Lordmonkus

Theoretically yes but you would have to go in and manually edit all those absolute paths for each shader pass because more than likely the folder structure would be different. Plus all I am using is the default non edited CRT-Royale_Kurozumi preset so if you load that you would be using the exact shader I am using.

billbo said Thanks very much guys up and running on what I have tried , can I please ask what would be best to run mame 0.37b5 roms ?? Thanks This would be the Mame4all rom set if I am not mistaken which is an older Mame used on the Raspberry Pi and other lower end devices. You can run these through Retroarch using the Mame 2000 core which is designed for that specific rom set http://wiki.libretro.com/index.php?title=MAME_2000 or you can use an older build of Mame http://www.mame.net/oldrel.html, scroll down til you find the 0.37b5 (0.41) version and download the binary. Outside of using this rom set on a Pi which I have done I don't have any experience with it otherwise. I would normally suggest using Mame over Retroarch for Mame emulation but in this case I think I would actually recommend using Retroarch. Being such an old version of Mame there are a lot of features not implemented and Retroarch brings a lot of great extra functionality like shaders. Maybe others might have a better suggestion however.

You don't need an EmuMovies account. I don't have one and all I miss out on is the game videos but I don't care about that stuff. Just wanted to clear up the wording of "needing" and EmuMovies account.

Ok good, I am glad what I typed out made sense somewhat to someone other than myself. This is one of those things I am by no means an expert on but I think have a basic grasp of the main concepts of how it all works. I think I understand it in my head and I try and put it all down in words as I think of it and it makes sense as I type it. I will try and answer your latest questions. You can add more passes to a preset but the problem there is that can only easily add them at the end without some extensive hands on dirty work. After you have loaded in a preset if you look in the Quick Menu > Shaders you will see a list of all the different passes that make up the preset. You will see the number of total passes, if you highlight that and press right on the controller you can add more total passes. Then scroll down and you will see the passes you have added but there will be no shader shown, it will say something like Shader #13 N/A for example. The last number will be different depending on how many passes the preset you had loaded in had before, I used 13 because the Kurozumi preset I use has 12 passes so adding one more gives it 13. Now to actually add another pass you go to the new pass you just added and press B on your controller and you will then dig into the shaders folder structure til you find the shader (not preset) that you wish to add. This is where you are looking for either a .cg or .glsl file (not .cgp or .glslp) Simply adding more passes to a preset may or may not give you the desired effect you may be looking for. Most presets are actually extremely good and the people who have created them have done a very good job of fine tuning to get the desired look. Further tweaking them and actually knowing what does what is well beyond my scope of knowledge. I simply know enough to edit them and make them look shitty. When you use the cycle hotkey to change shaders you are simply cycling through the presets that are currently in the Retroarch > Shaders folder and not the ones in the shaders_cg and shaders_glsl folders. I'm not quite sure I understand your question about me copy pasting here. What is it you are asking me to copy paste ? I was just pointing out something you could do within a preset to further tweak certain settings to customize a shader preset to your liking. This is actually how the Kurozumi edit of CRT-Royale came about, he just used Royale as a base and then further tweaked the values in the preset folder. Just to reiterate here. Shaders themselves are actually somewhat complicated code (sort of like a programming language but not as complicated) that directly modifys the image output on the screen. Dig into the shaders folder structure and open one of the .cg or .glsl files in notepad and take a look at it, you will lots of programming code in there. Presets are simpler and easier to understand and they are just what their name implys, they are presets of shader combinations to achieve a desired look. Think of the shader itself as something like the actual source code of a program and the presets are like the settings menu in a program or an .ini file where you can easily tweak settings. Edit: You can build your own preset using the shader files themselves. Simply load up a core and if you already have a preset loaded just set the number of passes to 0 and then Apply Changes, you should now have no shader effects at all. Now you can start adding passes and for each pass load up a shader file, again these are .cg and .glsl files not .cgp and .glslp. Each shader you add will change based on the shader that is in the pass above (in the list or lower in pass number). Like I said in my previous post, think of each pass like a Photoshop layer or like sheets of transparent plastic and each sheet has a different effect. Some combinations will look good and some will look terrible. Any further information on this stuff is way beyond my knowledge base.

Hmm, I have version 1.4.2 but I don't have any of the Final Fantasy games but I can load in 5 images using Lunar and Lunar 2. I did not try combining them obviously but they do load into each of the 5 slots.

I just wrote it all out as a general guide / primer for people who just happen to read it. I just let my fingers hammer the keys while I thought about it rather than try and pick it all apart for anyone specifically

I will try my best to explain this, it's something I understand in my head but I have a hard time putting it into words. In the shaders folder there are 2 folders, 1 called shaders_cg and the other called shaders_glsl. For the most part in these folders they contain all the same shaders with the difference being the framework they were built on. The CG stuff is built off of an Nvidia framework and GLSL is built off of OpenGL, the OpenGL is more compatible across systems. Other than that i'm really not sure what the differences really are. I just tend to use CG stuff since I have an Nvidia card. Anyways back on topic. In the shaders folder you will over time as you load up presets for a core you will find new preset files created with a name like "genesis_plus_gx_libretro.dll.cgp" for example. These are essentially the same preset file as the one you loaded in the first place but if you open it up in notepad you will see all the shader pass paths as an absolute path like: shader0 = "H:\Emulation\Emulators\Retroarch But if you were to go into the actual preset you loaded in the first place and open the preset in notepad it would look like a totally different file. If you dig into the shaders folders you will see files with the file extentsions of .cg, .cgp, .glsl and .glslp. The first obvious difference is that one is a CG shader and the other is a GLSL shader. The biggest difference though is the ones that ends with "p" is a preset which is a combination of shader passes to give the desired look. These presets can have as few as 1 shader pass and something like Royale or the Kurozumi edit of Royale can have as many as 12 separate passes giving a very complex but amazing look while at the same time can be being very taxing on the system. The best way I can think of to describe how shader passes work is to think of them like transparencies like you used to see in high school (depending on how old you are I guess, I don't know) or Photoshop layers. Each pass is a different shader effect applied to the one below it and each one of those passes is an actual .cg or .glsl shader file. The .cg and .glsl files are the actual shader files, these are the files where the real work is done where the presets are merely instructions to package a group of shaders together with some settings and the order to load them. Now that all that shit is explained to the best of my ability what I would suggest you do is load up a core and generate that core preset in the shaders folder like the example I showed earlier "genesis_plus_gx_libretro.dll.cgp". Rename this file to something that makes sense to you like "Testing1.cgp". Now load in a different preset and generate a new preset file and again rename it something like "Testing2.cgp". Obviously name these to something that makes sense to you so that you know which shader it really is. Once you have a few shaders pulled out that way you can then cycle through them on the fly and see the differences in them very quickly and clearly. One other little side benefit of all of this is these presets you have now in the "shaders" folder is that you manually edit values in the preset file using notepad or you can actually edit them within Retroarch itself by opening up the quick menu and where you load presets there is an option there called "Menu Shader Parameters". After you make changes be sure to apply changes and it will be changed in the preset file located in the "shaders" folder. Anyways I hope all of this made sense. If not just ask and I will try and make it a bit more simple and easy to understand.

The presets buried a folder or 2 deep are slightly different than the preset files saved out in the parent tree. The ones down in if you open it up in notepad and look at it are looking for a relative patch to the different shader effects where the ones saved out in the parent folder are looking for a hard path for the different effects. I really need to do a video tutorial on this stuff some time, would be so much easier than trying to explain it in text.

The PBP format was used for convert PS1 games to play on the PSP but it's a format that emulators now support and Retroarch recently started supporting it. I used this method to compile the 2 Lunar games, 1 game was 2 disks and the other was 3. I compiled them into a single PBP file and they load through the PSX core, not the PSP emulator (though they may work on the PSP emulator, I never tried).

Saving presets is more for your own custom combinations of shaders by applying layers and tweaks that you want. When you use an already existing preset there is no reason to save it again as a preset. But what you can do to save some time once you find a shader preset you do like for one core it will save it as a preset in the parent tree with that core in the name and you can just load that for any other core you load. You can then go in and copy one of those system presets to a name you want like "Favourite Preset" or whatever you wanna call it.

There are a couple of ways of doing this. The best emulator to use for it is Retroarch and the PSX core. RA supports the use of playlist files where each disk image is listed in the playlist file. Another option and is the one I use is with the recent addition of support for PBP files so you can merge multiple disk images into a single file and simply load that file. The program I use to merge images is PSX2PSP. Maybe someone else can pop in here and share their way of doing it because I am sure there is at least one other method to handle multi disk PS games. I only have experience with the merged PBP files and it works for me. If you want to go the play list route then google on how to make a play list, it isn't too difficult to do but I have never done it.

I assume you have your RA set to per core settings. Load a game for the core you wish to have the shader you wasnt. With a game loaded bring up the RA menu then "Load Shader Preset", then navigate to the CG folder then CGP folder and it should be in there. Retroarch should then appear to stall for a second or 2 but it is fine. Then you can exit back out of the RA menu back to your game and the shader should now be in effect. If it is not try repeating the process but click "Apply Changes" before going back into the game. You may also have to update your shaders using RA's updater, make sure to update the CG shaders. If it still does not work you just may not be able to use CG shaders for whatever reason and you will the be forced into the GLSL shaders. In GLSL try out the Lottes or Hyllian shaders, they are really nice. You could try out the standard Royale but in my experience results with that shader vary wildly from looking pretty good to downright awful, it all depends on your monitor and its settings and colour calibration.

CRT-Royale is in the CRT folder but the Kurozumi version is tucked away in the CGP folder. Weird place for it since it is a CRT shader and just an edit of Royale. Also there is only a CG version and not a GL version.

Yeah I just use the Kurozumi edit of Royale, it was designed to replicate a high quality Sony PVM which is what many of todays retro enthusiasts consider the best CRT display. It is also generally what the game developers at the time designed their games on. Though when it comes to shaders there is a lot of personal preference in what people like. The CRT look is just the look I like, I know Brad like his upscaled sharp pixels so he uses the Pixellate shader which does have an interesting look but not one I like. One thing to keep in mind though if you do go with one of the CRT type of shaders is to make sure you enable "integer scaling" in the video settings. With it off the scanlines may look off because of the oddball scaling of non integer.

I thought it was in the "experimental" section. "When RetroArch 1.3.5 gets released Download the new RetroArch 1.3.5, go to ‘Online Updater’, go to ‘Core Updater’. From there, go to ‘Experimental’, and download Mupen64plus HW. This will download the Vulkan-enabled Mupen64plus core." Quoted from their website, I haven't tried it yet myself.

If you want just a straight upscaled and shardp image try the pixellate shader, for a great CRT shader look in the CG/CGP folder for CRT-Royale-Kurozumi shader, that's the one I use and I love it.

Meh. Like I said, my opinion. I just remember back then thinking those games looked like shit and being very underwhelmed by the PS1 when it came out. Games like Toshinden and that Demolition Derby games just really turned me off of the system. I bought a PS1 and played Symphony of the Night (awesome and still looks awesome) and Gran Tourismo and sold the system again only a couple months later. Like I said I was into the PC scene by the time the PS1 and N64 came out. I'm not judging those games compared today, I am comparing them to the high quality 2D games of the day. Foggy draw distances, blurred textures and awful aliasing on the low polygon models looked like shit compared to high quality sprites. To me those early 3D games looked like simple 3D versions Atari 2600 games. I grew up using my imagination for what those graphics were supposed to represent, I did not want to relive that with 3D games when 2D games were so detailed I did not have to do that.

What sort of shader are you looking for ? CRT scanlines, a simple upscale and clean look or a smoothed out look ? Also what kind of graphics card do you have ? Some shaders are pretty heavy on the GPU requirements.

Well I did say it was my opinion. I just felt even at the time that the 3D was awful. Sure some of the game play was ok but the 3D itself was gimmicky and terribly ugly even for its time. I won't go into all the games you mentioned because I didn't play them all but FF7 was ugly as hell, I just couldn't play it back then and I really tried being a FF fan. Resident Evil was unique and an "ok" game but the controls were and still are absolute shit. Also FF7 wasn't even a real 3D game, just polygonal characters on pre rendered backdrops. If that game was done in a true 2D art style like Lunar for example the game would have held up in terms of looks and people wouldn't be asking for the remake we are getting. Yes, some games had some good game play ideas but ruined by hideous premature 3D graphics. I've said this in other threads and I will repeat it here again, the 32 bit era should have stuck to 2D games instead of cramming ugly 3D down our throats because it was the new gaming gimmick. And yes you could make the argument that it was a phase that we needed to go through to develop 3D but I still think it was way too early. Even the 3D polygonal games on PC at the time were ugly and it wasn't until we got good 3D accelerated video cards to drive those games like Quake til it got good. Go back and compare software mode Quake vs hardware accelerated Quake. Games that may have had some good game play design were ruined by extremely short draw distance and fog in or garbage controls til we got analog controllers on the N64. There is a reason my Playstation game collection is 99% 2D games. And no, I am not a graphics whore by any means but there are limits to how much fog in and low quality textures I can handle and the Playstation was the king of fog in, low poly count, ugly textures. Like I said, just my unbiased opinion. I grew up on a Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 and I cannot even go back and play those games anymore. Hell, even the NES is awful looking, for me the sweet spot in retro gaming and emulation is 16 and 32 bit 2D games.

As someone with zero emotional attachment to either the N64 or Playstation I think they end up in a tie in terms of overall system and gaming goodness. By the time these systems came out I was older and moved into the PC side of things, though I did own both systems at the time. The Playstation has the sheer volume of games but the 3D games really were awful at that time (yes just my opinion) and they really do not hold up to the test of time, the 2D games on the system however do hold up extremely well. The N64 on the other hand had a relatively small selection of games but the first party exclusives were some of the greatest games ever made, they still hold up very well because of the power of the system and the N64 defined how a 3D game should play. So to me in the end it's a draw with both systems having their positives and negatives. If I look at the actual number of games from each system I go back and play it's pretty damn close in number. Obviously personal bias and nostalgia plays a big role in peoples preference in system choices. Which system they played first and have the most fond memories of.

What version of Fusion are you using ? I don't use fusion anymore but I do have version 3.64 installed and just did a quick test and it loaded up in windowed mode by default. In the emulator settings for Fusion in Launchbox the default command line parameters box is left empty and all check boxes are unchecked. After messing around with it for a minute something that may fix your issue is load a game and if it loads fullscreen press escape on your keyboard and it should go into windowed mode. Now exit the emulator and the next time you load a game it should load in windowed mode. I noticed that if I put it into fullscreen mode and closed out the emulator the next time I loaded a game it loaded in fullscreen again. Hope this helps, if it doesn't then I am sorry I can't be of any more use :(

I don't know what to think about this. 60$ seems a tad high to me, 40$ is more of a fair price IMO. I guess the Nintendo collectors will be all over it.

A couple of recommendations from me would be instead of a TV get a really nice gaming monitor if the budget allows. I personally use the Asus PG278Q G-Sync monitor and I cannot recommend it enough if you are willing to swallow the price tag and have a compatible Nvidia graphics card. G-Sync is absolutely amazing for fast paced console games and for Mame with all the games having funky refresh rates, it really is worth the price of admission. Plus you can easily rotate the monitor for those vertical games. https://www.amazon.com/PG278Q-27-Inch-Display-Refresh-Monitor/dp/B00MSOND8C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468476646&sr=8-1&keywords=asus+pg278q For controller one I recommend for any system that only uses a d-pad and up to 8 buttons (Sega Saturn) the Hori Fight Commander controllers are great. The d-pad quality is spot on and has the right button layout for fighting games. https://www.amazon.com/HORI-Fighting-Commander-Controller-PlayStation-4/dp/B00TKLFES8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468476916&sr=8-1&keywords=hori+fight+commander

Yeah I found this extremely interesting and cool. Glad you guys like it too.

I came across this video over on https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/. It's about this guy who has managed to crack the Sega Saturn and is developing a simple add on card to slide into the expansion port in the back of the Saturn and allow the loading of games through USB. He is developing this because of many Saturns having their CD drives failing due to old age. The research and work this guy has done is also benefiting the emulation of the Saturn and he is sharing all of his work with emulator developers. I found this video quite interesting and is worth watching. It is about 27 minutes long and the emulation benefits start roughly 19 minutes into the video. Enjoy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOyfZex7B3E