Zombeaver

OpenEmu is an emulator. Retroarch is an emulator. Multi-faceted? Yes. Have their own UIs (not run from command-line)? Yes. Do those UIs aim to serve the same basic function of organizing games (albeit atrociously in the case of RA)? Yes. Does that make them in any way comparable to Launchbox? No. They support what they support and that's it. You can't take ePSXe and drag it onto Retroarch and now you've got an ePSXe core. They're self-contained collections of emulator modules, not a true frontend. Launchbox is not, has never been, and was never designed to be an emulator. Again, in and of itself, it doesn't emulate anything. It's a frontend. It allows you to plug whatever emulators you want into it, even multi-faceted ones like Retroarch; but it doesn't hook into them to the same degree as what's being suggested because it's not working within that kind of limited architecture (because it's not an actual emulator). If you have a garage, and a car in that garage, and a CD in that car's stereo, are you going to complain that the car lets you hit the skip button to change tracks but the garage doesn't? I hope not, because why would you? The garage is there to store the car (or a fleet of cars if it's big enough), which happens to have a stereo. It's not there to control the stereo. That's not to say that you can't sit in the garage, get in the car, and start up the stereo, just that it doesn't make much sense to bemoan the garage's feature set for something it was never designed to do.

The problem with all this is that Launchbox keeps getting compared, incorrectly, to something like Retroarch or OpenEmu - they're just not the same thing at all. Launchbox shares more DNA with Windows Explorer than it does with Retroarch. At the end of the day it's basically a visually-appealing organized collection of shortcuts. It takes X and throws it at Y, and possibly injects Z (launch parameters) into the chain if you so choose, and that's it (just like a Windows shortcut). It doesn't emulate anything. It doesn't even have to be used with emulators at all if you didn't want to - you could throw in a bunch of CBR (comic book archive) files and associate them with CDisplay if you wanted to. Because again, all it's doing is taking one thing and throwing it at another, with a pretty UI on top. If you wanted a greater amount of granular control over the emulators themselves, you could always look into something like RocketLauncher; it does a number of things that are being discussed here, but if simplification is what you're looking for, that's certainly not where I'd start. EDIT: Aaaaaand I was a minute too late in posting haha.

Yes - provide as much useful information as possible in order to ease the process as much as is feasible; which is what's already taking place. Yes, the video tutorials are designed to be used in conjunction with Launchbox, but in general they're still applicable whether you use Launchbox or not - they just include instructions for incorporation into Launchbox which you're free to disregard (with the caveat that in a few cases there are some nifty little tricks that are part of Launchbox that make the process significantly easier). The first 2/3 of the Amiga tutorial I did is completely independent of Launchbox and in no way requires it in order to get the emulator and games running. Yes and no. That can certainly be a big issue, but in some cases there's more to it than that. Bios files, the hardware and software that you're running the emulators on, etc. There definitely are some cases though where one or two knobs just need to be turned but people aren't aware of it. It depends on the emulator but typically yes. In most cases, I don't think so. The primary reason is that in the most consistently problematic (or at least fiddly) emulators there is no one-size-fits-all settings solution. Retroarch, DOSBox, PCSX2, and Dolphin are all examples of this. There just aren't simple set it and forget it settings for these; in some cases from one game to the next, let alone from one computer to the next. The best we can do is make an effort to explain what the settings do in order for people to make more informed decisions. I'm pleased to see that RA has been working to improve that recently. That stuff's been far too opaque for far too long, honestly. Some of these will always require some amount of experimentation and testing though, simply because what works in one case won't necessarily work in another. Having the kind of "packs" you're talking about would really only work in a situation where there are definitive settings in all situations; and in most cases where that'd actually be feasible it probably wouldn't be for the emulators that you'd actually want these packs for. And this is of course ignoring the fact that there are myriad cases in emulation where things are just purely subjective (in terms of visuals, certainly), which doesn't exactly lend itself well to "this is what everyone should use." I like the idea, I just don't think it'd work in the current emulator ecosystem.

Yep. I mean my gosh how much of that have we already seen just with Launchbox itself across multiple hardware and OS environments? Jason's already dedicated a significant amount of time just to optimizing it to accommodate as wide a range as possible, and that's without the additional layer of complication brought on by individual emulator implementation. What it's become is academic. That's what it's been for a while now. I'm not sure what prompted all this BS but I'm quite sure it wasn't necessary. I'm sorry you found it condescending for me to state the reality of the situation with verbiage that's more elaborate than you'd like. That's just the way I talk - both on and offline. I'm extremely detail-oriented, period. I've found that to be an asset in a variety of settings but certainly not the least of which is emulation, given the amount of minutia it often presents. That's not going to change nor will I be apologizing for it. At no point have I ever told someone here "No, I'm not going to help you." or "Why can't you figure this out?" or "Git gud." In fact, I've always made it a point to do whatever I can and take as much time as is necessary to get the issue resolved so long as it's within my ability. Why? Because the emulation scene is chock full of actual condescending elitist jerks that would sooner tell you to pound sand than take the time to be even remotely helpful; and I hate that shit. If you or anyone else chooses not to take advantage of the resources available to you (video tutorials, written tutorials, and these forums), that's on you - not me or anyone else. Nobody's going to be able to help you address questions that you don't ask. Huh? I don't even disagree with @robwired in sentiment. I don't think anyone here does. I have no problem with streamlining (so long as meaningful functionality isn't compromised) or with improving efficiency. Those are good things! At the same time, I'm not going to blindly endorse something that sounds nice in theory but simply isn't realistic or when the ramifications of what's being proposed aren't being taken into account.

I've had a few unexpected health issues lately that have, unfortunately, taken up a good deal of my time and energy of late so I haven't been able to be as active around here recently as I'd like. Thankfully they've mostly sorted themselves out at this point so things should be getting back to normal. In any case, I just wanted to jump in here and say that while, on a basic level, the idea of simplification over convolution is both sound and understandable, the problem is that, as has been established multiple times just within the confines of this one thread, the real world doesn't always leave room for such things once you really dive into the finer details. Echoing @lordmonkus's sentiments, the utopian-altruistic-emulator-developer world that would be a prerequisite for what you're asking for simply does not exist. Feel free to read over this thread if you need any evidence of that - pay attention to the posts by RealLibretro. Real swell guy that one. byuu? The Higan dev? Complete narcissistic asshole that treats his own fans like utter garbage. The scene is full of nutcases, frankly; and I'd just as soon that @Jason Carr, being the nice guy that he is, not go near some of these devs with a 30-foot pole, let alone have the kind of entangled development relationship that you're talking about. And by equal measure, I'd just as soon those people not come anywhere near Launchbox's development. I'm content to let some of these guys duke it out in a war of their own making and let the chips fall where they may - we'll still be over here doing just fine with our popcorn and our sweet, meticulously organized library, that it just so happens we can hook whichever emulator we choose into. And the alternative to that is...what? In-house emulator development? That's just not gonna happen. You understand that some of these devs, despite being borderline sociopaths, have dedicated literally years (more than a decade in some cases) to the development of emulators for single platforms right? And in some cases that's including multiple developers working on the project. That's not even remotely feasible or practical for what we're talking about. Again, it's not that there's anything wrong with wanting things simpler, it's just that the reality of this hobby is far from simple, for social, technical, and even legal reasons. Is the current system perfect? Of course not, but it's by far the best experience I've ever had with any sort of front-end environment, both because of the relative ease of the software itself and because of our community which is one of the nicest and most helpful you'll find on such things. And as lordmonkus said, practically everything imaginable is already covered in existing tutorials, people just have to make the small amount of effort to watch and follow them; and if there isn't an existing tutorial, one of us can probably help get it sorted out anyway; and hey - that means we'll have something new that can be covered in a tutorial video There are very real and tangible improvements that can still be made to Launchbox that would require only a tiny fraction of the kind of developmental effort you're talking about, and for most of us, those smaller improvements are going to be more beneficial than the kind of monumental overhaul that you're talking about. I also think the idea that the userbase would "expand significantly" as result of that kind of overhaul is pretty overstated. Emulation is, has always been, and by all accounts will remain to be niche. There's a particular group of people that are passionate about it, and a much larger group that simply doesn't care and will never care regardless of how painless you make it - these people aren't going to suddenly be super interested in X68000 emulation simply because you've streamlined the process a bit. So strap on your nerd-goggles like the rest of us and jump in - you'll make it, I promise. There are plenty of skilled lifeguards around these parts.

I'm happy to report that the review was completed after about 15 minutes, I got my key, and it worked just fine in Steam!

Just a bit of a PSA that Dark Souls 3 is on sale (with 3 days remaining) on Gamesplanet for $29.12~ and the Digital Deluxe edition (DS3 + Season Pass) is $48.55~. The price is in pounds which is why the amounts are a bit odd. The normal full price on these are $60 and $85 respectively at the moment, so that's pretty darn good. https://uk.gamesplanet.com/game/dark-souls-iii-steam-key--2978-1 https://uk.gamesplanet.com/game/dark-souls-iii-deluxe-edition-steam-key--2978-2 Full disclosure, I've not used this site before, but I found multiple game deal subreddit threads saying that the site is legit. I went ahead and purchased the Digital Deluxe version so I'll report back when everything's complete. It would seem they have some kind of payment review process (which I guess is probably reasonable considering I'm purchasing internationally) so my purchase is currently "in review". You also have to link your account to your public steam profile or one of several social media sites; that's not exactly unusual either. Anyway, if anyone is interested but is hesitant about the site itself, I'll be the guinea pig

Some further testing is below. All of these have working cracked versions already that work just fine in CCS64 and other emulators, but it's interesting to see that some of the Preservation Project (.nib) files actually work in CCS64 once converted to .g64 format. I started by using MNIB + DOSBox to convert them, but 1) that's kinda time consuming and 2) didn't yield working results as often as using Nibtools. Nibtools seems to just be easier and more reliable all around. You can find it here. All you have to do is drag a .nib file onto the "nibconv.exe" file and it will convert them into .g64 which you can load in CCS64 or other C64 emulators. Working in CCS64: Aztec Challenge Ballblazer Boulder Dash Bruce Lee Captain Blood Dig Dug Hawkeye The Last Ninja Legacy of the Ancients Master of the Lamps H.E.R.O. Hacker Impossible Mission Koronis Rift Little Computer People Montezuma's Revenge The Movie Monster Game Rad Warrior Raid on Bungeling Bay Raid Over Moscow Rampage Rescue on Fractalus Skate or Die! Summer Games Not working in CCS64: Artillery Duel - crashes Beach-Head - some garbled graphics Beach-Head II - has a hilariously preachy message about software piracy and then hangs Bop 'n Rumble - hangs Choplifter - garbled graphics; works in Hoxs64 Times of Lore - hangs after character selection screen; works in Hoxs64 First Samurai - seems to actually work but requests password to start IK+ - crashes Mr. Robot And His Robot Factory - plays but is missing some sounds Project Firestart - hangs Psi 5 Trading Company - hangs Shadowfire - hangs Spy Hunter - doesn't load The Train - hangs Zorro - hangs

So this is kinda exciting. I just discovered how to convert .nib files to .g64 and .d64 (and .g64 to .d64). Success rate when running them in an emulator seems a bit mixed so far though, which I guess is to be expected. More testing to be done. EDIT: It figures that the first game I tried this on (Times of Lore) uses V-MAX! protection The .g64 conversion works in Hoxs64 but in CCS64 you can't get passed the character selection screen. EDIT 2: The Last Ninja conversion (to .g64) seems to be working great in CCS64. EDIT 3: Ballblazer conversion is working great in CCS64. It would seem that a normal boot (i.e. not fast-boot) is required for these to work, but the Maximum 1541 Speed option in CCS64 doesn't seem to interfere with it and works great with .g64. Normal vs Fast boot is basically a non-issue with Maximum 1541 Speed enabled anyway.

CCS64 works just fine with my 360 controller. Hell, it even works with my Genesis/Master System/Atari/C64 to USB adapter + TAC-2 Joystick. It's also the only one (between it, Vice, and Hoxs) that actually works via Steam Link (because I enjoy Big Box + couch gaming as well, but don't feel like hooking up an actual PC to my living room TV).

Glad to hear it was helpful!

Exactly. I mean it's literally just a waste of hard drive space and clutters up your roms. Granted, hard drive space is mostly a non-issue for C64 games but still... No-Intro is typically a good way to avoid this kind of junk but their C64 sets are almost entirely Preservation Project files, which is unfortunate. I've had a good deal of success with Gamebase - their stuff isn't always in .d64 format but they seem to always work at least. I usually just use a combination of TOSEC and Gamebase - if the Gamebase version is .d64 format, then you should be good to go. If it's not, I'll usually try the TOSEC .d64s (and there's usually several...) until I find a good one; if there isn't a good one, then I just fall back to the Gamebase version regardless of file format. I've only got about 300 C64 games in my library (because I pick and choose everything) but I've tested them all

I found the post I mentioned above. Cassiel, an admin for TOSECDev, said in response to a question about why bad dumps didn't get removed from the sets: The only thing I can say to that is, who are these "people"? Why in the world would anyone want to collect dumps that simply don't work (and are known not to work, no less). I'll say again that this isn't preserving anything, any more than I'd be "preserving" something if I were to open up a rom with a hex editor, mash some random keys in a few spots, and then save it as "[game name] (my turbo awesome version).zip".

Happy to help! Yeah Maximum 1541 Speed definitely makes it a more enjoyable experience for me. Keep in mind that it only works for disk images. .D64 is the format I recommend, when available. You can of course still manually activate warp with any format, but having it kick in and turn off automatically as needed is awesome. One other point regarding file format that might be worth mentioning is that CCS64 does not support .nib files. This really isn't a problem as far as I'm concerned though because you should really just avoid .nib files to begin with - they're part of the Preservation Project and contain all of the original copy protection which will often render them unusable even on emulators that actually support the format. Yep, that can definitely be an issue. Even worse is that TOSEC actually has a significant number of bad dumps for C64 games. They've made the statement before that it's basically for historical reasons and that they typically don't remove dumps even if they're bad, which is kinda retarded as far as I'm concerned - having multiple dumps based on different cracking groups does make some amount of sense to me (I mean this was basically the birth of Demoscene - I think that stuff has some amount of historical significance), but having multiple dumps of the same group's crack, multiple of which don't work, doesn't. What exactly are you preserving by doing that? The fact that someone had a bad disk or did a poor job of ripping it? The only thing that amounts to is a good deal of annoyance for the end-user.

Thanks! I hope you'll find it useful if you decide to give FS-UAE a go. Yeah I'd like to do some more of these - I'd kinda like to do one on CCS64 for C64 emulation because 1) I love the C64 and 2) I feel like CCS64 isn't an emulator that gets talked about much despite having some really nice features; and many of the videos I've seen on Youtube about it have been woefully inaccurate and/or just horribly made. There really wouldn't be that much to go into though from an actual tutorial perspective since there's very little setup required - basically just enabling maximum 1541 speed (possibly my favorite feature of CCS64 - it's basically an auto-warp that detects when the game is loading and speeds up during the load and slows back down to normal once complete) and setting your video options. That's about it for setup really. You can do some other nifty things though like creating a save-state file and using it as your "rom" in LB and launching it will start the game right where you saved (useful for some games that have a lot of junk/docs/multiple load screens before the game actually starts). I honestly can't think of too many (or any really) platforms that would actually warrant the amount of detail that I went into for FS-UAE though - most things just don't have that many moving parts. Most stuff is fairly plug-and-play, even among home computer emulation like C64 and Atari 8-bit. Atari 8-bit might be a good one though simply because it seems like it never gets talked about. Atari 800 is actually a great emulator too. DOSBox certainly has a great deal of nuance simply because it encompasses such a wide period of games and hardware. I feel like a lot of it would simply be going over how to read and tweak .conf files though. That and I suppose more niche things like GUS and MT32 emulation. Launchbox also automates some of this stuff so I'm not sure how many people would care about things like learning how to use mount commands

Alrighty, it's done!

I think it'll be okay once everything's actually in place (I tested out combining a couple of random videos from my channel and that seems to work fine), but just to add insult to injury, I uploaded all three parts (they rendered fine individually), ready to combine them on Youtube, but it just so happens that I had a music clip that was literally about 20 seconds long (out of 53+ minutes of footage, that's the only part that wasn't just me speaking or game audio), just this generic elevator music, but it got caught by the automated copyright scanner and, funny story - you can't combine videos that have a copyright claim with other videos. Yay! So I found a royalty-free equivalent from Kevin Macleod, downloaded it, added it to my Google Drive, drove home on my lunch break, swapped the clip out, started the render on that part again and drove back to work. Double yay! This thing has just been one nightmare after another. But by god it's gonna happen; for science and geekdom! Also because the Amiga is really cool and it's gone on for too long as this somewhat impenetrable beast for people to get into emulating, which is a shame. I've read plenty of comments on Youtube and elsewhere where people gave up in frustration because they just couldn't get it to work and couldn't figure out what was going wrong, so if it helps out even a few people to avoid that it'll be worth it. The detail that I go into is arguably overkill, but I wanted to try to address not only the things that everyone is sure to encounter but the things that people might encounter as well; hopefully answering the questions that people didn't even realize they had yet. The other priority was that I didn't want to simply provide instructions on how to get things to run (which would be quite brief), but rather how to get them to run correctly. I've only got about 200 Amiga games in my library right now, but I've tested every one. And by that I don't just mean making sure they made it passed the boot screen. I think the only thing that I don't go into a whole lot of detail with is CD32 which is purely because my experience with it so far has been both limited and kindof hit-and-miss at that, so I kept that part fairly brief because I don't want to give out bad or misleading information (which I've seen a fair amount of for FS-UAE on Youtube - such as videos about WHDLoad games but no mention whatsoever of the fact that the QuitKey has to be used to in order for save games to be preserved). I have a feeling that I'll end up coming back to CD32 in a later video once I give it some more thorough testing. That's fine though, that can wait for another day. This should still be plenty to get people started. I'm definitely looking forward to getting back to actually playing some stuff once this is finally done though

As far as I know you can only do two at a time so you'd probably just do it like I have in the example and then you may have to use the UI to add in the third disk when needed. I've only ever messed with 2-disk games for Atari ST. I have a button mapped to swap between the disk in the first and second drive so I just load 1 into drive A and 2 into B and press the button when prompted to insert disk two. I don't think you could load all three at once.

So I woke up this morning to a crash/error message with the progress at 95%... which needless to say is pretty effing frustrating. I'm going to try rendering it in three pieces and then combining them with Youtube's editor.

The video's done. It's got about 3 hours of rendering to do though so I'll start the upload tomorrow morning, then I'll have to add in the timestamp links to the Google Doc, add in links and timestamps to the video description, and give the video a final once-over watch (it's 53 minutes long). As long as everything goes okay with the render tonight, I should have it up and finalized tomorrow afternoon.

I still haven't gotten around to picking up anything on the SNES pad front. I'm still kinda leaning towards the Fighting Commander just so I could use it for more than just SNES games, but I haven't bit the bullet yet. I did pick up one of these so that I can hook up my Tac-2 joystick for C64 emulation (and 2600, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, and Amiga... I got it mostly for C64 though). It works great! It actually allows for two joysticks to be connected at once, and I do have 2 Tac-2's, but I haven't tested them out simultaneously yet. It's the same port as the Genesis and SMS so it'd work for those too but I haven't tested it with those yet (can't imagine I'll be hooking up a SMS pad anytime soon but I've got a Genesis one around here somewhere that I still need to test out with it).

Just another status update - the first 35 minutes of the video (which is about half-way through section 10 in the script) are done. This is literally the only thing I've been doing this weekend so my guess is it's not going to be done tonight. Sorry for the delays but it's not because I haven't been working on it... believe me. I have to say I'm quite happy with how it's coming together so far though. I think it's gonna be pretty spiffy when it's all done.

So, just to give an update. The script is done and the audio has been recorded and edited down, so now it just needs the visual aid component to be recorded and edited. That's what I'll be working on this weekend. Just forewarning... it's at 47 minutes right now. Once the video is added in it's probably gonna be about 50. So... yeah. I'm just trying to cover everything I can possibly think of. The first 30ish minutes covers setup and usage of FS-UAE and the last 15 minutes covers integration into Launchbox. I've got a Google Doc of the script which is divided into sections which you should be able to navigate with the section selector on the left (at least I hope that shows up for a shared view-only version...). When the video's actually done the titles will link directly to timestamps in the video. Google Doc Script

I've got a full wishlist on VGCollect but these are the main things I'm looking for right now. PSX, PS2, and DC are the systems I collect most for. If anyone has any they're willing to sell, I'm listening. PSX: Einhander Herc's Adventures Koudelka Philosoma Psychic Detective Tail Concerto Tales of Destiny II Threads of Fate Thunder Force V I'm also looking for Playstation Underground volumes 1.3, 2.1, and 4.3. Those are the last three That's the last one I need Got them all now! I'm also looking for case+manuals for Tales of Destiny and Valkyrie Profile. PS2: Blood Will Tell Echo Night: Beyond Kuon Metal Saga Sky Gunner Tales of Legendia Virtual On: Marz DC: Bangai-O Cannon Spike Gundam Side Story 0079: Rise from the Ashes Heavy Metal: Geomatrix Illbleed Outtrigger Plasma Sword Psychic Force 2012 Tech Romancer