Knowcontrol

v23-May, 2022 Orionsange_bezelsl&HyperspaceMadness_reflective_shader-Combined_by_Knowcontrol.zip Hello. This is my first submission to the community. I recently came across Orionsangel's Realistic Arcade Overlays for RetroArch and was blown away at how amazing they look! @Orionsangel then began to update his overlays to be compatible with HyperspaceMadness' Reflection Shader. These two visual elements really bring some amazing realistic life to MAME arcade games!!! I then took on a project to combine Orionsangel's overylays and HSM's shaders into one. This was more time-consuming than I thought. Because not all Orionsangel's are converted to use HSM's shaders, I had to find a way that both could exist in the same folder structure and require no user intervention to change screen scaling. Bottom line - Orionsangel's original overlays (bezels) have their scale set within the game's cfg file. His overlays combined with the HSM shader's scale is set within the game's .slangp file (each game has their own .slangp shader file). And finally, mame_libretro.cfg is controlling the global video scaling by setting Core Provided. I have included -all- necessary files to make this work. I hope to keep this overlay/shader combining project going whenever Orionsangel puts out new overlays. I have included only the Realistic Arcade Overlays that have been modified to work with the Reflection Shader, you'll need to download the full Orionsangel's Realistic Arcade Overlays pack from his forum post to get all the overlays. Before you go and drop this in your Retroarch folder, I suggest just spinning up a new RetroArch folder and put these in there. Once you determine it's okay to use these in your main RA folder then it'll be just a simple drag/drop. CAUTION: I have a mame_libretro.cfg file in the Retroarch/config folder. This will overwrite your current mame_libretro.cfg file if you copy it over. Please be sure to back it up!!! These files were built with: RetroArch 1.10.3 Orionsangel overlay set from May 3rd, 2022 HyperspaceMadness shaders from his github page which was updated May 8th, 2022 MAME 0.241 non-merged ROMset Your ROM names may not match the cfg file names in the RetroArch>config folder. Simply rename the gamename.cfg to match your ROM's name. In LaunchBox, go to Tools>Manage>Emulators>RetroArch>Associated Platforms and enter -c "config\mame_libretro.cfg" in the Extra Command-Line Parameters Try launching 1943u.zip or Bubble Bobble (bublbobl.zip) as these are two examples that have the combined overlay and shader. If you want to know the other games, just go to the config/MAME folder and do a search for *.slangp Enjoy! Oh! One last thing - if you have a Game Startup/Over theme enabled, you will need to do the following to make sure the "Game Over" splash screen doesn't prematurely fire because the shader and overlays take a long time to load.

Hello. That's not how LaunchBox imports ROMs. I strongly suggest organizing your folders/games as such: ROMs Atari 2600 game1.bin game2.bin game3.bin Nintendo Entertainment System game1.nes game2.nes game3.net Sega Genesis game1.gen game2.gen game3.gen Here is a Atari 2600 video that will be a very similar process for importing other platforms. *This is a previous version of LaunchBox - your menus may look different. Here is a playlist for LaunchBox Tutorials

Thank you for this tip! I recently started running some bezel overlays and shaders in RetroArch that take a long time to load and I was getting the "Game Over" screen before the game loads (which it does). My solution was to ctrl+a all the games in the platform, ctrl+e to bulk edit and then I enabled Startup Screen - Override Default Settings, enabled Startup Screen - Enabled, and set Startup Screen - Load Delay = 10 seconds. This now gives RA time to load the shader, bezel, and game without thinking the game has finished and the Game Over screen still functions as expected when closing a game!

That was exactly it, thank you for the reminder/tip to change the view! Thank you so much for the helpful answer! Yep, all I had to do was to change the sort title and make sure the Parent was set.

I believe I found the issue. You'll need to change the "post_br" (which I assume means post rendering brightness) from 120 to 1.2 - I believe the way brightness is now handled with the most current version of Retroarch is that the decimal place has moved. In your RetroArch-Win64\shaders\Soqueroeu-TV-Backgrounds_V2.0\presets\TV-Console\Nintendo_NES.slangp change from post_br = "120.000000" to post_br = "1.200000" EDIT: The above strikethrough works fine but apparently this can be set directly in the HSM shader. After loading the Soqueroeu shader scroll down to Shader Parameters The sixth item down is Post CRT Brightness. Select it select 1.20 (these are the parameters that control the HSM shader You can also go about 3/4 the way down the page to disable the Intro Sequence with the HSM logo (OPTIONAL - save this shader to load each time this core is loaded) exit out of the parameters screen scroll up to Save Scroll down select Save Core Preset I've found I also need to go to Settings>Video>Scaling>Aspect Ratio set Full Next go to Main Menu>Configuration File select Save New Configuration Go back to Launchbox and go to Tools>Manage>Emulators>RetroArch>Associated Platforms In the "Extra Command-Line Parameters" section next to your Associated Platform type -c "config\mesen_libretro.cfg" Replacing mesen_libretro with whatever core name you have set in the Core column

Interesting. I know that when applying updates in Yuzu it "installs" them. Maybe it renames the file and therefore LB is launching the old file name and not the updated one?

Looks like scaling is hiding it

https://redout.games/ May 26th is the scheduled date release for Redout 2. Available on: Windows: Steam, Epic Nintendo Switch PS 5,4 Xbox X, One, S

Hi there. Thank you very much for this realistic TV pack! I downloaded and installed HSM and your pack and put them in the correct locations. My issue is that I'm seeing a really blurry screen and blown-out brightness/gamma. Is this an incompatibility with your shader and maybe a newer update to the HSM pack? Here is the HSM MBZ__1__ADV preset by itself

Create a configuration file for MAME. Then with mame_libretro.cfg loaded, go to Settings>Video>Scaling and set it to Core Provided. I wound up having to add the aspect_ratio_index to all game cfg files to get the game to scale to the overlay. This was quite simple with Notepad++. Here is a screenshot of what to enter Press ctrl+h, go to the Find In Files tab Find what: (.*) Replace with: aspect_ratio_index = "23"\r\n\1 set your directory where your Retroarch/config/MAME game cfg files are stored on the bottom left under Search Mode be sure to select "Regular expression" and check the box for . matches new line. Here is how you would load a custom core file config in LB emulator settings ** I wound up not using the custom mame_libretro.cfg as I found that just keeping the default retroarch.cfg set at "Core Provided" scaling worked just fine as long as you modify the text files as mentioned above.

Media cleanup! Yes, yes, yes!!!

AH-HA! I figured it out! Thanks to this post on the retropie forum https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/19598/custom-viewport-problem-retroarch-1-7-5 First of all, I'm running the most current Windows x64 1.10.3 Retroarch as of May, 2022. Second, I have a curated set of MAME 0.241 non-merged. Within Retroarch I had my Video>Scaling set to Core Provided. This is what was interfering with allowing each game to resize itself as per the cfg file's custom_viewport parameters. I then added the following to the top of each game's cfg file and BAM! the game was resized to fit within the overlay!! aspect_ratio_index = "23" Example astroid.cfg: aspect_ratio_index = "23" custom_viewport_height = "640" custom_viewport_width = "842" custom_viewport_x = "545" custom_viewport_y = "253" input_overlay = ":\overlays\arcade\asteroid.cfg" I hope this helps! Maybe I just have my global settings wrong?

I'm using your Retroarch bezels in Retroarch. One major issue that caused hours of frustration - there is a Arcade.cfg file in the Retroarch/config folder. It was constantly overriding each game's cfg and loading berzerk.png! Removing it allowed each game to load its respective overlay. Second, I'm now able to get each game to load its respective overlay but the custom_viewport sizes aren't being respected? Large portions of the edges of the games are being covered by the overlay. I've been testing with Asteroids and Centipede, neither are being resized to fit within the confines of the overlay. Help, please.

@neil9000

I'm seeing games just fine. Do the playlist names need to match the system names exactly to be picked up by LB? Also, @Mr.Laor you mention a Arcade list in your OP but I don't see this folder group in the zip you provided.

I successfully implemented the Atari 2600 lists but I'm having trouble with a few other systems - is there a specific file naming convention we must follow for LB to pick these up and add them into the proper platform? Basically, what's the proper "installation" process? Thanks!

https://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/ Does a good job of this. Just have it search for [jp] and you will see the result on the right pane. When ready, just execute the rename.

Thanks for the suggestion, I had done this in the past with 237 but forgot to unlock/update it to 241 when I acquired that romset. Does anyone have the 241 core they could send me, please? I figured it out!! Go to https://buildbot.libretro.com/stable Choose a Retroarch build from around the time your romset was released, select Windows, x86_64, then download the cores file. Backup or rename your mame_libretro.dll file to mame_libretro.dll.bak (or something like that) and then extract the downloaded core to your cores folder. Open Retroarch, load the Arcade latest and then go to Information > Core Information to find out which core you've downloaded. I was able to get the 0.241 matching my romset - which I then promptly LOCKED. I hope this helps anyone in the future!

With the recent tutorial by ETA Prime on the Unbroken YouTube channel regarding importing MS-DOS games, I got interested in adding a few DOS games to my library. In my search for the best DOS emulator I found a YouTube video by Pixelmusement who compares DOSBox vs DosBox-X. The video was fantastic and the content was very interesting. I then went to his recent video uploads and saw a video titled "No More NES Slowdown/Flickering!", well needless to say he had me at NES! What an amazing video with the explanation about sprites and the drawing limitation per scanline. I highly suggest you watch it as it's incredibly informative as to how the NES works. What I took away from that video is that the Mesen emulator is incredibly accurate as it actually emulates the visual glitches and slow-downs that the actual hardware produces. So that's the cool part. The next awesome part is that you can change the sprite limit to keep the gameplay smooth, reduce flickering, and prevent slow-down. To do so you'd go to Options>Video>Advanced>Remove Sprite Limit (checkmark it) - this will reduce or eliminate the flickering of objects, uncheck the "Automatically re-enable sprite limit" option. To reduce slow-down go to Options>Emulation>Overclocking>set Additional Scanlines before NMI to 400. This is in Pixelmusement's video so I highly suggest watching it all the way through, it's totally worth it. Enjoy!

I too have done this in the past but if you install Win10 fresh (in recent months) then Microsoft has disabled this option in the netplwiz tool. You have to go into the registry to enable an option to make disabling the password visible in netplwiz. Re-enable the netplwiz option: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/auto-sign-in-missing-from-netplwiz/1c06918b-04e0-4b2f-ab67-8b5bd7eee89b

I completely understand, but I'd really like to use these

Lovely. Thank you, sir. I guess then I'll grab .243 merged. (which I learned all about from your MAME noob thread - thank you very much for that!)

I want to do exactly this someday in the future so I bookmarked this page. I haven't tested this method yet, let me know if it works: https://superuser.com/questions/1267931/hide-the-logon-screen-windows-10-iot P.S. Running BigBox at login within the Task Scheduler is the other half of the equation to what I just linked.

Google hasn't helped. Searching on this forum hasn't helped. Retroarch only downloads the MAME core for ancient versions or the latest MAME core. Where do you download previous MAME cores? I specifically need the .241 core. I'd like to use Retroarch for shaders and OrionAngel's bezels.