Lordmonkus

Not sure if this thread has any useful information for you but a quick skim through it seems it may have something for you.

Well I won't claim to be any sort of expert on it but in Launchbox you set it to use all controllers or a single controller and that's it. Retroarch has to worry about which controller is being used for which player and core and unplugging controllers resets its UID number which is the USB identification and if you have 3 or 4 different kinds of controllers it messes with its auto config when you take them out and move them around.

Well hopefully someone here has some experience with the Mayflash adapter can answer you or you can check their forums. Like I said, I have no experience using one. I only have my controllers plugged in directly to their own usb ports.

Well I don't know if the Mayflash adapter causes any confusion for Retroarch or not because I don't have one and no experience with it. You can check their forums for topics regarding it, a quick search showed a few threads about it. If all the controllers are detected and showing in the yellow text on start up you should be able to go into the different Input User binds and change the User # Device Index to the controller you want to use which for me is Xinput Controller for my 360 controller and Fighting Commander 4 for my Hori FC. For different cores you will want to set the controller you want to use for it and save out a custom config which is what I did for my N64 setup. I use the 360 controller for it and the Hori FC for everything else. If your controller doesn't auto bind the buttons to your liking you use the User # Bind All and it will go through the process of it asking you which button you want for what and you press the button. Or you can go below that and change each button individually with the left and right keys on the keyboard.

https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/1369/bulk-edit-wizard

Thumbs up for craziness, I like it.

It's UI Is designed for what it is which is a cross platform (Windows, Android, Linux and even PSP and PS3) all in one controller driven emulator and frontend. Everything can be configured and controlled with a controller and for this it does the job very well. What are you even talking about here ? This is just a bunch of gibberish that makes no sense. This is just more nonsense. Depending on the core many are actually updated more than the emulators they are based off to begin with, Nestopia is just one prime example. But yes some are indeed outdated like the PSP core, this is a core by core thing though and not Retroarch as a whole. Just because the core version numbers don't change doesn't mean that the cores themselves are not updated and back ported with improvements made in the emulator the core was built from. See the first quote response at the top of this post. Anyways, this will be last post bashing something just for the sake of bashing it. The OP asked for simple emulators to get back in to emulation and some people here decided to make this their personal "shit on Retroarch" thread. You can have your opinion about something and voice it but repeatedly shitting all over something with nothing other than nonsense is completely unhelpful to people. Any further posts like the one above will simply be deleted and may result in warnings.

Well playlists aren't a replacement for platforms, they are just in addition and the playlist files themselves contain very little information.

You can just get rid of the playlist file and that playlist won't show up, your games should still be in the platform you imported to.

Good place to start, get your feet wet with a simple emulator like I suggested. Get the hang of the basics with Launchbox and then work up from there. You will find pretty quickly that there is often no "perfect" emulator, you will find a flaw in just about all of them in some way or another. Some are easier to setup while others might be more complicated they offer a lot more functionality. We're all here to help and answer questions you might have.

Select both by holding the control key and clicking each, then right click and combine. This will combine them into a single entry and you can choose which disk image to load. Your disk names were just in a format that Launchbox doesn't like. It should have been something like Chrono Cross (Disk 1) and Chrono Cross (Disk 2). Then it would have auto combined them on import.

Mednafen is a fine emulator but it is command line driven and all configuration is done either through command line parameters or manually editing the config file which has a section for each of its "cores". There are some 3rd party GUIs out there for it and they get the job done but they tend to be clunky as well. That's the thing about UIs, the more complicated and feature rich a program becomes the more complicated the UI has to become. As for Retroarchs controller "issues" I have yet to run into an issue with it outside of setting up controls for N64 which I admit is wonky. I have setup multiple controllers and even different controllers for different cores and setting them all up have been a breeze. The controllers I have set up are an Xbox 360, Hori FC which is basically a PS3 controller and a wireless Logitech F710 and no issues with either of them. Yes, previous versions of RA had a weird naming scheme which was confusing when you wanted to change some stuff but it really wasn't that bad. Since the 1.4.0 beta releases though the naming has been brought in line with the controllers and is super easy now. Anyways this thread is now off topic so keep the Retroarch UI discussion out of it unless the OP asks questions about it. People need to not hijack threads when Retroarch gets mentioned. I know there are people out there who hate on Retroarch and that's fine, just keep your opinions on it in relevant threads or to yourselves.

I just find it odd that you called Retroarch a "convoluted mess" but yet you talk about using Mednafen which has no UI and a giant config file along with RocketLauncher which is an absolute nightmare to use.

Yeah you were probably using the old ugly UI which was way more cumbersome.

This is your fastest way right now.

How long ago was it since you tried Retroarch out ? Do you remember which version ?

Retroarch does have a bit of a learning curve but like I have said many times before about it. For 8, 16 and 32 bit console emulation it is pretty much on par with any stand alone emulators for the most part, NES is probably the one place where certain stand alones outclass it. Where Retroarch truly shines though is it gives your games a universal look and feel if you want to use a shader. You can tweak it quite a lot to reduce input lag and dial in audio synchronization far better than any stand alone. And you can easily manage save states and disk swapping with your controller so much easier without needing 3rd party software.

Mame will let you use Unibios as well, you just need to set it in the mame.ini file first. Not suggesting you switch to Mame, just simply saying Mame supports Unibios

The easiest place to start with emulation would be a simple stand alone emulator like Snes9x or an NES emulator like Mesen. Those emulators are very simple to setup with no need to worry about external files or extraneous setup procedures. I would also suggest diving into Retroarch as you feel a bit more comfortable because it handles so many systems with one setup. I did a guide for that as well as the Mame tutorial @alexis524 linked to.

You probably could if you opened all the platform xml files you wanted to change and instead of pressing the "Replace All" button you press the "Replace All in All Opened Documents" button.

I just wrote up a guide for using Notepad++ since I figured it would come in handy for someone else wanting to do the same thing as you in the future.

Unfortunately right now there is no bulk edit tool for changing the rom path for a bunch of games at one time. We can however use Notepad++ to do this pretty painlessly. Download it here: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/ if you don't already have it, it is free and is an amazing replacement for the version of Notepad that comes with Windows. Here is a bitbucket feature request for this to vote for: https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/1369/bulk-edit-wizard To start off go to your Launchbox\data\platforms\ folder and look for the .xml file for the platform you want to change the rom locations for. For the purposes of this guide I am using a secondary install of Launchbox I use for tutorials and testing certain things and the only platform xml I have is a Nintendo Entertainment System.xml If you open this xml file will see a whole bunch of stuff but what you are looking for is this line: <ApplicationPath>E:\Downloaded Games\Emulation\Roms\NES\Adventures of Bayou Billy, The (USA).nes</ApplicationPath> E:\Downloaded Games\Emulation\Roms\NES\ is the location I want to change. The new location I want that changed to is H:\Emulation\Roms\NES\ Here is a screenshot in Launchbox if I right click on the Billy Bayou game and edit, you can see that the rom is located at E:\Downloaded Games\Emulation\Roms\NES\. IMPORTANT: Before editing your platform xml file you will have to close Launchbox. Now to change the paths in Notepad++ go to the Search menu at the top and then Replace. This will open the "Find and Replace" window, you want the Replace tab of this window. In the "Find what" box you will want to put in the old path which for me is E:\Downloaded Games\Emulation\Roms\NES\ Then in the "Replace with" box you will want to put in the new path where your roms are which for me in this example is H:\Emulation\Roms\NES\ Next you will press the Replace All button on the right hand side of the window, you will see all that the paths in Notepad++ changed. Close the replace tool and save the .xml file. Note: Because my rom paths were very similar I could have just put E:\Downloaded Games\ and H:\ in my find and replace boxes because that was all needed to be changed. I just wanted to be a bit more simple with this example. Startup Launchbox and right click a game or two to check that the changes actually applied. As you can see it is now changed, start a game and make sure it runs. If your rom path did not change make sure you closed down Launchbox before editing the platforms xml file. If your game does not load make sure that your new rom path is correct. I just did this entire procedure as I wrote this guide step by step and it worked flawlessly so if it does not work for you retrace the steps above.

Yeah just removing and re-importing is fairly quick and easy, remember you don't need to redownload the media so the import time will be drastically shorter than when you first did it.

There is no setting of a rom folder directly within Launchbox. I have asked @Jason Carr about a bulk edit option for a rom location but that has not been implemented yet and nor do I know if this will ever be done. When you imported your roms you most likely used the "Import Roms" tool within Launchbox and pointed that to your rom folder. My recommendation is to remove your games from the platform in LB and then go through the import process again but this time point it to your "new" rom location. Notepad++ and the find and replace all tool is very easy to use but if you aren't comfortable with it do what suggested above and re-import your roms. To speed up the import process just uncheck all the media stuff because that will remain on your hard drive in the right place after removing your games from LB.

You can't just set a rom folder. Then you can do either of the things I said previously.