Lordmonkus

Interesting idea, I like the artwork and what you are going for. On their own the pictures with the text are very cool looking but when in actual use the text is kind of pointless since you don't see it anyways. With all the stuff that is on the screen any sort of picture that isn't simplistic just gets the vast majority of the art hidden anyways. My personal preference in my Launch / Big Box is no background pictures just because it can sometimes interfere with the text I actually do want to read at times I actually want to read something. That's just my personal preference though, I am such a minimalist with my UIs. I am sure someone will really like this though, the artwork looks really cool.

Ahh, that I don't know.

While you can use Mame to emulate systems other than arcade it is a real pain in the ass, also I do not believe the Mame cores in Retroarch will do multisystem. Now you said 2500 so that is obviously a typo but did you mean 2600 or 5200 ? The 2600 is better off being emulated in Retroarch using the Stella core. The 5200 is a bit more tricky as there is no Retroarch core that does this system specifically. The easiest emulator to set up for the 5200 is Kat5200 but it can be done using Mame / Mess but in my experience with it (and other peoples around here) the results vary from game to game in terms of compatibility.

For Playstation yes, you can combine them into PBP format and Retroarch and ePSXe will read those images just fine. There is a thread around here somewhere talking about this.

Here is a backup of my SweetFX / Reshade files if you wish to try them out. I had to rename the file extension from 7z to zip to get the forums to accept the file type so you may have to rename the extension back to 7z. They may or may not work and they may or may not look like shit. I promise nothing at all and accept no responsibility for anything bad happening if you do try the so try at your own peril. Just extract into your SSF folder.

I am using the same version of SSF, 012 Beta R4. I really wish I could tell you the exact version of ReShade I used. ReShade can be a bit of a finicky pig to get working depending on your version of Windows. I have used a couple of times in other games like Elite Dangerous with mixed results and had to try a couple of different versions before getting the right one for my computer. Just to add to the DonPachi and Saturn discussion I did get a copy of the game and it plays just fine. Though it doesn't play as good as the arcade version in Mame it was extremely playable and while I wouldn't say there was any real noticeable input lag there was definitely a bit of sluggishness in the controls compared to the arcade Mame version. I call it sluggishness over input lag because the ship moved when I pressed a direction but the movement itself felt slow compared to the arcade (not the time it took to actually move). This may be the port itself and I have no idea since I no longer own a real Saturn or CRT to test it out on. There was also some sound issues but again I do not know if that was a case of sound issues in the port or in the emulation. I also did try loading the Saturn version using Mess but I got to the red hexagon screen just as the game play was about to start and it froze up.

@Zombeaver What VDP2 Ram timing are you using ? Mine is checked on and Buffer Size is 24. I just went into the EZ Settings tab and clicked the Full Compatibility and left it at that other than turning V-Sync off. @8Phantasm It's been over a month since I set up Reshade with SSF so the exact details I forget but all I did was follow Simply Austins video on it and followed his instructions. Here's the video I watched for it, it's mainly on setting up the Playstation Emulator, Xebra but he has a section in the video for Reshade. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq1ktz79ve4

Yeah the Mednafen work is exciting for sure given their track record for quality. Mess is ok but from my testing it's hit and miss with games that work and don't work. SSF has the best compatibility of the bunch so far.

I don't have DonPachi for the Saturn but I do have Darius Gaiden which is one of my favourite shooters and it really is barely noticeable even compared to the Mame version. But like I said it could very well be a game to game thing since Saturn emulation is in the state that it is in. SSF is the best that we have with Yabause and Mess being behind it.

Oh jeez I can't remember the exact version I am using but I don't think that itself matters as much as having the right version for your operating system, i'm using Windows 8.1. The other thing with ReShade is when you set it up for games and programs is you have to use the right video api (Direct X / Open GL). How bad is your input lag ? I don't have much if any input lag with SSF, it's no better or worse than any other system. Then again we are talking about Saturn emulation here so emulation quality can vary greatly from game to game on the different emulators available.

After some late night tweaking I managed to tone down the redness by dialing back the saturation just a tad and bumping the gamma by an equal tad. This is why I think HLSL is now the better choice, it is much easier to fine tune the settings to personal preference and monitor. I don't think GLSL shaders are as easy to tweak, they are sort of hard coded by the shader code itself (I may be wrong on this though).

I always love Jim Stirling and this video is no exception, he nailed it on the head with his take on emulation. My big thing with emulation and debating its legality is the more often than not the very people who bitch and cry about it being illegal are the same people who buy repro carts and think those are perfectly fine when the vast majority of those are illegally using fan translations to profit from while the translators see nothing. But oh look we put a nice sticker on it and put it in a nice box, pay us 40-60 bucks for something we stole. The people who complain about emulator illegality are either the corporations or some jerk off who thinks their physical retro collection is gonna pay for their kids college in 20 years. It's like the comic book and sports card people back in the early 90s when everyone jumped on that bandwagon. These people out there now jumping into the retro collecting are just dumping all their money into something that is only going to lose value. Now having said all that if people are buying because they genuinely want to have and play these games that's great. But if they think they are making an "investment" they are making a huge mistake.

Just a couple of screen shots from Ghouls N Ghosts to show what my settings look like. I may have to make some adjustments since it seems the reds might be a little high but that's something easily tweaked. Click and view in full screen, also keep in mind I play on a 27" 2560 x 1440 monitor. http://i.imgur.com/2EoxdEg.png http://i.imgur.com/oxyzZGl.png

Yes, you could do that but honestly I think that a good HLSL setup actually looks better. You can fine tune it to get get the look you like a lot easier and custmize it for your specific monitor. I was a GLSL Lottes shader fan up until the Mame devs fixed HLSL and now I am a convert :)

I didn't bother trying to.

I had a look into the latest build and there is some stuff in the settings that requires a bios dump of a chip other than the system bios. Still no sound effects in Darius Gaiden however so this emulator still has work to be done. Nice to see it progressing though, some day we will have good Saturn emulation :)

I have done some tweaking to the settings in the video and I think they are better. There are 2 files you need to edit, the first is the mame.ini, here are the settings: # # DIRECT3D POST-PROCESSING OPTIONS # hlslpath hlsl hlsl_enable 1 hlsl_oversampling 0 hlsl_write hlsl_snap_width 2048 hlsl_snap_height 1536 shadow_mask_tile_mode 0 shadow_mask_alpha 0.0 shadow_mask_texture shadow-mask.png shadow_mask_x_count 6 shadow_mask_y_count 4 shadow_mask_usize 0.1875 shadow_mask_vsize 0.20 shadow_mask_uoffset 0.0 shadow_mask_voffset 0.0 curvature 0.0 round_corner 0.0 smooth_border 0.0 reflection 0.0 vignetting 0.25 scanline_alpha 0.50 scanline_size 1.0 scanline_height 1.40 scanline_variation 1.0 scanline_bright_scale 1.0 scanline_bright_offset 0.0 scanline_jitter 0.0 hum_bar_alpha 0.0 defocus 0.8,0.0 converge_x 0.0,0.0,0.0 converge_y 0.0,0.0,0.0 radial_converge_x 0.0,0.0,0.0 radial_converge_y 0.0,0.0,0.0 red_ratio 1.0,0.0,0.0 grn_ratio 0.0,1.0,0.0 blu_ratio 0.0,0.0,1.0 saturation 1.2 offset 0.0,0.0,0.0 scale 1.0,1.0,1.0 power 1.0,1.0,1.0 floor 0.0,0.0,0.0 phosphor_life 0.0,0.0,0.0 The 2nd file to change is the raster.ini file located in the "mame\ini\presets" folder: # # DIRECT3D POST-PROCESSING OPTIONS # shadow_mask_tile_mode 0 shadow_mask_alpha 0.25 shadow_mask_texture shadow-mask.png shadow_mask_x_count 12 shadow_mask_y_count 6 shadow_mask_usize 0.5 shadow_mask_vsize 0.5 shadow_mask_uoffset 0.0 shadow_mask_voffset 0.0 distortion 0.0 cubic_distortion 0.0 distort_corner 0.0 round_corner 0.0 smooth_border 0.0 reflection 0.0 vignetting 0.0 scanline_alpha 0.50 scanline_size 1.0 scanline_height 1.0 scanline_variation 1.0 scanline_bright_scale 2.0 scanline_bright_offset 0.0 scanline_jitter 0.0 defocus 0.75,0.0 converge_x 0.0,0.0,0.0 converge_y 0.0,0.0,0.0 radial_converge_x 0.0,0.0,0.0 radial_converge_y 0.0,0.0,0.0 red_ratio 1.05,0.00,0.10 grn_ratio -0.10,1.00,0.25 blu_ratio -0.25,0.25,1.25 saturation 1.20 offset -0.30,-0.20,-0.05 scale 1.15,1.05,0.90 power 0.90,0.90,1.15 floor 0.0,0.0,0.0 phosphor_life 0.0,0.0,0.0 # # NTSC POST-PROCESSING OPTIONS # yiq_enable 0 # # BLOOM POST-PROCESSING OPTIONS # bloom_blend_mode 0 bloom_scale 0.20 bloom_overdrive 1.00,1.00,1.00 bloom_lvl0_weight 1.00 bloom_lvl1_weight 0.64 bloom_lvl2_weight 0.32 bloom_lvl3_weight 0.16 bloom_lvl4_weight 0.08 bloom_lvl5_weight 0.06 bloom_lvl6_weight 0.04 bloom_lvl7_weight 0.02 bloom_lvl8_weight 0.01 If you watched the video and saw the person using the sliders to change settings you would be led to believe that those settings are automatically saved to an ini file but they are not. You have to go into the mame.ini and / or raster.ini file and manually make the changes. The one complaint I did have with the settings in the video was that the blacks were not black, they were a dark grey. Simply changing the "floor" setting in the raster.ini to 0.0,0.0,0.0 made the blacks black again. There were a few more minor tweaks I made as well but they were based on personal preference and my monitor.

Lol, yeah Dos the 5200 is one of those systems for me now im just tinkering with the emulation of it just because of..... well just because. It's really not a system I care enough about to play the games on because like I said earlier the vast majority of games are arcade ports and I would rather play the arcade version, like Moon Patrol. There really is only a small handful of games that I would play on it like H.E.R.O. which is the better version compared to tehe 2600 version. Pitfall would be nice to get it working though, it is a graphical upgrade and a classic.

Yeah there really isn't a whole lot to configure. I just meant it more in terms of I haven't really spent any real time at looking at everything yet and maybe there could be something off. The 5200 is a system I didn't own or even play ever so my knowledge on the system is extremely limited so I have no clue how certain games are supposed to look and play.

Quake is a good choice but it was kind of right on that switch over from Dos to Windows where Doom is the iconic Dos game. If not Doom then Wolfenstein or Monkey Island. No matter what you use though your artwork looks great :)

Dude for DOS it has to be Doom :)

Added the 5200 roms folder to my rom paths and that got it working, thanks DOS. Jump button still doesn't work in Moon Patrol however :(

Maybe, maybe not. It could just be a case of setting up the controls better for games that have control problems. As for the non loading games they could just be rom dumps that Mess does not like.

If you are just using the default rom folder withing the Mame installation folder you do not have to set anything. But if you are keeping your roms in a different location you need to set this folder within Mame. If you are using MameUI you can set the folder or multiple folders using the drop down menus at the top. If you are using the command line version of Mame (like I am) then open your mame.ini and look for the line rompath near the top and just to the right of that you will want to type the full path to the location of your roms enclosed in quotation marks. For example mine looks like this: rompath "E:\Downloaded Games\Emulation\Roms\Mame Full" You do not need to point to any bios files, the bios files for arcade games just go in the same folder with all your game roms.

Hmm after reading some of the responses and further testing yeah certain games like Moon Patrol the jump button does not work for me either. Hero and Kangaroo work just fine while Joust and Star Wars just go to a black screen after the initial splash screen. Pitfall loads but the start button does not work while Pitfall 2 works perfectly. I tried a handful of other games with varying degrees of success, some work while others have either funky controls or just don't work. I am using the 174 version of Mess Brad linked to. I tired to use my Mame 174 but I had no luck getting it to work, I will try again later.