mothergoose729
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Posts posted by mothergoose729
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9 hours ago, angelobodetti said:
its not much extra effort - you can share settings files.
I posted earlier that for some emulators rocketlauncher is easier than launchbox because you don't have to know and type out command lines. All of the MESS systems for example, retroarch, etc.. even jaguar cd just works because the RL team built out the module specifically to work with those emulators. where launchbox is setup to work with pretty much all, you still need to add the extra layer of command lines.
Yeah that is the part I don't like about RL. The command line is easier and more powerful than RL menus. It takes no more effort to type "-f" than it does to toggle a drop down to true. For all emulators the command line is the most powerful way to control them, and RL doesn't give me direct access to it. I can't at all understand why.
The glam things it does well. RL automagically linked up to my media folders in LB. No extra effort required. That was really nice. I haven't dug into it yet, but the AHK scripts are also cool. A unified interface for save states and game closing is a great feature, usually implemented outside RL with add hock scripts. A feature I discovered the other day; RL will hide your mouse cursor for you. No more dragging the mouse off the edge of the screen. That is so nice.
The RL UI interface is a mess and there are some glaring issues, like the need to create symlinks for all your ROMs because RL can't search for files in sub directories. The fact that modules inevitably depreciate out, leaving you SOL until a new module is release or you make your own is also puzzling, because it seems so unnecessary.
In a perfect world LB would already have the features RL has, but better implemented. In the mean time I can't decide if the features that RL provides are worth the hassle of using it. I am leaning towards yes, because I am willing to put in the time to configure it and forgive its shortcoming, but am really not pleased about it.
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I am thinking I am going to end up not using rocket launcher after all.
There are so many cool features, but the basic stuff is so unnecessarily difficult. Rocket launcher doesn't seem to recognize any of my files if they are more than one directory deep. So for my CD games which are organized into folders by game, and folders by disc, I have to go and add dozens of rom paths so the audit will work. Frustrating.
Another problem is I can't seem to find an option to just let me pass my own command line parameters for a particular game to a particular emulator. I just want to bang out the command myself and have RL use it. Why is this not a part of the rom audit dialog or the rom settings tab? I am sure this option must exist somewhere, but for the life of me I can't find it. Something basic like that shouldn't be so difficult...grrr
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There was a similar thread posted elsewhere on the forums. Might give you some ideas.
If you buy used hardware locally you can get starter PC for somewhere in the 2-500 range. if you buy new, the barrier to entry is about 400$. A starter PC like the on in the link will play at least some games from the psx2/dolphin and others at full speed, and will chug through ps1 and n64 games no problem.
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My apologies, socket 1151 is the one you want, not socket 1150. The prices are actually a little cheaper too.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1N841M6939
Specing out all the parts, you can get the above with a small form factor case, a good 450 watt power supply, 2tb storage drive and 128gb SSD boot drive for $383 after tax and shipping. A cheap atom setup will set you back roughly the same amount. I recommend a custom PC.
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What is your budget?
An atom PC is still good for somethings, but you would be better off with a cheap dual core on a h81 board for not much more money and an order of magnitude more performance and future upgrade options.
This 60$ processor https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1K656X2361
Your pick of mini itx boards https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100007627 600438202 600009028
Add in an 8gb DIMM
A case like this one: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119299
And your pick of a half decent ATX PSU. A complete build can be had around 400$, and you still have the ability to go full kaby lake i7 with a high end graphics card if you want in the future.
As configured emulation up to gamecube and dreamcast should run pretty well, minus the graphical oddities you find with intel drivers.
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This forum is awesome.
I am going to get a backblaze account tonight.
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Just now, lordmonkus said:
In Launchbox to change the emulator for all games you select all your games (Control + A) right click and edit and change the emulator in the bulk wizard. RocketLauncher is probably simpler than this once you know where to look in the RL UI.
Ok, I see what you mean and it makes sense but at the same time is such a small and minor thing in the grand scheme.
Yeah it's not a huge deal, but I do like the extra context for organization.
Just now, DOS76 said:If you have a whole platform up and you use ctrl+a you can select all games then right click and select edit this starts the bulk edit wizard and you can change them all at once there.
I learn stuff on this forum constantly. Thank for the tips guys. I guess in that sense LB is probably a little easier to bulk assign emulators than RL.
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7 minutes ago, lordmonkus said:
Not exactly sure how much more simple it can be than in Launchbox, right click a game and edit, then in the emulation tab pick an emulator and you are done. I can see how something can be equally simple but not more.
Can you clarify this statement for me ? What do you mean but by in LB everything is global ?
If I want to change the default emulator for a platform in LB I have to update each rom in my collection. I may just be ignorant, but the only way I know to mass assign emulators in LB is to go through the import wizard. The audit grid only let me update each game one at a time. In RL, I can change the default emulator and it will update each rom that isn't set to an alternate emulator.
Setting an alternate emulator for a particular rom is probably more steps in RL than LB, but the drop down list in RL is shorter because it only has the emulators I associate for that platform, rather than all of my emulators I have for every system like in LB.
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I took another shot at RL last night and I got retroarch working. I haven't added any fancy effects, but I have gotten LB and RL talking to each other, and a bunch of cores to run.
So far I like having the extra layer of separation between the launching of the games and the presentation of the games in LB. Changing emulators on a per game basis in LB is a little more menu intensive than RL. RL also separates emulators based on platform, while in LB everything is global, so it feels a bit more organized on that front. The ability to set command line arguments in menus through the modules is also nice.
I wish that RL would silently fail instead of presenting an error message to you. I also noticed that it takes a good 10 seconds to get a game to start the first time, because RL has to load itself into memory first. I wish RL would just load itself into memory automatically on startup instead, that way there isn't that abrupt pause.
I am hoping I can smooth that part out a little with a hardware upgrade though.
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Found this tutorial online. It isn't as detailed as I would like, but it is helping me get started
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5 hours ago, Nigel said:
Exactly, I'm saying if you enjoy those videos that BigBox has over LaunchBox then maybe RocketLauncher is right up your alley. You've challenged me a bit. I may make a video on how to setup and and use RocketLauncher with LaunchBox as Simply Austin has never created one. And I've never seen one.
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkI would personally find something like that very helpful. All the videos online talk about hyper spin, and it is difficult to tell where RL begins and the front end HS ends.
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20 minutes ago, bundangdon said:
You may need to change some of the configuration-settings for some of the emulators within the rocketlauncher ui, but I have the same module (1.36) and everything seems to be working fine here with retroarch 1.60. However, I haven't (yet) tried any of the newly added systems like vice, dolphin, etc.
That is good to know. I was under the impression that you needed a new module for every release of the emulator.
I will definitely give it another try at some point. There is obviously value in RL and a lot of cool features, I just need to take the time to learn them.
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This has been a great discussion about the pros and cons of RL. Really awesome, thanks guys.
I tried RL the other day, and I saw that a module for retroarch 1.60 doesn't exist yet. The most recent one I could find was support for RA 1.36. I played around with it some, and I couldn't get anything to work on my first try. I might try again later.
Right now it is only the loading screens that really interest me. CD based emulators in particular take a while to startup, so something playing the foreground in the meantime would really help polish that experience. I am not interested in the pause menu's right now and I prefer black bars to bezels for my games, because I find bezels distracting.
RL's reliance on modules is the thing turning me off the most right now. I rather like the big box presentation as is, although it could be a bit better. If LB adds support for loading screens like in RL I don't think I would have enough reason to pick it up.
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As there any place I can see some RL glam footage? A video with someones l33t setup or whatever?
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To summarize, RL lets you:
- Easily transition from one presentation software to another (a la hyperspin to LB ect)
- Add in borders and overlays to emulators that don't support it
- Add in transition effects to hide windows popping up and the like ("silent" launch)
- Remap buttons on a controller for different emulators?
- Provide scripting support for hotkeys?
Am I missing any features? What happens if an emulator you are using doesn't have a module for RL?
The cons being that
- It can break
- It takes a long time to get setup
- It has a steep learning curve
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I am just curious to know what people's thoughts are regarding rocket launcher. I know you can hook it into launchbox, so you can use the two tools together. Does rocket launcher have features that a power user might want to use? Should I be using it, or is the tools built into LB just as good for doing all that stuff already?
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I am on 1.5x. It has a lot of cool features, but I am using it because the software render is more accurate and has better performance in the games I am trying to play. It adds several really cool features to the openGL render in particular that fix a ton of problems. If you go on the PCSX2 wiki right now, there are a lot of games that have had their compatibility rating updated to reflect the changes in 1.5. If you get the most bleeding edge build there is always a decent chance something could be broken due to regression, but in general 1.5 is a much better than 1.4 in pretty much every way.
With that being said, if it ain't broke don't fix it. If 1.4 is working well for you stick with it. If you are having problems with some of you games in version 1.4, than the latest build might fix it. It did for me.
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40 minutes ago, lordmonkus said:
Not sure if this is the same thing I noticed in my setup using G-Sync or not but I found I had to go into my config and set the refresh rate to match my monitor.
Try a shader that is only a single pass. I don't know what sort effect you like with shaders but I like CRT scanlines and I use the CRT-Aperture one and it is single pass and as far as I can tell it has little to no added lag. If there is some added it is so minuscule that I do not notice it at all and you would need a scientific way of measuring it to know if there is any.
Yeah I trouble shooted a bit, and it was disabling vsync that introduced the stuttering, I am finding that I actually play better with it on, so I am leaving that part stock now.
I really enjoy the CRT royal presets, in particular the 240p composite mode. Seeing the waterfall transparency effect on sonic finally look right was such a treat. Unfortunately, it applies 14 shaders passes, some of which are highly intensive. Taking an educated guess that input lag is definitely going "up". I tried some of the other presets, and I didn't really like them. It was one of those things where the whole was greater than the sum of the parts... I would rather have no shaders then a less convincing CRT emulation - scanlines being just one part of the effect.
With that being said, it also cool to play with no filters so you can experience every minute detail of each game. Visuals are so sharp they cut like a knife. I think I am going to play with no shaders, favoring sharpness and reduced input lag over cool CRT effects and all their nostalgia.
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Wasapi and raw input are working great for me so far. I am not particularly sensitive to input lag myself, but I did notice that everything felt sharp and snappy. I played some mega man 2 and ninja gaiden... my timing felt a little bit off actually. I think I am used to compensating for more input lag.
I turned off Vsync in retroarch and instead enabled "fast" vsync mode in my video drivers. This mode will generate as many frames as the system can handle, and then throw out the extra frames so you get 60. This has less lag than regular vsync. That seemed to help just a little bit too.
All this peeked my interest, so I went looking online and found this article talking about the effects of shaders on input lag:
http://filthypants.blogspot.com/2015/06/latency-testing.html
I disabled all shaders and bilinear filtering, and made sure to set fullscreen mode on, for exclusive fullscreen. When I did this I noticed that the scrolling on my NES games and the animations looked choppier... not sure if that is because the other settings had the effect of smoothing things out before, of if I have inadvertently introduced some sort of frame lag. Input lag though was noticeably improved, even for someone like me who doesn't always notice those kind of things. I have a hard time enjoying my games without my shaders... on the other hand I am really enjoying how responsive everything is. Not sure what I'll settle on as my permanent setup.
I do know that I will be using retroarch for pretty much all my games from now on. The raw input driver and the hard GPU sync are such a boon to me. Now that I have experienced it, I am reluctant to ever give it up.
Retroarch 1.6 comes highly recommended
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4 hours ago, lordmonkus said:
I think most of us are using Mednafen or the Retroarch version of it for Saturn but like I said it does require a fairly decent CPU to drive it. It obviously doesn't need a top tier CPU like Cemu or even PCSX2 but you will need something in and around 3 GHz or higher to be safe.
Mednafen is not 100% because there are some games like Burning Rangers and games that use the Virtua Fighter engine that have some problems but it is far better than Yabause and SSF in terms of compatibility.
You say there are only 4 games you are interested in playing, perhaps if you post them we can tell you whether or not we have them and how well they work for us.
The recommended spec is a 3.3ghz+ quad core haswell CPU or better, and notes that requirements for some games or forks might be higher.
From their website:
Mednafen's Sega Saturn emulation is extremely CPU intensive. The minimum recommended CPU is a quad-core Intel Haswell-microarchitecture CPU with a base frequency of >= 3.3GHz and a turbo frequency of >= 3.7GHz(e.g. Xeon E3-1226 v3), but note that this recommendation does not apply to any unofficial ports or forks, which may have higher CPU requirements.
https://mednafen.github.io/documentation/ss.html
I do not know if a quad core is recommended because the emulator can utilizing four threads, or if it is recommended just because its good to have a quad core just in case. At any rate, a modern 3.0ghz+ intel CPU, or AMD Ryzen 3.0ghz+ CPU, is required.
I have a 4.4ghz skylake CPU. I haven't spent a lot of time on the saturn yet, but so far I have gotten the following games to run on the standalone mednafen and in retroarch with the saturn core:
- Astal
- Daytona USA: Championship Circuit Edition
- Dragon Force
- Exhumed
- Fighters Mega Mix
- Guardian Heroes
- Nights Into Dreams
- Panzer Dragoon II
- Radiant Silver Gun
- Saturn Bomber Man
- Sega Ages Vol 1
- Sega Rally Championship
- Shining Force III
- Sonic R
- Street Fighter Alpha 3 (japanese)
- Virtua Cop
- Virtua Cop 2
- Virtua Fighter 2
I was not able to get Panzer Dragoon Saga working in the retroarch core, but it did work fine in the standalone version (might just be me on that one, not sure).
Only the standalone version currently supports analog input, for the games that supported the 3D pad back in the day (Nights and Sega Rally in particular).
Mednafen saturn only officially support NTSC games, which is north america and japanese releases. If you have a PAL game it is hit or miss. From my limited experience, the stand alone version has much better compatibility with PAL, but it is better to use NA games if they are available. I recommend the standalone version right now for better compatibility and analog support, and perhaps better performance or stability on the newer releases.
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I was curious to know what streaming services you guys use, if any. I would really like to be able to stream games from my PC, using windows, to another device that uses windows or linux.
I have used steam in home streaming, which works great for something but doesn't work very well for others. I would really like to be able to freely stream the whole desktop. Any software you would recommend? Thanks.
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9 hours ago, lordmonkus said:
Honestly, it's a toss up. I bounce back and forth between the two.
Stand alone Mame has HiScore support while I couldn't figure out if Retroarch does and it's just you have to jump through some hoops to get it working or not. Stand alone also now has port audio which gives you 0 latency audio if you want it but that requires exclusive audio so you can't use the same system for other audio features. This may or may not be something you want to use. I don't use this on my main system since I like to listen to MP3 music while playing.
Retroarch Mame is easier to get up and running since you don't have to fiddle with ini files or telling it where your rom folder is and it's shaders are better out of the box if you like (but you said you didn't so)
To me it's a wash and it's just personal preference with neither having a distinct advantage.
Better high score support is and more control over inputs and settings are why I plan to switch to MAME standalone. I believe that retroarch doesn't have support for multiple emulated mice, which can be a problem for rail shooters and light gun games. I have also found that save state support is really clunky in retroarch, as it is only supported in the MAME overlay, rather than the retroarch "parent" UI. The ability to hotswap different controllers though is very nice, and for the most part per-game input mapping works pretty well.
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Just now, lordmonkus said:
What ? Mario runs for me using a 360 controller, I can also tiptoe with a small movement of the analog stick.
It is a known problem with retroarch's controller input. It only effects the n64 controller used with the mayflash adapter, AFAIK. Last time I looked into it, they issue has been open in liberto issue tracker, but it doesn't seem to be a high priority fix right now.
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On 5/24/2017 at 2:06 PM, Pyrometheous said:
I do have quite a few wireless devices in my home, however (hopefully), a lot of that will be wired in the next few months. Crawled under the house over the weekend and found yards and yards of old coax cable that connected to nothing at all. I'm working on getting everything wired up to my office, so that should clear up the wireless noise around my entertainment center (where my router currently lives). So far even my logitech unify devices don't work well in the livingroom. That might be the culprit.
After thinking about the whole way retroarch recognizes different controllers and sets up controllers automatically per console differently. I saw somewhere that the Mayflash N64 and SNES adapters both show up as the same controller, so mapping one, messes up the other, I was wondering if I could have a few different retroarch folders and have specific games use different retroarchs? Would something like that work?
Like let's say
C:\Users\Me\Launch box\emulators\Retroarch(n64)C:\Users\Me\Launch box\emulators\Retroarch(NES)
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Or would each retroarch refer to the same configuration files in some way? I'm still new to using retroarch and I'm slowly making my way to using it for almost everything. It's been particularly convenient for it's auto-controller mapping, but it messes stuff up at times too.
I never had that problem.
With that being said, retroarch does not provide the proper analog range for the n64 joystick. For example, in mario 64 you can't get mario to run. I would recommend project 64 instead if you are using a n64 controller with the mayflash adapter. For a few of the games that don't work well with the glide plugin, I used dolphin's virtual console (mostly for super smash and pokemon snap).
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What is rocket launcher? Should I be using it?
in Noobs
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LB seems to tell RL what roms to expect, but not where to find them. I have to add the rom paths manually.
If you can tell me how to enter custom command line parameters on a per game basis in RL, than my most serious complaints go away. I can't figure out how to do it. I can't find any documentation on such a feature either.