Zombeaver

8Phantasm said Well, I had Vsync off and VDP2 RAM Write Timing on but DonPachi was unplayable for me. Those are definitely the big two for input lag. I've never actually tried any version of DonPachi other than arcade. It's possible there's some hiccup with it, in particular, I'm not sure. Anything else you've tried (other than that and Guardian Heroes)? I've got Blast Wind, Hyper Duel, Metal Black, Radiant Silvergun, Steam-Heart's, and Thunder Force V setup with SSF, when it comes to shmups. Thunder Force V does have noticeable input lag that I've been unable to get rid of since that game doesn't seem to like VDP2 RAM Write Timing. I opt for the PSX version of that one. The others seem to be pretty good though. Blast Wind: Moderate Lag; Playable Hyper Duel: Moderate Lag; Playable; you're probably better off with the arcade version for it though Metal Black: Low Lag; Playable Radiant Silvergun: Low Lag; Playable Steam-Heart's: Low Lag; Playable Thunder Force V: High Lag; Unplayable Obviously like you said, the degree to which this is noticeable varies from person to person but I think I'm fairly aware of it as I play a lot of shmups. 8Phantasm said If you have the best settings for SSF, I'm open to try them. I still have it installed to test games out. The problem there is that, like I said, SSF is so finicky when it comes to settings that they often have to be tweaked game by game, not unlike PCSX2 honestly. There really isn't a one-size-fits-all settings solution for SSF, unfortunately, which is frustrating but at least in the newest version per-game configs are created automatically so that takes some of the tedium out of it. Often though, things can be improved with some fiddling. This was the guide I used as a starting point years ago; unfortunately, it's out of date but it does help give you a better idea of what settings do what and how certain things can impact performance. It's still useful, I think. If there's any games in particular you'd like me to take a look at, I'd be happy to. I can't promise any miracles but it can't hurt. 8Phantasm said I'm not looking to just play something just because it's the best we got, though. I like using real hardware in cases where the emulation is not up to par. Oh don't get me wrong, I agree with that mentality wholeheartedly. If something is just too far off I don't bother, even if it's my only option. I guess I just don't think SSF is as bad as you're implying haha. If Yabause were the only option, for example, I would steer very clear of Saturn emulation altogether. I happen to think nullDC is a pile of trash too. Demul isn't perfect but it's at least close enough that it's within tolerance for me; though, once again, requiring a good deal of game by game tweaking.

Alright, this will be the last one prior to the release of the pack. I want to do a little bit of additional testing just to make sure everything's good to go and the process is as user friendly as I can make it, but I'll be releasing that tomorrow. Normal: Scanlines: And here's an alternate version that's my attempt at replicating the look of a Game Boy screen... I'm just gonna go ahead and say I failed but it was fun to experiment with regardless. Alternate:

8Phantasm said I'm not using Vsync and I didn't change a bunch of settings in the emulator, if that's what you are thinking. Actually, I was thinking that not changing a "bunch of settings" was probably precisely your issue. In my experience, none of the versions run all that great with default or near default settings. SSF requires more tweaking than just about any other emulator I've ever used in order to be tolerable. But hey, if you don't want to take the time to try to fix your issue, nobody's forcing you. It's far and away the best (I would argue only, really) option currently for Saturn emulation so I'm not sure why you wouldn't, but that's your call. I'm not saying that that there's zero input lag, of course, just that it's not significantly worse than any other emulator with some tweaking. VDP2 RAM Write Timing, for example, yields a noticeable improvement in input lag and I'm almost positive that's turned off by default. With that turned on and vsync off I was just playing Metal Black without any issues. I then switched over to Retroarch Mame and played it there, with Hard GPU sync on and a frame delay of 6. There's barely any perceptible difference, if at all. Going along with what lordmonkus said, there could be game by game instances where the disparity is greater, but I think tossing SSF aside with a blanket statement of "It has atrocious input lag. Unusuable." is cutting yourself off from access to some great games unnecessarily.

Yeah, that's true; it's predicated on people having either the default files or new files that are named identically to the default ones. I guess I had just assumed that that would be true for everyone because, prior to now, I had been under the impression that these image files needed to follow the same strict naming convention as other images that LB looks for. Hmm... oh well; not a huge deal!

Jason Carr said Also, it's important to note that the platform images can be named anything as long as they're in the right folders. So unfortunately overwriting will never work anyways. Actually... I don't quite understand this bit. I get that they can be named anything as long as they're in the right folder, but why would this prevent overwriting from working? If my files are named identically to the only other files that are in the existing clear logo folders (which should, by default, be named identically to the name of the platform)... then why wouldn't it work? The only thing that's stopping it currently is the fact that mine are named [platform name].png instead of [platform name].jpg I mean, even in the current state - once the default logo files are deleted - the filename/folder structure in the pack is setup so that people can swap between normal and scanline versions by overwriting (because the files are named identically) - you just copy the scanline -> images folder into the Launchbox folder to overwrite the normal versions and vice versa. ...does that make sense? haha You'll open it up and see this: If you go into either "Normal" or "Scanlines" folders you'll then have a folder structure of Images -> Platforms -> [individual platform folders for each platform covered in the pack] -> Clear Logo -> [platform name].png If you want to swap from one version to another you just drag the "Images" folder from either version and merge/overwrite. That would even work with the default files... if they had the same file extension haha. Sorry, I'm probably wasting time on minutia here

Jason Carr said Ah yeah, I forgot about that bug, @Zombeaver. LaunchBox doesn't care and I hardcoded the extension that it writes out without thinking about it a long time ago. I'll put a fix for this on my shortlist. But yeah, sadly, people's existing files won't automatically get fixed when I do. Gotcha. I figured it was something along those lines. It's no biggie - I just wanted to make it as easy for people as possible Jason Carr said Also, it's important to note that the platform images can be named anything as long as they're in the right folders. Interesting. I didn't realize that. Jason Carr said In the future I'll solve this by adding support for image packs (and sound packs). I also hope to allow people to integrate the images into the custom themes. Oh, I definitely like the sound of that! Thanks for all your hard work as always!

@Jason I'm getting close to releasing the first set of platform clear logos so I'm getting the zip setup with existing Launchbox folder structure so that all you have to do is drag and drop in the base Launchbox folder and then merge the folders. One thing I noticed, however, is that most (maybe all?) of the default platform clear logos are incorrectly named with a .jpg file type when in reality they're actually .pngs. Beyond the fact that this is... well kinda weird... this presents a problem for quick installation of my pack because they're all .pngs; this means that it's not going to prompt people to overwrite the existing clear logo files, it's just going to put them in the same folder, and then people will have to go through and delete all the old ones. .jpg format doesn't have transparency support so anything that's named "blahblah.jpg" and has transparencies... you can be certain isn't, in fact, a .jpg. Any idea why this is how they're coming in by default through LB and if that can be corrected in the future? I have the feeling this won't even help existing users to be honest, because I don't think any change you would make would have any impact on the extension of people's existing files, but it would help for future users I suppose. My guess is people are just going to have to delete their old files when they install the pack, but I'm trying to cut down on the work required as much as possible. I guess it's also possible that my default image files are just older and this issue has since been corrected... I'm not sure.

Atrocious input lag? I think you might have some wrong settings or something... I haven't experienced that at all. In fairness, that's pretty easy to do considering the convoluted mess that is SSF's settings. You may want to post your version and settings here.

I really hope people like this one because it was a complete nightmare. Getting the colors just right was really difficult and time consuming. I think it turned out pretty well in the end though. Normal: Scanlines:

Awesome, thanks @Jason! I think I'm just going to finish up Sega Master System, Gameboy, and Windows for the first release. I'm sure there's other stuff people will need but that should cover a lot of ground. That'll put it at 26 platforms. EDIT: Speaking of which, here's one for Sega Master System. Admittedly, this image isn't from the SMS cover of Space Harrier, but the actual cover (like practically all SMS covers) is complete garbage so uh, yeah... we're not doing that. Normal: Scanlines:

Interesting. I'll have to check that out. I've just been too knee-deep in other stuff in LB/BB to mess around with anything new lately. I've been in the process of auditing all of my DOS stuff to add in screenshots, descriptions, and "fanart" (which typically just ends up being another screenshot) because the Games DB seems to be lacking in the DOS department. It's time consuming but it just looks so much better once it's all setup. Between that and working on those clear logos I haven't had time to play much lately haha.

DOS76 said Zombeaver you don't play around with Model 3? I haven't thus far, no; not out of a lack of interest - I just haven't gotten around to it. Is Supermodel the best emulator for that? That's the only one I've read about but I don't know if there are better (or any) alternatives. Do things run reliably/accurately and at a good speed?

Yeah, this is definitely an issue. I think the main difficulty is that some of these games never got a true poster (or they're so obscure that you just can't find them anywhere). The Games DB is something that's constantly being improved upon, but arcade games in particular could use some work and often need manual intervention. My advice is to use a combination of The Arcade Flyer Archive, Mobygames, and Google Images (and for that I suggest starting your search with a modifier of search tools -> change "any size" to "large" and then move to "medium" if necessary). I usually start with those other two first. It's time consuming, unfortunately. 40 games honestly isn't a bad number to audit at all though. That shouldn't take that long really. I take a curated quality over quantity approach to my library but even then it's typically a couple hundred games per platform. I have platforms for "CPS-1", "CPS-2", "NeoGeo", "Sega Model 2", and "Arcade" (everything that doesn't fall into those first four) and the Arcade one alone is 300+ titles. Just throw on some good music (or a podcast) and go. It's kindof zen actually haha

My original plan was to do an M2 logo with Daytona USA but I couldn't really find an image that was satisfactory. I already used Motor Raid for the banner I made so I wanted to go for something else. Luckily, Dynamite Cop has one hell of a cover. It looks like a poster for a Charles Band flick from the 80's. Badass. I just have a couple more of these that I want to do before the first release of the pack. @Jason, if possible, could I get "trusted" status or whatever it's called so that I can edit my original post? I believe Brad mentioned it to you previously. I think it would make it easier for people that come across this thread and don't want to dig through several pages to get a link. That would also allow me to update the download as I add more stuff over time. Normal: Scanlines:

Aaaaand one more before I go to sleep. I know I know... Big Whoop. Normal: Scanlines:

Okay, so after updating to the newest beta, clear logo visual fidelity is noticeable better, to the point that the 150% scale scanlines are actually visible in Big Box. Unfortunately, at that scale it would seem that they're still a bit too dense to look right. At 250%, however, they look pretty good. So I've already gone back and created new scanline versions at 250% scale for everything I've done so far, as well as reworked/improved/fixed a number of things in some of them. When I release these in a packed download (should be very soon, probably tomorrow), it's going to have "Normal", "Scanline" (these will just be the 250% versions), and an "Alternate" folder for a few variants that I've made, like for the Saturn and Playstation logos. You can see some examples of how the scanline versions look in Big Box here (view in fullsceeen): And now, for some tactical GBA goodness: Normal: Scanlines:

Oh wow, I hadn't heard that. I saw where @DOS76 mentioned that in the OP but I wasn't actually sure what it was in reference to. That's actually super exciting! Better late than never!

Dipso said launch box needs options for alternate emulators for dos games. I've never messed with the RA version of Dosbox, but I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this. Why would it be any different from any other game that you're piping into RA through LB? Wouldn't you just unselect "Use Dosbox" in the game entry in LB, and then select Retroarch as your emulator? As long as you have the Dosbox core added to your Retroarch -> associated platforms (MS-DOS) it should be fine unless I'm missing something. I mean this is how you setup anything for Launchbox -> Retroarch (including cores that aren't in the default list that's populated by Launchbox).

DOS76 said That's weird, I don't recall having any issues with these in SSF. I'll double check tonight. They always run super slow and choppy for me unplayable on all of my machines and I have a few that can handle just about anything you throw at them. You know what... I just realized that I think I have these for Sega CD not Saturn. That's probably why. I'll double check but I'm almost positive that's what it is. DOS76 said Is there any particular reason not to just play the PSX version? No I just like to have everything working everywhere when I can. I most likely will never end up playing either version. Haha, fair enough! Croc actually isn't too bad. It's no Super Mario 64, of course, but it's decent. Jumping Flash 2 would probably be my pick for best PSX platformer that's 3D. It'd probably be a toss up between that and the Spyro series. There's a lot of other goodies too though - Gex: Enter the Gecko, the Crash Bandicoot series, Tail Concerto... actually come to think of it I'd put all of these above Croc haha. You could do worse though. I'm looking at you Bubsy 3D.

I love Jim Sterling, so I'll definitely give this a watch. lordmonkus said My big thing with emulation and debating its legality is the more often than not the very people who bitch and cry about it being illegal are the same people who buy repro carts and think those are perfectly fine when the vast majority of those are illegally using fan translations to profit from while the translators see nothing. But oh look we put a nice sticker on it and put it in a nice box, pay us 40-60 bucks for something we stole. The people who complain about emulator illegality are either the corporations or some jerk off who thinks their physical retro collection is gonna pay for their kids college in 20 years. It's like the comic book and sports card people back in the early 90s when everyone jumped on that bandwagon. These people out there now jumping into the retro collecting are just dumping all their money into something that is only going to lose value. Now having said all that if people are buying because they genuinely want to have and play these games that's great. But if they think they are making an "investment" they are making a huge mistake. I'm actually a big collector of retro games - it makes me happy and it's a genuinely fun pass time and I've met and become friends with a lot of cool people because of it. With that said, I'm also a huge advocate of emulation. I find it hilarious that people would find any disparity/conflict between these two statements. I frequent a subreddit called /r/gamecollecting and I was a little dumbstruck by how completely and insanely negative people are there about this perspective when I tried to explain it. If you mention emulation and the merits thereof, people will lose their shit over there. Here's what people need to understand - emulation is the only, and I do mean only, way to reliably preserve the art that all of us are so passionate about for future generations. All the physical media that we collectors are accumulating will eventually and inevitably fail, period. It may (and probably will) be after my lifetime, but it will happen. And when it does, then what? It's just gone forever because emulation is so bloody evil? Are you people insane? I'll make this comparison. The Mona Lisa was completed in 1506. The photographic process as we now know it was in its infancy in the early 1820s with the earliest surviving photograph dated 1826 or 1827. Let's say that in 1825 there was a tragic fire and the Mona Lisa was reduced to ash. Barring forgeries, without the photographic process, that piece of artwork would be lost forever. Would the world be better off if that were the case? I think few would argue that it would be. So why in the shit do people act as though emulation is high treason? I love video games. I love them as much as any other form of art; perhaps in different ways and for different reasons, but just as much. I love the history of them. I love seeing where they've come from and how that's affected what's come afterwards. I think that's a history that's worth preserving. Emulation is the way to do that. I think that, in their heart of hearts, most of the people that are so adamant about physical media wouldn't even disagree with that if they allowed themselves to think for two seconds. People need to grow up, think further than 15 minutes in front of their face, and chill the hell out. /drop mic EDIT: Watched the video. Not the same focus that I would have taken (obviously, based on the above), but he does make some valid points; and it's hilarious as always I think the issue of value is a very real one - it's certainly at the forefront of my mind whenever I'm debating picking up a retro title, especially if it's higher end. I think there's definitely some merit to what he's saying, and it's part of the reason I love GOG. I do think that if some of this stuff was at a more reasonable price point, people would go for it more; but I think a distinction should be made between digital and physical for that discussion - physical copies are a finite commodity, so it's reasonable that the prices of those would increase over time as the supply does nothing but diminish; all you can do in that regard is ask yourself "Is this worth it to me?" My guiding rule is that I won't pay more than the original retail of the game and that's never served me wrong. I've literally only broken that rule once, and that was for Suikoden 2 - I bought a disc-only copy about 10 years ago for $60 and just last year bought a case and manual for $40, which still puts it below fair market value but above original retail. That game is... special for me though so I'm willing to make an exception. It is worth the price point for me. For digital though? Yeah, more than say $5 for a 20 year old game is pretty outrageous as far as I'm concerned. It's not necessarily a statement on the quality of the game itself (though it could be, like he said in the video) but more of a "Why am I paying $30 for a digital version on a proprietary storefront for a 20 year old game again?"

Thanks @alec100_94! I actually missed your reply from earlier so I'm excited to test this out! I'll report back once I've done some testing.

Kristijan1001 said the comparison u did with adobe was just stupid Adobe has a line of software products that people can use, some of which are free (Adobe Reader, Photoshop Express, Flash Player, Air, Shockwave, etc.) and some of which require a premium to access (Photoshop, In Design, etc.). If you were to have access to Photoshop, a premium product in their line, without paying for it, it would be piracy. Launchbox has certain modules/features that people can use, some of which are free (base Launchbox without premium features) and some which require a premium to access (Big Box, and premium features). If you were to have access to Big Box, a premium feature, without paying for it, it would be piracy. Not only is it not a stupid comparison, it's about as close as you could get. Kristijan1001 said most of programs have drm and have support for like 3pcs(so u can't actually do that if its not drm free also im pritty sure even if it was possible the lincence would get terminated really quickly) Yep. Which is precisely why I differentiated between whether or not you can and whether or not you should for Launchbox. It is DRM free, which means there isn't anything systemically (to my knowledge) that would stop you from doing what you're suggesting. But you shouldn't. I'm sorry you didn't get the answer you were hoping for. Launchbox will still take care of your basic needs until you can save up to purchase a license yourself. The extra bells and whistles are neat, but not essential.

DOS76 said Corpse Killer and Double Switch both of which run like dog shit in SSF. That's weird, I don't recall having any issues with these in SSF. I'll double check tonight. DOS76 said It plays Croc which for SSF you need like a beta 10 or 11 version in order to not get the black screen with sound. Is there any particular reason not to just play the PSX version? DOS76 said It handles AMOK which SSF won't (This one works in RA) play. It's funny, I actually just picked up a big box PC copy of this a couple days ago. I haven't tried the Saturn version.

How is it out of context? You're asking if you can have access to a product/level of service that you're required to pay for without paying for it. What other context is there? To have X you must pay Y. Did you pay Y for X? No? Then it's piracy. Pretty straightforward. If your friend has a Playstation game and he lends you the disc, and you take it home, and play it on your Playstation, and then a couple days later you give it back to him - that's not piracy, that's basically the same thing as renting it. If your friend has a Playstation game and he lends you the disc, and you rip that disc to your computer, and then give him back the disc and continue to play the rip... that is piracy. What you're asking for is the latter, not the former. Unless of course you're planning on deleting the license a couple days later I guess, which you gave no indication of. Again, when you buy a license, you are buying a license to use on your computer(s). Not for you and whoever else you decide to give your license to. The fact that it's DRM free means that you can do that on as many of your computers as you choose; it also means that if you choose to give your license to someone else, there's nothing systemically stopping you from doing so... but you shouldn't because that is the same thing as piracy, whether you realize/want to admit it or not. @SentaiBrad feel free to jump in here and correct me if I'm wrong on the spirit or logistics of any of this.

SentaiBrad said You can drag and drop the exe, import it as MS-DOS (doesn't require you to specify an emulator, but that also works), then edit the game to take away the need for it to use MS-DOS. Jason is aware that importing shortcuts or drag and dropping windows games to specifically import them is a complete work around and he has expressed intrest in fixing that so you can more easily import PC game exe's or shortcuts without workarounds. One other thing I would add to this is that there are instances where some Steam games actually won't run if launched by their standalone exe's because of Steam DRM. Not all of them, of course, but some (often newer titles). The way to get around this is to go to your start menu -> steam -> find the shortcut to the game and right-click and go to properties. The way steam game shortcuts are setup in the start menu is to a url, that will look something like "steam://rungameid/#####". All you have to do is copy that url into the "application path" in your Launchbox entry and you'll be good to go. This is functionally identical to just pressing the "play game" button in Steam.