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dalehitchy said Just want the menus to go well, which can be a bit laggy at the moment. Please define "laggy" I have two computers, a Core 2 Duo E8500 / 4GB Ram / 8800GT and a recent i5 4670 / 16GB RAM / GTX 960. The difference between those two computers while browsing the LaunchBox menu is very small. When i change between systems it takes 4 seconds on the Core 2 Duo and 3 seconds on the i5 (average). Caching is faster on the i5 of course but after that, browsing the menus is a very similar experience. I don't think upgrading to a core quad will make any difference. However, using an SSD (if your system supports it) and using LaunchBox there may be more worth it, although i haven't tested it so i'm not sure. . djweevil said I installed a ssd drive and his motherboard board actually supported 8 gb of ram so we maxed his ram out the machine is nice and fast even running windows 10. You are doing something wrong. No way you can max out 8GB that easily. I use Launchbox on a Core 2 Duo with 4GB RAM and Windows 7 64bit. Max usage is a little less than 2GB while using LaunchBox, with a 7000 games/box art collection (1GB Ram cache selected in the options). Launchbox itself uses less than 700MB Ram there. On the newer machine (i5, 16GB) i'm struggling to make Launchbox use more than 1GB RAM itself, after setting Ram cache to 2GB. You might want to clean up your systems a bit.

Whenever i try to play a music file, LaunchBox tries to launch Windows Media Player. That's not even my default player, i use others like Winamp, Foobar, PotPlayer, etc. I never use windows media player, besides, i use chiptune emulation plugins that are not compatible with it anyway. I can't find an option to change the default music player through LaunchBox though. Is there a way to do it?

I used to have 3 different SSF setups, each one with a different bios. Then i discovered a region free bios but as far as i remember it wasn't perfect. I still had a few issues with some games. And then i discovered that in RocketLauncher you can select all 3 bios files and it automatically chooses the right one. I know many people here don't want to use that extra layer but i haven't found anything that handles SSF as good as RL does. So maybe it could be an exception just for SSF alone.

Ok i made the request https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/1005/run-with-context-menu-to-be-able-to-run

Yeah, i know that i can set different emulators for individual roms or groups of roms. However, what i'm looking for is a fast way to use 2 or more emulators for each rom, without having to go through menus and changing the settings every time. Since i have setup multiple emulators for each platform already, would it be possible to just right click on a rom and use whatever emulator i want through a "play with" context menu or something similar? This would be great for testing games with multiple emulators for instance. Edit: Here's a similar menu in QuickPlay, when you right click on a rom: You can add as many emulators as you want and they will appear in this context menu so you can use it immediately. If you just double click on the rom it will launch whatever emulator you have as a default.

lordmonkus said If someone can get MESS in Retroarch figured out that would be amazing just for the shaders alone. Probably not exactly what you are looking for but the only program that makes RetroArch Mess core work for me is RocketLauncher. I spent so much time trying to make it work through RetroArch itself or Launchbox with no luck. But RocketLauncher makes it work for some magical reason and i don't have the softlist roms. Maybe there's something in the AHK? So, if i want to use the RetroArch Mess core through Launchbox, i add RocketLauncher as an emulator and use that to launch it, using this command for each system: -s "SYSTEM_NAME" -r

Is there a more convenient method to use multiple emulators per platform? Launchbox allows you to add as many emulators as you want for each platform but you can only play the games with the "default" emulator. To change it you have to go to the options and change the emulator you want to use for each game or do a bulk edit and change it for all games. In another frontend i'm using, when you right click on a game, in the menu that shows up there is an option "run with". When you move the cursor there, another menu shows up with all the emulators that are associated with the platform/game and you can select it from there. You don't have to go through menus and change emulators every time, just right click and select which emulator you want to use. Is there a way to do this in Launchbox? And if not, could this be implemented in the future? It's very convenient for users who have multiple emulators for more options and maximum compatibility.

SentaiBrad said The speed and age of your CPU, the speed and age of your GPU, the speed of your RAM and then your OS is probably the list of most important things that can play factors in to it. We know for example, that BigBox performs way better on Windows 10 than Vista or 7 due to all the backend stuff they did. I have two computers with a pretty big gap in performance. PC1: i5 4670, 16GB DDR3, GTX 960, Windows 7, 1TB SATA3 Disk. PC2: Core 2 Duo E8500, 4GB DDR2 (or 3 i'm not sure), 8800GT, Windows 7, 250GB SATA 1 Disk. I copied-pasted my whole setup from PC1 to PC2 in a partition that has the same letter, so all paths are correct. And honestly, the difference in performance is very small. Maybe it's a half second slower. But the performance is similar after caching is completed (caching takes a lot longer on PC2). So i don't know. I feel like what makes the most difference would be a SSD drive maybe. I will test the program in Windows 10 soon though. . SentaiBrad said Our list is long, but Jason does want to tackle Performance again at some point. It's also worth noting that BigBox also inherently does the same tasks differently than LaunchBox does, so you may find it to be smoother in there if you do decide to upgrade to Premium. If you don't like it we can offer you a refund if it doesn't end up working the way you want. I'm pretty happy with the program regardless. I'm planning to get the Big Box version at some point.

Yeah it must be the library size since even if i disable Avast completely and increase RAM cache further makes no difference. Although my library is smaller than yours (7k games here) i suppose it's still a lot. I need to test a fresh setup with less games (say a few dozen for each system) to see how big of a difference this makes. Thankfully it should be easy since the program is portable. Or maybe there is no issue here at all and it's just me. I've been spoiled by QuickPlay all these years and maybe it's that difference that bothers me.

Thanks for the reply. -I have a SATA3 mechanical HDD (1TB) -I have AVAST installed but the partition where Launchbox is located is in the exceptions list. -I don't have any RAM monitoring process. Also, the system is clean, with less than 45 processes on startup (Windows 7 64bit) with no processes taking up CPU time. -I don't add any new games, this is the performance after everything is done and even after cashing all images as well. -I have a large collection overall but it doesn't seem to have any difference clicking to a small list or a big list. For instance, in my PS2 list i have only 14 games. It still takes 3 seconds to show up, just like in my larger lists. -I did increase RAM cache from 512MB (default) to 1GB, though i didn't feel much difference tbh. Maybe i should increase it further since i have 16GB? How much is more than enough?

I love many things about Launchbox but the one thing that bothers me the most about it is that, compared to other frontends i use, it's the slowest to navigate. For instance, it takes about 3 to 4 whole seconds to show my game collection when i click each system. I'm not using Big Box mode as i haven't bought the program yet. Before Launchbox i used QuickPlay (the fastest/snappiest frontend i ever used) and i still use it actually. The time it takes to switch systems is practically non-existent. Not even 0.1 seconds. This makes Launchbox very hard to get used to after using Quickplay for more than 5 years. Now, i'm not saying it should be as fast as QuickPlay since Launchbox is a more "eye candy" frontend but i feel like 3 seconds of lag on a i5 computer (4 seconds on my Core 2 Duo) every time i click on something to show up is a bit excessive. So i wonder if i'm doing something wrong or if there are ways to make the GUI navigation a bit snappier than that. Thank you.

I use one of the preset profiles in the last tab of the emulator. The one at the bottom that has the best compatibility. SSF's input lag is also reported here (go to known issues): http://segaretro.org/SSF I followed the instruction to reduce the input lag but there's still a lot. The games i'm testing are Duke Nukem 3D and Sega Rally. I have both games on my actual Saturn console and compared them directly. Sega Rally is almost unplayable on SSF for me due to the later response, i just can't drive the car as effectively as in the console. And Duke Nukem is also obvious. When i press the button to shoot there is no delay between my finget tap and Duke shooting at all but with SSF i can even do a fast double tap before he starts shooting. And i'm not even using an LCD, im running the emulator on a CRT PC monitor. Yabause is definitely more responsive.

lordmonkus said Hopefully the Mednafen Saturn emulator comes along nice and quickly and with great compatibility. SSF is a pain in the ass and Yabause is still way behind. I agree. Actually, even SSF isn't that great because it adds significant input lag, even on my CRT monitor it's pretty noticeable. I have high hopes for Mednafen Saturn because it's an exclusive core as far as i know (not a port of an existing emulator) and so far mednafen's exclusive cores are amazing, like mednafen PSX for instance.

Yes, i already voted for it too, even though i will probably just use RL.

Holy cow, the RocketLauncher trick did work! So, if you have a working RocketLaucher Setup that works with SSF, what you have to do is add RocketLaucher as an emulator and in the associate Platforms tab add Sega Saturn (or whatever name you are using for the system, it could be just Saturn) with this command -s "Sega Saturn" -r It just worked for me, of course you will have to setup SSF in RocketLauncher first, this is easy as the AHK file does all the work for you.

DOS76 said If you use RL as the emulator in LB shouldn't it just work automatically? That is what I thought from reading other RocketLauncher users post in the past. Really, you can? Damn, if that's true it will fix a few other problems i have. I will test it when i get some time and report here. . Zombeaver said There isn't currently a way to automate this through Launchbox, but I put in a feature ticket a couple days ago for that purpose. Until that's implemented, this is how you want to set it up in LB. 1) Choose your .cue as your rom as normal 2) Go to the emulation tab on your game entry and uncheck "Use an emulator to play this game (primarily for console games) 3) Go to the Additional Apps tab, add a new app, enter SSF application name, browse to SSF.exe for the application path, and check "Automatically Run After Main Application" This will mount your disc, and run SSF with the mounted disc once complete. If multiple games are setup this way, when you run another game, it will mount that disc, overwriting the old one, and run SSF with that mounted disc. If that feature request is implemented you won't have to do any of this, you'll just need to add SSF as a regular emulator and check a box in the emulator details. Thank you. Will test this as well.

DOS76 said you have to use the additional apps feature to load either the discs and unload them or you have to launch SSF from an additional app. The easiest way to do this is to setup the platform without an emulator with your pc associated to load the disc into Daemon Tools then you set up SSF to load afterwards in the additional apps beware that this process is extremely far from being intuitive or automated and it requires an additional app for every game you want to add so major PITA for Saturn. Their is a .bat somewhere on here and while I did get it to work it seemed that I had significantly less compatibility using the .bat vs the additional apps. Good luck, I'm glad mine is done and I don't have to sweat it anymore. Thanks for the reply. I'm pretty sure there must be an easier, more automated way to run this. I know because i use SSF via Hyperspin/Rocketlauncher without having to do anything else. Maybe the AHK file (basically the config file for each emu) has all the information needed inside it but i can't decipher it so i can "port" the same settings in Launchbox somehow.

Yeah, i'm looking in how to run this with Launchbox. I can already run the standalone version just fine and it even works with Rocketlauncher/Hyperspin. But i can't make it work with Launchbox. I don't care much about Yabause because i can already run this with every frontend i use via it's retroarch core. It's also an inferior emulator that SSF so SSF is my main right now.

I couldn't find any recent info about how to make SSF work. Are there any commands/settings for it? So far i only get a black screen with it.

Here is the ticket by the way https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/530/advanced-search-options

Ok i sent the feedback.

One of the best things about LaunchBox in my opinion, is that you can have a list that displays all of the roms you have, despite system. Using this list and the search window i can try and find different ports of the same titles. For instance, i can type "Mario" and it will show all Mario games i have from all systems. Or i can type "Doom" and compare all the different ports. The problem is, however, that some terms also bring up completely unrelated games. Like "Sonic" for instance. I was trying to see how many Sonic games i have added in the program and it would also bring up a bunch of 3DO games that don't even have the word sonic in their titles. Why? Because in the description on the right, it says they were published by Panasonic. So they end up in the list... This happened with other titles as well (that i can't remember now). Unrelated titles show up only because the word exist in the name of the developer or publisher, it shows up in the lists, making this whole process very inconvenient. So, is there a way to make the search a bit more advanced? Like making it look only at a game title and ignore other description info? Or making it look for developers only or publishers only, if you want all games from a certain company. Or, how about making it look for the exact word only? For instance, i want to look for "Doom" only, no "Doom Troopers" or "Towers of Doom". There is so much potential using the search window this way. Is that possible? Edit: Link for the ticket: https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/530/advanced-search-options

craiganderson said ....just FYI....RocketLauncher mounts/unmounts into Daemon Tools very easily ..again..just FYI Yes, from all the frontends i used so far, RocketLauncher is the most compatible/error free. All these .ahk configuration files really do work (most of the time). Heck, i even managed to make the RetroArch MESS core to work with this! Even though i don't have the softilst roms. I can't even make the standalone RetroArch itself to work with this core, even though it was made for it :P

SentaiBrad said What kind of GPU and how much RAM do you have? If you are using RetroArch x64 that means it is flagged to use up to 3 or 4GB of RAM. If you are at 4 or 6GB there might not be enough wiggle room. As well, if your GPU is a bit older as well that could effect the frame rate. A quick look up after my last paragraph reveals a lot about the two emulators actually. SSF is closed source which is why its a bitch to deal with. Only the main developer(s) can do anything to the emulator and who knows if they're even still developing it. Yabuse however is open source, which is why it is included with RA to begin with and can be edited or added to over time, and quicker more than likely. However, it does seem (at least at the time of this information's post date that I found) SSF is technically more superior to Yabuse. I don't know the rate of development for them though and the sad truth is the Sega Saturn is not a sought after console to emulate so it gets left behind sometimes. The complexity of the console can also be at fault sometimes too. An inverse example is the Wii. It was so like the Gamecube (pretty much two gamecubes stacked on top and plugged in to each other) that it was super easy to emulate and folded in to Dolphin right away. I'm pretty sure it's not my PC's fault that Yabause is slow. I have an i5 4670, 16GB RAM and a 960 GTX. If most PS2 games run full speed on the PCSX2 emulator, even by using the software graphics mode, there is no reason for Yabause to be so slow, especially when it's not as accurate as SSF. I don't use Yabause outside RetroArch so i don't know much about it, but i remember reading that SSF is more demanding, yet SSF runs all games 100% with no frame skipping for me. As for Saturn emulation in general, well, i think with SSF it's pretty good. There are far worse examples out there IMO. Jaguar, for instance, is still not good. Both emulators that exist (VJ and Project Tempest) don't play all games, even though the Jaguar has only a tiny amount of them. Also, the N64 emulation scene is very messy. You don't get good results unless you have a lot of plugins to experiment and, IMO, the latest PJ64 version (2.2.0.3).

RA is indeed much easier and error free. However, the core is Yabause instead of SSF. There is no RA SSF core. And SSF is a superior emulator, at least from my experience. Still, Yabause is good enough, plus you get the RA shaders with it so i think it's a worthy alternative if you don't want to go through all that mess.