Lordmonkus

Now try it on a vertical oriented game and compare it to a CRT shader on the same vertical game in Retroarch.

Looks much better, but what do you think about it ?

Yeah definitely update to at least version 172 or newer. Pre 172 HLSL was actually quite bad but with 172 they made some dramatic changes to HLSL and made it much much better.

They should look fine without having to do any tweaks but if you want to learn about tweaking them here is a great video to learn about it. This video is the one that made me make the switch from GLSL to HLSL and I used his settings as a base with some very minor tweaks in gamma and saturation for my monitor. Just keep in mind that while you can make changes in game those settings are lost when you exit. So what you have to do is make note of the settings you like and then manually edit your raster.ini file in your mame\ini\presets folder.

Well like any shader, it's very much personal preference. To me yours looks a little dark and I don't like the "grid" look but that's just my personal tastes talking. It's all about what you like and what might look good on your monitor may not look so good on my monitor. Resolution and panel types change how CRT shaders look due to pixel density. My monitor is a 27" 2560 x 1440 resolution TN panel.

BGFX is really good as it is right now, it just needs the ability to save out and load tweaked settings which is the problem with it right now. Default settings are ok but you really need to tweak a little for your monitor. For example right now the base HLSL settings are a little washed out, blacks are not black, the base gamma is just a tad too high.

Here is a screenshot of an HLSL shader setup I use. The aspect is a little messed up but that's something in the screen cap and not my settings. BGFX is a new shader language being implemented into Mame. HLSL is decent but getting outdated and BGFX is much more flexible. Here's a download for the HLSL settings I use if you want to try them out, be sure to read the readme.txt file in the download.

HLSL right now is the best way to go. But once BGFX gets enough support to store and load settings from edited files it will be awesome.

It's a bug in the current builds of the Mame core. I still recommend the use of stand alone Mame over the Retroarch core. I was tinkering a bit with a 175 build of MameUIFX and the BGFX shaders, lots of promise with it but not quite there just yet.

Name: CDMage Saturn Disk Repair Category: Tutorials Date Added: 2016-09-23 Submitter: lordmonkus This is just a super short and simple tutorial on how to use CDMage to repair corrupt Saturn disk images. It may work for others but I have only ever had to use it for Saturn games and has worked for several games for me. CDMage Saturn Disk Repair

Yup, if you got some games working your setup is right so if you got unworking games those are bad dumps. If they are Saturn games they can sometimes be fixed using CDMage or simply mounting the image with a virtual cd drive and redumping that with something like ImgBurn. If you Saturn games have mp3 or wav files then those will need to be redumped. Here is a video tutorial I did on fixing dumps that have mp3 or wav files.

Yeah some people keep their roms archived to save on space. If you are loading a rom through through Retroarch and it is a zip / 7z file it will need to be extracted first. Launchbox will extract it to a temporary folder first, then load it and delete the temporary file after playing, all leaving the original compressed file alone. I believe Retroarch does the same thing as Launchbox but again I cannot say for sure since I have always extracted my files out. The file type .sfc is a rom file but .srm files are still save files. The 2 rom file types for the Snes is .smc and .sfc.

Hopefully I can answer a couple of questions for you here. Keep in mind I do not use zipped files at all for my emulation, all mine are already extracted. First 7z or zip doesn't matter, both file types are recognized and handled just fine with 7zip which Launchbox uses to extract the rom files. The only time there may be a problem is if there are multiple files within the archive file, the first file will try and be loaded and if this first file is not an actual rom it may cause problems. Files with the extension .srm are save files and not rom files at all. I am not sure what the .src files are but I do know they are not rom files either. Emulators that directly run archived roms will be things like Mame, NeoGeo and some other arcade emulators where the rom archive contains several rom files and these should never be extracted, the emulator needs them to remain archived.

Load times are much better, great job on this Jason. Also love the new sound effects.

Oooohh.

Scrolling is fixed, awesome. But like @master333said it does feel very laggy for some reason. I can't compare to any other themes because I have never used any themes other than the default BigBox theme.

With Mame if you use an HLSL shader you won't have to worry about whether the game is vertical or horizontal. You will have worry about that though if you use RA with a CRT shader or in Mame with a GLSL shader. If you don't use any shaders at all or if you use something other than some sort of scanline shader it shoudn't matter in RA.

Off the top of my head I can't really think of many systems better emulated through a stand emulator over a Retroarch core. Though the PSP and N64 are better done through the stand alone versions. Nintendo DS it just depends on personal preference, I use the RA core because it lets me use shaders and the right analog stick for the stylus without using X-Padder. ePSXe is better if you have a lower end system and cannot run the RA PSX core. NES may be a tiny bit better through a stand alone but it's so close it isn't worth worrying about. Mame in terms of emulation quality is equal but because how RA handles CRT shaders for vertical games I prefer the stand alone version of Mame.

Cool, really like the look of the theme though so far. It's the only theme I have bothered to even try out yet.

Don't know if this is a bug or just a setting I am missing but my Platform list doesn't scroll. I can select platforms off screen below the cutoff but it doesn't scroll to show the platforms. The games list scrolls just fine but not platforms.

There is the throttle function in stand alone Mame, not sure if the Retroarch core has it or not. Did you try the Mame (no year) core ? Mame 2014 core is based off of the 159 build of Mame. I just tried it out in a 168 build and it's running at an appropriate speed. Pressing F11 while the game is running will show you the speed the game is running at.

Did you try it with v-sync off or in the stand alone Mame ?

Jason is breaking out the "disappointed parents" strategy.

The father posted it to try and show he wasn't involved in this and I can understand that, I wouldn't be hard on him for it. I am now locking this thread.

Man I really don't know what to do with this. Part of me is thinking I should remove the pic with the names and emails but at the same time why should I do that to protect a couple of people trying to steal from Jason. I do find it ironic though that people worried about their email privacy is using a gmail account. I fully understand and get the fact that it is difficult or impossible to buy Launchbox in certain countries because of exchange rates and credit card rules. I have no idea either of you tried to contact Jason privately about obtaining a license through other means or not, that's between you and him. Edit: Ok I thought about it and I removed the pics with the names and emails just because I believe it is the right decision. Don't make me regret it @Prags and @StuDentBR.