Lordmonkus

Voted for.

Yeah this would be a very nice feature to have. I plan on changing my roms drive sometime and it would be really nice to have a nice and easy way to change it within Launchbox itself. Right now I believe the only way is to edit the xml file with the find and replace tool in notepad.

The mame.ini file should be located in the mame folder itself, the same place as the mame executable. In that file there will be a line near the top (probably line 10) with the entry: rompath If there is nothing to the right of rompath mame will just default to the roms subfolder of Mame. Here you can add a path to a folder or even multiple folders with semi colon separating the paths. Here is my rompath for example: rompath "E:\Downloaded Games\Emulation\Roms\Mame Full;H:\Emulation\Roms\Atari 5200\" It has the path of my entire Mame rom set and my Atari 5200 roms. If you are using MameUI you can easily add rompaths using the UI but if you are using the command line version of Mame you may need to manually add these paths yourself. There may be a way to add folder paths using the built in UI that Mame has now in it but I have not tried it so I cannot say for certain that you can. If you have a fresh Mame you can and should generate an ini file as the first thing you do with a fresh Mame by using the good old DOS prompt. Navigate to your Mame folder and type in the following: mame64.exe -cc

Ok I opened up both presets in notepad, Easymode-Halation is really simple to read and Kurozumis is a novel like you said but to be fair to Kurozumi he did put some comments in there to at least help explain most of it. For shits and giggles I fired up the Kuorzumi preset and went to pass 10 and replaced it with the horizontal blur from Easymode-Halation because in Kurozumis pass 10 is a horizontal blur. This really did not have the effect I was expecting at all. Everything turned a shade of purple, LOL. This might be one of those things worth asking Kurozumi himself about over on the Retroarch forums. I am going to go get some food and I will have a tinker around with this more afterwards.

Well the nice thing about G-Sync is that it gives you all the benefits of V-Sync without the drawbacks (except for cost). The drawbacks of V-Sync is it does add to input lag, how much exactly I don't know but it does add some. Along with the added input lag V-Sync can also mess with the games timing because you are now syncing the game to your monitors refresh rate which is typically 60 Hz. This generally is not a problem for standard console games but when you get into Mame where many games run at oddball speeds it can cause problems. NeoGeo and Mortal Kombat are the prime examples here where those run the 50 (ish) Hz range. Load up Samurai Showdown 2 with V-Sync on and look at the shadows, they flicker at odd intervals and looks weird. Now the side effect of these games running at improper speeds varies from game to game and can be nothing more than cosmetic but can have weird effects later in the game. G-Sync eliminates these problems by syncing the monitor to the game so you don't get screen tearing like you would with V-Sync off. G-Sync does some other nice things as well which I would have to find certain articles I have read to relay them. Also most G-Sync monitors are of a higher quality and have a naturally low input latency level compared to average monitors even though you can get good low latency non G-Sync monitors, BenQ makes some nice ones. The obvious disadvantage of G-Sync is cost. A G-Sync monitor is going to add on at least an extra $200 to the price of a monitor and you are locking yourself into a relatively new Nvidia video card. My monitor I picked up on sale and after taxes it still cost me damn close to $1000 Canadian which really had me worried when I bought it. Now that I have been using it for a few months I have to say the extra cost was well worth it but that is obviously not an option for everyone. For me it was a birthday present split 3 ways and I paid 1/3rd of it myself. I do not have a hard objective way to test for input lag and I don't have an old CRT laying around to plug in one of my old consoles to do a side by side test on but I can tell you from my personal subjective feelings and using the 240p test suite everything feels buttery smooth and probably as good as it's going to get with emulation.

You could probably do it by replacing pass 10 in Kurozumi to the bloom pass in Easymode-Halation. Do you know which pass in Easymode is the bloom ?

Nah, it doesn't matter. If it works for you then it's all good. The only benefit to having them extracted is it is faster loading because you don't have to wait for your system to extract the files first which is what that extract option does, it's extracting the disk image to a temporary folder first so the emulator can load it. Personally I keep mine extracted and each game in their own separate folder but it's personal preference. Another option is to compress the games into a PBP format which has the benefit of being compressed and not needing to be extracted first and you can combine multidisk games into a single file but that is extra work to go through and convert them all.

This is a setting for people who like to keep their roms in a compressed format like zip, 7z or rar to save hard drive space. It gets problematic for emulators like Mame which requires its roms in a zip or 7z file because there are more than one rom image in the zip / 7z file. It's only recommended to be on if you keep your roms in a compressed format for a system that is not Mame or some other emulator that requires that type of format for the same reasons. I am assuming you have your PSX games in a zip or 7z file ?

Yeah you are definitely doing it right for having v-sync on and it's what I did before making the switch to a g-sync monitor. Trying to find a definitive guide on Retroarch + G-Sync + Hard GPU Sync + Frame Delay is kinda rough. But the best I can figure out with the information I can find spread across different websites and posts is that Hard GPU Sync is for V-Sync and does nothing if you are using G-Sync, quote from Hunterk over on the RA forums "hard GPU sync shouldn't matter because gsync already minimizes the delay between emulating a frame and displaying it" Frame Delay only has an effect when V-Sync is enabled so having anything set while using G-Sync is doing nothing.

I have to go back and redo some research on it. I was under the impression that frame delay only had an effect if V-Sync was enabled. I just know right now with G-Sync (v-sync disabled and frame delay 0) my input is extremely responsive. I don't think it could be any better outside of having real hardware and a crt tv.

Yeah frame delay is also a big help. Maybe you can correct me on this but I believe that only has an effect when you have v-sync enabled which you shouldn't have enabled unless you have terrible screen tearing issues. V-Sync causes some slight input lag along with as you said certain shaders depending on your system. I have V-Sync disabled because I have a G-Sync setup and the input lag is so extremely low. But like I said before, I was just clarifying the term "remove" because there is no way to get rid of 100% of the input lag. With correct settings and a low input lag display you can get really damn close to getting rid of 99% of it. Also on a side note while it's not directly input lag if you go into the audio settings you can reduce the audio latency to 24ms (depending on your system) before getting bad static. It's not input lag exactly but audio so its just perceptive lag.

Glad you got it sorted out :)

Very interesting and I must say I really like it :) Here's a couple of shots I took using the opening intro of Streets of Rage 2 which is a perfect test because of the black background and text which really highlights that glow in it's worst possible case scenario. This might be worth posting over on the Retroarch forums in the shaders section, Kurozumi himself has posted over there in the thread for his preset and is very receptive to suggestions and adjustments. Kurozumi-Default http://imgur.com/S23yB2y Kurozumi-Modified http://imgur.com/1mBsd9t

Just for clarification you simply cannot "remove" input lag but Retroach does let you reduce it as much as possible within the emulation itself by turning on Hard GPU Sync in the video settings. Your TV / monitor is also going to add some input lag if you aren't using a CRT.

Hmm, I'm not 100% sure I totally understand everything you said but it sounds like you accidentally removed Retroarch as an emulator. Go to Tools > Manage Emulators and in there you can see a list of all your emulators and you can edit their paths in there. You only need one entry for Retroarch (you can have more if you need for a specific reason but that's more advanced). If you have 30 Genesis roms imported already and you want them all set to Retroarch just go to your Genesis section, and press Control + A on your keyboard to highlight all your games, then right click and edit. You can then batch edit and change the emulator for all in one shot. I hope I understood what you were saying right. Mame is not hard to get working at all. Just make sure all your games are working through Mame on its own first and then you just import your roms and select Mame as your emulator and make sure it's pointing to your Mame executable. Most important thing with any emulator and Launchbox is make sure your emulator and games are working outside of Launchbox first and then if you are having a problem within Launchbox you know it is a setting in LB itself. Also if you haven't done it yet be sure to check out Brads video tutorials on youtube, just search for Launchbox on youtube and it should be the first result.

I have tinkered around with this some but the latest version of the unibios I could get working is 3.1. What I did was find a 3.1 version which had the uni-bios.rom inside it, I renamed the file to uni-bios_3_1.rom and put that file in my neogeo.zip bios file. When a game launched it will show that it is using the 3.1 bios. I tried the same thing with 3.2 but never got it to recognize, I don't know if it is a problem with my 3.2 bios rom or if Retroarchs FBA core supports it. Edit: Ok just after posting this I tried a quick trick and renamed the 3.2 rom to uni-bios_3_1.rom and put the file into the neogeo.zip file and it loaded up showing unibios 3.2 at the splash screen. Edit #2: I am using fb_alpha_libretro.dll core.

@Zombeaver Yeah another thread would be a good idea. I will have a poke around with that setting you mentioned and see what happens. I am by no means an expert in shaders and how they actually work or anything but I would think pixel density could have an effect if the shader is telling something to bloom a certain number of pixels. A larger display @1080 would bloom further distance than a smaller display @1440 (again I am no expert and just guessing here). Also the difference could be in the fact that my monitor is a TN panel when I assume your TVs are IPS which have more glow to them. On my 42" Samsung TV I wouldn't use Royale or Kurozumi even if the PC hooked up to it could run it because they look like ass on the TV. There has to be something to the type of display because like I said outside of those pure black background static parts of a game like the GnG title screen that bloom just is not noticeable on my monitor. You are seeing it in the SoR sceenshot I posted but on my display it just isn't there.

Double check your emulator details window, make sure you didn't check extract rom archive by accident and check your associated platforms command line is still properly set. If it worked before and doesn't now you probably accidentally changed a settings and didn't notice.

@Zombeaver Just out of curiosity what size resolution is your home monitor ? Just for reference I have the Asus PG278Q 27" 1440p monitor. It's obviously a display thing with what you are seeing in that screenshot because you said you can barely see it on your work display and looking at the areas you pointed out I don't see any of the outline blur that is really noticeable in the GnG title screen. Anyways since this is way off topic now I will just leave it at what I have said before. Royale and the Kurozumi edit really does vary in its look from display to display and they are meant for greater than 1080 monitors. Even 1440 can be a bit off because those shader presets were more or less meant for 4k displays. I have tried Royale on my TV and my old 22" monitor it looked absolutely hideous but on my new monitor they look really good. It's a good thing we have all sorts of shader options to get the right setup for personal tastes and individual display types :)

I generally do a google images search which has mixed results. The more popular hacks will have a box art for it but the lesser ones you are on your own for what you use for it. As far as I know there is no database for them but I could be wrong.

Here's a screenshot in game Streets of Rage, I don't see any of that glow that you see in the Ghouls N Ghosts title screen and it's a static shot not in motion. The glow is definitely noticeable and ugly on a static screen with black background but like I said in a game with colour and motion it becomes unnoticeable for me. I don't know if the response time of the display would have any effect on a game in motion or not but for what it's worth I use a high end gaming monitor with a 1ms gtg response. http://imgur.com/tyMFSiP I would love a way to try my HLSL settings in Retroarch to compare to its shaders though.

No problems, glad it worked for you.

The Ghouls N Ghosts screen I posted in that other thread was from my Mame HLSL setup. There is definitely a layer of personal preference when it comes to shaders, everyone has a different look that they like. Something else to take into consideration with Royale and Royale-Kurozumi is the monitors resolution, they work best at >1080 because of pixel density. Also a displays colour calibration can effect them a fair amount. That glow you are talking about with Royale-Kurozumi is really noticeable and offputting on screenshots and even more so when it's on a pure black background like in the screenshot but once you are actually in game with lots of colours in motion and a quick response monitor it becomes unnoticeable. I do agree with you on the Easymode-Halation though, that does look really good. I will have to give that one another shot for an extended period.

It should work fine. I don't normally use the stand alone version, I Use the Retroarch core. But I did just add the DeSmuMe emulator to my list of emus and selected it for a game and it loaded up just fine.

Ahh, I haven't used easymode in forever since my early days of Retroarch and trying to find the right shader for me. I have been stuck with Kurozumis edit of Royale on my main gaming PC and CRT-Pi on my lower end laptop. Some shaders do rotate properly and I think in the case of CRT-Pi I believe there is a vertical specific version of it.