Lordmonkus

If you don't want to use shaders there isn't much you can do about it at all. There is no resolution scaling for 3D games at all and from what have read I don't think there are any plans for it either but of course that may change somewhere down the road, who knows.

Very cool and handy.

No idea what to tell you then, sorry

In the controller plugin set did you pick dual analog in the drop down menu ?

Very nice work

Ok, it's good you don't need shaders but the other things I mentioned about Retroarch like Hard GPU Sync and Audio Latency are still very useful to anyone emulating to reduce the input lag due to emulation. Hopefully the AUtohotkey works out for you and this is essentially what RocketLauncher uses anyways so it should be doable.

There is no doubt that certain emulators are going to be a pain in the ass and hopefully Jason can come up with a solution for what you are asking. Retroarch though is worth the effort to get it working, yeah the menus can be a bit daunting but there are some features in RA that make the effort very much worth it. Shaders (if you are using a modern display), Hard GPU Sync which reduces input latency quite a lot and Audio Latency can be reduced quite a bit as well. If you are willing to give it another go I and others here are always willing to help you get it up and running. One thing to try is something like x-padder though I am not sure if that it work well with a joystick controller that uses keyboard presses. Keep in mind this is something I have not done and I don't use it for much so my knowledge of it is very limited so it may not be an option.

If you are just using Mame for arcade stuff setting up an exit key combo is ridiculously easy in Mame itself. Its the other stand alone emulators that are a pain in the ass. As far as the quality of emulation in Retroarch is concerned that just depends on the systems (cores). Genesis, Playstation, TurboGrafx and NES for example are all just as good as the stand alone emulators for those systems. Now obviously some systems the stand alones are indeed much better like Dreamcast and PSP.

Well like I said I have not tried setting that up with an arcade stick that uses keyboard presses and I take your word that it's not working and if that is the case then Jason needs to get on that shit and we can start up a riot if you like

Ahh, gotcha. I have an X-Arcade stick but I have not tried to set it up to work through Launchbox yet so I haven't delved into those settings but i'd imagine there is a way to do it. Hopefully @Jason Carror someone else who has set it up with an arcade stick using keyboard inputs can chime in with a solution. I will have to get my Tankstick hooked up again and play around with it. When I last had it hooked up I only used it for Mame and not other controller which made it super simple to close out with a button combo.

The premium version of Launchbox has the option to set a key combo to close an emulator out. It's in BigBox mode in Options > Controller Automation.

Unfortunately we cannot give you links here.

I recommend using the newer BGFX shaders over HLSL. They look better out of the box, HLSL requires some tweaking to get them looking good. Also BGFX reallyonly is worth using in Mame or Mess versions 177 or newer. Here is a tutorial I did on getting BGFX working.

Because you need to add the platforms you want Mess to be associated with.

In the Manage Emulators window add Mess like you would any other emulator.

Is it in the list when you go to the "Manage Emulators" window ?

Ok first off did you install and configure Mess ? If you did, did you add it to your emulators list in Launchbox ?

It's not the emulation quality of the Mame core in Retroarch that is the problem, it's the awful mess of setting it all up and getting it to actually work in the first place for non arcade systems. The actual folder structure and file naming is an awful nightmare, it makes getting Mess on its own a cakewalk in comparison.

I think you just hit the nail on the head here. But I guess I am just missing the point right ??

Oh I helped, trust me, I helped. Just stick to stand alone Mess like in Brads tutorial video. You really do not want to go down the path of emulating non arcade games through Retroarchs Mame core.

Sir, step away from the mess that is Mess emulation through Retroarch. Just back away now, you will be much better off in your life. Trust me.

Short answer is no, it's not easy to automate the setup of things like Retroarch control inputs through Launchbox. Longer answer is Retroarch already does this for you anyways right out of the box, there is no reason for another program like Launchbox to even do this for you. It's funny that RocketLauncher gets brought into this subject of making things easier for the end user when RocketLauncher is absolute atrocity when it comes to doing that. RL makes everything way more complex than it needs to be. Controller setup and settings always going to be best left to the emulator and not the front end unless somewhere down the road Jason decides to implement open source emulator cores / code directly into Launchbox. I think there is a bit on confusion here for some people think about Retroarch and OpenEmu. I think people think they are emulators and while if you think this you aren't entirely wrong but you are wrong none the less. Retroarch and OpenEmu are merely user interfaces built for the specific task of controlling the emulator code used on the back end. In the case of Retroarch it is using the libretro cores which are developed by their own devs. Let's take an emulator like Higan (formerly known as BSnes) as an example here. You can go out and you can download Higan and it has it's own UI to control it and set it all up. Or you can go out and download a previous version (when it was known as BSnes) which has since been released as open source. You can then take the code and build your own UI on top of it and you make modifications to that code to improve or make worse in some cases. This is what Retroarch and OpenEmu do, they work based of older BSnes code (typically 0.94) and they build on it. They make changes in the emulation itself which is the real nitty gritty work and then they throw their own UI on top of it. For Launchbox to do this Jason would need to do exactly what Retroarch and OpenEmu does and that is take the code that exists openly and then develop a UI for it and tie it directly into Launchbox. This is where the extra work that I and Zombeaver are trying to explain comes into play. It is not something trivial to a one man operation that Jason is, Retroarch and OpenEmu have a dev team that has worked years to do this, go back and look at Retroarch's UI pre version 1.2 and you will see how awful its UI used to be compared to nowadays. Keep in mind this option is only available to emulators that are open sourced and each and every single emulator "core" would have to have it's own functions tied into the UI. Now do you see why this job is so big ? Keeping in mind that this is not an option for closed source emulators such as ePSXe or SSF. The only other way to achieve the sort of controller setup automation being asked for here is to use something like the module system that RocketLauncher has and that again makes things even more complicated than they already are. When a new emulator comes out you have to wait for module to be written for it or if an emulator changes the module has to be changed to support the new changes. Just go talk to the people who use RocketLauncher already who are coming here because Launchbox is so much simpler. Of course you can always just use RocketLauncher already and link that into Launchbox but again you are now getting back to the more complicated way of doing things which is what is being asked. And around the fucking merry go round we go. Edit: Again, not saying it's not possible to do, just a case of time and money. Either Jason gets the money to pay a dev team to do it or he puts in a stupid amount of time to do it himself while putting every single other wishlist feature that people want on the back burner for a very extended amount of time

At the risk of coming off as a dick, it never was a debate. It was an explanation of why what was being put out there was not as simple it was thought to be.

Actually it's not. I thought OpenEmu used the libretro cores as well but someone over on the Retroarch forums said they weren't. I am assuming they are just doing what Retroarch does which is take open source emulator code and build a UI and other back end functionality on top of it.

@ckp I do get the point and what you are saying is just wrong. You are comparing an emulator / frontend combo that is tied directly to each other which is OpenEmu to a front end only which is Launchbox. You may not want to buy the hardware excuse but it is a legitimate part of the whole equation. Macs are very locked down in their hardware and OS compared to a Windows PC. What is being asked in this thread is for Jason to basically just replicate all the work that the Retroarch team and the OpenEmu team have done over several years but by himself. At the same time both Retroarch and OpenEmu are very locked down in what systems they emulate using open source emulators which makes programming a directly tied in front end to handle all the controller and audio functionality much easier but extremely limiting. @Thatman84 We are reading these posts correctly. OpenEmu and Retroarch are very specific UIs built for very specific emulator cores which are open source and allows them to do it but it takes time. And once again I will say this for the last time. All of what is being said is technically possible given enough time or enough money for Jason to hire a dev team. I and others including Jason have already stated as much. But it would a massive undertaking considering licensing issues because of the commercial nature of Launchbox and then you have to figure out which emulators you are going to tie in and which ones you won't because you can be sure that once some got tied in someone will be on here complaining that emulator x isn't tied in.