Lordmonkus

So here it is after 4am again and after about an hour and a half of pulling my hair out trying to figure this one out I found out how to have 2 controllers hooked up in Retroarch for the same core. This is mostly due to a tip I found buried on the RA forums but damnit it's after 4am and I am taking a sliver of credit for this one. If like me you have 2 controllers hooked up. I have an Xbox 360 controller for analog stick games like PS2, Dreamcast, Gamecube but most importantly for this discussion PS1 and Saturn. And I have a Hori Fight Commander 4 for digital controller games and consoles like the NES, SNES, Genesis and TurboGrafx. Retroatch will only let you set up one controller per core but if you want to change controllers you need to remap to the other controller which can get annoying. For the consoles that do not use an analog stick this is not a big deal but for the PS1 and Saturn where different games use different controls this is a problem. At first I figured just making a custom config file and appending that config in the custom command parameter with the -c switch would work. But nope that did not work and after digging around on the Retroarch forums I found that this is not possible to do. Then I thought maybe using the per game control remaps would possibly work, nope. This way will let you do remaps on the same controller but not change actual controller. The solution I found digging and is pretty simple. Make a copy of the core dll file and rename it something different. For example I copied the mednafen_psx_libretro.dll and renamed it mednafen_psx_libretro_analog.dll. I have the default one set up to use the digital d-pad controller since the vast majority of my PS1 games use that controller. For the few analog controller games I just edit and set a custom command to load that core -L "cores\mednafen_psx_libretro_analog.dll" With this new core and it's core config generated I now went in and set up my controls for the Xbox controller and it's all good. Anyways it is now 4:37 AM and bed time. If anyone has a better solution to this problem please let me know. I tried like hell to get the custom config solution to work but no way could I get it even though it seems like it should.

Good to know. It really is too bad there is no RA core for it. I saw it's accuracy rating on the TAS chart and its extremely impressive at over 98%.

It is a more accurate emulator than Nestopia and that accuracy usually comes at the cost of processing power needed to run it. I did find a game earlier though that the Nestopia core in Retroarch and puNES couldn't play though, the game Crisis Force. It does however run in the RA core FCEUMM and may run in Mednafens NES emulator or BizHawks NES core, sadly there is no RA core for Mednafen NES.

You are welcome. Like I said in theory it should work but if it goes tits up just bring up the task manager and run bsetshell to go back to explorer default. I used to use bbLean as my Windows shell and used this tool a lot. Over the course of tinkering with bbLean I managed to screw it all up so bad I would have to reset back to explorer to fix it, lol.

I have used a program called bsetshell.exe to change shells in the past. Here is the page you can download it from. http://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean/ On the left hand side under tools you will see a link that downloads it. It is just a simple zip file with and single exe file inside it. Run the exe select other and point it to BigBox.exe, and click set & logout. Log back in and you should have BigBox as your shell. I have used it on Win XP, 7 and 8 but I have not tested in on Windows 10 so I cannot say it will work on 10 or not. If you set a shell and it doesn't work all you do is bring up the task manager with ctrl+shift+escape, click file, run new task and browse your hard drive to bsetshell.exe and set it back to explorer.exe, then click set & logout then log back in and you should be back to normal. Disclaimer: I have used this many times in WinXP, 7 and 8 but I will not take responsibility for any problems you may encounter as I have not used this in Windows 10.

No but I just finished typing up a full text tutorial.

Since the topic of NeoGeo CD emulation has come up twice in the last 2 days I figured I would write up a tutorial on how I got it up and running. I got it up and running on 2 emulators, Mess and the stand alone version of Final Burn Alpha. The FBA emulation quality seemed to be just fine but the lack of fast forward functionality which is something you really will want with NeoGeo CD. The NeoGeo CD was notoriously slow being a 1x speed cd drive. NeoRaine apparently emulates this system as well but I do not like Raine so I didn't try to get it working there. Anyways, enough of the rambling lets get started on this. For starters I am using Mess version 0.174 for this and the bios files I have work with this. For obvious reasons I cannot supply the bios or tell you directly where to get them but I will tell you that a google search for "mess bios" should yield results in the first couple of hits. The FBA neocd bios come in the big FBA roms pack but do not work in Mess. There are 2 zip files you will need: neocd.zip neocdz.zip In these files you will see: front-sp1.bin top-sp1.bin neocd.bin 000-lo.lo Put these 2 zip files in the /roms folder in your Mess folder /Mess/roms Now open your mess.ini file and add your rom location folder to the rompath. Below is what I have in mine. rompath "H:\Emulation\Roms\NeoGeo CD\" If there is no mess.ini file then open up your command prompt window and go to your mess install folder where the mess64.exe is located and type the following command: mess64.exe -cc This will generate a mess.ini file in that folder. Now add Mess as an emulator to Launchbox like any other emulator and in the "Edit Emulator" window, "Associated Platforms" tab, "Default Command-Line Parameters" add the command switch "neocdz -cdrm" to your NeoGeo CD platform. Image below. Disk images that work for me are in cue + bin. Some downloaded images I noticed were in cue + iso + mp3 / wav which on their own didn't work but after converting the audio and mounting the image in daemon tools lite and regenerating a cue + bin with ImgBurn they worked fine. I only tried a couple of games since there is very few games for it that weren't released on MVS / AES like Crossed Swords 2 I didn't go out of my way to get more games to try out. Once you are up and running pressing the tab key in game will bring up the menu where you can set up all your controls and settings. Mess also supports GLSL and HLSL shaders so if you have settings from Mame you like they are relatively easily ported over. Here is an EmuCR link to a 0.176 version of Mess which I have tested and does work. http://www.emucr.com/2016/08/mess-git-20160821.html

Awesome, this same principle applies to X68000 emulation through Mess. Putting this in the custom command-line box loads up Castlevania which is a 2 disk game. x68000 -flop1 %romfile% -flop2 "H:\Emulation\Roms\X68000\Akumajou Dracula (1993)(Konami)(Disk 2 of 2).dim" Now if we can refine this further that would be even more awesome. If we could have the ability in the emulators associated platform windows default command-line parameters to have something like: x68000 -flop1 %romfile1% -flop2 %romfile2% Just using Mess and X68000 as an example. But since we now have multidisk import support and now the %romfile% feature it should be doable but I have no clue how difficult it would be.

I should have added I did not figure this one out. Was just reading over on /r/emulation and a user over there posted about it.

Go into your Project64 install folder, then into the "Config" folder and look for the file "Project64.cfg". Open it in notepad or any other text editor you want and look for: [Support Project64] Run Count= and change whatever number is there to -1 It should now look like this: [Support Project64] Run Count=-1 Save the file and nag screen is gone.

The new %romfile% variable in the middle of the command line feature works for Daphne now. It's still not super simple and smooth to get Daphne games but at least you can now make Daphne an emulator and import the .txt files as a rom image. You will need to have custom commands for each game however because of how Daphne works. Example: lair vldp -framefile %romfile% -blend -ignore_aspect_ratio -blank_searches -precache -min_seek_delay 1000 -seek_frames_per_ms 20 -homedir H:\Emulation\Roms\Daphne -fastboot -bank 0 11011001 -bank 1 00100111 -nocrc -noissues -noserversend -sound_buffer 2048 -fullscreen -x 1600 -y 1200 That is the command line for Dragon's Lair. The first word in the command "lair" changes on a game by game basis so for Dragon's Lair 2 it would be "lair2" and Space Ace would be "ace" I think the only way to get easy Daphne setup would be to have it's own setup system like how DosBOX has.

In Launchbox click Tools > Options > General > Updates and check "Update to Beta Releases" and restart Launchbox.

Very nice, even better than the dancing monkeys I was hoping for Does this mean we can mount multiple disk images at the same time ?

Please be dancing monkeys, please please please let it be dancing monkeys.

Honestly it was about the same difficulty setting up. The hardest part was finding the actual bios files for it. The bios file for FBA was actually in the complete FBA rom set though. The right Mess bios was tougher to find but once I found them setting it up was easy enough (as far as Mess setup goes anyways). Mess is my preferred way to emulate the system for the reasons mentioned above, shaders and skipping through the long load times. The NeoGeo CD had notoriously long load times with its 1x speed cd drive and it's something you really do not want to emulate and I could not find a way to speed it up in FBA.

Yeah for older console stuff getting an entire set is easier than hand picking but once you get into the larger CD based libraries it can get out of hand in a real hurry.

There is no Retroarch core unfortunately. Someone was asking about this a couple of nights ago and the ways I got it to work was through stand alone Final Burn Alpha and Mess. To me the better option was Mess because you can fast forward through the LOOONNNGGGG load screens and you have HLSL shaders. Here is the thread from a couple of nights ago And doing a search brought up this one about using NeoRaine I have not tried using NeoRaine at all so I cannot comment on it.

Did you give puNES a try ? I really think you will like it a lot, it really is a quality emulator and probably the only one I would even consider recommending over Retroarch. You can even use some of the Retroarch shaders in it if you wanted.

Yeah sound emulation seems to be one of those things that is much more difficult to emulate than it would seem. I wonder if it has anything to with the actual physical characteristics of the actual sound hardware itself that just isn't possible to reproduce. Years ago I used to work for a guy that refurbed and rebuilt vintage audio gear like amps and recording equipment (mainly from the 60s and 70s). He was a true audiophile and was a picky bastard when it came to how every thing sounded. I mean this guy was more than just picky, he was a real snob about sound. When he would get tubes for amps he would do his best to order in new old stock from Russia and when he got them even though they were already packaged as a matched pair he would take them all out of their boxes and go through them and match them up himself. But he always talked about how everything had it's own unique sound based on the board design and components used to build it.

Right now there is no way to put the command line after the rom. I even have a feature request in for Jason when he gets around to it because this would come in handy for certain emulators like Daphne. If you are using the stand alone version let me recommend using Retroarch for the Nestopia core. Or if you prefer a stand alone solution give puNES a try, it's an amazing emulator, probably the single best NES emulator out there. Get puNES here http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?t=6928

For anyone who thinks the Sega Genesis couldn't produce high quality audio and graphical effects you need to check out this tech demo from a couple years back. If you want experience it an emulator here is where you can download the demo rom: https://files.scene.org/view/parties/2013/evoke13/wild/titan-overdrivemegademo-v1.1-final.zip Only use Genesis GX though, Fusion and Pico cannot handle it based on what I have read, well they can run the rom but apparently at some point it won't be able to push all the colours.

I got it in my collection. It's in the database. http://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/games/details/1012

It depends on how many games you have. I have about 45 Windows games I imported and aren't on Steam and the Import > Windows games function is extremely slow considering it would have to scan about 6 hard drives. I also keep all my games shortcuts in a folder in my Start menu so for me all I had to do was open that folder and drag all the shortcut files into Launchbox. So either of the options I listed above right now is the most efficient way of importing a bunch of games.

Hmm, im not sure what to tell you. If you got your games working through the Demul UI the bat file should work. Like said I just have the bat file in the Demul folder and made sure all my paths for the bios and roms were setup and it just works for me.

Not sure if you need an active PSPlus account to play the games or not but knowing Sony you probably will. I let my PSPlus account expire but I still have games I have bought through the store using my PSNow account. Well even if the game play is remote and sucks I still like the idea of the usb dongle for using the DS4 controller with all features like the touchpad for Nintendo DS emulation.