Lordmonkus

It's hard to say just how similar it is but if you have BizHawk look in the about panel of the UI and it shows the emulator cores and what they are based on or their own. Mednafens Wiki page has the info on its cores and shows which are their own code and which are based on others https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mednafen

If you like the default auto control config Retroarch controller set up is obviously easier but if you want to change it it can be confusing at first. I'm not sure how many of BizHawks "cores" are written by the BizHawk team or how heavily modified by them there are but it seems that most of the cores are just based off the same emulation code so the differences in emulation is probably very little. Looking at it from the outside like I am it seems like there is a certain amount of overlap in cores and code. Obviously Retroarch uses code based on other emulators. BizHawk appears to have some of some of its cores based off the same code while some of its cores are their own. Mednafen also has cores which are in some cases based off other emulators code while some of it is their own

BizHawk is indeed very nice and I would consider using it if it had the same shader support as Retroarch. It is also much more straight forward in setting up due to it's UI over Retroarch but once you get used to Retroarch's UI it isn't so bad.

The simplest systems to start with is the Snes, Genesis and Turbo Grafx 16 because they don't use bios files. For Colecovision I use a stand alone version of Mess, I never tried it with Retroarch, RA my want bios files.

Ahh ok. Well you don't need to have separate installs to begin with. If you are having troubles with certain systems, first make sure you have the cores downloaded. Second, make sure you have the correct bios files for those systems in the \Retroarch\system\ folder. You will have to find bios yourself, we cannot help you get those unfortunately. Third make sure your command line parameters are setup properly in the emulator settings window. Stretched video is taken care of by settings in the video section, if you want stretched the aspect ratio will be set to 16:9, if you want the proper aspect ratio set it to 4:3 or core provided. For Snes cores which one you use will depend a bit upon your system and what it can handle but I would recommend either Snes9x or BSnes Balanced Mercury to start with. For arcade stuff I recommend sticking to a stand alone version of Mame and not using the Retroarch Mame core. FBA is fine if you want to use it for NeoGeo but it's no better or worse than Mame.

Huh, i'm confused. Are you actually bothering to have Retroarch scan your roms for use within the RA UI ?

Why did you make separate Retroarch installs ?

Well like I said above, if you are using Retroarch you need to match the dll name with the one you have downloaded or download a core and make sure the name matches up.

Just change the dll file name in the command line parameter to match the systems you want to emulate and if you don't have the core for a system you want to emulate you need to get the core. So for example for the Atari 7800 change the command line parameter to: -L "cores\prosystem_libretro.dll" And if you want to use Retroarch to emulate the Sega Genesis you need to download the genesis_plus_gx_libretro.dll core.

Yeah certain platforms default to other emulators which needs a major update.

Here's a couple of screen shots, one is of my actual cores I have in my \Retroarch\cores folder and the other is of the command line parameters in the edit emulators window of Launchbox.

Make sure that the command line parameters are using the same cores that you have downloaded and are in your \Retroarch\cores\ folder.

Interesting. I don't ever use any command parameters, I just set everything in the ini file like skip_gameinfo setting it to 1.

Here's my Mame settings in LB, I don't have any command line parameters since all my settings like skip info is done in the mame.ini Ignore the -nn in the Mame executable, that's just my no nag exe.

NeoGeo should be easy to get working but other consoles like the CD-i are trickier. I use a stand alone Mess for stuff like that.

Don't use quotes - checked - Change to unchecked

Well there is the filter to remove most of the junk. I imported a 178 set and with the filters it ended up being around 2800 and with a bit more manual cleaning I got down to 2657.

Fair enough but damn all those mahjong and video gambling games lol.

30,000 ? Did you import every single mahjong, video poker and clone or something ?

Just set it up like any other emulator but make sure to check the "Use file name only without file extension" box. Now while this did work for me to load it didn't load without spitting out a weird error about resolution. I will see if I can figure out fully though. Just out of curiosity though why not use Retroarch with the FBA core ? It is so much simpler to use than the stand alone FBA. Edit: I got it working without spitting the error message at me but I had to tinker with the resolution and colour depth in FBA itself..

If you're doing a fresh install get the biggest one which is Retroarch.7z. It will have all the necessary files for it to work. The smaller dated one is just the exe and a few files, it won't have everything needed for a fresh install.

Hmmmm, you can probably leave them zipped but make sure you have the box to uncompress checked in the emulator settings for it. I generally have mine uncompressed to begin with though.

no problem

You delete the word roms if you like or you can add to it by separating it with a semi colon ; Example: rompath "roms;c:\path\to\roms1\;c:\path\to\roms2\"

Yeah you probably can do it all in one shot, I would just do it one by one just to be safe.