Lordmonkus

I have had my Retroarch get all funky for specific cores at times by changing a setting that my computer didn't agree with (like a bad shader) and simply deleting the core cfg file allowed me to reload that core and redo its settings.

This indeed is a strange one. If Retroarch on it's own is launching the game Launhbox should work as well. I zipped up a rom and tried launching it and it worked perfectly fine. I don't know if having multiple files within a zip file would affect it or not. I am running Retroarch version 1.3.0 (I don't know what version the OP is using) on Windows 10 along with Launchbox and everything works perfectly fine. @MartGux Have you tried another core for another system like the Genesis for example ? One thing I can think of to at least give it a try is to delete the core dll file in the config folder. Sometimes a bad setting can somehow get into the cfg file and cause RA to act stupid and deleting the file and starting a new core cfg file can fix it.

2 things come to mind immediately to try out and thats to extract your roms and they should be in .smc format (.sfc should work as well). All my roms are extracted. The other thing I can see that may be causing the issue is the fact you have your RetroArch installed to a folder on your desktop. Try having it in a folder like "C:\Games\Retroarch", the desktop may give UAC problems. I know it's not a Windows 10 issue because my laptop is using Windows 10 without issue.

I don't know if there are threads on this topic but I just found this fix after "upgrading" to Windows 10 on my laptop. The first thing I noticed after upgrading and firing up Retroarch I noticed the "Guide" button on my controller (the Logitech button on a Logitech controller) no longer brought up the Retroarch quick menu. After searching around a bit there is a solution posted over on the RA forums about some setting in the GameDVR app but I don't have and don't want that app. I found another fix on a Steam forum thread with a simpler solution than installing some app just to get back the functionality of the button. Anyways here is the fix that should work for Xbox and Logitech controller and others. Go to the device manager to Xbox 360 peripherals. Right click and select properties. Go to the driver tab and click update driver, click browse my computer for driver software. Then select "Let me pick from a list". You should now see 2 drivers listed pick the one marked [2009-040-08], should be the bottom one. Reboot system if needed.

Do your roms load from within ReatroArch itself ? If they do then you have something not quite set up right in Launchbox, if not then it's a problem with your roms and right off the top of my head my first guess is that the rom is in zip format. Some more details on your setup and if possible some screenshots of your settings may help.

Yeah the difference between RA Mednafen and ePSXe 2.0 is really small. Trade off a small amount of accuracy (epsxe) vs quality of life features (RA). ePSXe does have an edge in performance too though, my 1.5 gHZ laptop with 4 gigs of ram isn't quite fast enough for RA but runs epsxe just fine even with lottes shader.

You can use the Mame core and depending on your romset you will have to choose which Mame core to use. For the newer romset the Mame 2014 core works well. Now having said that I would suggest using a stand alone version of Mame because for certain games you need to rebind some keys and doing it within the Mame core itself it doesn't remember the key binds so each time you load that game you need to re do the bindings. I'm sure there is a work around for that issue but the other reason I would go with a standalone Mame is you can get a version with the loading nag-screens disabled. I use Groovy Mame, there is some tweaking you need to do manually in the in .ini file but once it's done it's awesome. Once you set it up properly you have no nag screen, as close to zero input lag as possible and you can even get a special build with an extra program to get near zero audio latency. Take a look over at this thread on the BYOAC forums http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,142143.0.html. It really is the best Mame out there.

The amount of change is dependent upon the presets, they can get to be pretty drastic, especially with the ReShade which as more options. But if they mess with your recording software that's no good.

Really ? I find the DS3 d-pad to be awful for trying to play Street Fighter where as with the 360 controller it's better, still not good but better. That's why I got the Hori FC, to play Super Street Fighter Turbo HD on the PS3 and it doubles as a great non analog stick game controller.

Nice, i've used sweetfx and reshade in the past in games like Skyrim and Elite: Dangerous, it's a really good tool to modify a games look to suit your personal tastes.

Yeah the d-pads on the 360 and the DS3 controllers are just so awful. I really can't recommend the Hori FC enough for anything that doesn't require an analog stick. The 6 Buttons layout plus the 4 shoulder (technically 4 but really 2) is awesome and the d-pad is so perfect.

Cool, someday i'll pick up a PS4, the d-pad is hopefully better than the crap that is the PS3 controllers d-pad.

As the subject says, what kind of controller do people use for their emulation needs ? Personally I have a few controllers and one is obviously the mandatory Xbox 360 controller which is really nice except for the god awful d-pad. I think this is the controller the vast majority of people use. I also got a Logitech F710 wireless controller for gaming from the couch. This is a not bad controller, the d-pad is much better than the 360 even if it is a little sloppy. The buttons and shoulder triggers are all very good but the analog sticks aren't as good as the 360s. The other nice little bonus of this controller is that it doubles as an extra controller for the PS3. My third controller is the Hori Fighting Commander, this thing is downright spectacular for anything that doesn't require an analog stick. The d-pad is perfect and the buttons are equally good, nice and big and flat, very comfortable. This thing has the perfect layout for Genesis 6 button games and Saturn. Last, I got an X-Arcade TankStick for MAME. I know some people prefer to build their own arcade sticks and I would like to build one some time in the future but for a no hassle pre build arcade stick this thing is solid and works great. I also have to give X-Arcade full credit as a stand up company, when I ordered my stick from them I just wanted the normal 2 player one without the trackball but they didn't have any in stock and after a week or so of delay the owner sent out a full tankstick completely free of charge including shipping at no cost. They really didn't have to do that, the most I would have expected was the tank stick at the same cost as the normal 2 player. So full marks and then some to them as a company.

Looks good even though it looks a little faded and fuzzy for my tastes but like I said in previous posts different shaders and effects look very different on different displays. Hyllian and Lottes shaders are amazingly good and Royale is great when it is tweaked and the display is calibrated properly. I use a modified Royale as shown in my previous post and love how it looks. Lots of great shader options out there to accommodate personal tastes. Are you using the older version of sweetfx or the newer version with ReShade ?

Retroarch really is the way to go nowadays. What its does it generally does well outside of a couple of emus like Saturn and Dreamcast. With the release of ePSXe 2.0 that has arguably become better than the Mednafen core now.

Have you tried using Retroarch for Genesis emulation ? It loads pretty snappy without any resolution problems even on my crappy laptop running Launchbox. I know fusion is an amazing emulator. I used to use it but since I got into using RA I see no difference in the quality of emulation between Fusion and GenesisDX.

Not a bad job to have then

Yeah depending on the game type 30 vs 60 fps isn't a big deal, 60 is preferred but for slower paced games like rpgs its not a big deal as long as its a stable framerate. Faster paced games like first person shooters and action games 60 is better. Yeah testing everything and keeping up on everything is impossible, it's a full time job in itself. I just remember several weeks ago trying the PPSSPP core out and it was bad but after trying it again recently and getting the assets folder dropped in and setup it's really not far behind the standalone. Like I said, the standalone is still better overall but the RA core is very usable if someone was forced to be locked into it and had no option for the standalone. I wish the Yabause core was as good as the PPSSPP core, I hate SSF and the standalone Yabause. The Yabause core for shaders and no need for mounting cd images would be awesome.

I looked at the PPSSPP core a week or two ago and it seemed to be running good and has a lot of the core options in it that the standalone version has once you get all the assets folder options setup. Now I won't go so far as to say it runs 100% as good as the standalone but it's far from awful. The standalone is definitely the better choice but the RA core is not that far behind. It's alot closer to the standalone than the Yabause core that's for sure. Ghosts N' Goblins is locked at 30fps, but is running at 1920x1080 internal resolution.

@fromlostdays If you bump up the internal resolution, then close the content and then reload the game it should now be displaying in that higher internal resolution without the shrunken size. If you notice beside the "Resolution" setting there is the word (restart), anything with that means the core needs to be restarted for that setting to take place. @SentaiBrad Oh yeah I forgot about doing the per game configs that way too. It's a lot of extra work but is the only way of doing it for now. Hopefully the RA per game setting gets expanded to shader settings in the future. Would be less work than doing it through Launchbox itself depending on how many games you got of course. I agree with you about not using shaders if you can scale the internal resolution. Right now there is no RA core that I use that uses internal resolutions other than the PSX and I don't play 3d games so its not a feature I use. For N64 i use PJ64, Dreamcast I use Demul and NullDC depending on the game, Reicast is still way too slow but it's early days for that core. Saturn core is equally slow so I stick with SSF or Yabause standalone. The PPSSPP core is good but I still stick to the standalone

My best guess as to the cause of the black bar is because of how in some games menus and in game graphics are rendered at different resolutions. I've seen videos on upscalers like the Framemeister which people who use real hardware to run their games on modern tvs even have some graphic anomalies because of the different resolutions. I will grab a copy of Chrono Cross later and see if I figure something out. It's game I have been meaning to grab :) On a side note after doing some more messing with N64 I think I prefer just cranking the internal resolution way up to something like 1900x1600 and leaving the shaders off. If I were to use Retroarch for N64 instead of PJ64 that is

Do those anomalies disappear with the shaders off ? Yeah 8x is definitely a no go for now, it's just way too taxing. 4x is doable depending on the system and shader in use but 2x runs very nice even with shaders thrown at it. My system is an AMD 8350 (not overclocked) and a GTX 970 graphics card and 8x is just crushing. Here are a couple of Banjo Kazooie screens running a 960x720 internal resolution with integer scaling off. I definitely prefer the Hyllian-3D on the N64. I might give it a try at higher internal resolution but I don't know yet, would be nice if somehow they could implement texture pack support (unlikely but I can hope) Hyllian-3D Lottes-4xBR Hyllian-3D Lottes-4xBR

I don't use the N64 core, I use PJ64 for the texture pack support but I took some screenshots of Klonoa for the PS1 since it's one of the few 3D games I have on that system. Here are the results. First its just using my hybrid Lottes / 4xBR @ native resolution (looks decent to me) Second is crt-Hyllian-3d at native resolution (not so good) Third is crt-Hyllian-3d at 2x native (looks much better than native) @drybonz Uneven scanlines are usually a result of not using integer scaling in the video options. It has the tradeoff of some black bars across the top and bottom of the screen however.

There is a "Use per-game core option if available" in the Config menu but I have not messed with it so i'm not sure if that would work. I'll fiddle with it some later and see what kind of results I can get out out of it. I can only imagine the vast amount of .cfg files on a per game option could get way out of hand in a hurry on larger game collections. Edit:After testing out the "per game" setting it seems that it does not work for shaders which is unfortunate. I turned on the per game settings and then loaded up 2 games and for each game went into the core options and generated a game config file for each with a different shader. I then loaded each game hoping to see each game with the shader I had saved with it. This however was not the case, they both loaded with the same shader. I then looked in the configs folder in retroarch and there was a folder generated with the 2 cfg files, after looking at them in notepad I couldn't find any shader settings. It looks like the per game settings is just for different core settings on a per game basis. Different shaders may be a feature to be implemented somewhere down the road though, it shouldn't be too hard of a thing to implement. Yes, the current Mednafen-PSX core has internal resolution scaling in it right now, update your core and it should be there. They added into the core just a couple of days prior to the ePSXe release. I think I read somewhere the Retroarch guy that maintains the core was working with the ePSXe guy to get this feature working. Just as a heads up depending on the shader you use for PSX there may be some odd graphical effects if you combine the internal res scaling with a shader. I know with my choice of CRT based shader it gets super funky and slow. Your results may vary. My understanding is that the bulk of the Retroarch cores are done by separate people from the actual emulator they are based off. I believe the way it works in most cases is that the standalone version guys give access to their emus code and then the Retroarch guys take that code and work it into Retroarch.

Retroarch is an easy program to get up and running but getting it fine tuned to be at it's best can be more tricky especially with all the different settings. I am going to go through what I think are the most important settings to get the best performance out of Retroarch to boost your enjoyment of playing your games. There are other settings but I don't feel they are that important to getting up and running or they are for more specific occasions. These are also the settings that I have found that work best on my setup and your setup may require some other settings. I use just a basic 60hz Samsung (non-gaming) monitor. As of me writing this the latest official build of Retroarch is 1.3.0. Here is a link to an example retroarch.cfg file and description of all the different settings. https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/RetroArch ***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. 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. 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 ? 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 long hear and crackling. If anyone feels like something I said is completely wrong and should be changed please let know and I will test it out and modify this post accordingly. These are what I have found to be the best all around general settings regardless of core that work on my system.