Lordmonkus

This guide may be out of date by date by now and I won't be updating it. Part 1 - The Basics, Getting Up and Running This is going to be a basic getting started tutorial guide for Retroarch with pics. I was thinking for a while about doing a video guide but the couple of times I started to do one it just ended up being way longer than I wanted. So I am going to do it in a step by step process with pictures and explanations of certain settings and cores. DISCLAIMER: I am writing this guide using the latest nightly build so some screen shots may look a little differently if you are using the stable 1.3.6 but in the future it should be more in line with what you see. First head on over to the Retroarch downloads page and download the latest stable version here: https://buildbot.libretro.com/stable/1.3.6/windows/ Click the x86 link if you are using a 32-bit version of Windows or the x86_64 one if you are using a 64 bit version. If you are unsure press the Windows + Pause / Break key on your keyboard or right click the My Computer icon on your desktop and click Properties. You will be greeted with a window much like the following, look for the section I have highlighted with the orange box. Once you have determined which version your Windows is download the correct version of Retroarch. The 32-bit version will work on a 64-bit Windows but not the other way around. On the actual download page you will see 2 files, download the one labeled Retroarch.7z and it will have a file size of 79,016 KB to somewhere on your computer. Extract this file to a folder of your choosing, for organizational purposes I like to label my emulator folders with the version of the emulator in the name so in this case I would call it "Retroach 136". You should have a folder with the files in it like the following: Next make sure that the controller you are going to use is plugged in if wired or turned on if wireless. Now you are ready to run the program by double clicking the "retroarch.exe" file, you will be greeted with the following screen: For this I am assuming you are using an XBox controller or compatible and Retroarch should just work with it out of the box. Use the d-pad to move around the menus and as of Retroarch 1.3.6 the "B" button is your confirm / ok button and the "A" button is your cancel / back button. If you are using a Playstation controller it will be "X" for confirm and "O" for cancel. Yes this is going to feel awkward if you are new but the latest nightly and presumably the next stable release it will be "A" for confirm and "B" for cancel, the more natural way. You can use your mouse to navigate as well if you choose. Right now we cannot play any games at all because we have no "cores" at all, cores are just another word for "emulator". Retroarch uses the term "core" because it has more than just emulators, it has things like a Quake core and a Minecraft clone core. To download cores from the screen you see in the picture above press down on the controllers d-pad to highlight "Online Updater", press your button for "confirm". The next screen is where you will download updates for this specific install of Retroarch such as your cores and shaders. But for now "Core Updater" should all ready be next choice so press your "confirm" button on the controller. You will now be on a screen with a big list of system names with another name in brackets beside it like in the following picture: The name on the left side of the list is the system you are going to emulate and the name in brackets is the actual emulator core. So in the picture above you will see several entries for Arcade, 5 for different versions of FB Alpha and 5 more for Mame. This is because there are different versions for different systems. I will most likely do a part 2 guide covering more advanced stuff but for now I want to keep this simple for beginners that are new to Retroarch. For that reason we will start with a very simple system to emulate that doesn't require any special files and has the least amount of "core" options for it. Let's get the core for the Sega Genesis, scroll down the list til you see "Sega MS/GG/MD/CD (Genesis Plus GX) and press your confirm button: You should see some yellow text at the bottom of your screen telling you it is downloading and the percentage progress. It shouldn't take long since the file is really small. Your Genesis core is now downloaded and you are ready to play Master System, Game Gear and Genesis games. If you wish to play Sega CD games you will need bios files and that is for you to get since I cannot provide them due to copyright laws and we don't want to get Jason in trouble now do we ? This next step is not necessary but it is good for convenience and quick testing purposes. Press the "cancel" button on your controller to back out of the "Online Updater", then press right on the d-pad once so that the cogwheel looking icon is highlighted. This is the "settings" menu which I will go much more in depth at a later date, press down on your controller to the second to last entry called "Directory" and press your confirm button: In here is where you can set all sorts of custom folders but we don't care about any of that but you will notice one entry that stands out because it has no folder path for it and that is the entry for "File Broswer". This is the folder that Retroarch defaults to when you want to open a file using the Retroarch UI. Like I said before this step is not necessary but for testing purposes I like to set this folder. Navigate to your folder where you keep your roms and press your confirm button on "Use This Directory" entry. It should kick you back to the main "Settings" list with the "Directory" entry highlighted, just press your confirm button quick and look to see if your folder you set is in the "File Browser" entry. If it is not retry setting your folder again, if it is set press your cancel button. Now press left again so that you see "Main Menu" in the top left and you see the same menu entires as you saw back in the first picture of this guide. Now make sure that "Load Core" is selected and press your confirm button, you will see a list of all the different cores you have download but for now the only core you will see is the Sega Genesis entry. Select that one and press confirm. It will kick you back to the "Main Menu" again but now where it used to say "Load Core" it will say "Quick Menu" and in the bottom left if will say the version of Retroarch you are using and the core you have loaded: Now you are ready to load a game, highlight the entry for "Load Content" and press your confirm button, then click your confirm button again for "Select File". If you did the previous step you should see a list of folders where all your roms are located. If not then just navigate to where your Genesis roms are: You will now see all your rom files. Simply pick the game you want to load and press your confirm button and if all went right you should see your game load up:Some emulator cores will require bios files and Retroarch is very picky and specific about them and their exact names. To check what cores require bios files check this page here: https://docs.libretro.com/library/bios/ Look up the core you are trying to use and look for a section called BIOS, it will tell you exactly what files you need and their names. Bios files will go into the "system" sub folder of your Retroarch install folder: I will do a more advanced guide soon covering video and audio settings, controller configurations and shaders. Bonus: Here is some third party Retroarch information that you may find usefull http://www.powerup.io/gaming/emulators/retroarch

Ok.

Do your roms load using just Retroarch on it's own ?

I have never used so I don't know the full extent of what it can do but I do know you can have it setup to light up the buttons used on a game by game basis.

Yeah if you close NMM and re-open it you will see the load order has changed.

Huh ? You do only hit apply and it moves everything to where it "should" be. Some mods with the current version of LOOT and Skyrim SE need to be manually adjusted though, Realistic Lighting Overhaul for example. For better looking and smoother game try out the link I posted above to a program called Bethini.

Here's a couple of screenshots of the "Core Options" for the Genesis core. In the one screenshot you will see at the bottom for Save Core and Save Game overrides. In the other screenshot is the controller settings and you can see the Save Core and Save Game Remap. You can also see the button config and how it is labeled the same as the Playstation buttons.

Yeah, what Zombeaver said is the best way to import them. You can bulk import if you have like, having all your shortcut files in a single folder makes this much easier.

It was a bit weird to me at first but I think this is a better way to handle it. It also makes having different controllers for different games using the same core.

Yeah that's been there for a bit but very limited.

Two that I have plugged in, the 360 pad and the Hori pad. I didn't try any more though it looks like they are putting some effort into the controller mapping.

I have been using the stable build of Retroarch 1.3.6 for a while now and haven't really bothered with the nightlies at all. Tonight though I decided to check in on it and see what is going on with it and the next version is looking to be very nice indeed. So let me share some of my first impressions with you, they are good. First let's get the simple thing out of the way, emulation quality isn't going to have a huge improvement if any at all since that has always been very good outside of a couple of oddball cores and that is on the core level anyways, not the UI. The first thing I noticed immediately was that by default using an Xbox 360 controller the A button is now "confirm" and B is "cancel'. This is backwards to what it has always been but many people including me felt it should have been this way all along. Don't worry though there is an option to revert it back to the old way if you want it that way. The second thing you will notice if you have been using an older non nightly build is that when you go to a setting underneath it will see a short description of what that setting is and what it does. Now that doesn't mean it has a full blown explanation of every little thing since there simply isn't enough space but there is enough there to give you a general idea. It is still upon the end user to do some research on what some of the more advanced options are. The third thing I noticed was there was no more "Per Core Settings" in the configuration section. This doesn't mean that it is gone though, it has simply moved to the core settings and even more fine detail in the core controller settings. This is fine since the bulk of your settings such as video and audio are all going to be the same across all cores anyways. The fourth and last but not least thing I noticed was controller setup, more specifically the bindings screen. While at first glance you would think nothing has changed in here but there is a very nice little improvement made. On the left hand side you will of course see all the buttons representing the controller for the system you have loaded. For example the Sega Genesis controller has ABC, XYZ, Start, Mode and d-pad. On the right hand side you will see 2 sets of buttons, 1 is the keyboard button and the other is the button of the controller you are using. *Informercial Voice* "But wait, THERE'S MORE !!!" The controller buttons you see in the right hand column match up with the controller you are actually using. Earlier I said by default everything is set to the XBox 360 controller but I use a Hori FC4 controller (pic below) for anything that doesn't require an analog stick. This is a Playstation controller so obviously all the buttons are marked with Playstation button markings (X, Circle, Square, Triangle). To map my controller to match the Genesis controller I simply had to select the button from the left hand column and press left or right on the d-pad to match the button on my controller. By default since it was a PS controller Retroarch sets up Square, X, Circle as A,B,C. I just had to go to the A button on the left side and press right on the d-pad til the right hand changed to X. The go to B on the left hand side and change the right hand column to the Circle and so on til all my buttons were mapped. Then in the controller settings with the Genesis core loaded just simply save that as a core default. The "share" and "options" buttons were correctly mapped to "mode" and "start" automatically. This was so much easier than in the past, good times ahead.

.ink games ? do you mean .lnk as in a shortcut file ?

Yeah I only use WHDLoad files myself, so much easier and hassle free.

Personally I don't care about videos so it's an easy answer for me, i'm fine with just screen shots of the games as I go through them. But my setup is for myself only and I pretty much know what every game is for the most part and if I don't know what a game is I don't mind loading it up. For people who have a lot of friends and family who come over and use it having those videos is nice, they show off really nicely.

Stand alone PPSSPP is still better, the RA core isn't bad but PPSSPP is so damn good. There really is no reason to be leery of the RA cores versus stand alone options. In many cases the RA cores are far more actively developed than the stand alones. Retroarch brings far better audio and input than the vast majority of stand alone emulators. They have done amazing work with synchronizing audio and input lag and their shaders are unmatched.

I pretty much do this but I do use the DeSmuME core because of the ability to use the right analog stick for stylus controls. I also don't play much DS anyways.

I don't believe there is an easy way to import an xml from a HyperSpin setup, maybe someone knows of away. I never tried since I don't use HS and have only used it for a very brief moment before ditching it. The Arcade game importer will let you ignore clones so they don't import. Basically when it comes down to Arcade and Mame there really is no easy way to do it. The above methods I suggested is about the best you are going to do for at least a starting point. There was the lightspeed import tool that a user here was working on but I really have no idea how the progress is going on that, I never used it and I haven't paid any attention to it.

The default import process for the Arcade platform at the end will give you several filter options to remove all the mahjong, casino and clones and that will get you down to about 2800 games out of the full set. From there it isn't too much more work to go through it and remove anything that slipped by, this is what I did on my main gaming system with everything. On my HTPC I used a batch file which is available here on the site in the downloads section to pull out a "good" list of games which totals around 640 games plus all the necessary bios. In the download package there are several batch files, one will pull all the games out into a single folder and the other batch files will pull out games based on genre into individual folders if you wish to import them by genre. You can then build off of that if you choose.

Here's a great little utility for not only Skyrim but other Bethesda games like Oblivion and the Fallout series. It's a much MUCH better graphics configuration tool than the Bethesda Launcher. It has it's own presets that not only look better but also run smoother than Bethesdas and gives you quite a bit more customization options as well. It's not a complicated thing to use at all but it is worth watching the video for it. And just for reference and my testing it out the Bethini Medium preset looks as good or better than Bethesdas High settings. Using the Bethini High preset made my game look even better than before and even got me back 10 frames per second in my "worst case scenario" test spot. Standing on the bridge in Riverwood looking back up the river I was getting around 40 fps with my settings and textures, after using the Bethini High preset that went up to 50. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4875/?

Of course they do.

Hmm, then something is going on. For me on the low end pc I listed above using the default view with only boxart and screenshots I can speed scroll though my games and stop exactly on the game I want every time without issues. All transitions turned off and image quality set to medium (not sure if that has any effect in the default view or not).

ePSXe is a nice emulator, especially since the 2.0 update. I use it on my lower end PC that isn't fast enough to use Retroarch's Playstation core. I would prefer to use Retroarch but such is life lol.

Does it act that way even when using the default view (the one with the text list down the side)?