THRobinson Posted June 20, 2017 Author Share Posted June 20, 2017 11 minutes ago, neil9000 said: I like scanlines personally, Here is how my mame looks in retroarch. Neat, the overlay adds the curvature to the screen and edge shading to mimic a CRT? That's pretty cool... though gotta eat up some resources, no? I got a pair of Samsung 204B 20" 4:3 monitors a few weeks ago... both with bad capacitors, takes like 6min to turn on, and super dark. $10 a screen, and about $12 each for new capacitors and I soldered (with almost no soldering skills) new capacitors in and monitors look amazing! Best is... true 4:3 screen not 5:4 like most. So looking to go full screen with everything. But 1600x1200... so that 720p upscaling appeals to me a lot. Maybe when up and running I'll prefer the scanlines. Hard to tell looking at pics online vs playing the games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted June 20, 2017 Share Posted June 20, 2017 1 minute ago, THRobinson said: Hard to tell looking at pics online vs playing the games It is and also keep in mind that different shaders look differently on different monitors. Yeah that's a lot of differents in a single sentence but what are you gonna do, it's how it is lol. 2 minutes ago, THRobinson said: the overlay adds the curvature to the screen The curvature is actually a part of the shader effect being used and is something you can control. I don't like the curvature at all but again that's just me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
THRobinson Posted June 20, 2017 Author Share Posted June 20, 2017 3 minutes ago, elitemanhood said: If there is a Retroarch core that is as compatible with the games you want to play for a particular system as a standalone emulator then Reotrarch is a no brainer. The only system I use a standalone emulator for that Retroarch supports is Dreamcast because the standalone is more compatible. I haven't tried everything yet... and even then I only tried 2-3 games for each because was still learning how to make stuff work. Worst was NAOMI.... how's it with Retroarch? I haven't tried every system with DEMUL yet, just the NAOMI ones, and even then I have a couple that don't work well. Took a while to get PS2 working as well, God of War 1 and 2... PCSX2 worked, but was just random guessing to get a good image. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MiamiLamiW Posted June 20, 2017 Share Posted June 20, 2017 Naomi is the Arcade board of Dreamcast bascilly so the best emulator is the standalone Demul, The Retroarch cores for Dreamcast aren’t that great Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
THRobinson Posted June 20, 2017 Author Share Posted June 20, 2017 Just now, lordmonkus said: The curvature is actually a part of the shader effect being used and is something you can control. I don't like the curvature at all but again that's just me. It's well done though... that's why I figured the extra rendering might eat up some GPU resources or something. Well, I guess my weekend is now planned. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted June 20, 2017 Share Posted June 20, 2017 2 minutes ago, THRobinson said: Neat, the overlay adds the curvature to the screen and edge shading to mimic a CRT? That's pretty cool... though gotta eat up some resources, no? It depends on the specific shader some are quite heavy, but there are also some very lightweight ones as well. And when i say heavy MAME games themselves are not particularly heavy by themselves so it's not to bad. Also i am using that on a 60inch TV so the curvature and scanlines really pop at that size. I love the look personally. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
THRobinson Posted June 20, 2017 Author Share Posted June 20, 2017 1 minute ago, elitemanhood said: Naomi is the Arcade board of Dreamcast bascilly so the best emulator is the standalone Demul, The Retroarch cores for Dreamcast aren’t that great. DEMUL is what I have now... Seems to work pretty well, though still a few games I can't get running. If I remember, there was a SPAWN game for Naomi... not at home right now so can't remember but I think it was for Naomi. Missing files error. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted June 20, 2017 Share Posted June 20, 2017 It does require some GPU power but if you got a semi decent GPU it should handle it just fine. In my shitty HTPC I threw in my old Radeon 7850 which has 1 gig of GDDR5 Vram it handles any shader without issue. On board video chips will struggle with most shader effects though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zombeaver Posted June 20, 2017 Share Posted June 20, 2017 I use Retroarch for most platforms when a core is available, for a number of reasons, most of which have already been covered in this thread. I could go on about some niche things (like this or this) but suffice it to say RA is an excellent all-rounder with some great features... once you come to grips with it and wrap your head around it, which admittedly takes some time. It is not newbie friendly (though that's improved a good deal since the early days) and there are some questionable/head-scratching design decisions in there, but it is worth the time investment. Luckily there's no shortage of tutorials or RA users round these parts. There are a few exceptions where I prefer a standalone emulator to RA though: PPSSPP (PSP) - Standalone is already a pretty outstanding emulator so there isn't a lot of room for improvement in the first place, and in most cases it's just a better option - less bugs, it runs better, etc. CCS64 (C64) - There is (now) a RA port of WinVice, but I don't recommend it as it's kindof a pain in the ass to setup and doesn't have the depth of features available in standalone C64 emulators. WinVice, Hoxs64, and CCS64 are all good standalone C64 emulators with CCS64 being my favorite. The "Maximum 1541 Speed" feature is a godsend and it's usefulness (which basically translates into automatic, practically non-existent load times) can't be overstated. 4DO (3DO) - Standalone 4DO supports a couple of games that aren't supported by the RA core such as Crash n' Burn. Desmume (DS) - The RA core has some pretty serious issues with sound in some games - namely in the form of a lack of sound interpolation that's found in the standalone version, resulting in some crunchy/crackly/awful audio depending on the game. Demul (Dreamcast) - Demul is simply the best DC emulator available currently. Even it's far from perfect, but it's a good deal better than Reicast. DOSBox (DOS) and ScummVM - These are both available in RA but they're kindof a mess to use in that setting; DOSBox especially. Setup for a lot of DOS games tends to require a certain amount of backend work and it's just not conducive to the RA setting. I don't think there's a way to tap into digital midi devices like Munt (an MT-32 emulator) via RA either. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted June 20, 2017 Share Posted June 20, 2017 Most points have been covered here, so I also wont beat a dead horse. It's worth noting that any of the new cores need some time to get up to speed, and some old cores can be updated. PPSSPP for example is bad because it's 2 years out of date, but they're working on it apparently. As for the 4:3 screens, I didn't see any one ask if you were using BB. If you are, make sure to download a 4:3 specific theme, otherwise Big Box will not look right on your monitor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
THRobinson Posted June 20, 2017 Author Share Posted June 20, 2017 So... when you say 'cores' it's the same essentially as emulators correct? like an NES Core, SNES Core, Sega Genesis Core... etc? BigBox, not yet... been using the freebie LaunchBox so far, so a few things limited. Was about to buy BB when that contest popped up for a license so figured I'll hold poff a few weeks, just in case I win. But thanks for the info... didn't even think of that. My thinking was that 95%+ of everything I'll be playing will be 4:3 or those old tall MAME games... very little (if any) will be widescreen. Samsung's I got were $10ea, cost $12ea to repair... widescreen the same height would need to be I think a 24" so even used, woulda been a bit pricey. Used that money towards extra ram and cpu. If this works well, I'm pretty sure my "backup" Samsung will probably get turned into a single player table top for my niece. Though probably a RaspPi in her case. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zombeaver Posted June 20, 2017 Share Posted June 20, 2017 1 minute ago, THRobinson said: So... when you say 'cores' it's the same essentially as emulators correct? like an NES Core, SNES Core, Sega Genesis Core... etc? Correct. Depending on the platform, there may be multiple cores available for use (especially some of the more popular systems like NES and SNES) but they're basically emulator "plugins". You download the ones you want in RA and then indicate which ones you want to use for which platforms in LB. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted June 20, 2017 Share Posted June 20, 2017 Libretro is the code behind it, the emulator, RetroArch is the UI and frontend portions. The cores are just extensions of Libretro more or less. They are like mini emulators, especially because the code inside of a lot of them are based on or is directly from another emulator. As for the theme, LB scales better because it's a standard "application", but Big Box doesn't scale down properly. It will adapt to 16:10, or other fairly widescreen resolutions, but by default, the default themes and most other themes also look for 16:9 preferably. That's why a few 4:3 themes were created. They're in the downloads section when you're ready. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
THRobinson Posted June 20, 2017 Author Share Posted June 20, 2017 I guess the next question is, in cases of ones like NES... is there a list of which are better or more commonly used? MAME... I have a 0.186 rom set, and a few CHD's (found a few Top 10 lists for CHD Mame's and just grabbed those instead of the full 550GB download)... so I suspect that will be straight forward, find the MAME core that says 0.186 and use that one. Not sure what's worse... at work right now, and unable to jump onto RetroArch and try this stuff out? or that my PC parts were delivered here and I can't build my system yet... the parts just sit on my desk, mocking me... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted June 20, 2017 Share Posted June 20, 2017 For NES use the FCEUMM core or Nestopia but you will want the nstdatabase.xml for it which sort of acts as a bios to provide better compatibility with the core. Mame, use the latest Mame core that doesn't have a year in its name. Anything with a year in it is an older build. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted June 20, 2017 Share Posted June 20, 2017 There are several mame cores, you want the one just called "MAME" that's the current one. The choice of core will likely depend on your system. Some are designed to run on low powered systems but are far less accurate, others need a strong cpu but are very accurate emulators. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
THRobinson Posted June 20, 2017 Author Share Posted June 20, 2017 Funny you say that, because when I first tried RA....that's all I was trying. MAME's with years in the name. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted June 20, 2017 Share Posted June 20, 2017 Some cores do different things. Like the Nestopia core is lauded as being perfect emulation now, but it does require a more beefier CPU. I did make a custom list, that I've been trying to get Jason to edit the defaults to. I also need to update it, but it's fairly complete. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1k1aSGkhzHR4L7VDD5CPy-PVMFKiaGOiQhgZO56hUNaE/edit#gid=0 The MAME cores are only labeled if you dig for that info. The "MAME" core, with no year, is usually the most up to date. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted June 20, 2017 Share Posted June 20, 2017 We all need to stop responding at the same time! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted June 20, 2017 Share Posted June 20, 2017 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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