them to work above 1080p).

I have a currently unused HTPC that I was planning to make a dedicated emulator box. Seeing these screenshots has me motivated. I just wish the Retroarch people (or someone else) would write up a good, comprehensive setup guide instead of pointing people to a github repo and saying 'have at it!'

zephervack · Jul 30, 2013

Awakened said:
If you go back to the main shaders page there is a download zip link on the right to download all shaders at once.

Edit: Beaten

Yep, it only applies with vsync on. Vsync off really improves latency, but the tearing is so bad I've never been able to leave it off.

I'd like to see 120hz support in emulators. Maybe if byuu or one of the other open source developers get that working it'll propagate into most open source emulators.

Have you tried d3doverrider?

Rich! · Jul 30, 2013

zephervack said:
Have you tried d3doverrider?

I second this

triple buffering is the shit

I NEED SCISSORS · Jul 30, 2013

richisawesome said:
Pretty damn easy to do - just time consuming. You can set it to load a selected ROM by default, and boot straight into it. But if you'd need to do a different shortcut/batch file for each game, linking each one to Steam afterwards.

but if you want just a handful of favourites, then it shouldnt take too long.

I don't mind time consumption, as long as it's possible. I usually just make separate copies of emulators for individual games anyway.

bernardobri · Jul 30, 2013

For some reason I can't manage to open the phoenix executable on the latest version. I downloaded a previous version and I managed to download the cores and everything else, but I updated Retroarch and it won't work. Any solutions?

(Using Windows 7, 32-bit)

Awakened · Jul 30, 2013

zephervack said:
Have you tried d3doverrider?

Just gave it a quick test. It doesn't prevent tearing when running at 120hz with d3d or ogl and vsync off in my RetroArch config. At 60hz it prevents tearing only with d3d, but the input lag is still terrible compared to using RetroArch's hard sync with ogl.

low-G · Jul 30, 2013

Hyllian said:
Enter the main repo page: https://github.com/libretro/common-shaders

And look for a button at the right side with this: "Download ZIP". You download all repo in only one zip file.

Awakened said:
If you go back to the main shaders page there is a download zip link on the right to download all shaders at once.

Edit: Beaten

Awesome, thank ya!

Hyllian · Jul 31, 2013

Adde the latest mdapt multipass shaders (4-passes) to the repository:

https://github.com/libretro/common-shaders/tree/master/dithering/mdapt-4p

I took out pseudo transparencies because of too much false positives. It's very good with dithering, though!

Included are two presets, one for pure mdapt and another combined with xBR. It works very well with capcom games, specially SFA3.

Use pure mdapt preset to load its shaders and then add an additional pass to put your favorite shader.

What it does with SFA3 dithering:

polyh3dron · Jul 31, 2013

I seem to have fixed my BSNES crackling audio issue by disabling the windowed full screen mode. It also lightened my CPU load too because even though I told it to do 1920x1080 it was still running at my native resolution which happens to be 2880x1800 (retina MacBook Pro).

Alo81 · Jul 31, 2013

Hyllian said:
Adde the latest mdapt multipass shaders (4-passes) to the repository:

https://github.com/libretro/common-shaders/tree/master/dithering/mdapt-4p

I took out pseudo transparencies because of too much false positives. It's very good with dithering, though!

Included are two presets, one for pure mdapt and another combined with xBR. It works very well with capcom games, specially SFA3.

Use pure mdapt preset to load its shaders and then add an additional pass to put your favorite shader.

What it does with SFA3 dithering:

Have you got a vanilla shot for comparisons sake?

Goldmund · Jul 31, 2013

How do you set these borders? I can't seem to find it in the options. Or do you set them with your TV?

My words exactly! · Jul 31, 2013

I frequently use Wii Retroarch on my CRT and it looks glorious.
One core feature i really like is the FX overclock for the SNES 9X Next core.
As i said before in the Wii homebrew thread, it allows games like SNES Starfox to run at a really smooth and playable framerate. To get an idea:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOU2GikRRY8

teiresias · Jul 31, 2013

Hmmm, I really can't decide if I prefer the multi-pass ntsc shader preset or the crt-geom-flat.cg single-pass shader more. I kind of like the look of the ntsc shader preset, but it looks more like it's simulating ntsc via composite than anything else, whereas crt-geom-flat.cg seems to have the clarity of what I've seen from my RGB connected real hardware, but not quite true-to-life ntsc colorspace like the ntsc shader.

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