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Zombeaver

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Everything posted by Zombeaver

  1. Zombeaver
    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).
  2. Zombeaver
    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.
  3. Zombeaver
    45 new games since the last batch: Current full list of new titles (112 games total):
  4. Zombeaver
    Rocket Jockey has now been added to Zomb's Lair.
  5. Zombeaver
    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.
  6. Zombeaver
    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!
  7. Zombeaver
    Take No Prisoners has now been added to Zomb's Lair.
  8. Zombeaver
    No problem @5thWolf I don't use any of these anymore though. I would suggest taking a look at the below thread
  9. Zombeaver
    That's perfectly understandable. Trust me, I know. I'll just post them in here as I go and hope for the best. If people see them and use that information to update the DB, great; if not, it'll just be business as usual regardless.
  10. Zombeaver
    Alright y'all, I've been busy working on individual game releases for Zomb's Lair lately but I'm currently gearing up to resume work on C64 Dreams. Something that I thought might be helpful for the project would be for me to list the games that I've added as I go, preemptively, so that anyone that will be working on media/metadata for the DB can work on that beforehand rather than after the fact. I work on the Launchbox side of things as the last step of the process, so that would make things easier for me as well since I could just scrape the DB after the updates had already been made. I currently have 150 games picked out with the goal for the next version being 500, but not all of those 150 have been tested yet so I don't want to list them until I've done that (because they might turn out to be crap and end up getting removed). 67 of them are actually done though, so those are good to go. I'm sure that some of these have DB entries with media/metadata already, but I just figured doing it this way would make things easier for everyone. @Z3R0B4NG I don't know how involved you are with that side of things, but if there's anyone specifically you think I should shout out for that, just let me know. I've also setup a Discord server for Zomb's Lair which includes a C64 Dreams channel for discussing the project, if anyone's interested. You can find it here.
  11. Zombeaver
    Lifeforce Tenka has now been added to Zomb's Lair.
  12. Zombeaver
    Logical Journey of the Zoombinis has been updated to version 2.0. This updates the game version to Logical Journey of the Zoombinis Deluxe, adds Retroarch support with shaders and bezels, controller support via Antimicro, Reshade support, and ASuite for management. I still plan to do this with a few more of the older packages, bringing them in line with the feature set of the newest ones, but a user recently made me aware of the Deluxe version of the game which brings a few improvements over the original (which is what was used in the original package) so I figured it'd be a good opportunity to take care of this one.
  13. Zombeaver
    Iron Assault has now been added to Zomb's Lair.
  14. Zombeaver
    Gothos has now been added to Zomb's Lair.
  15. Zombeaver
    I forgot to mention it in here, but I've started a Discord server for Zomb's Lair. Anyone interested is welcome to join. I discuss upcoming projects I'm working on, take requests, talk about the tools I use to make the packages, and just blather on about old games in general You can find it here.
  16. Zombeaver
    Master of Dimensions has now been added to Zomb's Lair. This marks the 50th package available on Zomb's Lair! It's been a long road, and I look forward to the next 50. I've got plenty more in store. More to come soon!
  17. Zombeaver
    That'll work. I basically just wanted to make sure that increasing the input scale to 4x wasn't going to have a significantly negative impact on performance. Seems as though it had a positive one, oddly. That would be my guess, yes. That's highly unlikely. If anything, that would add more overhead. 98 is almost never warranted/beneficial over 95 for the purposes of emulating these games. That's significantly more likely. With that said, I don't really plan on changing that. The BIOS for the FIC VA-503+ isn't actually included with PCem by default either.
  18. Zombeaver
    Did some testing for the upcoming package with some interesting results. To my hand/brain, OpenGL 3.0 seems to actually reduce input latency slightly over the options, and this is improved further by making a few additional changes. I'm not certain whether or not these have any additional performance impact though. There is none for me, but I'd be curious if there is on your hardware @D-TurboKiller. Try setting the renderer to OpenGL 3.0 and then going to Video > OpenGL 3.0 Renderer > Input Stretch Mode > 4:3 and then Video > OpenGL 3.0 Renderer > Input Scale > 4x. This feels noticeably better to me than just using Auto. I'm not certain if that input scale setting increases hardware requirements though. From the upcoming package:
  19. Zombeaver
    Well, this is fortuitous. I was looking for an easy way to swap out the PCem settings in the launcher for more than just the renderer settings - it's easy enough to swap out any one value doing what I've always done which is essentially making multiple versions of a config and then making .bats that replace the used config with another with slightly altered settings. I've done this for DOSBox, Retroarch, and other things. This is no problem so long as you're only changing one value and don't need to toggle different things separately - like say a combination of the renderer and CPU speed. At that point that method wouldn't really work unless I made a separate .bat and separate config for every possible combination of those (which isn't going to happen). But I just came across the rather eloquently named FART - Find and Replace Text. It's a command-line tool for replacing text in files. This is perfect because now, rather than replacing the entire config with another, I can replace specific strings of text with another, so I can make changes to specific settings independently via command-line. Another gadget to throw into the tool belt.
  20. Zombeaver
    Understood, and I didn't really take it that way just explaining the logic behind what's there and how I get there. It's a process. I know that in a lot of cases the settings used are higher than "what's needed" as a bare minimum but there's still a reason for it. I do know of a couple though that I specifically intend to revise some settings for in an update like Biosys (which was my first use of PCem and I wasn't as well versed with it at the time). Thanks. I try to make it as easy as I can. I'm not always able to eliminate disc-swapping, but I try to when I can. Some games make that easier to do than others. That's part of the issue, for sure. There's nothing you can really do about that. But if you go from say a Windows 95 environment in PCem and then go to a Windows 95 environment in DOSBox, same screen resolution, same sensitivity settings, there's a noticeable difference (for me anyway). PCem is certainly still usable though. I should be able to do that. Yes, sometimes it can be beneficial to force various options through the Nvidia control panel as opposed to a game's own implementation of them. I've experienced similar things with Nvidia hardware. I don't know about Fast Sync specifically, my card doesn't support it (GTX 780), but that wouldn't shock me.
  21. Zombeaver
    Point and clicks are some of the worst culprits of noticeable input latency because you're constantly moving a mouse cursor. It's very noticeable to me even going from the most ideal settings for reducing it in PCem to DOSBox. It's basically always there in PCem, and then there are various changes that can be made that will only make it worse (like enabling vsync, which seems to do very little in PCem to begin with... other than increasing input latency). In any case, my point in all this is that I already make a conscious effort to do what you're asking. If you need to dial down settings more for your hardware, okay. I already do that to begin with until I reach a point that I'm seeing some sort of performance impact (minor, in some cases, to be fair). If someone came to me with questions about what changes they could make to cater to weaker hardware, I'd have no issue assisting with that. But my point is that the settings I use aren't just arbitrary. I won't go as far as to say that tweaks shouldn't be made in some cases (I have a few early ones in particular that I know I need to adjust), but in many cases they're dialed in where they are for a reason; and some people's hardware won't be sufficient. I don't mind switching over to OpenGL 3.0 in theory, if that's going to prove beneficial (although I don't know how comfortable I am with assuming that that's going to be ideal across all hardware/software as opposed to Auto), but only if it's not going to negatively impact the input latency.
  22. Zombeaver
    I'm using a 6 year old PC with an i7 4770k without issue so I'd say there's more than likely a deeper issue on your side; the presence of Wine seeming to be the most probable culprit. In all honesty I ordinarily dial back the CPU speed for the final release. Emulating a Pentium 200 runs at full speed for me. I ordinarily dial it down until the game runs slower in some way/at some point. I even try to ordinarily take a look at the system requirements as listed on the box and aim around the recommended (not the minimum) hardware. Sometimes I'll go a little above if I can notice a difference in load times or performance. The settings I use though, by and large, are not that demanding to be completely honest with you. None of these are intended to be used on Linux/Wine so I can't guarantee how well or if any of them will work in that setting, and I'm not going to cater to that. About the best I can do is get it to an "about right" value and tell people to make adjustments if necessary for their hardware (it's easy enough to do). There are a few that I intend to go back and make a few tweaks to, and that might include speed settings but, again, emulating a P133 is not particularly outlandish (even on relatively ancient hardware like mine). I've seen several packages from The Collection Chamber that use a P166 with 128MB of RAM. I do wish that PCem's tools for tweaking performance were as robust as DOSBox's. I always use "cycles = max limit [#]" for the DOS stuff which is extremely useful since it essentially means "as fast your PC can handle but no more than [x]" which gives you an upper limit to prevent problems from running too fast while simultaneously not locking it into an arbitrary fixed speed that the host might not be capable of reaching (which is essentially what you're stuck with for PCem). Unfortunately, there's no equivalent to that in PCem currently. I'll take a look at this again, but my recollection of using OpenGL 3.0 as the renderer was that it increased the input latency a bit (which is already worse in PCem than it is in DOSBox). Will have to experiment some.
  23. Zombeaver
    It saves to the inis folder in your PCSX2 folder. I think you can change this in the settings file in the configurator plugin folder.
  24. Zombeaver
    Mummy: Tomb of the Pharaoh has now been added to Zomb's Lair.
  25. Zombeaver
    The Day The World Broke has now been added to Zomb's Lair.
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