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Ok, so this means Dolphin is not offered as a "core" with RA and you can only run dolphin stand alone, correct? I'm not so clear about using MAME stand alone or in RA core. So, for MAME(or arcade mame) games, all I've really used so far is out of box stand alone MAME and it seems ok on my 1080p screen, whether vertical or horizontal. I'd like it to look better but just haven't got into the crazy config details yet in MAME. I think for MAME I'd just go with whatever works and is easy. If it looks good and I don't have to do much research to maek it look good, that's a big plus. From all the comments it sounds as if using the mame core in RA I will have controller irritations, bad vertical gaming, etc. I was hoping RA might be a way for me to not have to use Xpadder anymore for my games and would allow my xbox360 controllers to just work in all my emulated games, which would also be good so I wouldn't have to keep exiting Xpadder and starting it back up when flipping between playing emulated games and regualr PC games(where i don't want Xpadder). Now I'm not sure if I should just: - keep my existing setup of Launchbox/Rocketlauncher (where everything seems to work as it uses stand alone emulators, but may not be the best looking configs?) - go full on LB without RL as the launcher, but still use all the stand alone emulators that I'm already using with RL. - drop RL, use LB for all launching of stand alones, but have LB use RA for certain platforms emulations The 5 reasons to use RA posted by @lordmonkus looked really good, but now it seems my most used platforms/games would not be from platforms that are best inside of RA anyway =/ Oh the choices...want to keep things simple and games looking good without a lot of emulator and shader research configuration or a huge amount of my time setting it all up. It's highly unlikely I will ever want to customize on a game by game basis either.

This is great info. Thank you both. @lordmonkus If it's not too much trouble, do you think you could give me a list of platforms that are best in RA in your opinion? It sounds very good. I would have thought "mame" games would be in that list also because i just assumed RA would be using MAME as the emulator for those games. Aside from that big list, are these better in stand alone or RA in your opinion (some of my favorites and most used platforms): - MAME games: you said to use stand alone mame as the best thing for these roms (why is it faster than with RA?) - PS1 and PS2: stand alone ePSXe - Dreamcast: stand alone emulator (Demul) - Nintendo 64: stand alone emulator - Gamecube: - Saturn: - SNES: - Wii (if i can ever figure out how to use without sensor bar and using normal controller like xbox360):

Well, I've been using rocketlauncher a while and most users on their forum have trouble getting Saturn to work on Win10 and you have to setup Daemon tools lite in Rocketlauncher for CD stuff for Saturn. With Win10 you need to get scsi cd driver in DT Lite to work in order to use Saturn. But most users can't get DT Tools to install that drive as of Win 10. I am one of the few who got it to install so it works for me. I think the emulator mounts the image file as a CD with the help of Rocketlauncher setting that part up. Sounds like Retroarch and Mednafen do all of this for you under the covers without needing DT Lite and no issue on Win 10 I guess. That's great. I think I'll have a look at Retroarch and see how I like it. When you get Retroarch setup with all your emulators, and then add it to LB, do you really have to add an associated platform for every platform in the LB emulator config for Retroarch, like I see in the video? With Rocketlauncher, you don't have to add any associated platforms because LB will automatically figure that out now (but you used to have to setup all those associated platforms).

I use two usb xbox360 controllers as well as a x-arcade dual joystick. Does Retroarch allow me to use both of these (not at the same time) and does it automatically set them up for two player in games also? Controller support passed through to emulators seems very attractive. Does Retroarch not support ps1, ps2, and gamecube? How do you have those 3 setup in your LB, just individually with each one as a platform with emulator? Does Saturn work in Retroarch? I think it requires a drive letter mount which is troubling for Windows 10 even with Rocketlauncher.

Thanks @polymorph77. Based on that video, best I can tell is that Retroarch downloads all(?) emulators a user might choose to have it download and will do some configuration of each emulator also, so that you don't need to run every stand alone emulator to set it up for your system and controller? I have a feeling you might want to run every emulator on its own to do some video and controller config on it, but I'm not sure. The video also shows LB running a windowed Retroarch when launching games. I assume LB can just show the games and in fullscreen without Retroarch interface? Another thing is that I guess if you use Retroarch, LB then becomes dependent on it, which worries me a bit. So, does everyone suggest to use Retroarch with LB for all emulators? Or do some of you recommend setting up each emulator in LB one by one on their own with LB?

Hi, After a little googling, I'm not sure I know what Retroarch is and why you would want to use it with LaunchBox? I see that some people on this forum say they use Retroarch. Is it a front end of its own and if so why/how would you want to use it with LB? Or is it some tool that downloads all emulators that exist and sets them all up for you? I really have no idea what it is Should I use it with LB?? Does it make anything better? Easier? Harder? Currently I was planning to start a new (i have been using it with rocket launcher so far) LB install pointing to all my downloaded and configured emulators. Thanks.

My system is very strong, but putting everything on the SSD might be a pain fixing all the paths to everything. Also I don't want to use a lot of space on my SSD for this stuff. It runs well enough as is, but maybe another simple change or two may come up to improve it. Thanks!

So, I renamed (to cache__) my cache folder on the usb drive which is 6.5GB. Then I ran mklink to redirect to my ssd drive. Then I ran robocopy to quickly copy over all the usb cache files to the new location on the ssd drive in case LB would recreate all the files much slower. Then I ran LB. I don't really notice a difference in Bigbox, but I never really had much of a performance issue in the wheel and games using Bigbox. In regular LB, it seems like the game images are all there right away when clicking on each platform, but there is still a fairly long hourglass pause when clicking a platform. Once the hourglass passes, it's readily usable. So I don't see a super huge difference, but I'll keep it this way for now. I renamed the original cache folder and kept it with all the image files so I can use it if I ever move the usb drive to another computer temporarily.

Thanks for confirming. If it's really just the image cache folder that is the big difference, it would be better and easier for me to simply redirect (symlink) the current cache folder on my usb drive to my ssd drive and have only the cache there. I think this would make my LB more portable and easier to work with. Do you guys know if it's really just the cache folder? I think I'll try this experiment.

Thanks @CADScott !

i think it should work ok to do this. i just tried installing LB on a different system i have and it looks to me it should be fine.

If I run the installer, will it let me choose a different place to install LB and not mess up my existing LB install? I want a clean install for slowly building up a pure LB setup without Rocketlauncher, but I'll use my original LB install with RL for quite some time still until I get a pure LB setup going the way I'm satisfied with. Thanks.

Hi, When LB is sitting there idle on any platform, I see the cpu spike 5-10% for launchbox.exe about every 6 seconds. This is without any videos or images showing or a game even selected. What is it doing (trying to refresh the images maybe?)? Can it be tuned? Thanks.

You guys are AWESOME!! Works perfectly!! Thanks SOOOOOOO much!

Hi, Currently I have my entire LB folder, giant collection of ROMs, and all media on the same 5TB (nearly full) usb 3 drive plugged into a usb 3 port with Win 10. I'm wondering if anyone has some test results for possible LB performance improvement if LB is running from these various types of drives? And how much of LB would you need to have on something like an SSD to see a big improvement? Like include everything but the game roms? Or can a small bit of LB being moved help out? I'm trying to avoid moving many gigs of data to my SSD but still see a performance improvement? If I should see a pretty good improvement, it may be worth going through the LB xml to reconfigure a bunch of paths. I have my roms, videos, and emulators outside of the LB folder. But the LB folder is still huge from art and image cache and stuff. Thanks.

just saw your post @lordmonkus . how do you set that up? that would be PERFECT!! i prefer your method to prevent accidents. i didn't realize the controller had a press on both thumbsticks!

Oh thanks! I already use all the buttons which is why i was looking for a simultaneous combo press, but looking forward to seeing your screenshots. maybe i will figure something out to use it.

Yeah the thumbstick button is a good idea, but i use it already for the escape key to get out of all games from rocket launcher and back to LB. Guess I will just leave a wireless mouse around when I use this computer as somewhat of a "cabinet". I just didn't want to have to tell anyone if they are in a TV app to use the mouse to close it in order to get back to LB.

Hi, I need to be able to close some applications I launch from Launchbox (like Netflix). I use an xbox360 usb controller and Xpadder with Launchbox. Does anyone know how to configure Xpadder to send alt-f4 when pressing two buttons like the Back button AND the Right Trigger simultaneously? I'm not having much luck googling this. Thanks!

That makes perfect sense as far as the left view of platforms goes, but they definitely should show up in the platform drop list when adding a platform to a game or app, imho. Anyway, I'm all set now, other than how to close these apps. Thanks a lot!

So very strange that it doesn't show up in the platforms list but indeed I was able to add it by typing in the platform name "TV". Thanks!

That's great, thanks for saving me some time searching! But I can't seem to create a platform named TV? I create this in managed platforms, but it is not there to select as the platform when trying to use the Add button to add a shortcut?

ok, so i get the part about adding a normal exe or shortcut, but i have no idea how to add a windows app store app to launch, like netflix. i guess exiting these apps will be an issue also unless i can figure something out for that.

Hi Jason, thanks. Issue filed, Issue #1510

Do you mean you launch thees kind of like how you launch PC games with no emulator? So for SlingTV exe (or other similar applications), how do you exit these without keyboard or mouse, to return to LB? And for Win 10 Apps like Netflix, they are unusual and don't have a shortcut. In fact, I am not even sure how these launch and what they run as. Installing the Win 10 app just produces a special shortcut with no target or info about an executable. Thanks for your help.