Zombeaver

Oh? I must have missed when that was implemented. Thanks.

I'm using Windows 7 and haven't updated anything recently... Big Box is hiding my taskbar if I alt-tab. It comes back when I close Big Box.

Great! This is a very nice addition. Brilliant! This is a wonderful change! Hmm...I guess this means it wouldn't find existing saves if people had been using the UUID method then. I suppose that's not a huge deal since it's unlikely that people are going to remove existing games from their library and then reimport them just to use this different method (because why would they?). It's something that people should be aware of though since they'd run into it if they were to, for example, copy their files over to a new computer and did a fresh import on another instance of Launchbox, using archives rather than UUIDs. Hmm. Interesting. So, just so I understand, this would be for a scenario where someone has already created a custom config but rather than starting FS-UAE with that config they're starting it with the archive itself? Does the archive have to exactly match the name of the config? Because that probably wouldn't work if so - most of the commonly distributed archives have names like "Agony_v1.3_0960.zip" rather than just "Agony" (which is what the config is likely to be named). If there's some kind of matching logic though that could be useful - people could theoretically just dump all their archives into Launchbox and if there's an existing config it'd find/match/use it accordingly. What would an example of this be? I'm not sure if I've encountered this. Thank you very much for all of your hard work Frode and for keeping us apprised of what's going on!

Here's one for Atari 5200 to go along with the new clear logo. "Patrol the moon they said. It'll be fine, what could go wrong? You'll probably be bored out of your mind." Nobody told me there'd be all these bloody PITS and UFOS trying to MURDER ME Fun fact: Moon Patrol was one of the first games to include parallax scrolling. Neato!

It's not out of stubbornness or secrecy (I'm showing exactly what I used for the 5200 one); I just don't think that's going to have the desired effect. I don't want to tell somebody "Hey just paste this style on and it'll look like these." when the same combination of elements creates something very different depending on how they're used. I'd rather people know which fiddly bits they should be messing around with to achieve a similar result than just "Hey paste this on there with no idea what any of this stuff is." Teach a man to fish and all that. If I were to share a style it would just be "this is what I used for [insert] logo".

Well I mean it really does vary from logo to logo. The elements I listed are the ones that are typically used - I'm using multiple (2-3) stroke layers, inner glow, outer glow, etc. - but how they're used and what each one is set to (size, color, gradient scale/style, blending modes, etc.) is different for basically every logo so there really isn't a layer style, just a consistent combination of elements. The screenshots I posted are just an example of how they can be used.

I've considered doing that at some point haha

It's varies from logo to logo but generally speaking it's a combination of several gradient stroke layers, inner glow, outer glow, and drop shadow. Here's what the one for the Atari 5200 text looked like, for example: Stroke 1: Stroke 2:Stroke 3:Inner Glow:Color Overlay:Gradient Overlay:Outer Glow: Drop Shadow 1: Drop Shadow 2: The text color itself is just white and the layer is set to multiply: This lets me use the background image itself to form the inner portion of the letters. I then duplicate the background and mask it for just the text portion and then apply a blur so that it turns this: Into this: There are other elements like noise, glow, and gradient mapping but these are the main points. Getting the text right is probably the most time consuming part of making these.

I just noticed a problem with the digit spacing in "5200". I'm going to fix that... EDIT: All fixed. Nobody saw that

Here's a new one for the Atari 5200. As a C64 kid we didn't have Joust (it was released on nearly every Atari console but not the C64; my guess is due to some kind of deal between Atari and Williams Electronics) but we did have Jouste (see it's got an "e" so it's totally different) which was a carbon copy (ripoff) and I played a ton of that as a kid. Normal: Scanlines: Normal - Version 2: Scanlines - Version 2:

To each their own but honestly there's hardly anything I've seen in any of the intros here, including James Baker's, that I couldn't do in Vegas. It's in knowing how to use the tools at your disposal. Pan, crop, resize, masking, layering, keyframing movement and effects. You can do a lot more with Vegas than simple editing. Now, with that said, are there things that can be done with After Effects that I can't do in Vegas? Absolutely. No question there whatsoever. It's a much more specific piece of software for specific needs. That doesn't mean, however, that those elements are necessary for what we're talking about or typically even used in nearly anything I've seen here. Want to have some art assets kindof hovering around while showing some resized, positioned, and layered video clips? You can easily do that in Vegas. Want to make something like dmjohn0x's Big Box intro? That's way outside of Vegas' capabilities.

Could be, yeah. We can hope anyway. I'm not trying to naysay - I really really want this to work. It's just that whenever something like this has come along I've tried it and thus far they've all been kinda awful. This kind of thing has always kindof been "the dream" I think. Hell even ZSNES had Netplay (which was P2P). The idea of having like a Launchbox community retro gaming group where you could hop into a lobby, start up VOIP, and be like "Hey anybody wanna play some Turtles in Time?" and then jump right in together would be completely amazing. I realize that's kindof outside the scope of this, but having a solid, consistent, working connection/play experience is kindof the starting point and nothing has even really met that bar yet. Here's hoping Retroarch works its magic!

Kaillera is also server-based and like I said it's pretty spotty. My friend and I were using a 70-80 ping server (for both of us) and had all kinds of desync and connection problems (and we tried multiple servers). Depending on the type of game it's more or less of an issue, but something like Contra III for example would literally be impossible. If they find a way to avoid this, that'd be awesome. I just haven't seen it done yet.

It does, yes. I've been using RA (BSNES) for all of it though.

MSU-1 hacks can be a bit wonky to get working. The way the hacks are implemented varies from one hacker to the next, probably because the process is so poorly documented. I've got some notes and some bml manifests for download in this thread you may want to look at if you're still having trouble with any other MSU-1 hacks at this point. I think I have all of the ones that have been released but admittedly I haven't checked if there are any new ones in the last few months.

Neat! A buddy and I played through some arcade games via Kaillera a while back and it was pretty spotty - disconnects, sync issues, and other weirdness (and we both live in the same state). Hopefully this will work better than that. It'll be totally sweet if so!

Yeah, that's plenty. I have an i7 4770k and it works great for me - the i5 4690k is only slightly slower on single thread performance. If you're still having the issue with SNES9x... you may want to ensure that you're using a good dump of Contra III. If you're using roms from the No Intro set you should be good, but there are bad dumps/overdumps floating around the internet. It seems unlikely that that would cause this specific issue but you never know. I'm kindof running out of ideas at this point. For testing purposes I'd recommend just standing at the very start (no enemies will attack you if you don't move forward) and just pressing down on the joystick/d-pad and then letting go and repeating. That should give you the clearest indication of any latency because the change from standing to prone is instantaneous.

Back before we knew any better or had any alternatives it was great! Like I said, that's where I got started with emulation so I'm still thankful that it exists, but emulation has come a long way since those days. You can run it on like a 300mhz CPU with 32MB of RAM though so...that's pretty damn impressive Generally speaking emulation is much more CPU-intensive than anything else - primarily because most emulators only use a single core (some will use two). To run BSNES Accuracy at full speed you need a 3ghz CPU. Which i5, specifically, do you have? There's a big difference between say an i5-7600K and an i5-3330. Your specs should be totally fine for Balanced or Performance regardless though so it's kindof a moot point if you've tried those. Emulation General Wiki / Computer Specs

Nice! I knew we had the Steam profile link thread a while back but I didn't realize we had an actual Steam group. Joined!

Oh god please don't do that. Admittedly I have pretty fond memories of ZSNES - it's basically where I got started with emulation back in the 90's... but it's kindof awful to be honest. It'll run on a complete toaster but that's about the only thing its got going for it. Emulation accuracy is really bad compared to any of the alternatives. If you're going to use a standalone I'd probably start with SNES9x. I guess you could use ZSNES purely for comparison purposes but I wouldn't advise using it as your actual SNES emulator at all. A SNES without Contra III is like a Genesis without Gunstar Heroes, Alien Soldier, or Ranger X; or, I suppose, Contra: Hard Corps. A sad thought indeed.

Yeah that's definitely not the game itself. Maybe try a different core. SNES9X isn't quite as good but it's lighter. I'd probably try BSNES Balanced or even Performance first though. BSNES Accuracy is significantly heavier on requirements than Balanced without being hugely different compatibility-wise; in fact, I think Air Strike Patrol is the only game that has some issues with Balanced.

There's definitely something wrong there. I play through Contra III a couple times a year. There's nothing "underwater" about the controls. Does it feel like that while playing on the host computer? You need to eliminate the Steam Link from the equation entirely until you nail down what's going on.

For SNES I'm using BSNES Mercury Accuracy. BSNES Balanced or BSNES Accuracy are fine too. I flip around between different shaders semi regularly but the one I probably use the most is CRT Hyllian Glow. No overlay.

I use Retroarch via Steam Link quite frequently and don't experience input lag *shrug*