wolfhound89 Posted May 24, 2017 Share Posted May 24, 2017 It has been about five years since I last played on my MAME machine (a rather large desktop PC). I started to play around with some other EMUS. Then after a couple of years off and numerous moves I dusted off some of the HDDs and was surprised as to what I found. Tons of outdated emulators and ROMs. It peaked my interest of getting back into the hobby. So, after some testing and research i settled on LB. Hopefully it will help me clean up my ROM collection. While I am just getting started with installation of LB I think that I jumped into the deep end too soon. I tired to get MAME working last night. A bit frustrating however, I think I know what I was doing wrong. I would like to ask a simple question. What would be the first and easiest emulator to start with? Thanks and time to get back into the tutorials and research. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexis524 Posted May 24, 2017 Share Posted May 24, 2017 welcome back to the fold @wolfhound89 Actually, MAME isn't too hard to get set up. lordmonkus put together a pretty easy straight-forward tutorial on getting your set up and running. Look here if you'd like to have a read: I felt overwhelmed in getting my MAME set up and running but it was pretty easy with the help in the above post. Feel free to reach out here if you run into trouble Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMadMan007 Posted May 24, 2017 Share Posted May 24, 2017 RetroArch is by far the easiest "all in one" emulator. 1. Download it from Libretro's site, extract it and load it up. 2. Go to the core updater and download the cores for whatever systems you want. 3. Add the emulator in LaunchBox, add the roms to launchbox, 4. Edit the emulator platform in LaunchBox to use RetroArch for the systems that you want and use the core's that you downloaded. 5. Launch a Game and play. In Retroarch you can use the quick menu to change and save control configurations. There are ton's of video tutorial on setting up all sorts of systems, and it's pretty much all the same, I use RetroArch for 90% of all my systems. It's just the easiest and updated frequently, instead of using a emulator that hasn't been updated since 2006 or something Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted May 24, 2017 Share Posted May 24, 2017 The easiest place to start with emulation would be a simple stand alone emulator like Snes9x or an NES emulator like Mesen. Those emulators are very simple to setup with no need to worry about external files or extraneous setup procedures. I would also suggest diving into Retroarch as you feel a bit more comfortable because it handles so many systems with one setup. I did a guide for that as well as the Mame tutorial @alexis524 linked to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damageinc86 Posted May 24, 2017 Share Posted May 24, 2017 I found retroarch to be a convoluted mess actually. Plus it doesn't even let me map controls to any of my controllers besides the xbox360 i have plugged in. rendering anything past player 1 games useless. Mednafen has been great for me. Takes care of almost all of my systems, plus sega saturn now! I use everything with rocketlauncher though, but that might be a good thing to just try to set up one emulator in, to get your feet wet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted May 24, 2017 Share Posted May 24, 2017 2 minutes ago, damageinc86 said: I found retroarch to be a convoluted mess actually. Plus it doesn't even let me map controls to any of my controllers besides the xbox360 i have plugged in. rendering anything past player 1 games useless. Mednafen has been great for me. Takes care of almost all of my systems, plus sega saturn now! I use everything with rocketlauncher though, but that might be a good thing to just try to set up one emulator in, to get your feet wet. RetroArch is actually one of the better emulators available. Everything is actually laid out in a very well manner. I get that it's daunting, but it honestly offers one of the best emulator packages available. I can also map to my PS3, PS4, Xbox One, Generic N64 and 360 controller right now. If your controller doesn't have an auto-config profile then you may need to make sure to select the controller and set the buttons. In the case of the most popular controllers, like 360, Xbox One, PS3 and PS4 controllers, they just map automatically. My Generic N64 and GameCube controller are really bad controllers too, but they still map. I just need to make sure to select the generic what ever label in the Player 1 Binds. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted May 24, 2017 Share Posted May 24, 2017 3 minutes ago, damageinc86 said: I found retroarch to be a convoluted mess actually. Plus it doesn't even let me map controls to any of my controllers besides the xbox360 i have plugged in. rendering anything past player 1 games useless. Mednafen has been great for me. Takes care of almost all of my systems, plus sega saturn now! I use everything with rocketlauncher though, but that might be a good thing to just try to set up one emulator in, to get your feet wet. Retroarch as far as im concerned is far from a mess. The latest versions are great using the xmb fake ps3 GUI, everything is much better layed out also these days, and multiple controlers can be set up in the GUI. Absolutely each to there own, but current retroarch in my opinion is great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted May 24, 2017 Share Posted May 24, 2017 Yep what @SentaiBrad said. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesBond@ge Posted May 24, 2017 Share Posted May 24, 2017 RetroArch is not a mess. It is a little bit tricky, in places, and I wouldn't recommend it for someone just getting back into emulation, but once you get it worked out, it is excellent. The OP made a good choice for frontends though. I was a long time user of another prominent frontend (Not Hyperspin) and LaunchBox is so much simpler, more customisable and prettier in comparison. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted May 24, 2017 Share Posted May 24, 2017 5 minutes ago, JamesBond@ge said: RetroArch is not a mess. It is a little bit tricky, in places, and I wouldn't recommend it for someone just getting back into emulation, but once you get it worked out, it is excellent. The OP made a good choice for frontends though. I was a long time user of another prominent frontend (Not Hyperspin) and LaunchBox is so much simpler, more customisable and prettier in comparison. To be honest i would go as far to say that its not even tricky anymore, and is actually easier to use than several stand alone emulators that make you use a mouse the first time you set them up, then make you use command lines to get fullscreen etc...Retroarch just gives you easy controller access to emulators, but if you want to deep dive virtually unlimited flexibility if you have the time and patience. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted May 24, 2017 Share Posted May 24, 2017 Retroarch does have a bit of a learning curve but like I have said many times before about it. For 8, 16 and 32 bit console emulation it is pretty much on par with any stand alone emulators for the most part, NES is probably the one place where certain stand alones outclass it. Where Retroarch truly shines though is it gives your games a universal look and feel if you want to use a shader. You can tweak it quite a lot to reduce input lag and dial in audio synchronization far better than any stand alone. And you can easily manage save states and disk swapping with your controller so much easier without needing 3rd party software. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted May 24, 2017 Share Posted May 24, 2017 And it's actively developed with really quality developers behind. If you ignore the politics and just come for the emulation, it really can't be beat. No one here works with them, we just recognize when something is damn good. There are other good solutions out there, and there are hundreds that are simply down to personal use. If you don't like RA, then don't use it, use something else. That wont stop it from still kicking ass though. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damageinc86 Posted May 25, 2017 Share Posted May 25, 2017 Yeah I don't know why, but it never seemed that intuitive to me. maybe it's gotten better. but i spent hours trying every different input driver and mapping never worked. Ever. It would only ever recognize the xbox360 controllers. Maybe something has been fixed in terms of allowing other controllers to be mappable, I should try again. You just hit a wall at some point though when the basic stuff doesn't work. Launchbox itself lets me map more controllers than retroarch has ever done lol. It's definitely worth looking at though, maybe it will be a different experience for the OP. I would do mednafen/retroarch. Those are the first two I'd take a look at. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted May 25, 2017 Share Posted May 25, 2017 How long ago was it since you tried Retroarch out ? Do you remember which version ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snarfo67 Posted May 25, 2017 Share Posted May 25, 2017 4 minutes ago, damageinc86 said: Yeah I don't know why, but it never seemed that intuitive to me. maybe it's gotten better. but i spent hours trying every different input driver and mapping never worked. Ever. It would only ever recognize the xbox360 controllers. Maybe something has been fixed in terms of allowing other controllers to be mappable, I should try again. You just hit a wall at some point though when the basic stuff doesn't work. Launchbox itself lets me map more controllers than retroarch has ever done lol. It's definitely worth looking at though, maybe it will be a different experience for the OP. I would do mednafen/retroarch. Those are the first two I'd take a look at. I agree with you. I find RA to be horrible to work with (a freakshow of a gui and horrible controller mapping) as well, but hey... to each his own. If RA would add simple direct input button/axis mapping (like, say, MAME) I would get over the gui and give it another try for its other advantages like low-latency input. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damageinc86 Posted May 25, 2017 Share Posted May 25, 2017 4 hours ago, lordmonkus said: How long ago was it since you tried Retroarch out ? Do you remember which version ? I've been trying for the last 2 years, whatever versions came out. It's fine for now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted May 25, 2017 Share Posted May 25, 2017 Yeah you were probably using the old ugly UI which was way more cumbersome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damageinc86 Posted May 25, 2017 Share Posted May 25, 2017 i remember trying again when they announced the new and improved UI, that even went so far as to add the nice wave thing in the background to make it look more like the PS3. That still didn't do anything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted May 25, 2017 Share Posted May 25, 2017 I just find it odd that you called Retroarch a "convoluted mess" but yet you talk about using Mednafen which has no UI and a giant config file along with RocketLauncher which is an absolute nightmare to use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thatman84 Posted May 25, 2017 Share Posted May 25, 2017 (edited) Edit:- @wolfhound89 do what lordmunkus said about starting with a simple emulator Then if you want to step up a gear give rocketlaucher a shot before you get fully setup as you need to follow their format. This is very outaded but gives you an idea of RL's power I always read these conversations and think its just people do or dont "get" a program or read the right setup guide for their use case. RetroArch is hard....imo but also the best multi emulator package next to mame...not tried mednafen but alot of people rate that higher than retroarch. Worst thing about retroarch is the controls setup. Maybe because it tries to do it for you but mainly because of the infinate combinations of operating system quirks and sheer number of controllers people use. Im trying to work on their documentation but nobody really reads that stuff "aparently" and even less people take the time to improve it. To be fair if i have an emukator problem i look at the emulators documentation 1st...then move onto hunting down forum posts which are usually buried. I dont get why people dont read or write documentation. Must be a man thing Edited May 25, 2017 by Thatman84 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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