Aclectico

I'm stumped. Both Castlevania and Metroid output at 512x480. That's really odd that the default CRT shader option plays nicely with one, but behaves differently for the other. @Lordmonkus I noticed you wrote a tutorial about using SweetFX / Reshade to introduce shaders last year. Do you see the same issue in both the standalone version with SweetFX / Reshade and the Retroarch version with integrated shaders? Aside from that, I may be out of ideas. As far as audio goes, I just remembered that the Metroid game uses the jumping sound to indicate lava damage as well. I think it was a very odd choice for the developers of the Metroid game. But, they programmed the jumping sound to play in a rapid loop when the player is damaged by lava or acid. This means if you delete the jumping sound, there will be silence when damaged by lava (this may, or may not be okay for you). An alternate strategy you could try is duplicating the running sound and renaming one of them to the jumping sound (since they are the same sound anyway with the running sound just being a bit softer). I'm not sure if that would help. In any case, if the popping sound is intermittent, and the Retroarch version causes it to occur more frequently, my best guess is that it may be a performance issue. I notice audio popping issues on my end as well if I have too many windows open while running Mesen. If I close the windows, it seems to get better. With that said, programming of sound did require 6502 assembly knowledge as part of the replacement process. This was beyond my area of expertise. So, KYA (the developer of the Castlevania pack) was gracious enough to assist during this part of development with the Metroid pack. So, KYA may also know something of the sound popping issue that I may not.

Also, the Castlevania pack should be the same scale as the Metroid pack. I'm not sure about Mega Man.

@Lordmonkus I think I see what may be occurring with the shaders (the screenshots helped). Am I correct in saying the issue only seems to occur with horizontal sections of letters? If so, these areas of the letters are only one pixel high. The shader lines are probably just covering up the very small area of the letters. My guess is that you do not see issues like this with Castlevania is because the letters in that pack never get that thin. Also, the numbers in your screenshot seem to be okay because all areas of numbers never get below two pixels in size. I suppose one fix may be to simply increase the thickness of all letters so that no horizontal area is less than two pixels. That would be a relatively large undertaking, and I think that may be more than I am able to take on at the moment. As far as the clicking sound goes - do you notice the same issue in this video? If so, what you are seeing is probably intentional. When replacing sound effects, there were a number of options that already existed with jumping in prior games: -Metroid - Very cartoonish jump sound -Metroid Zero Mission - Jumping sound similar to the walking sound -Super Metroid - No jumping sound I decided to try and follow the strategy of Zero mission. Basically, I just took the sound of Samus running and increased the volume a bit. If it is not to your liking, there should be a simple fix. In the HdPacks folder, there should be a "SamusJumping.ogg" file and a "SamusTakingARunningStep.ogg" file. If you delete the Jumping file it may solve your issue. Let me know what you think.

If it looks too good for 2x resolution, I'll take that as a very large complement But yes, the way Mesen classifies the scale, it is 2x. Two pixels instead of one in the y direction, and same for the x direction. The end result is 4 pixels now make up what used to be one. But, depending on how you look at it, I suppose some could consider it 4x. I also know what you mean on stand alone versions. My PC really has trouble with Retroarch and DS emulation. But, performance seems to be much better with stand alone.

That's weird. I haven't really experimented much with shaders on this pack. But, that's interesting if you are having different results from the Castlevania pack. When using the pack builder feature to create the final product, a 2x scale was used. A screenshot of the settings I used is attached. I'm not sure what may be different. In any case, it wouldn't surprise me if performance on this pack vs. Castlevania is a little more hit or miss. The Metroid pack cycles through four frames for the environment on a continuous basis. This is probably more difficult for the CPU to handle. While this is a pain in the neck for HD pack development (all environment tiles are multiplied by four), it does allow for animation effects (like lava and light effects). I could be wrong, but I don't think the Castlevania pack behaves in this way. There may be other causes, but that is the first one that comes to mind.

Hello! Wow, that's great to hear. I wasn't aware Sour was that on top of things with Retroarch. I have not tested the pack on the latest version, but I would be interested to know how your experience goes. Happy gaming.

Hi - Yes, you are right. It is best to use the standalone version of Mesen for the Metroid: HD pack (at least for now). Some of the features of the pack are unique to the version of the emulator that just came out this month. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Retroarch version takes a while to catch up. Assuming the setup is working as intended, game play should look similar to you the YouTube video available at the link below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAom8dBJ9Vg Also, Mesen is compatible with command line parameters. So, if you set Launchbox to use a fullscreen option, the experience is fairly seamless (like it can be with Retroarch). I have a screenshot of settings that seem to work fairly well attached. Also, if you are interested, I've attached a copy of a game cover that should work in Launchbox. The background art is from Harmony of a Hunter.