Total Noob with lots of questions

[ABeezy13]

Hey everyone,

 

First post here... I may end up being all over the place with questions and pieces of information that pertain to what I am trying to do. So I would like to start by apologizing for anything that may be in the wrong section or already answered elsewhere.

What I am looking to do is build a "console" so to speak that. What I would like to do to test this first is turn my gaming rig into a home emulation console free of any mouse and keyboard control after initial set up. If I can achieve what I am looking to do I would then eventually like to turn a small form factor pc into this retro "console. I am not worried about my gaming rig specs as its a beast of a machine that can handle all emulation with out problems. However if can achieve this successfully I am curious if I purchase this Alienware Alpha machine can I successfully achieve my goal? Here is the link to the build: http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/productdetails/alienware-alpha/dkcwa05hbts?oc=dkcwa05hbts&l=en&s=dhs. With that being said I am NOT looking to emulate past Gamecube or PS2... I think this build would be capable of doing everything from NES, Sega, N64, PS1 & 2 as well as Gamecube.

Quote

Alienware Alpha Build Specs for "retro console":

Processor: Intel® Core™ i3-4170T Processor Dual-Core (3MB Cache, up to 3.2 GHz)
Operating System: Windows 10 Home 64-bit
Video Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX GPU 2GB GDDR5
Memory: 4GB DDR3L 1600MHz Memory; up to 8GB
Hard Drive: 500 GB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s
Wireless: Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 3160 1x1 + Bluetooth 4.0

 

I have poked around and seen others say they were able to successfully get there windows PC to boot right into Big Box as their front end and navigate through and select consoles and roms with just a controller. So what I am asking here is all of the following:

 

* Is there a tutorial that guide a HUGE noob step by step from the very beginning through the end. (Everything from installing and paying for Big Box to downloading all needed emulators and adjusting the settings?
* Setting up complete controller configuration (For me I have bluetooth 8bitdo SNES controllers, PS4 controller for PS1 & 2, Bluetooth N64 controller that I would like to be able to use all of them with their respective systems and have them all be able to sift through the Big Box front end)
* Setting up Windows to boot directly into Big Box
* Other random tutorials for theme customization, game saves, controller shortcuts, etc.

 

I basically just do not know the best way to start this project after the having the necessary hardware. Any tips, tricks, help, and/or support would be great!

 

Thanks in advance everyone!

Edited January 6, 2017 by ABeezy13

[SentaiBrad]

Yea, that machine should be good to go even with GameCube, Wii and PS2 being run at a lower level (not super high internal resolution up-scaling) even.

We have tutorials for a lot of everything. The SNES Beginner tutorial is probably the best place to start. Just plug in the latest version of the software that I show off and it should all be relatively the same, save for some new features. Purchasing is honestly easy if you've made purchases online, and all you need to do is drop in the License.xml that you'll receive in your purchase e-mail in to the LB folder. Here is the entire Tutorial playlist. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6pTDaHeAz-WMcNURVPU-1xLN_TVpT3FB

Go through that list and start picking out what looks like a good tutorial. Like I said, I think the SNES Tutorial might be the best place to start. A little bit of exploring will also go a long way as well, going through the options menu. You'll honestly pick up on a lot of it, It's laid out fairly easily. Big Box is your controller centric software, LaunchBox is primarily keyboard and mouse, and where everything gets primarily set up. The Feature Specific tutorials might be of help too, like Controller Automation, Scrape As, How EmuMovies works in LaunchBox, How to Use Custom Big Box Themes (there's another theme related tutorial coming out in about an hour and a half from right now), and since I utilize RetroArch quite often enough then the RetroArch tutorials for Custom Configs and Info Files is also a must. Mostly everything else is system related, so start with SNES so you can get a beginner friendly tutorial, then start watching tutorials for the systems you want next.

For starting Big Box with Windows, there is plenty of software that can do this for you, you'll be looking to create a custom shell essentially, so that Windows Explorer doesn't launch with the machine, only Big Box. Otherwise, if you just want Big Box to start, a low rent alternative is to just copy the exe in to the Windows 7, 8 or 10 Start Up folder (Google can help you more there).

If you have any more odd and end's questions, feel free to ask. Watching the tutorials should help a lot, and you should honestly pick up on stuff fairly easily, especially if you wsere able to identify a system that would be powerful enough for your needs. The rest we can certainly help with.

 

[Lordmonkus]

Feel free to join us on Discord as well. always a bunch of us on there and willing to answer questions.

https://discord.gg/X3Cwsyw

[ABeezy13]

Hey thank you both for the information I really appreciate it! I decided to start with the SNES Tutorial like you suggested and I will admit I followed right there along with you - no problems until about the 18 minute mark of the video with all the RetroArch stuff. Following exactly what you did I am not getting the same outcomes and its becoming frustrating... this emulator is rough to get started on.

For example I pressed F1 and it did not load my custom config file... also the X and Z on the keyboard do not work... only enter, back, and the arrow keys seem to work. After this step I also followed along with you and I do not see the quick menu on mine to click on (which X doesn't work anyways) so I am already stuck. Gosh I really hope I can learn this and figure it out and achieve my final goal. Hitting a road block already kind of sucks.

 

While I type this one other random question I should of asked in my first post... (If I do get this 100% set up and running am I able to some how do like a "mass copy" and plug and play of all the files and directories to paste onto the second system, or will I have to reset up and config/download most things?)

Edited January 7, 2017 by ABeezy13

[Lordmonkus]

Try a simpler emulator to get set up like Snes9x or BSnes.

[ABeezy13]

1 minute ago, lordmonkus said:

Try a simpler emulator to get set up like Snes9x or BSnes.

I did manage to download Snes9x yesterday and get that up and running fine and even paired my bluetooth 8bitdo SNES gamepad up as well. That seemed pretty straight forward. I will admit I like the idea of retro arch kind of as the "main hub" that is running under the hood for all the different emulators/cores...

[Lordmonkus]

If you want to get into Retroarch then make sure you have the cores downloaded using the online updater tool in Retroarch and then in Launchbox you will have to make sure your associated platforms tab is setup right with the cores you have downloaded. Just make sure the dlls you have match up with the ones in the associated platforms.

[ABeezy13]

Thank you!! Somehow I decided to try again and I was able to get everything set up shown in the SNES Video Its now easier to navigate the RetroArch menu with the working SNES pad I have too! Now I need to start doing the other systems before tackling on more advanced steps and features!

[Lordmonkus]

Good to hear you got it working now

[ABeezy13]

2 minutes ago, lordmonkus said:

Good to hear you got it working now

Only issue I seem to having up to completion of the SNES tutorial is sound. I decided to try out Super Mario World and the sound is funky, and the game itself runs slow. Best way for me to describe it is as if the game is running in slow motion and the sound is too. Not sure if I somehow set something wrong with speed and slowed it down from 1x?  (I am importing almost 700 SNES games though while attempting to test SMW so that may be it?)

Edited January 7, 2017 by ABeezy13

[Lordmonkus]

It's probably a certain setting. What sort of CPU are you using ? What's the speed of it ?

I did a pretty big guide on Retroarch if you haven't checked it out I suggest giving it a look.

Sound issues tend to be related to a slow than required CPU or too aggressive of settings for the CPU you have.

[ABeezy13]

I have an Intel Core i5-6600K CPU @ 3.50GHz... not sure if it matters/means much but yesterday when I installed the Snes9x and tested Super Mario no issues with sound or slowness of the actual rom file... just noticed it in the Retroarch & BSnes. 

As far as the guide, do you have a link? I would love to check it out

[Lordmonkus]

Ok that CPU should be more than fast for the BSnes cores.
Here is the guide: Part 2 is probably where you would want to start.

 

[SentaiBrad]

The RetroArch controls recently changed to Enter and Backspace, and some UI elements changed, but it's still more or less the same deal.

If your problems are settings related, I would replace the RetroArch.cfg with a clean one from the rar and see if that fixes it, making sure all the settings are set back to default. As well, custom configs aren't a required feature by any means, but if you want to get in to customizing platforms with specific settings, they become very very useful. If certain cores are giving your the problems though, try a different from out just in case. In a perfect scenario, the best set of roms to get for pretty much any system they released a set for is No-Intro. So try and grab the latest No-Intro for SNES, and that will for certain give you the best starting point. If you're currently setting up LaunchBox, you're trying Bsnes Accuracy, LB is caching, downloading, and Windows on top of it all, I could see why it's giving you some glitches. I would at least wait till the import is done, image caching isn't going to be too too crazy, and try bsnes balanced. Also, make sure that you have no custom config set like I explained above.

Also, it's worth noting for clarification just in case, that F1 only opens the RetroArch menu when you're in a game, it doesn't do anything else.

More info on custom configs:

 

[ABeezy13]

Thanks guys for the replies. I started following lordmonkus's RetroArch guide and on the Sega and I noticed the sound does the same thing. My PC is now done importing all the games and I have no other tasks running... so that narrows done the issue to something in RetroArch I believe. I tried standalone Sega emulators outside of RetroArch and they work fine. So not sure if I should delete RetroArch completely and restart or what. But I think that is what is causing my issue here... 

Edited January 7, 2017 by ABeezy13

[Lordmonkus]

I can guarantee that there is a setting in Retroarch that is causing your issues.

What sort if display are you using ? Is it a 4K TV ?

Try turning off V-Sync in the video settings.

[SentaiBrad]

The easiest method to start fresh, is to not be using custom configs right now, and open up the rar you downloaded from the RA site, and move the RetroArch.cfg from that in to the RA folder and overwrite it. That will start you at default for sure, and all of the suggestions monkus gives will be applied to what would essentially be a fresh install. This way you don't have to make sure paths are still correct or re-download cores again, things like that.

[ABeezy13]

15 minutes ago, lordmonkus said:

I can guarantee that there is a setting in Retroarch that is causing your issues.

What sort if display are you using ? Is it a 4K TV ?

Try turning off V-Sync in the video settings.

Looks like that may have fixed it... I turned that off and everything seems great!!! However... (see below)

12 minutes ago, SentaiBrad said:

The easiest method to start fresh, is to not be using custom configs right now, and open up the rar you downloaded from the RA site, and move the RetroArch.cfg from that in to the RA folder and overwrite it. That will start you at default for sure, and all of the suggestions monkus gives will be applied to what would essentially be a fresh install. This way you don't have to make sure paths are still correct or re-download cores again, things like that.

However, I did not start fresh yet and replace the cfg. I tested a few more things... Looks like if I load the Sega or SNES core right out of RetroArch perfect audio and video no issues. When I double click a rom out of Launchbox it a.) doesn't launch in full screen like I set the config too, and b.) has the stuttering video and audio... any idea what I may be doing wrong here? 

[Lordmonkus]

It's possible that your settings are not being saved when you close Retroarch.

What version are you using ? 1.3.6 stable or a nightly build ?

Are you using a 4K TV ? The reason I ask this is because someone was posting on the Retroarch forums about a very similar issue of speed and he was using a 4K TV. One of the devs (I think it was a dev) mentioned that some 4K TVs lock their refresh at 30 Hz and with V-Sync on it would slow the game to half.

[ABeezy13]

4 minutes ago, lordmonkus said:

It's possible that your settings are not being saved when you close Retroarch.

What version are you using ? 1.3.6 stable or a nightly build ?

Are you using a 4K TV ? The reason I ask this is because someone was posting on the Retroarch forums about a very similar issue of speed and he was using a 4K TV. One of the devs (I think it was a dev) mentioned that some 4K TVs lock their refresh at 30 Hz and with V-Sync on it would slow the game in half.

I do make sure I hit save configuration, Brad stressed that in the SNES video so I make sure I do after every change  I was going to use a stable build but I went with nightly since you both said you use those... and as far as my TV, yes its a 4K. Its this tv to be specific: http://ca.rtings.com/tv/reviews/samsung/ks8000