After a few years off getting back into Retro Gaming

[alexis524]

9 minutes ago, DOS76 said:

I strongly suggest you check out the LB YouTube tutorial section there is a plethora of information there that can take out a lot of the guess work when setting things up. Especially for RetroArch.

I second this. 

It'll help you navigate it and you'll be zipping around in RA in no time flat.

[SentaiBrad]

In the older tutorials that I did, the RA buttons were still Z and X, but it has since changed to Enter and Backspace. The SNES Beginner tutorial is all about RetroArch and I walked you through every step.

[Lordmonkus]

2 hours ago, wolfhound89 said:

Thank you to all for the comments and suggestions.  I am happy to see that the community is so active and willing to help.

So, here is what my near term plan is. 

• Install and work with NES emulator
• Install and work with RetroArch

I have tried both the USB X360 wired controller and USB SNES controller.  Hopefully these baby steps will help me decide which one to go with.

 

I was given a small HyperSpin build and it drove me crazy trying to get my controllers set-up for the various emulators.   So, I will proceed with my plan in hopes of making progress this weekend.  I hope that this will be a stepping stone to my larger plan.

 

 

 

Thanks again.

 

 

Good place to start, get your feet wet with a simple emulator like I suggested. Get the hang of the basics with Launchbox and then work up from there. You will find pretty quickly that there is often no "perfect" emulator, you will find a flaw in just about all of them in some way or another.

Some are easier to setup while others might be more complicated they offer a lot more functionality. We're all here to help and answer questions you might have.

[damageinc86]

I second the +1 for moving into Launchbox.  There is so much ease that has been brought to the frontend experience with Launchbox/Bigbox.  It has finally given us most everything that should have been a "given" with other frontends.  I never knew why certain things weren't present, and then here comes Launchbox out of nowhere and bing, bang, boom!  basically everything I wanted from a frontend.  With actual attention payed to the community and what we need.  It's great, you will never look back. 

didn't mean to hate on Retroarch, but that was my experience, and it is valid to add to a proposed setup question.  Doesn't mean I truly hate it to the fact I'm loosing sleep, but it just didn't work right for me, so oh well.  life goes on.  Maybe it's time to give it another shot.

[NLS]

7 hours ago, alexis524 said:

good to know. It's been a minute since i had to go into the menu and cruise around. thanks for the correction

@NLS, what has you frustrated with RA specifically?

I don't want to ruin the thread. Roughly only, ( a ) I find the design confusing and many things overcomplicated for no reason really and ( b ) I hate that the major part of the equation, the actual emulators, are only treated as irrelevant building blocks, whereas libretro itself is considered to big boy that will take control of everything. I would prefer if libretro was instead a nice library, politely pushed to emulator developers to use and solve many I/O problems and discrepancies. I also hate that it is usually a few versions back (cores vs stand-alone emus). I also hate the RA GUI (looks like HTPC from 2004). I might re-think things if mamedev (for example, as a major player of the emulation game) released with every official MAME version, also the "core" version. Anyway, enough for off-topic.

 

Back to the topic, I believe the easiest way to get back to MAME, is to get back to MAME. As is. It is literally 5 minutes of config to be up and running. From local disk or network. Anywhere.

[Lordmonkus]

2 minutes ago, NLS said:

( a ) I find the design confusing and many things overcomplicated for no reason really

It's UI Is designed for what it is which is a cross platform (Windows, Android, Linux and even PSP and PS3) all in one controller driven emulator and frontend. Everything can be configured and controlled with a controller and for this it does the job very well.

5 minutes ago, NLS said:

( b ) I hate that the major part of the equation, the actual emulators, are only treated as irrelevant building blocks, whereas libretro itself is considered to big boy that will take control of everything. I would prefer if libretro was instead a nice library, politely pushed to emulator developers to use and solve many I/O problems and discrepancies

What are you even talking about here ? This is just a bunch of gibberish that makes no sense. 

8 minutes ago, NLS said:

I also hate that it is usually a few versions back (cores vs stand-alone emus)

This is just more nonsense. Depending on the core many are actually updated more than the emulators they are based off to begin with, Nestopia is just one prime example. But yes some are indeed outdated like the PSP core, this is a core by core thing though and not Retroarch as a whole. Just because the core version numbers don't change doesn't mean that the cores themselves are not updated and back ported with improvements made in the emulator the core was built from.

10 minutes ago, NLS said:

I also hate the RA GUI (looks like HTPC from 2004)

See the first quote response at the top of this post.

13 minutes ago, NLS said:

I believe the easiest way to get back to MAME, is to get back to MAME

Anyways, this will be last post bashing something just for the sake of bashing it. The OP asked for simple emulators to get back in to emulation and some people here decided to make this their personal "shit on Retroarch" thread. You can have your opinion about something and voice it but repeatedly shitting all over something with nothing other than nonsense is completely unhelpful to people. Any further posts like the one above will simply be deleted and may result in warnings.

 

[wolfhound89]

I would like to thank everyone who posted guidance and comments to my thread.  My apologies for not posting an update on my progress.  So, I wanted to let you know that I have installed Retroarch and things a moving along quite well.  I scanned in some NES Roms and have been having some fun.  Controller is working great.  The only new question I have is in regards to scanning in new Roms.  I had a folder of NES Roms that worked under HS and stand alone emulators.  However, when I scan with Retroarch only 5 of the 150 show up.  Is this because of their age?  Could they need to be updated?

 

Thank you again.

[Lordmonkus]

If you are referring to scanning them within Retroarch that is completely unnecessary when going through Launchbox.

You would only "need" to scan your roms within Retroarch if you are wanting to join other players with netplay.

As for why Retroarch not scanning in some games it is because your roms do not match up with its CRC checksum. Retroarch checks your roms against a checksum contained in its database which uses the No-Intro set to compare against.

[wolfhound89]

Thanks lordmonkus.  I appreciate your explanation.   It helps me understand how things are working as I progress from one simple emulator (NES) to others eventually after three being set-up in RA I think that is when I will take the plunge and add the next layer of complexity and install launchbox.