Lordmonkus

You may want to take a look at this forum post over on the Retroarch forums. http://libretro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5488 Hopefully this can give you some insight on what you are doing. Unfortunately that's about all the information I can point you to since I have zero experience running Retroarch on a real CRT but I did remember reading about others doing this. Edit: Here is another thread which may or may not have some more information for what you want http://libretro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4228&highlight=real

@spacegoathlz I had the exact same CPU before and recently upgraded to 8350 @ 4 GHz and it was a fairly noticeable increase in performance. I wouldn't say it was huge but it was the simplest and cheapest upgrade instead of replacing the motherboard and going with an Intel CPU. The 8350 is enough to drive PCSX2 and it let me bump up the graphics settings of GTA 5 and The Witcher 3. I also have a GTX 970 GPU which helps out a lot and does the does bulk of the work in most modern games.

eric said Q: about the shaders , how does one set up the shaders in RA so you can use the N M hot keys to try the different ones on the fly. also any links to good shader packs? thanks . I'm not sure how to easily cycle through the shaders other than the hotkeys, I have never bothered to try out the feature personally even though I know it is in there. As for shader packs the best packs already come from the Retroacrh guys themselves, just use the updater to update the CG and GLSL shaders. They update it in a fairly regular basis and if you really want to keep up on what they are doing head over to the Retroarch forums http://libretro.com/forums/ and check in the shaders section. Sometimes someone is working on something and you can download WIP versions of packs or individual shaders people are doing. In general though when something gets good enough to use it gets integrated into the official shader packs through the downloader. One place that I found to be an interesting read but no real downloads is the http://shmups.system11.org forums. This is where I found the Kurozumi settings for Royale which I used for a long time. The discussion is a bit technical at times but I found it really helpful to understand some of the inner workings of CRT shaders in particular.

LoL, awesome. Glad you like it now.

Ahh, I was thinking it was just looking for screenshots and box art from thegamesdb in the screenshot, it didn't look like any emumovies stuff in the errors.

Could be the server is down at that moment. I doubt you did anything wrong.

Right click the game you want to rescrape, click the red X in the far right to disassociate that db entry with that game, the re-enter the game name and click search for meta data. A drop down box should appear with all the matching choices, just pick the one you want for it.

It looks like the Retroarch Mednafen PSX core is getting support for PBP files. Just updated the core and I noticed when I loaded the core it says (PBP Test) in the core name. I haven't tried to merge any multi disk games to try this feature out yet. Edit: Ok I just tried this out by merging Lunar - Silver Star Story Complete. I merged the 2 disks into a single PBP file and it loaded just fine in Retroarch. So far though the extent of my test is just to load the image, I have no idea how it would handle the game further in once you get to the point where it would want to switch disks.

GLSL is the more cross platform set of shaders for use on Mac, Linux and phones. The CG is an Nvidia technology and is not meant for other systems other than Windows. According to the Admins over on the Retroarch forums they are working on a new shader architecture based around GL and the new Vulkan api. If you notice the CRT-Pi shader I mentioned above is not available in the CG format since it was written for the Pi specifically and of course that being a Linux based system it has no CG support and no need for CG rewrite. @Walrus13 As I was saying to Brad in another thread the old pixel are was designed from the start with full knowledge of the final output was going to be output to a CRT with the scanlines and shadowmasks. Because of this the artists took those qualities of the display into account and used those very scanlines and shadowmasks to creat illusions of smoothness and more shades of colour than were actually there. Whatever shader people choose is pure personal preference and for me all those other non CRT shaders looked neat to me at first but they grew old and looked better or worse depending on the game. Once I started looking at the good CRT shaders there was no going back. A lot of emulators have a simple scanline effect built in and it does achieve some of its goal to break up the pixels it is a cheap effect and not a very good implementation. When you get into the really good CRT shaders such as Hyllian and Royale these shaders really show what a good high quality CRT TV of the time could look like. Also keep in mind that the higher end CRT shaders such as Royale are not meant for 1080 and under resolutions. The pixel density just isn't there to show the effect properly, you need to have at least 1440 or preferably a 4k display to really see them shine. I made the jump up to 1440 recently and Royale just came alive compared to 1080. Also I am not looking to recreate the crappy old TV and RF connection we grew up with the early 80's. I am looking to recreate the high quality CRTs and RGB signal that were around before the modern displays took over. There is a reason that the real hardware guys are going for the RGB modded systems and Sony Trinitron TVs or dropping 300$ and up on 20" PVMs (other than for zero input lag as well).

For a decent CRT shader for low end systems look in the GLSL shaders under CRT for the CRT-Pi. Its designed for the Raspberry Pi so it's obviously meant for low end systems. I use this on my laptop with crap graphics and it runs well. The Hyllian-Fast is fairly performance friendly as well as far as CRT shaders go. Hyllian is probably the 2nd best CRT shader if Royale is looking like ass for you. Lottes and Geom are ok as well but not as good IMO. I am heavily biased towards the CRT shaders but if I Had to pick the best of anything that is not a CRT I would go with either Pixellate or one of the Scalenx stuff. Everything else is just way too out there and niche for every day use, again IMO. Pixellate is obviously gonna give you the best looking raw pixelart look but scaled up, it has a very sharp and clean look. The scalenx stuff is probably the best of the smoothing shaders if you want that look.

Yeah, I got a G27 as well and it's probably the best bang for buck wheel out there at the time not sure what's out there now. Wish I had the money for a fancy Fanatec setup but those things are stupidly expensive. $150 for a game pad is bit much though but at least it does seem like you get a damn nice controller.

Pshh, $150 is chump change on a controller :P I have spent more on flight sticks and racing wheels.

I should have added that if you try out the Kurozumi edit of Royale and you like it and want to apply it to other cores the best way to do it without reloading the Royale shader and manually editing each setting again is to do the following. Not sure if per core settings affect this or not. Load up whatever core you are going to try first, let's just use the Sega Genesis for example. Load in the CRT-Royale shader and if things change then you are good to go. Make the changes I outlined above using the Retroarch menu. Now there should be a file in your "shaders" folder called "genesis_plus_gx_libretro.dll.cgp" Make a copy and rename this file to something you like, I called mine Kurozumi-BVM.cgp. Now when you load up another core such as any of the SNES ones and you want the same shader setup just load a preset and instead of drilling down to the CRT-Royale shader and changing all the parameters just load the preset you renamed above. It just be right there in the first menu of the "load preset" menu.

Alright. I certainly don't want to do anything you guys don't want done.

Would you guys care if I setup an "Unoffical Launchbox" server in the mean time until you guys get your stuff completed ?

I figured you did but I had no idea how far along you guys were and this is so ridiculously easy to get setup.

I know this has been mentioned and something in plans and I have no idea what Jason and Brad have in mind or if you guys have anything really thought out and planned out as of yet but I thought I would direct you guys to something that I recently stumbled upon in the last couple of weeks and could be a really good and simple solution. Discord (https://discordapp.com/) is a voice and text chat program and can also be run through the web browser so people do not have to download and install anything if they did not want to but it does have the option to have the app on their PC or phone. I have been using it for the past couple of weeks and I have to say it is really good and extremely quick and easy to get it setup. An administrator would setup the main channel and any sub channels required and then all you would need to do to have people join it is post a link generated by the app on the website / forum for people to click on and they would be brought into the channel either in the browser or the app automatically. Anyways, just something I wanted to direct you guys towards as a very simple, easy and cheap (free) solution to the talked about chat for the site.

I made the following post a couple of months ago in its own thread but I thought I would just copy / paste it in here for more people to see. It gets into the more advanced but important settings of Retroarch that everyone should have. These aren't really personal preference because they really do objectively make the performance and enjoyment of playing much better. I have also made a few edits in this post so it's not an exact raw copy / paste job. These settings should be applied to every core where possible. ***Disclaimer*** These settings are based off my personal experience with each setting and my understanding from reading what I can find scattered throughout different places. The first settings you should be looking at are in the Video section of the Settings tab. For testing purposes turn on "Display Framerate", while playing you want your games to be running at a constant 60 frames per second. Aspect Ratio should be set to Core provided or Custom depending on your personal preference. Personally I use core provided but Custom is just fine too but then adjust the Custom Viewport Width and Height settings to adjust the screen size to what you like. Start out by setting each number at it's lowest setting then bump up each by one til you get what you want. Integer Scale is another personal preference and I use this with Core Provided aspect ratio. This setting however will give you black bars across the top and bottom of your game. This setting scales the game image at equal steps. The purpose of this is to maintain the proper aspect ratio at bigger sizes. If you leave this setting set to off with "Custom" aspect ratio when you adjust the Viewport Width and Height you will either get black bars or your screen will probably just slightly be larger than the height of your screen. Integer Scale set to "On" is my recommendation if you choose to use some sort of shader which uses scanlines. With it off your scanlines may look a little off. HW Bilinear Filtering is a personal preference, basically this just adds a slight blur to the output image. I like this one on to help break up the sharp pixels but it is purely personal taste, try them both and you decide. (I have since turned this off because I have made the switch to the CRT-Royale shader so I leave the base image as raw as possible and let the shader do all the work) Threaded Video should be left off if you can help it but if you are running on a low end system and you need to squeeze out a little bit more performance you can turn this on but off is preferred. Vsync is another setting that should be left off when possible. Off can cause some screen tearing depending on your display but the downside to having it set to "On" is it can cause some input lag which is something no body wants. Turn Vsinc on only if your screen tearing is really bad and you can live with some input lag. Hard GPU Sync is an amazing setting, just leave this set to "On". This is a feature that drastically reduces input lag. Input lag = bad. (I bolded the above because this is probably the single biggest reason to use Retroarch over all other emulators when possible.) Frame Delay is another setting that can help with input lag. Set this as high as you can before getting audio distortions like crackling or a frame rate hit. 0 is an ok setting but higher than 0 is better but don't go too high. Crop Overscan should be set to On. What this does is it crops a few pixels off the image output which on an old fashioned CRT would be hidden by the bezel but on new wide screen displays and using the Integer Scale setting above you may see. You don't want to see those garbage pixels do you ? (If you choose to use Iteger Scaling above and custom port size and have part of the screen outside the edges of the screen setting this to "Off" could be a good idea", it's just garbage pixels anyways.) That should be it for the Video section so now we move on to the Audio section where there really isn't too much to mess with here but you should set your Audio Latency to as low as possible without hearing crackles in your sound. The best thing to do here is set the latency all the way down then bump it up one notch at a time til you no longer hear any crackling.

The Hyllian CRT shader is indeed one of the best CRT shaders out there, especially when you consider how relatively performance friendly it is. If you have a decent GPU however give Royale a try, your mileage with it may vary though because the way it looks can vary wildly depending on the screen you are playing on. You will need a proper colour calibrated display and preferably at least a 1440 resolution to get it looking the way it should look. Out of the box it looked like garbage on my older 1080 monitor but on my new 1440 it looks glorious. One other thing when you try out CRT shaders is to turn on integer scaling otherwise because of how 240 does not divide evenly into 1080 it messes up the spacing of the scanlines and it will cause it to look weird. You can also try out the Kurozumi edit of Royale which I had luck with on my old 1080 monitor and I used it over Hyllian before I got my new monitor and started using the base Royale. I don't believe that the Kurozumi edit is in the selection choices but all you need to do is load up Royale then in the quick menu go to Shader Options > Menu Shader Parameters and check all the settings to match the following. Make sure to apply shader changes after. crt_gamma = "2.500000" lcd_gamma = "2.400000" levels_contrast = "0.840000" halation_weight = "0.000000" diffusion_weight = "0.010000" bloom_underestimate_levels = "0.800000" bloom_excess = "0.000000" beam_min_sigma = "0.02000" beam_max_sigma = "0.200000" beam_spot_power = "0.370000" beam_min_shape = "2.000000" beam_max_shape = "4.000000" beam_shape_power = "0.250000" beam_horiz_filter = "0.000000" beam_horiz_sigma = "0.545000" beam_horiz_linear_rgb_weight = "1.000000" convergence_offset_x_r = "0.000000" convergence_offset_x_g = "0.000000" convergence_offset_x_b = "0.000000" convergence_offset_y_r = "0.100000" convergence_offset_y_g = "-0.100000" convergence_offset_y_b = "0.100000" mask_type = "0.000000" mask_sample_mode_desired = "0.000000" mask_specify_num_triads = "1.000000" mask_triad_size_desired = "3.000000" mask_num_triads_desired = "900.000000" aa_subpixel_r_offset_x_runtime = "-0.333333" aa_subpixel_r_offset_y_runtime = "0.000000" aa_cubic_c = "0.500000" aa_gauss_sigma = "0.500000" geom_mode = "3.000000" geom_radius = "3.000000" geom_view_dist = "2.000000" geom_tilt_angle_x = "0.000000" geom_tilt_angle_y = "0.000000" geom_aspect_ratio_x = "432.000000" geom_aspect_ratio_y = "329.000000" geom_overscan_x = "1.000000" geom_overscan_y = "1.000000" border_size = "0.005000" border_darkness = "0.000000" border_compress = "2.500000" interlace_bff = "0.000000" interlace_1080i = "0.000000" This edit was made to mimic the look of a high quality PVM / BVM display. Again how well this looks on your display may vary depending on your monitor and its colour / brightness and contrast settings.

I haven't tried using the stand alone FBA through Launchbox before. I have used the stand alone on its own but I didn't see any compelling reason to use it over Reatroach since RA was easier to set up controls, had better shaders and easier to manage save states. Just out of curiosity why would you rather use the stand alone ? Is there some feature of it that makes it superior ?

Use Retroarch and the FBA core.

G-Sync is so awesome, no screen tearing and no need for v-sync.

Ahh.

What kind of monitor are you using right now ? I recently pick up an Asus PG278Q ROG Swift and let me tell you its freakin awesome for gaming and emulation. The G-Sync, 1440 resolution and extremely low input lag make it amazing for emulation. I noticed a fairly big difference on input delay and I was not an input lag whore like some purists out there. I know it isn't cheap but if you are interested and in the market for a significant upgrade this things is worth the money.

I have 5 hard drives and DVD rom and a ton of USB devices in mine with a 970 and my power supply is only 500W and runs flawlessly. But if you are planning on adding a 2nd card somewhere down the line then the 850w is fine to have. If not then 850w is overkill.