Special T

I've been trying to get BSX / Satellaview games to load in the bsnes_mercury_balanced_libretro.dll core and the bsnes_balanced_libretro.dll but I can't seem to get them to work. I put the BS-X.bin bios file in the RetroArch/System folder and I renamed my rom extensions from .bs to .sfc When I try to load any rom, it just goes to a black screen. Has anyone else been able to load BSX / Satellaview games?

Thank you both for the quick reply. I tested some of the games in the link you posted but they look normal to me if I display them at 320 x 240. Have you noticed any games that need specific resolutions to look normal or do you just play all your genesis games at 320 x 240 and all your SNES games at 256 x 224? Wouldn't the games all get stretched to a 4:3 resolution on real televisions anyway? I don't recall playing any games on real hardware in letterbox mode although it's been a long time since I played any retro games on real hardware.

I was looking online at the tec specs for the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo and I noticed that they have multiple resolutions - Genesis: 256x224, 320x224, 320x448 - SNES: From 256x224 to 512x448 Does anyone have a list of what games utilize which resolutions?

I know this is an old topic but I'm having trouble getting Game.com to work. - I'm using the MAME (0.193) core - I used clrmamepro to rename all my roms using the No-Intro dat file e.g. Sonic Jam (USA) .tgc is compressed inside Sonic Jam (USA).7z - I placed the bios "gamecom.zip" in the root of the "RetroArch/System" folder - I tried two different command lines on the retroarch / Associated Platforms tab but neither worked -L "cores\mame_libretro.dll" -L "cores\mame_libretro.dll" "gamecom -cart1" Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks for posting the tutorial. Now that Mesen has been ported to retroarch do you see any reason to still use the stand alone version of Mesen?

Just an fyi that the cores were updated so they are now playable. Thanks for everyone's help!

thanks for checking, I appreciate it! :-)

It might be a core problem someone on the retroarch forum stated they were having the same issue on thier Linux version of retroarch. I tried installing retroarch on a different computer and I'm still having issues with wonderswan games. Can someone try updating thier core on a Windows machine or trying a wonderswan game on a fresh install of retroarch?

Thanks for the reply Lordmonkus. Unfortunately I don't think that's the issue. I posted a topic in the Retroarch forums to see if anyone over there know's what happened (LINK) If anyone here has any other suggestions, please let me know. Thanks

No I tried loading Buffers Evolution (Japan).ws in stand alone retroarch and it just goes to a white screen. I also updated the core again just in case and it still doesn't work Here is the hash info for Buffers Evolution (Japan).ws just for reference CRC32: B25A0635 MD5: 9B15B2236CAE605F7BC3BEA3859FDD36 SHA-1: 35EEA568F756BACF533BB9AAAD7E3239BA00E411

thanks for the quick reply and link :-) Here are a few that I can't load Armored Unit (Japan) Buffers Evolution (Japan) Chocobo no Fushigi na Dungeon for WonderSwan (Japan) (Rev 2)

1. I like retroarch and I would prefer to use it as my default emulator for most consoles. I prefer playability over accuracy/slowdown if possible. What consoles/cores would you recommend using retroarch to emulate as opposed to a stand alone emulator? My computer is a couple years old and I'm running Windows 10 on an x64 Processor (Intel Core i5 CPU S 760 @ 2.53GHz, 2534 Mhz, 4 Cores) with 8 GB of ram. 2. I'm running into issues with the wonderswan core in retroarch (mednafen_wswan_libretro) it loads some games fine, however most games load to a white or black screen and the system just hangs there. Is anyone else having an issue with that core? The reason I ask is because in addition to a PC that I run launchbox on, I also have a raspberry pi 3 that I run emulationstation on and I don't have any issues running wonderswan games on the under powered raspberry pi 3. I'm ran all my games through clrmamepro using the latest NO-Intro dat files so I know my roms are correct.

Thank you for clarifying

Is there an option to delete the Platform logo on the top left but leave the platform category in the middle of the screen?

Sorry for the delay I was out of town. I tested CityHunter 2 and it works great and it fixes my issue with the video not playing on the game list. Thanks for fixing that It looks like the video file has to be labeled background.mp4 though so you can't put multiple videos in the folder to cycle through...correct? The only issue I have encountered is that the Tiger Game.com clear logo won't populate on the menu. I've tried labeling it Tiger Game.com.png and Tiger Game com.png and Tiger Game_com.png but none of them are work. Any suggestions? Lastly, I'm missing a few platform banners and if you have any time I would be grateful if you could make them. If you don't have time and you are willing to upload your banner template I could try to make them myself. - Neo Geo Pocket (not the color, just the regular Neo Geo Pocket) - Nintendo DS - Tiger Game.com - WonderSwan - WonderSwan Color **EDIT** I'm not sure what fixed the issue but I rebooted bigbox and the Tiger Game.com.png logo is showing up correctly now. It's currently labeled Tiger Game.com.png

thanks for the quick follow up.

Sure no problem

Thanks, background fade fixed the issue The Game List View I was referring too was Vertical Wheel 1. I was cycling through the views and must have mixed them up because now that I check the view again, it's a static background image, but can I change it to the Flash Back 2012 scanlines background video instead or is that not possible?

I really like this theme, thank you for taking the time to make it! I have a couple of questions though. 1. I like the look of the Flash Back 2012 scanlines video when I look at it in VLC but when I launch BigBox the video has a dark overlaid on top of it. Is there a way for me to reduce or remove the overlay for the background video? 2. Is it possible for me to use the Flash Back 2012 scanlines background video once I select a console instead of using gameplay videos in the background?

Thanks for sharing your knowledge and the bartop arcades look nice as well! If I end up building one I'll come back here and post an image

Thank you for responding and for the width information. Do you have any pictures of the bartop arcades you've built? I was thinking about building the bartop myself. I've watched a few videos and read a few articles online... it doesn't seem too complicated but I would need to purchase some power tools because all I have is a miter saw and a drill. What resources (websites / books) did you use when you built your first arcade?

I saw Jason's video of his children playing the bar-top arcade and I thought that would be something fun for my family. So for anyone that owns or has played a bartop arcade, is there enough room for 2 adults to play comfortably? It will most likely be my children playing but I was hoping to get my wife involved as well. My only other thought would be to space out the controls for more elbow room (similar to the image below) but I think that is just a mock up I haven't seen anyone make a bartop arcade like that except for the image I referenced below.

I typically don't convert everything to png unless it makes sense for example, I've tried to convert several jpg images into png's but they tend to be larger in size so no reason to convert them. However, bmp files which some emulators use when capturing screen shots compress very well when converting to png and can be reduced in size by 50-75%... at least on the tests I've done using Sega Genesis & 32x images. Anyway, I ran some tests this morning to see which program is better PNGGauntlet or XnConvert. I didn't have any bmp image files to test so I just used png images I found on my hard drive. ========== Test #1 ========== I used 107 different png screenshots taken of Shining Force III for Sega Saturn and ran them through each program. PNGGauntlet Tested Using Default Settings - Time: 20 Minutes - File Size: reduced in size by 1,531,904 bytes (Original: 15,978,496 bytes - Compressed: 14,446,592 bytes) XnConvert Tested Using Minimum Compression (level 1) - Time: 6 Seconds - File Size: the files actually increased in size by 3,678,208 bytes (Original: 15,978,496 bytes - Compressed: 19,656,704 bytes) XnConvert Tested Using Maximum Compression (level 9) - Time: 60 Seconds - File Size: the files actually increased in size by 364,544 bytes (Original: 15,978,496 bytes - Compressed: 16,343,040 bytes) ========== Test #2 ========== I tried another test using 96 different png screenshots taken of various Sega 32X games and ran them through each program. PNGGauntlet Tested Using Default Settings - Time: 8 Minutes - File Size: reduced in size by 573,440 bytes (Original: 8,130,560 bytes - Compressed: 7,557,120 bytes) XnConvert Tested using minimum compression (level 9) - Time: 18 Seconds - File Size: the files actually increased in size by 450,560 bytes (Original: 8,130,560 bytes - Compressed: 8,581,120 bytes) ========== Conclusion ========== XnConvert Pros: Extremely easy to use (drag & drop), allows for batch conversions between various image formats, & fast XnConvert Cons: Doesn't appear to reduce file size or compress png images PNGGauntlet Pros: Extremely easy to use (drag & drop) and won't increase file size i.e. it will either reduce file size of that image or leave it in it's original format if converting increases file size PNGGauntlet Cons: Since it tests several different compression algorithms it takes a long time to compress images (even longer if the image is extremely large i.e. several MB in size like cover images) So, XnConvert is an extremely easy to use however it doesn't compress png files to save space as far as I can tell. On the other-hand, PNGGauntlet does take a lot longer to process images, however it will either reduce the file size in the conversion process of skip that image if converting results in a larger file. So, for my needs, PNGGauntlet takes the gold. On a personal note, since PNGGauntlet uses a lot of the computer resources, I will normally just leave my computer on over night and start the compression process when I go to bed, by the time I wake up it's done and I saved save and didn't have to waste any time configuring anything because the default settings are already set to maximum compression. ========== Suggestions to LaunchBox Developers ========== My suggestion would either be to ask people to use PNGGauntlet before uploading images or possible run the images through the program on the back end once they've been uploaded to the website. Maybe add a flag (somewhere behind the scenes) indicating whether or not the image has been optimized. Yes, the file size reduction is marginal, however it you extrapolate that over hundreds of thousands of images and hundreds of thousands of downloads, I would assume the reduced load on the server would be worth it plus the images would only need to be optimized once and then after that everyone benefits. Combining the two examples above would equate out to a savings of approximately 10371.15 bytes per image (2,105,344 bytes / 203 images). I don't know how many images are on this site but lets say the database contains 100,000 images (100,000 x 10371.15) which would equate out to a total savings of about 1 GB. The trade off seems worth it to me since the reduction in file size doesn't degrade the image quality. Thoughts?

I joined this community two weeks ago and have read through every topic in the LaunchBox Games Database section to familiarize myself with the state of the database and what obstacles people are faced with when adding or moderating content because I would like to be a contributing member of this community, but I worry that the effort may not be worth it which is how others new members may feel as well. Be for warned, this will be a long but hopefully interesting post to read through. I hope the development team of LaunchBox and other community members read through this post and leave honest feedback or point out potential caveats that I may have overlooked. Since I’m new to this community and to LaunchBox, I hope none of the information I’m posting here is inaccurate, but if any of the information is incorrect, please let me know and I will be happy to update this post. Development Priority: Compressive Change Log: To Do List: Features that will not be implemented: My suggestions and feature requests: Please let me know if any of these suggestions are useful and I’ll be happy to add them to the BitBucket. Add a link to the Moderator & Contributor guidelines within the Games Database: Split the Name field into two separate fields and incorporate a tag system: Allow multiple entries in the Release Date, Publisher, & ESRB field and Incorporate the above mentioned tag system: Convert ESRB field to an Age Appropriate field: Incorporate a more flexible Genre system with examples: Fields to add that aren’t currently present: Allow inclusion of the source to reference when submitting a new game or changing an existing entry: Merge or link similar developers together: Create a reward system that encourages contributions: For anyone that actually read through this post, thank you and feel free to post your thoughts or feedback.

Let me know what you think. By the way, does XnConvert shrink the size of png files without losing quality?