Zombeaver

Here's a new one for DOS. Full gallery here. I had plenty of options for potential games to use, too many to count, but I had to give it to Betrayal at Krondor - one of my all time favorites. It doesn't get enough love!

SentaiBrad said I actually heard the 8bitdo controller wasn't all that great from a friend who has one, and he's super in to the NES / SNES, but I haven't used it myself. Hmm... did he have any specific complaints that you can recall? D-pad accuracy, button responsiveness, weight, shape, etc.? SentaiBrad said If you are willing to spend a little extra money, if you can find a clean and less beaten SNES controller you can also get SNES to USB adapter's and go that route as well. Yeah, I mentioned that as an option in my opening post - I still have my two OEM controllers from when I was a kid. The problem with that is I've heard from multiple sources that those adapters can introduce input lag - not a huge deal for RPGs but a killer for Contra 3 and the like. Definitely wouldn't have to worry about getting that authentic feel though! haha If anyone has any first hand experience with these adapters, I'd be interested to hear about it.

I would second that - I'd never actually thought of this but it's a great idea. If there isn't a way to do this currently, I can submit a bit bucket request (assuming there isn't one already). EDIT: Regarding playing the game directly, I think you can already do this? Don't you press X on the 360 controller to do that? I'm not at home at the moment to check.

The feature needs to be implemented, regardless - there's plenty of us that have no desire to integrate RL in any way to LB. If you're a preexisting RL user, it makes sense, but since I'm not, it's just a whole other rabbit hole that I'm not willing to jump down. I feel like with LB -> Retroarch -> sub core -> game we've got enough layers as it is haha.

rmilyard said Well most of my ROMs are .img so I guess for now I'll use 4do to run them since works. I posted on RetroArch about .img but nothing yet. Honestly, for 3DO I think standalone 4DO is still the better option, as opposed to the Retroarch port, and this is coming from someone who's a big Retroarch fan. I use RA for almost everything, but there are a handful of emulators whose standalone versions just work better and more consistently than the RA port and I think 4DO is one of them. I had a lot of issues getting several games to run well (or at all) on RA 4DO that were perfect in standalone, so I never went back. It's possible they've made improvements, but I kindof doubt it - there's probably not a huge demand for it, relatively speaking. I'm not a fan of RA PPSSPP either, for the record.

There isn't currently a way to automate this through Launchbox, but I put in a feature ticket a couple days ago for that purpose. Until that's implemented, this is how you want to set it up in LB. 1) Choose your .cue as your rom as normal 2) Go to the emulation tab on your game entry and uncheck "Use an emulator to play this game (primarily for console games) 3) Go to the Additional Apps tab, add a new app, enter SSF application name, browse to SSF.exe for the application path, and check "Automatically Run After Main Application" This will mount your disc, and run SSF with the mounted disc once complete. If multiple games are setup this way, when you run another game, it will mount that disc, overwriting the old one, and run SSF with that mounted disc. If that feature request is implemented you won't have to do any of this, you'll just need to add SSF as a regular emulator and check a box in the emulator details.

Dear God man... 40k? I'm not sure that any frontend is going to perform all that great under that kind of strain. Moving LB to an SSD shouldn't hurt, but I doubt it's gonna have a massive impact with a library of that size. I'd recommend breaking out your trimming gloves!

Yep, I looked at that one too! haha The deciding factor for me was that Qanba is PS3 and PC only, whereas the Mayflash is PS3, PS4, 360, Xbox One, and PC compatible (and was $20 cheaper, to boot). It's supposed to be showing up Friday so I'll report back on it after some testing. Regarding the FC, have you had any problems with the d-pad sticking or failing in some way? I've been doing a lot of reading on it and a lot of people like it, but I've noticed a recurring theme of people saying their d-pads either started sticking for certain positions or crapped out on them entirely after a few months. That said, I've seen how some people treat their controllers/joysticks (i.e. like garbage) so maybe that's what's happening.

DOS76 said I have to disagree I've been using codec packs for years specifically started because WMP in Windows 7 used to not support mp4 back a few years ago. I still grab them whenever I do a fresh setup and I've never ran into any problems once you have one you know you can trust then its not a big deal installing it just have to watch for the bundled crapware. That's not what I'm saying at all - I'm not saying there's anything wrong with codec packs, I'm saying that 1) if you install MPC, you're already installing a codec pack as part of the installation so you don't need a separate one and 2) you do not want to install multiple codec packs at once because it can cause problems. If you didn't have MPC, VLC, or something similar (just your native WMP) and then you installed say K-Lite, that's totally fine.

DOS76 said I have two Mayflash controllers like that but more plain with all black. They are nice as can be. Yeah, I looked at those as well. The F300 is the newer model - drops the PS2 compatibility but adds PS4 and Xbox One compatibility, and the quality of the stick and buttons are supposedly better. It's apparently easier to mod as well (for those that care about such things) as the buttons are apparently immediately swapable with Sanwa buttons; apparently the older ones are slightly smaller. It's also twice the price at $60 though - still a good deal below the $200 tag that's pretty common for a lot of arcade sticks though. It would appear that the Fighting Commander (the symetrical one) has native xinput support whereas the Fighting Commander 4 is dinput only (I was under the impression that the FC4 was the newer model, but apparently not). Xinput support is kindof a boon for me because that means I could use it on my Steam Link as well (In Home Streaming needs Xinput compatible controllers).

@lordmonkus Yeah, I was really looking for a SNES pad specifically. I'm glad to hear the 8bitdo pad is good - I'm kindof leaning towards that at this point anyway. It's funny you mentioned the Hori Fight Commander because I'd looked into that pad recently - I just ordered one of these a couple days ago and the Fight Commander got mentioned quite a bit when the discussion of "Fight Stick or Fight Pad?" came up - it seemed to be the definitive option for the pad route. I ended up going with the Mayflash because I want to have an arcade stick that I can use for other arcade games, not just fighting games, and because it has a very wide range of platform support, plus it's comparatively very affordable when comes to arcade sticks. I may still end up getting a Fight Commander down the line, just to have more options - I've heard nothing but good things about it. Based on the button layout, it looks like it'd be a good fit for a genesis controller too! Hmm... Thanks! EDIT: You know, the more I look into the Fight Commander, the more I like the idea of going that route. It's not what I had in mind, but it would probably make a better all-around solution than a SNES pad, which would be great for SNES but a little odd for other purposes. It looks like you can get these for $30 from Gamestop too...

I'm a big fan of MPC myself - I haven't used VLC in years. Basically all of my viewing is via Plex or Kodi these days, but as just a standalone video player MPC is my favorite. I was having some issues with the videos in LB/BB when using the VLC option, but that was when it was first implemented - I switched it to WMP and have had no issues since so I haven't tried switching it back to VLC. I didn't install an independent/standalone codec pack on this machine, but if memory serves MPC actually comes with one (or some fork thereof) prepackaged in the installation; I think it comes with K-Lite although it could be CCCP. In any case, if you've installed MPC and used the default installation options, you shouldn't need to install any additional codec packs. In fact, people should be really really cautious about that and avoid ever installing multiple codec packs at once. I can attest first hand that it can cause some major issues/conflicts as I did it many moons ago on and old PC when I had no clue what I was doing - "What? This video won't play? Well, better find a different codec pack and install it too! Surely one of them will work!" BAD IDEA :(

I'm currently on the hunt for a good USB SNES controller and there are a lot of options available to that end so I thought I'd get some opinions beforehand. Does anyone have any experience with any of these? I suppose another option is to get an adapter for use with my OEM SNES controllers, although I've read that those can introduce some amount of input lag, so that's probably not going to be my first choice. The two main options I'm currently debating between are the Buffalo Classic USB Gamepad and the 8bitdo SNES30 Wireless Bluetooth Controller. Both of these are pretty highly recommended on neogaf. If anyone has any other specific recommendations though, I'm all ears. The main issues I'm concerned with is build quality and getting something that feels authentic or at least very close to the original - those are the primary issues that seem to plague a whole lot of these. The d-pad needs to be very good, and not have issues with pressing down equaling "kinda down, kinda down-right, kinda down-left...whatever I feel like at the moment". The buttons need to have a good tactile feel and not be mushy garbage. The Buffalo is supposed to be very good on all these points, my only issue (and this is going to sound nit-picky/dumb) is that it doesn't have the 2 concave / 2 convex buttons from the North American controller. That's just a personal preference for me. The 8bitdo has the benefit of being wireless, having the North American buttons, and the bonus of being Android compatible. From what I've read, it doesn't suffer from any input lag issues despite being bluetooth, though bluetooth in and of itself can sometimes introduce additional complications (not always, of course). Granted, it is three times the price of the Buffalo but that's not a huge deal. A lot of the options look fine but it's hard to make a real determination without having it in my hand. Mushy buttons, an inaccurate d-pad, noticeably wrong weight, wonky contour... these are things you can't really tell from a photo so that's why I'm hoping to get some feedback from people that have actually used one.

SentaiBrad said I covered emulation preserveration on RSS previously too. I did a story on this: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/03/how-the-demonization-of-emulation-devalues-gamings-heritage/ Cool! I'll definitely check it out. I think it's a shame how it's developed this stigma of just being about "free stuff!" If you talk to the developers of any number of different emulators and even peripheral applications like Launchbox, people who spend hours and months and years on these projects, I doubt even one of them is going to tell you "I did this cause I wanted to play games for free!" People need to realize that this stuff is vital for the preservation of the art that all of us love and are so passionate about, even if that only comes to fruition years after we're all gone.

@DOS76 I understand that to a point. I think that emulation in general is important from the perspective of the preservation of all games (even the bad ones) for future generations - eventually all our physical copies will fail, without exception, so emulation is the only reliable/feasible way to preserve that data for the future. I've tried to explain this to people on r/gamecollecting which I frequent quite a bit, and, perhaps predictably, people typically just jump on the "PIRACY. YOU JUST WANT FREE GAMES. HISS." bandwagon. Anyone who took even a brief look at my shelf would be fully aware that it's not about "wanting free games" for me. To me it's just being responsible and practical, given that I'm aware enough to know that everything on that shelf will eventually break down, even if it's after my lifetime. There's actually a really interesting article I read on this topic a while back that's worth checking out if you get the time. With that said, I view all of that as a separate issue/entity from my personal collection, both physical and emulated. To me, those are purely for my own entertainment and there's nothing entertaining about sifting through a gigantic pile of crap to find something worthwhile. I just recently hit 250 PSX titles in my physical collection - it's my favorite console of all time and I think it has an amazing library, but even if I had literally everything that I would ever want, the final tally would be about 350 titles... out of a library of 2000+ games. And again...that's for a system that I think has a particularly good library. There's a ton of utter garbage/shovelware out there for every console (even the better ones) and I just have no desire to have any of those occupying any of my space, whether physical or digital. Basically, I think it's good to preserve all of this data for the future (and if I actually had storage space that was effectively unlimited, I would already be doing it), but that perspective doesn't have any impact on my personal game library, because that's just for me. Sorry, wasn't trying to derail the thread... DOS, we should probably continue this elsewhere haha. I think it's a pretty interesting topic. EDIT: @SentaiBrad That's fair, though even then I'd still end up with more stuff being deleted than kept haha

Aaaand this is why I curate all of my stuff. Beyond the fact that I don't need Mary Kate and Ashley games clogging up my library, I'd just as soon not deal with all this mess. I take the same approach with my physical game library - I've never understood the "I need them all!" collecting mentality. I have a fairly sizable collection, but I want every inch of my finite amount of shelf space to be occupied by games that I actually want to play. They're self-contained nuggets of entertainment, not Pokemon. I see no reason not to take that same approach to an emulated library - the fact that the shelf is significantly larger doesn't make Mary Kate and Ashley games any more appealing. You're also placing greater strain on LB/BB for content that you're never going to touch. /non-helpful rant To each their own, but I'm a big proponent of a hand-picked (curated) library. It's generally more time consuming (though you don't have to deal with the deluge of duplicates like you have now) and requires more effort, but I think it's worth it in the long run. I know that I can pick literally anything at random and it'll be worth playing. I'm probably in the minority in this view though...

Abobo said I do have Webroot AV software running, but have never seen any warnings, etc. No scanning operations/RAM monitoring that i know of. A lack of warnings/messages doesn't necessarily mean it's not the culprit. I used to have an issue where my AV (Avast) was causing some software related to my dedicated soundcard (of all things) to crash until I added it to its exception list; and there was no error specifically from Avast, it was just a generic windows "application has stopped working" error. If it were me, that's where I'd start. If turning it off completely solves your problem, try adding Launchbox/Big Box (the entire folder, for that matter) to your exception list.

I know this isn't the answer you were looking for but, as an alternative, you may want to look into Steam's In Home Streaming for use with Launchbox/Big Box. I use a Steam Link with it (which is basically just a cheap box that you can connect to a TV and make use of Steam IHS, as opposed to a PC/laptop) but if you're just wanting to play on other computers on your network, you don't need that - you can just install Steam on the host computer and any computers that you want to stream to and you'll be good to go. You just add Launchbox/Big Box as a "non-steam application" and you're set. In Home Streaming is basically a remote desktop application except that it's specifically designed for gaming - you connect a controller to the client machine (it needs to have Xinput support, so a 360 controller is ideal) and then start a stream from the host machine; your inputs are relayed from the client to the host with practically no noticeable input delay - I was playing Contra 3 on mine last night, believe me, you'd notice if there was lag - and the video is streamed back to the client. You won't have the performance issue that you're currently having because you're not actually running LB/BB over the network, you're running it on the host PC, and sending inputs to it over the network. This would, of course, require that you move your library and LB/BB off of your NAS and onto one of your PCs, which could be a pain, but I can attest to this setup being a viable option.

Thanks Brad! Are you sure Retroarch's MESS core (not standalone) doesn't require the special naming convention though? I think that's what @bundangdon was saying. If it doesn't, that'd be great and it'd definitely make things little easier at least. I can't confirm or deny as I literally haven't gotten anything to work with Retroarch's MESS core. Launchbox -> Retroarch -> MESS -> Sub Platform is giving me flashbacks of Rocket Launcher Inception shenanigans haha

So I noticed something in your screenshot... why does the rom file name say "2600 1.00 Files.log"? That seems wrong... I'd have to double check when I get home but I'm fairly certain all my 2600 roms are zipped.

lordmonkus said If someone can get MESS in Retroarch figured out that would be amazing just for the shaders alone. Yeah, that's the real reason I was interested in getting it to work - CCS64 is a fine standalone emulator, but I would love to have access to those sweet sweet shaders :( I guess you just have to have the appropriate bios in the system folder and then have your rom named in accordance with what's on this page (Software Lists -> search page -> description [game title])? I may mess around with it tonight.

Here's a new one for Sega Model 2. No "sketch" version this time since it's just a logo. I tried a couple different arcade cabinets and it just wasn't working for me. I'll probably end up doing the same thing for DOS, which will be up next. Full gallery here.

I'm a really big fan of Retroarch Mednafen. I haven't messed with PBPs at all since m3u's have covered my multi-disc needs, but it sounds interesting. I've never played around with Xebra but I've heard good things about it too, but Mednafen's integration with RA (and the many benefits that brings) is a big selling point for me. I came from using ePSXe which is kinda garbage to be honest, at least by comparison. The only real benefit to ePSXe is that you can throw just about anything at it, including erroneous .cue sheets and bad rips and it'll probably still work...if you want to consider that a benefit; Mednafen is pickier, but accuracy is leagues beyond ePSXe.

Interesting. I wasn't aware of that. I did some searching and it looks like a whole lot of C64 stuff is missing support on MESS anyway - a lot of the stuff that I would want to use it for isn't even covered apparently. Guess I'll have to wait for the Frodo core... I don't suppose anyone knows anything about compiling these? They have it up on Github. I know literally nothing about how to do that :(

I used Kawaks way back in the day on a POS laptop, but there weren't many good alternatives at the time. Retroarch has replaced the vast majority of the individual emulators that I used in the past - the FBA and MAME cores of RA will cover most of your bases. For the few remaining games that don't cooperate with those, I use MAMEUI.