Lordmonkus

Hmm, I could have sworn I saw something in there to do what you wanted. I got a USB N64 controller, i'll plug that in and see what I can see with that controller. Maybe the fact I am using an XBox controller is making it annoying.

One is a c and the other is a k Just kidding, i'm sure it was just a typo.

Awesome, good to know And let me welcome you to the forums here. Rogue Squadron looks and plays great, just some minor sound distortion during the Star Wars story crawl. Perfect Dark looks, runs and plays great. Very nice work.

If you use the new nightly build you wont need to mess with the -c command, you can simply save out the control scheme in the core controller settings and it will just load automatically. Plus the nightly build seems to have better controller controls so you can set your c-buttons to actual buttons instead of the analog stick.

Well lets just say that Cen64 is not in usable state at all and a cycle accurate emulator is going to need a lot of processing power. Think about this, for 100% cycle accurate SNES requires a 3 GHz CPU to emulate a 3.5 MHz system. That means you need a hell of a lot more CPU power to do the N64 properly. This gets into why the Vulkan Mupen64 core was made. It was done to see if it was possible to emulate using the power of a GPU because CPUs are not getting that much faster anymore. If you can harness the GPU for emulation that means you can get more accurate emulation without having to scale the CPU requirements.

Not that I am aware of. The Vulkan one is just a hack of Mupen for Retroarch to use the Vulkan api, more of a proof of concept than anything. Here's the Cen64 page: https://github.com/tj90241/cen64

Hopefully Cen64 progresses and gets released sometime. It is aiming to be a more cycle accurate emulator rather than a hack job that Mupen and PJ64 are.

At the end of the day it is still N64 emulation using the same old code base and without a total rewrite from the ground up there are going to be issues. Examples of problems using GLupeN64 is Perfect Dark loads to the initial info screen and freezes and Rogue Squadron loads to a black screen. No N64 emulation is perfect, it's just a fact of life for now and getting small progress but GLupeN64 is small progress over current N64 options.

I have not tried Conker yet but DK64 and Banjo-Tooie look and play amazing running at 1920x1440 internal resolution. No obvious graphical glitches, sound is perfect.

Yeah I started tinkering with the new Glupen64 core and I am very impressed with it. It's by no means perfect, no N64 emulation option is yet but Glupen so far is the best overall.

Ahh I get what you are saying now. I loaded up my stable 1.3.6 install and I see exactly the issue you are having. But if you are feeling a bit adventurous try getting the latest nightly build and the GLupeN64 core. I had a quick look in there and it lets you have far more control over the controller.

The best way to do it is in the core controller settings. With an N64 games running, open the Quick Menu go to Controls and remap it to the way you want and use the Save Core Remap File or if it is a game specific remap use the Save Game Remap File option. You may have to turn on Load Override or Load Remaps in the Configuration section of the Settings menu.

Are you remapping in the main controller settings menu or in the core remaps section in the Quick menu > Controls ?

Part 4 done and nothing more planned.

No problem.

Yeah certain emulators make it more difficult than others, Retroarch though gives the ability to swap disks using the Quick Menu.

It should, Jason added in the feature that when you import multiple disks of the same game it automatically adds the other disks as an additional app. This used to have to be done manually.

Im not sure how ePSXe handles disk swaps it but I know it doesn't like m3u files. But if you import both disks Launchbox should detect that it's 2 disks of the same game and it will import as a single entry and then when you right click the game you will have to option of which disk to load. I think you will also get that option in BigBox mode but I have not tried it out.

Depends on which emulator, Playstation and Saturn through Mednafen and the Retroarch cores you can use an ms3 playlist. Make a text file and for each disk put the name of each disk image on its own line in the file and rename the file extension to .m3u Here is how my FF VIII is: Final Fantasy VIII (USA) (Disc 1).cue Final Fantasy VIII (USA) (Disc 2).cue Final Fantasy VIII (USA) (Disc 3).cue Final Fantasy VIII (USA) (Disc 4).cue Then you just import the m3u file into Launchbox.

No problem.

Hehe yeah I got the notification of you liking my post and realized that this thread was that old and needed to updated lol.

This thread should be updated since we now have a Discord server, here is the link for it. https://discord.gg/X3Cwsyw

Part 4 - Quick Menu, Core Options and Cores This will be the last part of the guide barring some unforeseen circumstances and if something comes up I will either edit previous parts of the guide or I will make some notes here of if I need to I will make a part 5. The Quick Menu is a wonderful feature of Retroarch. This menu is accessed by pressing the F1 key on your keyboard, the XBox button on and XBox controller or if you are using a Playstation controller the PS button. This is also the same place you loaded shaders above in the last part of this guide. In the Quick Menu you can manage save states, take screenshots, manage disks for multi disk games and modify your controller settings. Most cores have their own "Core Options" or "Settings". These will be very specific settings to that system and not apply to other cores. To access these "Core Options" when you have a game loaded for a specific system access the Retroarch Quick Menu and go to the "Options" entry. This menu will look different for every system and some may not have anything in here and since we have been using the Genesis GX core all this time here is the Core Options for the Genesis GX core. There are a lot of cores to choose from in Retroarch and which ones you use are up to you and your needs and what your system is capable of. Different cores for the same system can have different system requirements, the SNES is an example of this. While BSnes-Accuracy is hands down the best core in terms of quality and compatibility it requires a 3 GHz CPU to fully take advantage of while the Snes9x core on the other hand has much lower system requirements but you won't be able to play 100% of all the games. The BSnes-Balanced core is a good middle ground. Then of course there is the issue of bios files, BSnes-Balanced and Accuracy both require special chip dumps from certain games to play them the BSnes-Mercury series of cores does not need these extra chip dumps. You can use them if you want to but you do not need them since the core is able to emulate them on a high level. Obviously I cannot tell you what cores you should use, you will have to decide that based on your needs and system but I will give you my recommended cores. Arcade - FB Alpha (without the year)though if you have an older rom set the older ones may be better for you. This core is very good for Capcom and NeoGeo games and I wouldn't try and dissuade anyone from using it but I prefer the stand alone version of Mame. Arcade - Mame same as above, use the core with no year unless you have an older rom set that need it. I also prefer stand alone Mame over Retroarch. Atari 2600 (Stella) and Atari 7800 (ProSystem) - Both are excellent and I use these over stand alone options. Dreamcast (Reicast) - Just don't use it, it is in very early stages and very buggy, use a stand alone option such as NullDC or Demul preferably. Gameboy Advance - mGBA is the best core hands down. NES - Both FCEUmm and Nestopia are excellent and pretty much equal though Nestopia may have a very slight edge in compatibility it also requires an .xml database file for full compatibility. Nintendo DS - DeSmuME the core isn't bad but overall quality goes to the stand alone, the RA core does however have the ability to use the right analog stick on a controller for the stylus. Nintendo64 - Use the GLupeN64 core, recent testing has shown this core is really good and a huge improvement over the standard Mupen64 core. It may even be better than the stand alone version of Mupen64 and Project64. Certain games may require some "core settings" tweaks such has Rogue Squadron needing RSP set to LLE and Perfect Dark you need to disable memory packs for all but player 1 controller. N64 emulation has a whole is bit messy but GLupeN64 seems to be in the lead for now. PC Engine / TurboGrafx 16 / CD - I use the Mednafen SGX core, this one core handles all of it. North American and Japanese hucard and cd games along with the 6 SuperGrafx games. The Mednafen PCE Fast core is perfectly fine as well though it will not do the SuperGrafx games. Playstation - Mednafen PSX core is the one I use but you can try the Mednafen PSX HW one if you like. It isn't quite as well developed but is getting better all the time and handles internal resolution scaling on a hardware level so it's faster. PSP - The PPSSPP core isn't bad but there is no reason at all to use it over the stand alone version of PPSSPP. Sega Genesis / CD / Master System / Game Gear - Easily the best core is the Genesis Plus GX core, it handles all but the 32X and does it with 100% compatibility and practically flawless. Sega 32X - PicoDrive is your only option if you want to use Retroarch but Fusion is the the better emulator if you want to emulate this system. Sega Saturn - Mednafen Saturn is your only choice here if you choose to do it through Retroarch. The Yabause core isn't even worth looking at, it is no where close in quality. The one downside with the Mednafen core is it still lacks analog controller support and for that the stand alone version of Mednafen is better for games that use the analog stick. However for games that don't use it the RA core is very good, though you may have to turn on Threaded Video to get 100% speed. This is pretty CPU intensive core. Super Nintendo - Basically you have 3 viable options here and I even talked about it above. Basically I recommend for most people to use the BSnes-Mercury Balanced, this gives you 99% compatibilty and decent system requirements. Use BSnes-Accuracy if you got the CPU to drive it and want 100% game support. If neither of these cores works for you then Snes9x is your best bet and just like the FBA and Mame cores use the one that has no year in the name, those are older cores and serve specific purpose. Any core I didn't talk about I simply do not use and I am not even remotely qualified to even give an opinion on. Well I hope this guide can be of some use to people that are new to Retroarch. There is a lot more stuff in Retroarch but to get through all of that stuff would require a whole other "Advanced" guide and probably be about as along as this one was or longer. If someone reading this guide finds any mistakes or wrong information please either leave a message below or message me directly and I will make the necessary edits to correct the errors. Part 5 - Controllers This part is a late addition by request and I apologize in advance for this part not being as in depth as the previous sections but because so many people use such a wide variety of controllers and have personal preference it would be impossible for me to cover it all. When setting up your controller if using something that Retroarch detects out of the box such as an XBox 360 controller it should just work automatically and be all setup. However if you need to change settings it may be a little confusing (depending on which version of Retroarch you are using). The main thing to remember when rebinding controls the left hand side of the screen represents the controller of the system being emulated and its button naming while the right hand side is the controller you have physically plugged into your PC. With an older version of Retroarch like 1.3.6 this will be somewhat confusing until you wrap your head around it. With a newer 1.4.1 build the devs have made some effort to label the buttons on the right hand side to match up with the controller you are physically using, for example if you are using a Playstation controller the right hand side buttons should be labeled like a PS controller with Square, Triangle, Circle and X. Here is the controller configuration page along with pictures to help you out to understand. https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/retroarch-configuration

Part 3 - Bios and Shaders First let's start with the easy section, bios. Bios need to be placed in the \system\ folder within your Retroarch install folder. Some emulator cores won't need bios files to work but a decent selection of them will. Anything that is CD based will need them, this includes the Sega CD, TurboGrafx CD, Playstation, Saturn and Dreamcast. Most of the cartridge based systems don't need bios files but some do and it depends on the specific core. For example the Snes9x and BSnes-Mercury cores do not require any bios files but the regular BSnes cores (BSnes Accuracy and Balanced) do. The special chips used in the Megaman X games for example need to be dumped and placed in the system folder. For legal reasons I cannot link or tell you where to get bios files since they are covered under copyright protection laws. I can only tell you google is your friend and to find out which cores require what bios check the Retroarch wiki page for each core here: https://wiki.libretro.com/index.php?title=Category:Libretro_Cores You can also check if your bios files you have are correct or see which ones you are missing by loading up a core. Then scroll down the main menu to the entry "Information", click your confirm button. Then click it again on "Core Information". You will see a list of information tell you which core it is expecting, if you have them or not and if they are required or optional since not all bios files are mandatory. Shaders, this is a very subjective matter and which one you use if you use one at all is very much personal preference and how you want your games to look. There is also a very wide array of shaders available so finding the right one for you could take you a while. Also, up until this point emulation performance was all determined by your systems CPU and nothing more. Your GPU has had absolutely zero impact on emulator performance, shaders however change this and the shader that you can use is going to be determined by your graphics card. If you are using an on board video chip such as an intel or integrated AMD APU your choice in shader is going to be very limited but if you have a relatively modern GPU you can use pretty much any shader you like. I have tested on an older Radeon 7800 series graphics card with 1 gig of DDR5 vram and I can use even the heaviest of shaders such as the Royale-Kurozumi. First we have to download the shaders, just like the emulator cores they are not included in the download. We get the shaders the exact same way as we download cores with the "Online Updater". Near the bottom you will see 3 different types of shader, CG, GLSL and Slang. Ignore the Slang for now unless you plan on using Vulkan based cores which right now is only an N64 and an experimental Playstation cores. The GLSL ones should be good for everyone but you can try the CG ones if you like or run into problems with GLSL ones due to weird hardware issues. Click on the one you want or both and the download will begin, this will take a few minutes. Even if you don't have a good GPU that doesn't mean you are completely screwed out of using a decent looking shader but your choices are going to be limited. I cannot get into talking about every single shader option there is because there are so many but I can give you a few suggestions to look at and see which one you like. Personally I prefer a CRT shader that emulates the look of an old CRT TV, old school sprites were never meant to be displayed on a modern TV or monitor. The sprite artwork was meant to be shown on a CRT and when the art was designed the artists took the characteristics of a CRT into account to give the sprite its final look. The 2 shaders I find to be the best is Royale-Kurozumi and Easymode-Halation. A really nice CRT shader that is very performance friendly is the CRT-Pi shader, it was designed for use on the Raspberry Pi so the hardware requirements are extremely low and it looks pretty good. CRT shaders as a rule will look much better with Integer Scaling On in the video settings, they also look much better on higher resolution displays because of pixel density. 4K displays are really nice for them. I will post screenshots with shader but keep in mind that a small picture won't give you the full effect of the shader, you really need to see it full screen and running to get the full effect. Easymode-Halation If you want to have more modern and smoothed out look the XBR and SABR shaders might be of interest to you. SABR v3.0 Then there is just straight up upscaling the pixels so they look cleaner and crisper on a modern display. This is not like internal resolution scaling in a 3D game in an emulator such as Dolphin or PCSX2. These are sprites, not polygons so it is a different kind of upscaling. This shader is the Pixellate and it is the shader of choice for @SentaiBrad. Anyways that's enough about what shaders are let's talk about how to actually load one up. First load up a core and a game of choice so you can see the effect quickly. With a game loaded either press F1 on your keyboard or if you are using an XBox controller the XBox button in the middle will bring up the Retroarch Quick Menu which gives you access to the Retroarch UI. In the Main Menu click on "Quick Menu", scroll down to "Shaders" Click your button and then on the next screen you want "Load Shader Preset" In here you will see the different shader types you downloaded earlier, CG, GLSL or Slang. You will either want to use the "CG" or "GLSL" shaders, both of these folders for the most part contain the same shaders but not necessarily all of them will be available in both. For example the CRT-Pi shader is only available in the GLSL. I will suggest using the GLSL shaders but if you are having problems you can then try the CG ones. Once you go into the shader folder of choice you will see a big list of sub folders sorted by shader types, and there are a lot. Pick a folder such as CRT for example. Then again just as an example pick "crt-easymode-halation.glslp" Press your confirm button, this will load the shader and kick you back to the "Load Shader Preset" screen but you will see that the "Shader Passes" number has changed and you will see a bunch more lines of stuff. These are the different layers of shaders making up the final effect. Now press F1 or your XBox button on your controller again and you will be back in game and you should see the shader in effect. If the shader did not take effect it may just be a bad shader or one that does not get along with your video card. Go back into the Quick Menu and try a new one. Also if you did not like the shader you just tried just go back into the quick menu and repeat the process to pick a new one until you find one you like. If you decide you do not want a shader at all after going through them and not liking any, simply go to the "same screen as the "Load Shader Preset". Go to the line where is says "Shader Passes" and a number (5 in the screen shot above). No just press left on your d-pad til that number says 0, the go up to where it says "Apply Shader Changes" and press your confirm button. Now when you go back into yur game there should be no shader effect at all. Well I hope this covers enough on shaders to get you started, they can be a complicated thing but depending on preferences they have a great effect on how your game looks. These old 240p games just weren't designed to be shown stretched up to a 1080p screen. If you have questions feel free to ask.

Part 2 - Settings Now that you got games up and running it's time to make some tweaks to make playing your games more responsive and enjoyable. While the out of the box settings work well enough to get you up and running there is more that can be done to make your play experience better. Now the reason for these "safe" settings is because Retroarch is designed to work on a wide range of hardware and operating systems like the Raspberry Pi and Android devices. Everything in this part is going to be done using the "Settings" column in the Retroarch UI, it's the one with the cogwheel icon. The first setting in here is for drivers and for the vast majority of users in here nothing should be changed. There is the Vulkan video driver if you plan on using the Vulkan Nintendo 64 core but that is more advanced and not really in a usable state right now so we won't cover that. I also won't be able to cover every single little possible issue that you may or may not run into with your specific setting or else this guide would be just beyond stupidly long. I am going to try and keep it to just the basics of what should be good for everyone running on a Windows based gaming rig of at least moderate power. Also remember that I am using a nightly build for the purpose of screen shots which may look a bit different than the build you are using but should be a little bit future proofed. So go down to the "Video" entry and click your confirm button on your controller and you will be greeted with the following screen The first setting is pretty obvious and easy, just leave Suspend Screensaver set to On. Display Framerate simply shows your framerate while playing your games which in itself is very obvious. I would suggest having this on for testing purposes and then turning it off later on when you are comfortable your setup is running properly. What you want to see is your games running at a solid 60 fps or at least 59.xx which will match up with your monitors refresh rate with V-Sync enabled. If your framerate is dipping below that you will either need to make some adjustments or bigger changes. 60 fps is your goal here though. Monitor Index is for multi monitor setups and out of the scope of this guide. Use Fullscreen Mode is up to you but generally you will want this set to On unless you want to work in a window like I am doing for this guide and taking screenshots. Windowed Fullscreen Mode is set to On by default and honestly I am not sure why, this should be set to Off. Basically what this does is when you are in Fullscreen mode it makes it a window but you don't see the borders and it is full size. The reason this should be set to off is that Windows Compositing (the stuff that makes your windows look all pretty) can cause input lag and that is a bad thing. Proper Fullscreen mode turns off the compositing while Windowed Fullscreen mode does not turn it off. Next you will see Vertical Refresh Rate and Estimated Monitor Framerate, there really isn't anything of interest here for the purpose of this guide so just leave it. There is a guide on the Vertical Refresh Rate stuff over on the Retaorch forums so it's best to just link to it since it is a bit big and technical, it will guide you through it and help with Audio / Video Synchronization. https://forums.libretro.com/t/perfect-audio-video-synchronization/12072 Force-disable sRGB FBO Off is the default and for most people this should just be left alone though if you are using an Intel video chipset you may get some benefit to setting this to On. I don't know though since I don't have an Intel video chip to test this with, it's an advanced setting and if you want to know more you are on your own. Next we are on the Aspect Ratio Index and Core Provided. This is one of those settings that will be on the individual user and personal preference. The default setting of Core Provided means that the actual emulator core will dictate the aspect ratio your game is showing at and it is what I use. On real hardware different systems output at different aspects but on a CRT TV it changed the picture to fit the TV which generally was 4:3. If you prefer to force your games into 4:3 simply press right a couple of times on your d-pad til you see 4:3, you may see your game image stretch out a tiny bit. If you are playing on a modern display with a 16:9 screen and prefer to fill your screen set this to 16:9 but it will stretch and distort your game image, it is not a true widescreen. Personally I cannot stand this and will openly mock you for playing this way but hey you do you The vast majority of the rest of the options in here are for very specific and circumstantial scenarios and if you need them that's on you. There is however one setting which is "1:1 PAR" which stands for pixel aspect ratio. The way this looks will change on a core by core basis, in some cases it will be 4:3 and in some other cases it may be closer to a square. Check out this setting if you wish and see if you prefer it over Core Provided. Again the Aspect Ratio you choose is a personal choice and up to you which you like. The next 4 entries all have to do with Custom Viewports which lets you resize and move the game screen around. This is for people who wish to use custom bezels and is for advanced use so I am leaving that out of this guide. Window Scale lets you change the size of the game screen while playing in windowed mode. If you try and resize the window by clicking and dragging with your mouse it will crash Retroarch so this is the best way to change how big your game screen is if you plan on playing in windowed mode. It has no effect if you playing in fullscreen. Skip Window Width and Height and move down to Integer Scale. Integer Scale is an interesting setting and whether or not you set it to On or Off is up to you and your setup. Basically what it does is determines exactly how it scales up the game screen to fit on a modern display. Older games run at a resolution much smaller than modern displays and unlike old CRTs modern displays do not simply scale the image up to fit neatly and cleanly. Without getting into the math of how it works simply put setting this to On you will have black bars across the top the bottom of your game but your game screen is scaled properly. If you plan on using some sort of CRT scanline shader you should generally leave this to On otherwise you could run into some weird scaline spacing issues and it will look weird. Setting Integer Scale to Off will fill the screen top to bottom and you will have bigger overall gameplay screen compared to the On setting. The one downside to this is that on a 1080p screen the original game image does not fit neatly into 1080 pixels in height so there will be some pixel stretching though you most likely won't notice it but it is there. **Personal Note and Opinion** I use Aspect Ratio On with a CRT shader on a 1440p monitor so the black bars at the top and bottom are fairly small Hardware Bilinear Filtering, this applies a slight blurring effect. If you plan on using a shader of any type turn this off but if you don't want to or can't use a shader for any reason leaving this on is a good idea. It will smooth out the image a little making it look less harsh on a modern display. Rotation is pretty self explanatory. Threaded Video is set to Off by default and should be left to Off unless you really need to turn it on. Setting it to On can squeeze out some extra performance if needed. This is a secondary option to an option a little further down but if you are finding your games aren't running at a solid 60 fps you may be able to get there with this set to On. The side effect of this set to On though is some input latency which we prefer to avoid where possible. Vertical Sync (Vsync) for most people should be set to On. Retroarch actually does a great job with it's v-sync and input latency. Turning this to off if you don't have a G-Sync or Freesync monitor will reduce input lag but you will get screen tearing. It's a case of the lesser of 2 evils but there is a setting below that helps with the input lag that goes with v-sync on. Max swapchain images, Set to 2 if you like. It supposedly reduces input lag but it won't be enough to notice by anyone. Try it out if you like, you won't break anything and setting it to 1 will do nothing. Hard GPU Sync, I have no idea why this is set to Off by default but I guess the Retroarch devs have their reason. Turn this bad boy on, this right here is probably the single biggest reason that Retroarch in 99% of all cases is the better way to emulate. Turning this to On will reduce your input lag a lot compared to any stand alone emulator out there. No more explanation needed, turn it on now. *Disclaimer if your PC blows up don't blame me* Hard GPU Sync Frames, try and leave this at 0 but if you just aren't quite running at a full 60 fps try setting this to 1. This is the preferred way to get a bit of a performance boost compared to the Threaded Video setting above. If setting this to 1 still doesn't get you to 60 fps then go back and turn on threaded video. If you are still having framerate issues and you don't have any shaders on then you really need to rethink the hardware you are running on. Frame Delay, this setting is the sister setting to V-Sync. You will want to run this as high as possible before you hear crackling audio. Exactly how high you can set it will be determined by your hardware and the core you are running. CPU heavy cores such as the BSnes Accuracy cores you will probably only get to about 4 or 5 before encountering audio crackles. Less taxing cores you can probably run up around 10. You will need to experiment a bit here to find your sweet spot. Basically start out around 8-10 and work your way up or down from there. Basically if you hear crackling audio turn it down til the crackle goes away. This with V-Sync On should reduce input lag a decent amount. Black Frame Insertion is for people running a 120 Hz non G-Sync / Freesync monitor. The last 3 settings just leave them alone. Well we made it through the Video settings portion let's back out once with the cancel button on your controller and move down one to the Audio section.There really isn't a whole lot here that needs much explaining, most everything here is very self explanatory but there is one setting here we do need to look at and that is Audio Latency (ms). This setting is much like Frame Delay setting from the Video settings section. By default this is set very high at 64 but we can reduce this til you hear crackling audio and then back it up one notch to remove the crackle. Most systems should be able to at least set this to 32, going lower can be tricky. I have not been able to run successfully at 16 without bad crackling but you may be able to so give it a whirl and see. Sometime when bumping it back up from 16 it will stop at 24 which I have often found to be very good. If for you it doesn't stop at 24 and just goes straight back to 32 leave it there or if you feel adventurous and confident in editing a cfg file you can manually set it to 24. Open the "retroarch.cfg" file found in your Retroarch install folder using notepad (or notepad++) and look for the line audio_latency = "64" Change the 64 to 24 and save it.***Bonus content for those of you lucky enough to have a G-Sync monitor, this may apply to Freesync as well but I cannot confirm*** Make sure Audio Sync is On in the audio settings. In the retroarch.cfg file look for 2 settings: audio_rate_control = "true" and set it to "false" video_refresh_rate = "59.xxx" and set this to match the Hz that your monitor runs at, for me this was "144"