midas

When I had slowdown/noise crackling in Retroarch it was across all cores, and had to do with my resolution and refresh rate on the monitor. Other emulators worked fine. I'm wondering if you have an override in the Flycast core that has a different refresh rate than what your monitor is running at?

Out of curiosity, what version did you update from? 13.19? Or an earlier version?

(Per favore perdonate la mia traduzione) Non conosco Bizhawk, ma il percorso dell'emulatore nel tuo screenshot mostra Nintendo Entertainment System.exe. È il percorso/eseguibile dell'emulatore corretto?

Same here. It authenticated during the test yesterday when I was setting up my new PC, but not today. FTP and web working normally.

I think I've found the problem: Starting in Launchbox 13.15 something appears to have changed with how it passes characters in a file path to the emulator. In all of my testing I'd either just copied the folder with the MvC2 CHD over to the new installation, or--when trying CHDs from different sources--replaced the file that was there (even changing its name but not its folder). In my fresh 13.20 install however, I'd only placed the CHD file in the Sega Dreamcast folder rather than having it in a subfolder for the game. In continuing testing this morning I happened to notice what appeared to be double spaces before (USA) in the folder name. I removed the extra space, updated the game's launch path, and the game launched fine. So it looks like although Launchbox can see the extra space (it's visible when viewing the path in the launch location) it's not passing that on to Retroarch when telling it to launch the game. This is shown in the log console I posted before, where it said it couldn't read the attributes of the file--of course it couldn't, because the path it was given didn't have the extra space in the folder name. To further test this, I went to a game I've launched a hundred times: Castlevania - Symphony of the Night on PS1. I launched the game successfully, then exited. I located the folder with the BIN/CUE and added an extra space to it. In Launchbox I edited the metadata, went to the Launching section and browsed to the new location of the .CUE file. I confirmed that the folder now showed the extra space. I saved the settings and tried to launch the game. It did not launch. I renamed the folder to remove the extra space, re-browsed to/selected the .CUE and saved the settings. I successfully launched the game.

I think I've found the problem: Starting in Launchbox 13.15 something appears to have changed with how it passes characters in a file path to the emulator. In all of my testing I'd either just copied the folder with the MvC2 CHD over to the new installation, or--when trying CHDs from different sources--replaced the file that was there (even changing its name but not its folder). In my fresh 13.20 install however, I'd only placed the CHD file in the Sega Dreamcast folder rather than having it in a subfolder for the game. In continuing testing this morning I happened to notice what appeared to be double spaces before (USA) in the folder name. I removed the extra space, updated the game's launch path, and the game launched fine. So it looks like although Launchbox can see the extra space (it's visible when viewing the path in the launch location) it's not passing that on to Retroarch when telling it to launch the game. This is shown in the log console I posted before, where it said it couldn't read the attributes of the file--of course it couldn't, because the path it was given didn't have the extra space in the folder name. To further test this, I went to a game I've launched a hundred times: Castlevania - Symphony of the Night on PS1. I launched the game successfully, then exited. I located the folder with the BIN/CUE and added an extra space to it. In Launchbox I edited the metadata, went to the Launching section and browsed to the new location of the .CUE file. I confirmed that the folder now showed the extra space. I saved the settings and tried to launch the game. It did not launch. I renamed the folder to remove the extra space, re-browsed to/selected the .CUE and saved the settings. I successfully launched the game.

Well, I have a little more information that may be helpful, but I still don't understand the issue. I went into retroarch.cfg and set log_verbosity to True, then did a screen recording to get what flashed on the screen on a failed load. I've tried disabling the "Extract ROM archives before running" option but it doesn't make a difference. The same .CHD file copied to my fresh 13.20 installation loads fine.

So, a fresh install of 13.20 launched the game without issue. Creating a second fresh install of 13.19 in another directory does not launch the game. I updated my 13.14 install to 13.20 and it does not launch the game. I updated the fresh install of 13.19 to 13.20 and it does not launch the game. Same issue as before--I'll see retroarch.exe show up in Task Manager for about 1-2 seconds, then it disappears. Launching RetroArch manually and then loading the core -> game still works fine. Actually, retroarch.exe will show up, then another copy, then they both disappear. I've tried adding -v --log-file retroarch.log to the command-line parameters of the emulator, but it must exit/crash before any logging occurs--I can only get logs with this if I launch the emulator directly (which doesn't have the problem, so there are no errors to log).

I can report that the same thing happened after trying the above steps. I'm not sure what I could/would be doing wrong. I can easily reproduce it by just installing 13.19 (or any version since 13.15) and doing nothing but importing the Marvel vs. Capcom 2 CHD for Dreamcast. I've tried letting LaunchBox install RA and I've also downloaded it separately and told LaunchBox to use that install, but it just will not launch from LaunchBox. Opening RA itself (either directly or from within LaunchBox) then loading the core/loading the content it runs fine. Because of this I'd think anyone here would be able to do the same thing and reproduce it as well. I've also sourced other copies of the game elsewhere. I can see that LaunchBox starts RA (as I see the process appear then disappear). Is there some logging I can enable in RA to see what happened?

I can give that a shot, however I have this issue on a fresh install of LaunchBox in a different location (or on a different machine). No plugins installed and only this one game added, albeit it loads fine if I launch RetroArch itself and load it.

The problem was with multiple games in multiple systems; MvC2 is just the one I remember the most and what I was using for testing. These are the same settings I have. I did try unchecking the "hide console" box but no dice. It's strange, as I can reproduce every time with every version of LaunchBox from 13.15. Just a fresh install, install RetroArch, import that one game, and it won't launch. I do same steps using 13.14 and it loads without issue.

I'd previously posted an issue about launching some titles that has apparently occured since 13.15. There are several titles that I'd run across, but the only one I remember (and can readily reproduce) is Marvel vs. Capcom 2 for Dreamcast. I just updated to 13.19 to see if the game would launch, but I still have the same issue. - Launching the game from LaunchBox/BigBox fails (retroarch.exe shows up in Task Manager, then closes with nothing ever showing up on screen). - Launching RetroArch by itself, loading the Flycast core, then loading the game works fine. - I also tried a fresh install of 13.19 to a different location, imported Marvel vs. Capcom 2, let LaunchBox install RetroArch. Same problem. - Going back to 13.14 the game works without issue. What should I be looking at? I've seen similar posts on the forums but so far nothing to indicate what the issue could be.

I'd made Favorites playlists in the past and had no issue updating the logo at the top as well as the background for the playlist. I'm trying to make one just for a particular game series (Castlevania) and having a heck of a time. I named the playlist Castlevania Games. I saved a background image to \Themes\Unified\Images\Theme\Background\Castlevania Games.png. I saved a logo image to \Themes\Unified\Images\Theme\Logo\Castlevania Games.png. I can get the logo to show up, but the background never showed up. I have confirmed that the logo has a transparent background, though the background didn't show up even before I'd had the logo (it'd just have BigBox at the top and a black background). Are there specific requirements for background images? **EDIT** Disregard. I decided to open it in paint and save the background as a .jpg and that worked, so I expect there's something wonky with the file I had.

I have confirmed issues launching various games on all of the systems I had that had been updated beyond 13.14. I see other folks with posts in the last 6 months having similar issues. Do we have any idea what the issue is? The only game I remember wasn't launching was Marvel vs. Capcom 2 for Dreamcast, so that's the barometer I was using for my testing. I can confirm it will not launch from Launchbox (using Retroarch) in any version after 13.14, but launches fine when loaded from within Retroarch itself. To confirm my testing method: I would install a fresh copy of LaunchBox in a new folder. I would import the Marvel vs. Capcom 2 Dreamcast .chd file, telling it to use Retroarch and allowing it to install it, using flycast-libretro core (I also had tried downloading Retroarch from their site and instructing LaunchBox to use that, but it didn't make a difference). Once imported I tried to launch the game. The retroarch.exe process showed up in Task Manager, then after a few seconds disappeared. I launched Retroarch directly, loaded the flycast-libretro core, then loaded the Marvel vs. Capcom 2 .chd and it worked fine. I repeated those for every version from 13.14 through 13.18 and from 13.15 onward I had the same problem--13.14 is the last one that worked.

I posted about this same thing yesterday, but it isn't nearly as widespread for me as what you experienced. For me it's a game here or there. For example, out of 15 Dreamcast games I tried to launch only Marvel vs. Capcom 2 had the issue. Like you, it worked fine in 13.14, but not at all in later versions. I don't know how many games are affected on my system; so far Marvel vs Capcom 2 is the only one I've seen.