Lordmonkus

Wow, you said a lot of stuff here so i'll pick out a couple of things that stuck out to me. A full set is not 233GB unless you get into the CHDs as well or use the Non Merged set which is pointless if you are using the full set. That all depends on what you want but there is some newer stuff in the later versions that is extremely good. Newer versions are more accurate and have more games, it's up to the end user if that matters or not. The RA cores are very good but I find stand alone Mame better. You don't have to keep updating if you don't want to, Nothing is preventing you from just freezing your rom set and Mame version. Don't update the core if you don't want to. I like the 2003 Plus core, it has some very good game backported and supports Netplay. At the end of the say it's down to personal preference and end users needs and there is way too much to unpack here to make a side by side comparison of games, features and improvements.

The platform you have set in the Associated Platforms tab of the Edit Emulator menu needs to match the name of the platform your games are imported under.

In your 2nd screenshot you don't have the mame 2003 plus core selected, you have the mame core which is based off the latest version of mame.Also, I see in your Associated Platforms you have the platform name as mame, is this the same name as you have imported your games to ? If you look at the screenshot I just posted you will see I have the mame2003_plus core selected using the dropdown menu and the platform name is MameNetplay which is where those games are imported to, those names need to match.

Do your games work in Retroarch on its own ? If no then your roms are not compatible with the Mame core you are using. If yes then you have something setup incorrectly in Launchbox and we would need some screenshots to help find the issue. We would need screenshots of your Edit Emulator screen for the Retroarch emulator entry and the Associated Platforms tab of the same window.

No but we have a lot of video tutorials, this here forum board and discord to help in any way we can. There are constant changes being made so making a manual would be extremely difficult and time consuming.

It may just be emulation quality of those games, 3DS emulation is still very much a work in progress and many games are hit and miss on how well they work, the emulator also requires a fairly good CPU to run smoothly.

Locking this thread here, we don't need 2 threads about price.

Personally, zero. If this thread gets to the point of telling people that "they are poor and can't afford it" or other stupid crap then I will lock it down. For what it's worth I also believe that Jasons new price is way too much money and we all know I am a supporter of Jason and Launchbox or else I wouldn't have been here for as long as I have and helping out. But Jason needs to charge what makes sense to him to support his family, run the business and make a wage that makes sense for him. If he doesn't then he may as well go work for someone else. If people don't buy the license because of the price then Jason will either have to lower his price or quit doing it. Either buy the license or use another front end, it's as simple as that. Complaining about the price is silly and being condescending to someone because they think the price is too high is equally silly.

Right now the forever license is over 100$ Canadian. Yes, after 1 year you get to keep all the functionality of the premium license, you just won't receive any updates. My advice would be just to buy the 1 year license and if there is an absolute must have feature released after the 1 year period then maybe update to the forever license. While I have a lifetime license there hasn't been a feature added in quite some time that I would ever consider essential or must have for my needs. At the end of the day it's your dollar and your decision, there are other options out there to look into as well.

It's most likely a file that would be inside either the rom file or a bios or parent rom required for the game to work.

I'd suggest the Mayflash F500 Elite for it's price point. It has Sanwa parts and is seen as an Xinput device. https://www.amazon.com/MAYFLASH-Buttons-Joysticks-Nintendo-Android/dp/B07QJ1JJ7J/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=mayflash+f500+elite&qid=1585592134&sr=8-1

I suppose it could maybe be one of those 2 things, I use my own custom LB which has no blur and it's on an internal drive. Here is the theme I use:

Just tried to reproduce this and I cannot see any change my ram usage. Launchbox hovers around 730-760 MB of ram usage on average and clicking around games sometimes the ram goes up a little and other times it goes down a little. Changing platforms and clicking around did make it spike up to around 800 MB but it then quickly dropped back down to 700 MB

Mess / Mame only needs to know what folder your bios is located in, you can place them in, this setting can be set in the mame.ini file or using whatever UI you are using.

Same as any other system, make sure your games work in the emulator of your choice first then import the files into LB.

Here's a bunch of lists of games for the systems I hand picked games for. Obviously these are my personal choice lists so they won't appeal to everyone, in fact im sure there is a bunch of stuff missing that most people would have. 2600.txt 7800.txt N64.txt NES.txt PC Engine.txt Genesis.txt SMS.txt SNES.txt PS1.txt Sega CD.txt Saturn.txt PC Engine CD.txt Gamecube.txt GBA.txt

My daily use set is a small collection of hand picked games, I avoided "top lists" because they typically only have a small selection of the heavy hitters and miss a lot of the lesser known but still high quality games. There was no easy process to this other than my own gaming experience and going through my games to find ones I liked and didn't like.

Newer stuff is more difficult because it is still relevant content and no one wants to get in trouble for piracy. Second and Third generation is quite easy to find on the sites I listed other than PleasureDome, they don't want Nintendo coming down on them but Internet Archive has DMCA exempt status.

Really ? I find it easier than ever nowadays with the Internet Archive and a certain "roms" sub reddit, combine that with Pleasuredome and everything is easily accessible.

If it works in Launchbox it should work in BigBox, they use the exact same xml files for how it all works. PS: Please change your name to something more suitable.

Well for starters CRT shaders will look better on a 4K display, if you like using those types of shaders. After that though for arcade games it really doesn't matter a whole lot since arcade games vary a lot in their vertical resolution so some games will scale to match better than others. For consoles though most of them are 240 pixels high or very close to it and that doesn't match up very will with a 1080p display if you are using integer scaling. 4K has a height of 2160 which is a perfect 9x integer scale, 1440p is also a good choice since it's a perfect 6x scale. I don't believe Freesync works over VGA at all, I know G-Sync does not. G-sync requires display port while Freesync does work over HDMI, not sure about Freesync with an Nvidia card which is a case by case basis, like I said in my previous post, that is something you will need to investigate your self based on the display you intend on buying. Going from a CRT to a fixed pixel display is going to have some tradeoffs for you that is for certain.

I would highly suggest a G-Sync or Freesync display, especially for Mame but of course you will require a video card which supports that. G-Sync is only available with Nvidia cards while Freesync is an AMD technology but some Freesync monitors do work with Nvidia graphics cards but is something you need to check before hand since not all are compatible. G-Sync / Freesync is particularly good with Mame because many arcade games run at oddball refresh rates and these monitors (with supporting graphics cards) adjust the monitor to match the game. This eliminates screen tearing and other graphical anomalies such as the NeoGeos use of "flicker" shadows and you run your games at their proper speed. Without G-Sync or Freesync you have to choose between enabling v-sync which forces the game to run at 60hz or whatever refresh rate the monitor rates which is often faster than intended or you can turn v-sync off which runs the game at it's appropriate speed but you will have screen tearing because the game is running at a different speed than that of the monitor. As for filling the side spaces the only thing you can do about this is either run your games stretched which for many is not an option or you can use bezel artwork to cover the black spaces on the sides. Personally I have no issues with black empty space on the sides in my setup but that is just my preference.

Just import the cue files, problem solved.

Setting up Mame to run non arcade system requires some extra work along with bios and extra command line parameter. I have been meaning to do a generalized tutorial on setting this up but I haven't gotten around to it yet. These all require bios to work. https://docs.libretro.com/library/atari800/ https://docs.libretro.com/library/beetle_handy/ https://docs.libretro.com/library/bluemsx/ It's very much personal preference and what you like but I would suggest starting with trying out some of the CRT shaders in the CRT presets folder. Absolutely, both are great systems with many great games and a crazy active homebrew scene to this day with new games coming out all the time.

This cannot be done, you only have BGFX or HLSL shaders in Mame