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

daninthemix

Member
Er, I'm sorry the MAME dev is angry but as a user, rather than a contributor, I have to say I regularly play MAME through RetroArch on my big screen TV with a controller, and it's a great experience.

Sorry, I guess?
 
No it's not...
I don't mind people using other emulators but coming over to say "hey your stuff is broken gonna use something else"

I find this particularly annoying, we try our best to keep features working and stable, and I personally try to help everyone I can manage to help.

Edit: https://wiki.libretro.com/index.php?title=Beetle/Mednafen_PSX

https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/issues/5254

Also, I'm not going to be making a m3u of what I'm trying to play. It's the beatmania games and you have to do different disc swapping paths to reach different songs on the discs. Creating a m3u for each specific game and each song selection process would be a nightmare rather than just being able to swap the discs easily.
 

Radius4

Member
https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/issues/5254

Also, I'm not going to be making a m3u of what I'm trying to play. It's the beatmania games and you have to do different disc swapping paths to reach different songs on the discs. Creating a m3u for each specific game and each song selection process would be a nightmare rather than just being able to swap the discs easily.

Oh, well it seems pretty recent I had used the feature a couple months ago, I'll note it and try to bisect it next week.
 

Josman

Member
Been tinkering with this emulator, it's complete but extremely frustrating for me.

I want to add borders to SNES, GBA and N64, I game on a 1080p monitor, latest version of Retroarch, everything fully working, I even got the grasp on custom display configuration, but for the love of god, why can't I select an overlay preset? I tried with the ones that come with Retroarch and even the 1080p ones on this thread, and they just don't work, I select the .cfg file and nothing happens, it appears on the list but once I select them it takes me back to the previous menu and it does not appear selected.

Help GAF?
 

Josman

Member
Again, sorry to bother so much, another issue I'm having is some N64 ROMS (ParaLLEI) black screen when I start them and even the menu blacks out but I hear it running in the background, I read on other forums it was shader-related which seems true as I was playing with CG CRT shaders, but for some reason even after I change in other roms that work the preset to a GLSL one or to no shader it doesn't change the configuration when I launch them, as if it was default, any idea on how to change this? erase the shader or how can I create different shader presets for three different cores?

Edit: After I remove presets and click "Save Core Preset" it says ERROR - Saving shader preset
 
I've having an issue with Retro Achievements, I haven't had them working for the longest time. I've made sure that my username and password are correct. For example, they used to work and I've unlocked some before, but now, in Nestopia for example, I can't unlock anything. Anyone have an idea as to why?
 

daninthemix

Member
I'm really hoping the issue with multidisc PBPs in Beetle-PSX gets fixed. Currently, you can't load a save state from Disc 2+ in a PBP, as Beetle loses track of what disc the game is on and softlocks the next time it tries to load data. PBPs are cool (FF8 goes from 9 files, including the M3U, to one PBP) but they are also useless for multidisc games, currently.

I wonder if the recent CHD support for Saturn-PSX will help.
 

Radius4

Member
I'm really hoping the issue with multidisc PBPs in Beetle-PSX gets fixed. Currently, you can't load a save state from Disc 2+ in a PBP, as Beetle loses track of what disc the game is on and softlocks the next time it tries to load data. PBPs are cool (FF8 goes from 9 files, including the M3U, to one PBP) but they are also useless for multidisc games, currently.

I wonder if the recent CHD support for Saturn-PSX will help.

m3u method it working fine for me, I just tested, I made a m3u for mgs with the discs swapped for testing purposes (2 first 1 last), started new game, it asked me to swap disc, swapped fine.

Also made a savestate on the title screen and when I finally had control of snake, tried to load those once in the other disk and it changes the disk index properly so it shouldn't have issues with save states.

Not sure about pbp, I don't like lossy compression.
 

daninthemix

Member
m3u method it working fine for me, I just tested, I made a m3u for mgs with the discs swapped for testing purposes (2 first 1 last), started new game, it asked me to swap disc, swapped fine.

Also made a savestate on the title screen and when I finally had control of snake, tried to load those once in the other disk and it changes the disk index properly so it shouldn't have issues with save states.

Not sure about pbp, I don't like lossy compression.

It's this issue here, I even put a bounty on it a while ago.
 
Sameboy and Mesen are looking to take Gambatte and Nestopia's crowns. RA devs have already looked into doing ports of both; Sameboy seems to be easier for them to port over. For Mesen, the original author might do a port.

What's the differences between them? I feel like every week there is a new Gameboy or NES/SNES emulator... it's getting really confusing, and seems more and more like they are not really doing all that much differences other than "Its more accurate" but there doesn't seem to be any info on how exactly it is more accurate or examples of how it is more accurate
 

Awakened

Member
What's the differences between them? I feel like every week there is a new Gameboy or NES/SNES emulator... it's getting really confusing, and seems more and more like they are not really doing all that much differences other than "Its more accurate" but there doesn't seem to be any info on how exactly it is more accurate or examples of how it is more accurate
Mesen is supposed to be the most accurate NES emu right now, but I've never used it, so I'm not sure what's noticeably different from something like Nestopia. Supposedly it's not easy to port to libretro because it's coded in C#. I messed around with the Sameboy core when it first came out. It had worse sound than Gambatte, but was on par graphically. The author updated the sound code when I made an issue report about it, but while it sounded better in the stand alone port, the libretro version didn't seem to change. Sameboy is also much slower than Gambatte, so I don't think it's worth using over that for general use. The code is supposedly very clean, so I guess it's a good documentation project.
 
I messed around with the Sameboy core when it first came out. It had worse sound than Gambatte, but was on par graphically. The author updated the sound code when I made an issue report about it, but while it sounded better in the stand alone port, the libretro version didn't seem to change.
this is because somebody has to update the libretro core if there are changes to the stand alone emulator - it's not automatic.
 

Radius4

Member
It's this issue here, I even put a bounty on it a while ago.

Yes but as I said, the M3U method is working fine :)

What's lossy about pbp? I was under the impression that it's just using gzip to compress sectors...

Yeah, I thought PSX2PSP PBP conversions were lossless. I've only heard that official PBPs from PSN could be lossy.

I don't know for sure, I asked, I was never given a proper response.
 
Does anyone know how to get PX68k (Sharp X68000) to detect Android's filesystem in it's in-emulator menu? Opening FDD1 just brings up an empty dialog box.

Loading up multidisk titles on the Android devices I've tested seems to not work. I've tried it on the Shield TV and Shield Tablet and in neither can PX68k find the file system.
 

Knurek

Member
Any ETA on Dolphin and Citra cores having savestate support?
(Additionally, any way to check which cores have savestate support?)
 

linko9

Member
Anyone played around with the citra core? I'm getting full speed with no dips, but horrible audio stuttering. Can't seem to find a setting that fixes it.
 

RedSwirl

Junior Member
So it looks like I'm gonna be starting the long, arduous process of running the Neo Geo Humble Bundle ROMs all over again. Even having to uninstall and reinstall RA from the looks of it. Some help would be appreciated.

Edit: So I'm guessing maybe my current Neo Geo BIOS doesn't work with the current version of RetroArch or something, or maybe my FB Alpha core is too old or whatever. For whatever reason I can't get any of the Neo Geo games to work at all. These are the versions of the ROMs that came with the Humble Bundle a while back.
 
Could someone recommend me a good shader for Legend of Mana on a 1080p display? I'm pretty new to shaders and currently using CRT Royale as I heard that is the best one but I wonder what gives me the best and most faithful image quality short of hooking up my PSX to an upscaler. Oh and which core should I use? I currently use Mednafen PSX.

It's my first time really using Retroarch to play anything aside from my 3DS and usually used ePSXe.

EDIT:

I have to say I find it looking quite good already, even if a bit dark, just wondering if I can still improve things:

xewrzj.jpg
 

Hyllian

Member
Try the shaders inside 'crt' and 'denoisers' folders (the latter is particularly good for 32bit games). In 'crt' folder, the most known are: geom, easymode, hyllian, hyllian-glow, aperture, lottes and royale. Royale shines in 4K.
 
Try the shaders inside 'crt' and 'denoisers' folders (the latter is particularly good for 32bit games). In 'crt' folder, the most known are: geom, easymode, hyllian, hyllian-glow, aperture, lottes and royale. Royale shines in 4K.

Yeah I'm using Royale right now and it looks great already at 1080p, any way to get it a tiny bit brighter though? And alright thanks, I'll play around with the others.
 

Hyllian

Member
Yeah I'm using Royale right now and it looks great already at 1080p, any way to get it a tiny bit brighter though? And alright thanks, I'll play around with the others.
Unfortunately I don't use Royale, so I don't know its parameters to help you. The other crt shaders are brighter than Royale at not so high resolutions. Try them and tell what you think.
 

Paragon

Member
There's not much you can do about the image darkening when you add scanlines other than turn up your display's backlight/contrast control.
Some shaders adjust the gamma to "brighten" the image but that just messes up the colors. Even the default settings for Royale do that.
 

Awakened

Member
Yeah I'm using Royale right now and it looks great already at 1080p, any way to get it a tiny bit brighter though? And alright thanks, I'll play around with the others.
CRT-Easymode-Halation is the best for maintaining brightness. It was designed for 1080p as well, whereas Royal is supposed to shine more at 4k.
 
Unfortunately I don't use Royale, so I don't know its parameters to help you. The other crt shaders are brighter than Royale at not so high resolutions. Try them and tell what you think.

There's not much you can do about the image darkening when you add scanlines other than turn up your display's backlight/contrast control.
Some shaders adjust the gamma to "brighten" the image but that just messes up the colors. Even the default settings for Royale do that.

CRT-Easymode-Halation is the best for maintaining brightness. It was designed for 1080p as well, whereas Royal is supposed to shine more at 4k.

I see, thanks for all the suggestions and info! :) After messing around with them all I settled for CRT-Hylian as it seems to have the best trade-off between darkness and the CRT effect, for Legend of Mana atleast:


CRT-Easymode-Halation was a bit too bright and bloomy for me.

It took me a while to get it going though. I updated all my cores and Mednafen turned into Beetle which required me to select the GLSL shaders now. I have to run Retroarch in OpenGL mode as setting it to use either Vulkan or Direct3D doesn't work properly. Whenever I use either of these two opening the quick-menu of Retroarch crashes it.

On another note, seeing how beautiful LoM looks at 1x resolution with a good CRT Shader at 1080p I wondered if that's maybe a solution to handdrawn games? It's often said that modern HD games can't be handdrawn because such high-resolution art would be far too expensive and resource intensive.

Why not make the actual art 480p, only have the UI assets in 1080p/4k quality and then put a good shader over it. I know some people might dislike that approach but I wonder how this would go.
 
PCSX Rearmed (PlayStation) emulator is fixed on 3DS in the latest nightlies. Lots been broken for over a year, since 1.3.6 was released in July 2016.
 
Is there any sensible article discussing what the correct aspect ratio to display various systems is?

I guess my main focus is the NES. 256x240

So we can integer scale to:

1:1 often times results in things looking "squished" vertically and circles aren't circles.
(3:3 768x720)

4:3 is what I understand CRT to be so you would think everything is intended to display at that ratio but I don't think that is right either. Seems wide.
(1024x720)

These are based on my observations with the NES Classic and the two modes provided.

If we go the retroarch route on my 1080p display:

My options:
4.5:4.5 (1152x1080) (non-integer, skinny look, shimmering effects)
6:4.5 (1536x1080) (non-integer, fat look, shimmering effects)
5:4 (1280x960) (integer boxed resolution)
6:5 (1536x1200) (integer full screen! but note the 24 vertical pixels lost)

I think this is because a CRT doesn't really have fixed pixels and using a fixed pixel display forces a perfect square. CRT didn't use perfect squares, but using the fuzzy upscale results in some rounding issues causing uneven pixel sizes.

What is the magic bullet to get razor sharp pixels and round circles?
 

Awakened

Member
1:1 often times results in things looking "squished" vertically and circles aren't circles.
I've only noticed the morph ball in Metroid looking squished at 1:1, so I just use that. Everything else has perfect squares and circles at pixel aspect. Well, I'm sure there are other examples of NES stuff corrected for 4:3, but none I can think of. Funny that the morph ball looks round at pixel aspect in Super Metroid.
 
Is there any sensible article discussing what the correct aspect ratio to display various systems is?

I guess my main focus is the NES. 256x240
The problem is a lot of old systems (NES, SNES, Master System, Game Gear, GBA all jump to mind) had rectangular pixels and these days we have square pixels. So CRT or original device is the best way to go.

If you're trying on a modern LCD you're best sticking with slightly squished, as running it at the correct aspect ratio will introduce scaling which will mean blurring and the picture will still be less then perfect but in a different way.
 

Rufus

Member
Is there any sensible article discussing what the correct aspect ratio to display various systems is?

I guess my main focus is the NES. 256x240

So we can integer scale to:

1:1 often times results in things looking "squished" vertically and circles aren't circles.
(3:3 768x720)

4:3 is what I understand CRT to be so you would think everything is intended to display at that ratio but I don't think that is right either. Seems wide.
(1024x720)

These are based on my observations with the NES Classic and the two modes provided.

If we go the retroarch route on my 1080p display:

My options:
4.5:4.5 (1152x1080) (non-integer, skinny look, shimmering effects)
6:4.5 (1536x1080) (non-integer, fat look, shimmering effects)
5:4 (1280x960) (integer boxed resolution)
6:5 (1536x1200) (integer full screen! but note the 24 vertical pixels lost)

I think this is because a CRT doesn't really have fixed pixels and using a fixed pixel display forces a perfect square. CRT didn't use perfect squares, but using the fuzzy upscale results in some rounding issues causing uneven pixel sizes.

What is the magic bullet to get razor sharp pixels and round circles?
https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Fel...idescreen_Tips_on_correcting_aspect_ratio.php
 
If you're trying on a modern LCD you're best sticking with slightly squished, as running it at the correct aspect ratio will introduce scaling which will mean blurring and the picture will still be less then perfect but in a different way.

I've found that running RA with 4K output on my 4K TV really helps make scaling issues less noticeable. When I was on 1080p I always had to use integer scaling because the artifacts were just too ugly but at 4K I will fill screen while maintaining aspect ratio and it usually doesn't bother me. Scanlines work better too.
 

Knurek

Member
I've found that running RA with 4K output on my 4K TV really helps make scaling issues less noticeable. When I was on 1080p I always had to use integer scaling because the artifacts were just too ugly but at 4K I will fill screen while maintaining aspect ratio and it usually doesn't bother me. Scanlines work better too.

crt-easymode-halation doesn't seem to have issues with scaling at non-integer values
Works for me at least... *shrug*
 

Radius4

Member
it's because of the dotmask, if you lower the dotmask to get simple scanlines you get artifacts again, namely uneven scanlines.
 

Paragon

Member
Is there any sensible article discussing what the correct aspect ratio to display various systems is?
I guess my main focus is the NES. 256x240
[...]
I think this is because a CRT doesn't really have fixed pixels and using a fixed pixel display forces a perfect square. CRT didn't use perfect squares, but using the fuzzy upscale results in some rounding issues causing uneven pixel sizes.
What is the magic bullet to get razor sharp pixels and round circles?
Depending on how the art is drawn, you either use 1:1 pixel aspect ratio or 4:3. Whichever looks correct.
4:3 is referring to the image aspect ratio, not the scaling factor; i.e. 1.33:1
4:3 would be 1024x768 (1.33:1) not 1024x720 (1.42:1)

If you use a shader like Pixellate, you can use non-linear scaling with minimal artifacts. You just get a slightly softer image.
CRTs handled non-linear scaling well for a few reasons. The main one is that they never had the same sharpness as a flat panel display to begin with.
If you use a CRT emulation shader like Retroarch (configured correctly, at least) it should handle non-linear scaling much better.
The higher resolution your display, the better the results should be.
 

Awakened

Member
The Genesis Plus GX core just got a lowpass audio filter option, which had already been in the original Wii version of the emulator. You can enable it in core options by setting the "Audio filter" option to Lowpass. It's recommended to change the "Low-pass filter %" option to 45 to closely replicate the Genesis/Mega Drive Model 1's sound, while setting it to 55 is close to the Model 2. You can read more about it here: https://forums.libretro.com/t/genesis-plus-gx-where-is-the-audio-lowpass-filter/12169
 

linko9

Member
I'm having a problem with input configuration after switching to the newest release. Any changes I make to input settings never save. Doesn't matter if it's changes made in the "input" tap under settings, or under "controls" for the individual core. Also doesn't matter if I make the changes before launching a core or after launching a core. Also doesn't matter if I hit "save core overrides" once in a core. The input changes never save. This is true for game inputs, as well as hotkey inputs. They will remain changed until I close the program, then when I relaunch they're back to the defaults. All other settings (graphics, sound, etc.) save just fine from session to session. Any idea what's going wrong?

edit: I should also mention that all options under "configuration" are set to "on." If I make changes directly in the retroarch.cfg file, they will stick, but there are no settings that I can find in that file for mapping to a gamepad— only mapping to a keyboard, which I don't use. In the program itself, the default gamepad mappings are displayed alongside the keyboard mappings, and work as expected, but again, those defaults are always loaded regardless of what changes I made in the previous session.

edit2: Fixed it I think. I disabled the setting "autoconfig enable" in the input settings, which then allowed me to reassign things and have them save.
 
I download Retroarch last friday, but since them I can't get it to download/update the cores, it says the task failed when downloading the index extended.

I googled a little and heard that was likely a server issue, but I don't think it would be down all those days XD

I did managed to download the cores through buildbot, but I'm wondering if there's anything in my setup wrong? (though it does update some other stuff if I chose to)
 
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