Zombeaver

Alright y'all, I'm beating my head against a wall with this and it's probably something simple, but I cannot get this to work. The section in green works fine so long as the section in red isn't present. If the section in red is there none of the section in green works. If I put the red section in second it doesn't work. I've tried placing the WinWaitClose through ExitApp portions within each sub function underneath the hotkeys but if I do that it runs through the entire sequence as soon as I press the hotkey despite the fact that Retroarch hasn't closed (it closes CDisplay and itself at that point). I've tried using if/else statements and didn't have any more luck with that either. All I need is a hotkey combo that flips between two windows (Retroarch and CdisplayEx in this case) and that part works fine, but I also need it to watch and close CdisplayEx and itself once Retroarch closes and at this point I'm getting one or the other but not both no matter what I try. SetTitleMatchMode, 2 WinWait, RetroArch VICE WinWaitClose Process, Close, Cdisplayex.exe ExitApp Hotkey, ~NumpadSub & NumpadEnter, Function1 Return Function1: SetTitleMatchMode, 2 WinActivate, Cdisplayex Hotkey, ~NumpadSub & NumpadEnter, Function2 Return Function2: SetTitleMatchMode, 2 WinActivate, RetroArch VICE Hotkey, ~NumpadSub & NumpadEnter, Function1 Return

Kaiser's actually in the collection already

Countless people have contributed in large and small ways to this scene for many years. Contributions which you have undoubtedly reaped the benefits of no small number of times. If you've downloaded a single piece of media or metadata you have. None of that stuff just appeared out of the ether. It's a scene made up of a wide array of different people good at various bits and bobs that all come together to make a better whole, and it's all niches within niches. That's the nature of the hobby (or any hobby, really). You either enjoy it or you don't (and, if you don't, why the hell are you doing it?) You're either willing to put the time and energy in for the benefit of that hobby or you're not. If you're not, my suggestion would be to stop. If you need to stick your digital coffee cup out into the crowd in order for it to be worth it to you, you might want to take a moment to consider why you're doing what you're doing. I've spent literally thousands of hours on various projects for this scene, and continue to do so to this day, without receiving penny one. Hell, I spend money every year on these projects. And I'm married, have a mortgage, and a full time job. You enjoy the hobby or you don't. If you don't, stop spending your free time on things you don't enjoy. My two cents.

50 more done. That puts it at 2300 currently! I've made it through all of "I" as well. I've also made a new generic bezel (with a couple variations) which people might like. I'm still making my way through and adding music to text adventures (and a few other games that just have no sound).

Does it give Launchbox horse armor?

You're very welcome! Absolutely! Things are moving along nicely with the next version but there's still room for requests (which I always encourage). I'll add it into the next batch.

I am but it'll be a while as I'm in the middle of another project at the moment. 1.6.0 (stable) is what was used for the current configs.

Another 50 done:

Glcore doesn't support cg, so that means you'll need to use cores that support regular gl. The non-HW Beetle PSX core should still work (and would be my recommendation anyway since the shaders are designed for native resolution anyway). That's likely the only thing out of the bunch that might throw people off, since in the past you could still use the HW core and have it use gl if you set it to software mode. Kinda stupid change imo but shouldn't change much as far as support - some cores never supported gl to begin with.

Yes, v0.20 is still the current version. The next update will be v0.25. I'm in the process doing some auditing because a number of things changed with updates to the core, so that's slowed things down a bit but it needs to be done. I'm also in the process of testing out and adding autowarp where applicable - the current core now has this as an option and it's essentially the core's implementation of CCS64's "Maximum 1541 Speed" feature, which warps when it a disk attempts to load data. It only works when TrueDrive is enabled but that's the only time you'd really need it anyway so that's okay. It's a great feature and was basically the only remaining thing that CCS64, up to this point, held as an advantage. With that said, it's not something you can just use across the board since there are times where it's problematic - some games are in an almost constant state of loading, so you can't use it there and in cases where a game has frequent short loads and music you don't want to use it because it mutes the game while it warps (so it makes it sound like the audio is skipping). That said, there are a lot of cases where it's immensely beneficial. For example, there are a number of text adventures that have still images for each area that tend to take several seconds to load each time you move to another area - games like The Brew for example - and they have no music or sound (other than the SID music which I'm now piping in in the background with libsidplayfp, which is unaffected because it's external to Retroarch) - in these cases you're talking about going from 5-10 seconds per screen change to it happening virtually instantaneously. There are of course plenty of other good use scenarios for it as well, but testing is needed in all cases to verify that it doesn't screw anything up or make the game behave oddly.

40 new games since the last batch. 2200 total.

Black Dahlia has now been added to Zomb's Lair.

Read the performance section of the opening post.

Found some more tracks that are appropriate for text adventure background music. It still doesn't quite cover everything I want, but between these and the previous ones it's a good start anyway. Astral Travel by G-Fellow Catalyst by Jammer Downward by Kruthers Illbient by Jammer (can't find a video of this one) Lighthouse in a Storm by Mibri Lost in the Night by MCH (I really love this one; added it to The Curse of Rabenstein and it's just so much better) Street of My Soul by Jammer

That's strange because I tested it and it worked fine here. Glad you got it sorted at least.

I had an interesting idea the other day while talking about text adventures on the Zomb's Lair Discord - many of them have no sound or music, so the thought occurred to me that maybe I could sortof pipe in my own appropriate background SID music to help set the mood a bit better. I found a nice tiny SID player that runs directly from CMD called libsidplayfp so I can basically start this as part of a game's .bat, tell it to start a specific SID track (which loops), use an AHK script to watch for Retroarch to close and then close it and the AHK script. I already have this working, at this point it's just a matter of getting tracks picked out. I've found four so far that I like and would be appropriate (below). I'll be looking for more and am open to suggestions. I want stuff that's 1) relatively slow and low-key/atmospheric and 2) are original compositions not from game soundtracks. If anyone wants to help look for more and make any suggestions, a good place to start is the Unepic SID Channel which has over 50,000 SID tracks (!) uploaded, which you can go through in a single playlist if you go here. Stars Are Us by Jammer Stolen Properties by TDM Ghosts by SIDwave Neon Haze by The Solution

You're very welcome! Yeah I make the web version the default since the magazines are now a separate module. If you download the local versions you can right-click on an entry in LB and choose [Magazine Name] (Local) to launch them. If you wanted to make them the default launch, that's easy enough to do. You can do this on an individual basis by editing them, going to additional apps, selecting the local version and choosing "make default". If you wanted to do this en masse, you'd probably want to use something like Notepad++ and then open up C64 Dreams\C64 Dreams\Data\Platforms\Magazines.xml and do a find and replace all for " (Web Version).url" with ".vbs" Make sure you include the space before (Web Version). I would recommend backing up your .xml before doing this to be safe. You would need to again open up C64 Dreams\C64 Dreams\Data\Platforms\Magazines.xml in Notepad++ and do a find and replace of: <ApplicationPath>C64 Dreams\Magazines with <ApplicationPath>[your new path]\Magazines Everything is setup with relative paths so the Magazine folder will work unaltered so long as you've got everything included (i.e. everything in the folder including !CDisplayEx, the .bats, etc.). In other words, just make sure that you move the Magazines folder in its entirety (not just the .cbrs by themselves).

Aaaaaand the sweep through the GB64 H folder is done. Phew! 17,761 screenshots parsed between # and H...

50 new games since the last batch. This brings the current total to 2160 (I removed 2 games from v0.20 that were duplicates with alternate region titles - Coil Cop and Bad Dudes vs Dragon Ninja).

Whatever you're loading there, it isn't one of my presets. I don't load anything from 199X or Analog Shader Pack version 3 paths. It's all self-contained in its own folder (Zombs Shaders), but your screenshots show paths external to that. It looks like you're loading a 199X preset. Those are not mine. Those were made by Birm. Retroarch's shader path format has changed since those were first made (relative to loaded preset location, not relative to Retroarch location) so they probably don't work anymore. The newest version of my presets are in this post and don't have any external dependencies.

45 new games since the last batch: Current full list of new titles (112 games total):

Rocket Jockey has now been added to Zomb's Lair.

Feel free to adjust my presets as you see fit. Color boost and luminance are both available in the shader settings. Be careful with the latter though - it's easy to get blowout if you push it up too high (i.e. it wouldn't take much of boost from what I'm already using for that to happen). As I said, most of what you're seeing there - and I'm not sure how I can make this any more explicit than I have already - has nothing to do with (and is not replicatable) via shaders. No shader that you're going to throw on top of Streets of Rage 2 is going to spontaneously give the game dynamic lighting or high res textures, which is the majority of what makes it look the way it does. The only thing on top of that is scanlines, bloom, and grain which the presets have already. You can boost the green if you want, and maybe increase contrast and saturation. Those are about the only things that are within the confines of shaders that would make it look closer. The only advice I can give you there is "play around". That's all I've ever done. I just looked at what others had done - namely Birm's 199X presets - and poked and prodded and fiddled around with them for hours and hours until I ended up with something I liked. All I can say is play around and experiment. Not necessarily. It depends on whether you're doing it through Retroarch or Reshade. With Reshade you can use a mask layer that won't apply any effects to the areas that you indicate in the mask. I use this to make it not affect my bezels, but you could do it for whatever you want, including the UI (which is what it's actually designed to accommodate). You'd have to make a different mask for every game though... There's no real equivalent to that in Retroarch though, to my knowledge. So in that scenario the shaders are going to affect the entire screen, yes.

Well, it depends on what exactly you're trying to replicate. There are scanlines, grain, and bloom - all of which are present in the presets already. Most of what you're seeing that's giving that a unique look comes down to the assets themselves and what looks to be some kind of additional lighting engine, none of which is stuff that shaders have any control over - that's based on the content. In other words, if you stripped away the scanlines, grain, and bloom from that picture and gave it to me, I could add a shader on top that would make the end result look similar (probably better even, honestly), but I can't make a preset that will cause content to spontaneously develop dynamic lighting or replace textures Glad you're enjoying the shaders!

Take No Prisoners has now been added to Zomb's Lair.