Zombeaver

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.

I also use the additional app method when it's the only option available (based on the emulator), but I think it should be noted that for PSX emulation, Mednafen and the Mednafen core of Retroarch have m3u support which is actually a much better option because it lets you swap discs within the emulator itself, with only a couple keyboard presses, rather than having to exit out or do anything via Launchbox itself. Basically you just create a text document, add the names of each .cue file on separate lines (in disc order), save it, and rename the file extension to .m3u and then choose that as your "rom" in Launchbox. I have Retroarch setup so that I press number 0 to "open/close the disc tray", + to go to the next disc, and - to go to the previous disc so when prompted to "switch to disc 2" I would hit 0 -> + -> 0 on the keyboard and then I can keep on truckin'. A good game to test this with to make sure you've got it working correctly is Riven - it's a 5-disc game and you can get to the second disc in just a couple minutes (each island is its own separate disc).

Thanks for this Brad. Have you messed around (heh) with the MESS core in RA at all? I'd like to use it as an alternative to CCS64 for C64 emulation since the Frodo core is still in early development, but I haven't been able to get it do... well anything really. I would have assumed you could just drop the c64 bios files in the RA system folder like anything else and be good to go but that doesn't seem to be the case. The searches I've done for documentation/help haven't been particularly helpful. Most of the forum posts over at Libretro were basically "Uh...has anyone actually gotten this to work? If so...how?" haha.

I made a new banner for 2600. Full gallery here.

Jason Carr said ...other than the Windows 7 thing, nothing really makes sense. For the record, I'm on W7 and have no major performance issues personally. The only "issue" I have is when BB first boots up there's an initial couple of seconds on each platform where it's caching the images, which I assume is unavoidable/normal; and it's literally about 2 seconds. Once they're cached everything's completely smooth. I have the image caching setting in LB set to 3GB. Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit 32 GB RAM i7 4770k GTX 780 Both LB and my roms are on an external USB 3.0 HDD.

I overwrote them with the ones you supplied - worked like a charm! Not sure what would have caused it in the first place...kinda weird. Is there a github or something where we could access the newest xmls in the event this were to ever happen again? Not a huge deal, but I just prefer to fix my own junk if I'm able rather than pestering someone else :P Thanks for the help!

@Jason I do remember pulling some stuff in yesterday (which worked fine, by the way, this seems to have just started once I moved from the last beta to official) and the progress bar (once you go through all the initial import screens) said something like "updating local metadata" before the bar actually progressed, but that doesn't seem to be happening now. Just to confirm...I'm not going to lose anything if I manually overwrite my current Metadata and MAME xmls right?

@Jason Well, when I try to do an import it has the launchbox games db listed as the resource to parse. It's obviously pulling some of the data because the text description/genre/etc. are coming through fine - it seems to just be relegated to some of the images. Is there something I should look for in the xml or something else I should test? Thank you for all your hard and continued work on LB/BB by the way. I've been involved in a number of other projects for a while but I've come back to working on my LB/BB setup recently and I'm really happy to see all the continued improvements that are being implemented. I really appreciate it!

Has the Launchbox games db integration for images been broken for anyone? I've imported some new SNES games and all I'm getting is clearlogos and screenshots - they're on the db page, but Launchbox isn't seeing them for some reason. Here's an example.

@breachless The Steam Link uses Steam's normal In-Home Streaming tech on top of some basic necessary hardware to make it work. While the majority of the posts here have revolved around the Steam Link specifically, the information is still applicable for normal In-Home Streaming usage via laptops and such as the functionality is basically identical. With that said, you can absolutely use LB/BB over IHS. The only real issue currently is that IHS requires Xinput support in applications in order for controller inputs to be recognized correctly and LB/BB don't currently use Xinput though Jason said he's working on that. Keyboard inputs work with it, however, and once the emulator is actually launched, assuming the emulator uses Xinput (things like RetroArch, PCSX2, and others do) the controller functions normally during play. You'll just have to use keyboard inputs for LB/BB navigation. Regarding the specific issue you're having, what you need to do is go into your Steam Big Picture settings -> controller -> configurations -> desktop configuration -> browse configs -> community -> Xbox 360 Gamepad (I used to recommend Captain Keeb's bindings but I'm not seeing it in the list anymore). Basically what this does is configures the controller so that it only functions as a normal controller and doesn't switch to desktop controls (which is what's causing it to send an ESC signal when you hit the "B" button). You may want to check out this thread I posted in on the Steam Link forums - I go over some things that you need to do to overcome some issues you'll likely run into. If you try the above and read over that thread and are still having any problems let me know - I'm happy to help.

There's no one-size-fits-all solution for much of anything and emulation (and its various and sundry front-ends) are certainly no exception. I welcome as many options as possible because frankly that gives me more opportunities to find something that suits my needs. Just look at how many different emulators there are for some platforms and consider that there's not necessarily a consensus among users of what's best. What's best for one person isn't necessarily the case for others. Options are a good thing! With that said, I'm personally not a fan of RL because I find it pretty unintuitive/non-user friendly/convoluted and I think LB is an absolute breeze by comparison. The only feature that seemed appealing to me about RL were the overlay features which, frankly, I found pretty underwhelming (those that I could even get to work) when I actually messed with it. The only one that I was really interested in was the disc swapping feature (which I intended to use in conjunction with ePSXe) which actually didn't work correctly for me as it never got the necessary open tray signal (I probably did something incorrectly but at this point I no longer care). Once I figured out how to use RA/Mednafen + m3u's it became a non-issue so I had no reason to mess with RL any further. It actually worked out for the best because prior to that I had no knowledge of RA but that experience is what drove me to RA in the first place and now I'm attached at the proverbial hip . At this point RL would be little more than another potential source of problems to troubleshoot, for little to no gain...for me. The more layers you add the more links you add to the chain that can potentially break (or maybe just get tangled). If you're a preexisting RL user and therefore need to invest very little additional time in order to integrate RL into LB then I can absolutely understand why you'd take that route, but if that's not the case RL seems like an added level of complication in exchange for features that are largely redundant with LB. If the feature-set that's actually unique to RL is something people find appealing enough that they're willing to invest the necessary time and effort, then more power to them, they should just go in fully cognizant of the headaches they might be facing. Personally, none of the various features enumerated thus far in this thread have convinced me that I'm missing anything. But again...that's me. As a side note I think the concept of LB -> RL -> RA is pretty hilarious. That's some serious Inception crap right there

Is there a way to disable and/or mute the videos? The audio continues to play even after launching a game which is kindof annoying. They also seem to freak out if you have a long game description and scroll up or down in the details while the video is playing. I'd just as soon disable them until the kinks get ironed out but haven't found a way to do that yet. I haven't been getting any crashing though, thankfully.