Lordmonkus

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.

Ok this is getting ridiculous. You people are now comparing OpenEmu to Launchbox which are 2 completely different programs doing 2 completely different jobs. If you are going to compare OpenEmu to something compare it to Retroarch. Hardware and operating system differences make a huge difference when it comes to programming on a platform. With a Mac you know pretty much exactly what OS version and hardware configuration you are targeting where as on a Windows based PC you have 3 or 4 and sometimes even more potential versions of Windows to code for and then you have the different versions of DirectX, OpenGL and other hardware drivers to worry about. Yeah this is an advantage to the Mac in some cases but also a detriment to it. Go try and run the CRT-Royale or Kurozumi shader on an integrated GPU or even some budget low end one and see how well that runs for you. Also try all the different shaders available in Retroarch on both Nvidia and AMD GPUs, you will find out pretty damn fast that it matters quite alot. Also try running Mednafens PSX core on a 2 GHz CPU compared to ePSXe on the exact same CPU. You want to point out what OpenEmu does that Launchbox doesn't ? Let's point out what Launchbox does that OpenEmu doesn't. Launchbox lets you run any emulator you choose. The single biggest reason to use Launchbox right here. Does OpenEmu support a choice in Playstation or N64 emulator ? Does it support emulators like PCSX2, Dolphin, Cemu, Citra, Daphne, DosBox. Looking at their homepage and wiki it looks like they don't even support Mame in their non dev builds. Launchbox lets you run any other program you choose, like Windows games or even launch movies if you so choose. Launchbox lets you use it from the couch with a controller. Launchbox gives you awesome themes. Launchbox has 1 developer (a single developer, not a team) that is working constantly to make it better and implement things that everyone wants. Launchbox actually has a forum board like this that will not only support you in setting up Launchbox but more often than not we even support people in setting up emulators. How many other products forum boards will help out with products that aren't their own. Go right on over to Retroarchs forums and ask for help with front end help or other emulators, I can tell you right now you will not get the same treatment over there. That is not to say they are pricks or assholes but they are under no obligation to help support products that aren't theirs. Does OpenEmu have a forum board to help people ? I couldn't find one. If you somehow think setting up Launchbox is so difficult please go try setting up HyperSin and RocketLauncher or any other front end for that matter. Please do not compare Launchbox which is a very open ended front end with a huge amount of customization options for users to a locked down emulator with a basic front end. Launchbox is by far the easiest to set up front end out there that at the same time allows so much user customization and options in what emulators the end user gets to pick. Seriously, I cannot even think of a single emulator that you cannot somehow shoehorn into Launchbox yet, yeah some require some extra work like SSF but the option is there for the people who don't have the hardware to run Mednafen for their Saturn games.

Well said and glad you are feeling better. I was trying not to name names of devs and their.... well let's just say quirky personality and behavioral traits. Let's just talk about Retroarch here for a moment since it is one of the more seemingly complicated emulators out there for the "average" user. Out of the box aside from downloading the cores you need and dropping bios files in the \system\ folder it just works, no controller config unless you have crazy controller setup. Now for people like me who want to tinker with it and fine tune it to my system there are plenty of settings to fiddle with such as reduce audio latency, hard gpu sync and frame delay just to mention a couple off the top of my head, not to mention the stuff I need to get into for G-Sync. I know there are a lot of things in there that many people find overwhelming and up until recently all those settings you see in it's menu you are left guessing as to what they all do. But if you look into the nightlie builds for what is coming up each menu item now has a small line of text telling you what each setting does. This should make people lives easier. Now I said that out of the box Retroarch pretty much just works and it does on my main gaming rig but on my lower end HTPC I just built and installed everything it required some more tweaks to get things running as smoothly as I wanted because we are now talking about the world of Windows based PCs. It's this crazy possible combination of hardware and operating systems is why the PC side of things becomes more tricky and accounting for it all is a huge job. Something else that the average person doesn't know and maybe don't even care about Retroarch but they should know and care about is beyond their UI is they have done a lot of work on the v-sync side of things and the way sound syncs up. Emulation is not like normal programming where you just write code and compile an executable and it just works. Emulation is about tricking a piece of software (game rom) into thinking it is running on real hardware and all the timing issues that those original systems operated on. If these timings are off then the game has problems and glitches ranging from minor to extreme. This is why you see the more complex emulators like Higan (Snes emulator for those that don't know) requires a 3 GHz cpu to run every single game at 100% speed, think about that for a moment, a 3.5 MHz system requiring a 3 GHz modern CPU to run at full speed. Then you get people who don't know any better thinking that a CPU with 8 cores and a high end GPU should be able to handle an emulator better when in reality a GPU does nothing for the emulation aside from resolution scaling and shader. A GPU does absolutely nothing for the emulation itself and neither does having an 8 core CPU. Most emulators don't even use a dual core CPU (some do). Why is this ? Again it all has to do with the emulated systems timing and the way the original hardware functioned. It is much easier to keep the timing in line on a single or dual core CPU, once you start trying to spread the original hardwares functions across multiple cores of a CPU it becomes much more difficult to keep it all in sync. This is also why Saturn emulation took so many years to get to a point today where we can actually call it "good". The original Saturn hardware had 2 cpus and 2 vdps (video display processors, sort of like gpus) in it. The system was so complex for it's time programmers back then even with documentation from Sega had a hell of a time making games for it. Emulators developers generally do not have access to this documentation and they have to figure it all out on their own. This is why implementing and maintaining libretro core into Launchbox is not such simplistic task. I have no idea how deep Jasons knowledge of programming goes but I do know that emulators are not written using the tools he uses to make Launchbox. @robwiredI saw your posts over on the Retroarch forum but you left out the major issues at hand here. How much time their devs put into the Retroarch UI and all their other stuff outside of the emulator cores themselves. You also did not ask about the policies surrounding the use of libretro cores into a commercial product such as Launchbox. I am certainly not going to delve into the legalities and finer details of GPLv3 licensing but you can if you really feel like you want to, here is the web page for it https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html

@Jason Carrhas already replied to this thread on page 2 back when you started it and his response was: "the amount of extra effort required in order to make that happen is massive. Sure, the code is written for the cores, but we'd basically have to code an easier version of Retroarch itself in order to make it happen. So sadly, it's not feasible in the short term. But longer term, it is something exciting to keep in mind. I still shutter at the likely licensing and legality issues of it all though, too."

Like I have said in this thread before, I fully appreciate the idea but until someone backs a dump truck load of money into Jasons backyard and says "here, make it happen" it's an unfeasible idea. If you want an idea of time maybe ask over on the Retroarch forums because they have been working on that a long time now. I really am unwilling to discuss this any further.

I'm sure getting something to simply load the cores and run a game wouldn't be all that difficult and is probably the easiest part of it. But when you take in all the other functionality that Retroarch and OpenEmu provides that is where the real time consuming things comes in. Things like input mapping for all the different controllers, the audio back end, the shaders, video rendering and all the other little settings you see Retroarch is where the real work really piles in. Like the old saying goes "the devil is in the details", simply loading a core and a game is the least of the problems. And once again we are back where we started, why in the world waste all that time and energy into reinventing the wheel when we can just install Retroarch or any other emulator and use that in Launchbox ? It is so much easier to do things as they are and provide tutorials and support on getting it to work together like we already do. And of course this also bears repeating. This would also cost money for lawyers because you cannot simply use libretro cores in a commercial product like Launchbox because of its GPL licensing. This is where Hyperkin (Retron 5) got into shit but because they are a bunch of shady pricks they just did it anyways because they knew the libretro devs didn't have the money to defend themselves. Are you really willing to piss off the entire emulation community just because you want an "easier to use" product ? I am now done banging my head against the wall on this one.

The cores themselves need a "frontend" of sorts to configure them which is where OpenEmu and Retroarch come in. The cores themselves are simply the backend and without all the config files and other stuff the frontend part of it does they are useless. This is where all the extra time and work would have to come in from Jason or the money to hire people to do it for him.

That's my point this whole time though, there is only so simple it can be made before you end up crippling what is already there. And by crippling I mean you either limit or eliminate the features, functionality and customization that is already there or you are spending a whole pile of time and money which simply is not there. There just comes a point when the end user has to take some responsibility on their end and put in a tiny amount of effort. Jason, Brad and the volunteers here on the forums can help out in a lot of ways and we are happy to do it. Trust me when I tell you that I only wish I could package up an emulator with all the roms and bios files have a person download it and have it just work. But I can't even openly tell people where to get roms or bios files, it's just how emulation is.

I haven't had any issues outside of the name of the file maybe being different from the database. Sometimes the file will be using an English translated name versus the database using the Japanese name.

There is a Supergrafx core in Retroarch which will function as your TurboGrafx 16 and CD emulator if you wish to use it, I do. I also just put my CD games in the Turbografx CD platform and have a folder just for CD games.

I don't even know what to say to this anymore but it sounds more like a solution in search of a problem. I am really at a loss here for where to start so I will just do my best and spit it out as I think about it. What you are suggesting is basically OpenEmu and Retroarch which already exists and does a damn fine job at what it does but naturally it is limited to only what it can do and does not go beyond this. All of these cores are opensource and you are free to take them and use them in a frontend as long as they are not sold for money. That is not something simply "worked around". Now if you somehow did manage to get around the opensource cores for sale in a commercial product such as Launchbox you are again locking yourself into certain cores and you essentially eliminate all the other choices in emulators that are not opensource and freely available. I don't know how familiar you are with some of the personalities behind some of the more popular emulators out there but I can tell you that some of them have egos the size of a freakin house and anything that they don't like they will shit all over it, again take a look over on /r/emulation sometime. Do you really think Jason has the money (forget the time) to get a lawyer who is going to spend a pile of time (which will cost money) to get in contact with devs of emulators like Higan, ePSXe, Mednafen, PCSX2, Dolphin and on and on and on ? One of the major strengths of Launchbox is its flexibility to handle pretty much any emulator you throw at it, some require a little more effort than others but it is still a strength that very few other frontends (if any) offer. I really do get and appreciate what you are saying and the idea behind it but it is something that would require a ton of time, money and a full time dev team. And for what ? Something that is already doable right now with just a tiny bit of effort and the ability to read and or watch a youtube video ? Let's just say that somehow you manage to have all of this that you are saying. There is still 2 major hurdles and probably the 2 biggest ones at that, roms and bios and no matter how much time and money you throw at that those will not go away or be made easy. I can tell you right now from spending a great deal of time on here helping people out the most common problem by far comes from people needing bios files or they have bad rom files. Hell, you even have people out there selling pre made hard drives with front ends, emulators and roms already on them and guess what ? They still don't work and require a lot of fixing.

More explanation needed.

Yeah if you can control the hardware and you limit the use of emulators to use ones that do not require any bios files it is very doable. I would also be wary of any emulator that doesn't allow its distribution on hardware for sale. This is where Hyperkin got itself into some trouble using libretro cores in the Retron 5. Now of course the devs of the libretro cores didn't have the money to fight this issue and of course Hyperkin being a bunch of shader pricks didn't care.

No, it's not seamless and it never will be without writing the emulators directly into Launchbox which you already agreed that that would be a huge undertaking. And I get what you are saying but the reality is that is a pure and simple pipe dream. If someone wants super simple and not worry about anything at all then they need to go buy a Mac and use OpenEmu or get a Pi and use EmulationStation. But like discussed before about those solutions, you are locked in with the emulator choices. The fact is here in a Windows PC environment there are countless different hardware configurations and multiple versions of Windows and compatibility issues will arise. For this reason people need the options to customize and configure everything at a lower level which Launchbox does an absolutely amazing job at. Launchbox already makes things much easier to setup than any other front end out there and is constantly being worked on to add new features on a regular basis. On top of that we got @SentaiBraddoing tutorials which I swear at times no ones takes a single second to ever watch, those tutorials walk people through the emulator install and game import process as simple and painless as possible. Then on top of that you got people like myself, @Zombeaver, @CriticalCidand others making written and video tutorials. You also have to take into consideration that what we are dealing with here is a grey area in terms of legality. Not that anything about Launchbox is even remotely close to illegal but things like roms and bios files are. Hell, people cannot even pay for Launchbox using PayPal because PayPal considers Launchbox to be emulation related and therefore in their eyes an illegal activity so they block Jason from accepting payments through them. Can you imagine how hard companies like Nintendo would come down on Jason for making money off a product that allows people to play their precious games without going through them directly ? Then on top of all that you got pissy whiney emulator devs to deal with. Take some time to read /r/emulation and you will see the cry baby pissing contests that certain emulator devs get into with each other over there. If all of a sudden Launchbox suddenly starts importing their emulators and Jason is perceived as making money off them they would have a conniption fit. In the end Jason, Brad and the community here as a whole can help you to a certain point but somewhere along the way the end user has to take some responsibility on their own end to read and educate themselves on getting certain things to work. There is always going to someone with some weird little niche problem and everyone has their pet feature that only they want, Jason only has so much time and has to pick and choose which features get implemented and when. So until he gets a dump truck load of money to hire a full time dev team we get what we got which is already the best damned front end out there. Like I have said previously in this thread, if you want super simple there are other options out there but your control over how it works is severely lacking. Launchbox gives it's user the customization options that most people need (there is always going to be that weirdo that needs even more) and at the same time makes it relatively easy when compared to something like HyperSpin and RocketLauncher. Anyways this ended up way longer than I intended and if it came across as a rant I really don't care. It's emulation, it's not some plug and play console so people need to do some work on their own end. We can reduce it drastically but we cannot eliminate it.

Maybe not the answer you are looking for but I recommend using Retroarch and ProSystem core. Mame is good for some things and in some cases the only way to emulate a system but not always the best way.

Here is a video I did on converting Saturn images but the programs and process used are the exact same. Brad is probably going to be doing a tutorial video on setting up the emulator and running the games.

I had no luck with cue + iso files, I was only able to get cue + bin to work. You can convert cue + iso to cue + bin using daemon tools and ImgBurn.

You will need a cue file, that is the file that gets loaded.

For NeoGeo CD it's cue + bin like I said in my tutorial.

Yeah it would be a good tutorial to do. My text tutorial will only go so far and having a good video to go along with it would help some people out.

I highly recommend against Final Burn Alpha only because of the extremely long loads times of the NeoGeo CD that FBA emulates. It was a 1x CD drive and it really has painfully long load times. With Mame / Mess you can fast forward it.

Maybe through the Mame core but I never tried it, I know the FBA core won't do it. Even if the Mame core did work I wouldn't use it over a stand alone Mame / Mess anyways.

I'm sure some people do but I haven't run into any issues with Retroarch controls. I even use 2 different controllers for different cores. Are you looking for recommendations stand alone emulators to use over Retroarch ?