How do I make an emulator run before the ROM loads?

[Beastachu]

I'm using Retro Achievement's stand-alone emulators and am trying to figure out how to launch a game from there with achievements activated. I know I've read somewhere on the Retro Achievement forum that the emulator needs to open before the ROM, and I know LaunchBox opens via command line, but I'm not sure how to make the 2 work together.

PS - I'm trying to avoid using RetroArch.

[Lordmonkus]

So you need to load the emulator first and then once it is loaded it needs to load the rom ?

If this is the case then the emulator itself would need to be allow a command line passed to it to load a game which in my experience is not doable. It may be possible but I have never seen it done.

Now of course this leads me to ask the question of why are you trying to avoid Retroarch ?

[Beastachu]

Yep, I'm not horribly familiar w/ command line, so I'm not sure if this is even possible, but I figured I would ask.

I've just had bad experience with it working on my laptop. I'm only running a dual core i5, and an onboard Intel HD 3000. Stand alone emulators work fine, but RetroArch crashes. I tried troubleshooting it on their forums, but couldn't get it to work. I wanted to make that clear bc I watched the LB video on Retro Acheivements, but I pretty much got "just use RetroArch" out of it.

[Lordmonkus]

Well perhaps we can help you with getting Retroarch working. If you can start by giving us more details beyond "it just crashes" that would be good. Is it crashing when you load it ? Is it crashing when you try and load a game ? Does it give you some sort of error message ? Is it crashing with a specific core ?

Also more details on your system would help as well like are you using a 32 or 64 bit version of Windows ?

Many of us here use Retroarch on a variety of hardware because we feel it is the best overall package of emulation quality and usability and adds a lot of extra features that stand alones just don't offer.

I have also done a tutorial for people new to Retroarch if you want to look that over.

 

[Beastachu]

Windows 10 x64

It starts to load, but once a window opens I get an error message. I can't tell you what the error window says right now bc I haven't gotten it installed yet.

In the middle of downloading atm

[Lordmonkus]

Ok once you get the error message post what it is but for now my first guess is that it is a Visual C runtime error. I say that is my first guess because I just recently installed Windows 10 on my main gaming system and ran into that issue and had to install the 2015 version of Visual C++.

[Beastachu]

On load up I'm greeted with a generic Stopped Working message

[Lordmonkus]

Hmmm. Where do you have Retroarch installed to ? Are you trying to running it as Administrator ?

[Beastachu]

I have a default gaming folder ( C:\Users\Fat Stephen\Saved Games\RetroArch ), uninstalled, reinstalled & updated my 2015 Visual c++, and tried running it on admin.

same

 

[Lordmonkus]

Not sure if installing to that folder has an effect (it shouldn't) but I have my stuff installed to a separate drive which I know is not exactly easy on a laptop unless you partition the drive.

 

[SentaiBrad]

Is this a new download of RetroArch, fresh from their site? The Stable or Nightly 1.5.0 should work. Also, have you tried running it from somewhere other than your Users folder, like an external or even from the root of your C drive?

[Beastachu]

I downloaded this when you mentioned troubleshooting RetroArch earlier, tried both the x84 & the x64 and I just tried running from the root directory on my hard drive, and it's still the same.

Edited March 30, 2017 by Beastachu

[Lordmonkus]

Do you have up to date drivers for you graphics card / chip ?

[Lordmonkus]

As a test can you try this for me.

Open the retroarch.cfg in notepad and look for the following line:
menu_driver = "xmb"

change it to:
menu_driver = "rgui"

If it works you will get the old ugly UI but it might work.

[Beastachu]

as much as I can, since this is a 2nd gen intel board

[Lordmonkus]

It should still work, Retroarch can run on toasters like the RaspberryPi and even a PSP but uses the old UI so hopefully changing the gui might fix the issue.

[DOS76]

As a heads up for computers with HD3000 graphics I had to change both the graphics and menu drivers from the default in order to get them to work.

[Lordmonkus]

What was the graphics driver you used DOS ?

[Beastachu]

that isn't in the RetroArch cfg. It just has:

dpi_override_value = "160"
input_joypad_driver = "xinput"
input_osk_overlay_enable = "false"
load_dummy_on_core_shutdown = "false"
menu_collapse_subgroups_enable = "true"
video_driver = "gl"
system_directory = ":\system"
savefile_directory = ":\saves"
savestate_directory = ":\states"
 

[DOS76]

https://forums.libretro.com/t/retroarch-crashing-when-i-try-to-start-it/4441/10

d3d graphics rgui menu