joelfabiani Posted January 11, 2019 Share Posted January 11, 2019 Hey guys! Here it goes my extremely noob question, hope you can shed some light here. After long time using pre-built retropie images (dz omega, retrorama...) I upgraded my year LB license to lifetime and decided to start a collection from scratch. I got roms from different packs always prefering no-intro roms when possible. Included eXo beautiful DOS collection and other stuff. Sometimes when adding an specific platform LB suggest an emulator to be used, but for various platforms it doesn't (eg. Amstrad) and other times even with platforms I believe retroarch supports LB suggested other emulators like nestopia and ePSXe. In these cases I searched and/or downloaded many different emulators and now my .\Emulators folder seems so messed up with folders like Cemu, Demul, desmume... and so on. No problem at all as long as they are required. I just wanted to be sure that I'm not duplicating emulators that are already supported by RA. My question, finally... could you please enlighten me about what emulators I REALLY need besides RetroArch. In case of, for instance, not being supported on RA or being supported but not optimized like an dedicated emulator. Sorry the long post, I just wanted to be most clear as possible about my scenario. FWIW, my actual emulators folder: Cemul, Demul, desmume, ePSXe, Final Burn Alpha, FS UAE, Fusion, Mame, Nestopia, Project 64, RetroArch, VisualBoyAdvance-M, WinAPE20B2 and WinVice-3.1. Appreciate any input that help me understand better the mess I made here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted January 11, 2019 Share Posted January 11, 2019 Suggested emulators are just that, suggestions but by no means are they necessarily the best option. Use what you feel is best for your setup. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damageinc86 Posted January 11, 2019 Share Posted January 11, 2019 Personally, I love the standalone version of mednafen, so I use that for a lot of systems (NES, SNES, GENESIS, SATURN, and Virtual Boy) I even found out how to enable the built in crt shader for mednafen which isn't that bad. So my mednafen games look similar to others that I have in retroarch (sega cd, and a few others). For handhelds I use retroarch because of the awesome overlays that make it look like you are playing on the device. Dolphin for GC and wii, and MAME for arcade. Redream for dreamcast. d-fend for DOS. That pretty much takes care of it. So there are some folders in there, but it's by no means un-manageable. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joelfabiani Posted January 11, 2019 Author Share Posted January 11, 2019 1 minute ago, Lordmonkus said: Suggested emulators are just that, suggestions but by no means are they necessarily the best option. Use what you feel is best for your setup. Hi Lordmonkus, thank you for your input. Please don't get me wrong. Nothing against the suggestions. I just wanted to hear from experienced users like you that already tried extensively many different setups instead of trying every existing emulator. For instance you maybe feel that I should throw Final Burn Alpha standalone emulator on the trash and use some RA core instead. To know my setup, and every single emulator out there probably will take a long time... would be good to hear others experiences. Thank you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joelfabiani Posted January 11, 2019 Author Share Posted January 11, 2019 2 minutes ago, damageinc86 said: Personally, I love the standalone version of mednafen, so I use that for a lot of systems (NES, SNES, GENESIS, SATURN, and Virtual Boy) I even found out how to enable the built in crt shader for mednafen which isn't that bad. So my mednafen games look similar to others that I have in retroarch (sega cd, and a few others). For handhelds I use retroarch because of the awesome overlays that make it look like you are playing on the device. Dolphin for GC and wii, and MAME for arcade. Redream for dreamcast. d-fend for DOS. That pretty much takes care of it. So there are some folders in there, but it's by no means un-manageable. I'll definitely gonna take a look on these. Thank you so much damageinc86 for the detailed asnwer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted January 11, 2019 Share Posted January 11, 2019 I'd ditch the stand alone FBA for the RA FBA core and I would ditch Fusion for the GenesisGX core along Pico for 32X. I like to use RA for where it makes sense, if there is a clear and obviously better option in a stand alone I will use it or when I have a preference over the RA core such as Mame. Stand alone Mednafen for NES is not something I would recommend to anyone, even they say it's not the best out there. Mesen in RA or the stand alone version the best NES emulator followed closely by puNES, everything after that pales in comparison. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joelfabiani Posted January 11, 2019 Author Share Posted January 11, 2019 1 minute ago, Lordmonkus said: I'd ditch the stand alone FBA for the RA FBA core and I would ditch Fusion for the GenesisGX core along Pico for 32X. I like to use RA for where it makes sense, if there is a clear and obviously better option in a stand alone I will use it or when I have a preference over the RA core such as Mame. Stand alone Mednafen for NES is not something I would recommend to anyone, even they say it's not the best out there. Mesen in RA or the stand alone version the best NES emulator followed closely by puNES, everything after that pales in comparison. Kudos Lordmonkus! I really appreciate, that's gonna help me to clear some standalone emulators I downloaded for cores. Thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damageinc86 Posted January 11, 2019 Share Posted January 11, 2019 honestly I just love the on-screen, on the fly control mapping in mednafen standalone. Don't even have to go into a menu for anything, just the key command to bring it up and a few seconds later everything is re-mapped. Plus I've been using it for so long, i guess i'm just used to it as well. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted January 11, 2019 Share Posted January 11, 2019 Mednafen is amazing for Saturn, PS1 and TurboGrafx 16/CD but I still wouldn't use it much for anything else. It has a place in my emulators list that is for certain. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryoke Posted January 11, 2019 Share Posted January 11, 2019 Spectaculator for zx spectrum is the best, RA fuse core isn't very good imo. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted January 11, 2019 Share Posted January 11, 2019 Tip for organzing you emulators folder make top level folders for manufacturers or type of game so for Example you have Nintendo then inside you have your Dolphin your Cemu Citra Desmume. Then for Arcades you can have a top level and put MAME FBA Demul Sega Model 2 emulator Super Model TaitoTX Nesica Teknoparrot. Emulators usually don't take up much space so organzing them further may be a better solution than just jettisoning them completely. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joelfabiani Posted January 11, 2019 Author Share Posted January 11, 2019 56 minutes ago, DOS76 said: Tip for organzing you emulators folder make top level folders for manufacturers or type of game so for Example you have Nintendo then inside you have your Dolphin your Cemu Citra Desmume. Then for Arcades you can have a top level and put MAME FBA Demul Sega Model 2 emulator Super Model TaitoTX Nesica Teknoparrot. Emulators usually don't take up much space so organzing them further may be a better solution than just jettisoning them completely. Gold tip. I should have done this from beginning but will reorganize this way now. Thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CDBlue Posted January 14, 2019 Share Posted January 14, 2019 (edited) Some of the stand-alone emulators I use for different systems. I do use RetroArch for many systems, and in some cases the below systems also have Retroarch cores. But I find the stand-alone emulators works better/faster for the below if they do have a Retroarch core alternative... IMO. In many of the systems below I've tested multiple stand-alone emulators, but ended up with these as they seem to work best for my system/preferences: Arcade - Mame - https://www.mamedev.org/ Atari 5200 - Altirra - http://www.virtualdub.org/altirra.html Commodore 64 - Hosx64 - http://www.hoxs64.net/ Commodore Amiga - FS-UAE - https://fs-uae.net/ Nintendo 3DS - Citra - https://citra-emu.org/ Nintendo 64 - M64P - https://m64p.github.io/ Nintendo Entertainment System - Mesen - https://www.mesen.ca/ Nintendo GameCube/Wii - Dolphin - https://dolphin-emu.org/ Nintendo Wii U - Cemu - http://cemu.info/ Sega32X - Kega Fusion - https://segaretro.org/Kega_Fusion Sega Dreamcast - Demul - http://demul.emulation64.com/ Sega Saturn - Mednafen - https://mednafen.github.io/ Sony Playstation 2 - PCSX2 - https://pcsx2.net/ Sony Playstation 3 - RPCS3 - https://rpcs3.net/ Sony Playstation Portable - PPSSPP - https://www.ppsspp.org/ Edited January 14, 2019 by CDBlue 3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted January 14, 2019 Share Posted January 14, 2019 I agree with this list pretty much in every way though I would say there is no issue running the Mesen core for NES unless you have a very slow system. If you can run stuff like Cemu or Mednafen for Saturn you can run the Mesen core. There really is no reason to use stand alone Mesen over the core unless you have a strong dislike for RA for whatever reason. Sour updates the core along side the stand alone so it's always up to date. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CDBlue Posted January 14, 2019 Share Posted January 14, 2019 (edited) 100% agree, the Mesen core is one on the list that is just as good in Retroarch... missed that one That's one where the stand-alone is there more so as a alternative (launch with) just in case I ran into one that didn't run well with the Retroarch core. I was playing around with to see if the stand-alone offered anything that the Retroarch core didn't. You can ignore that one from the list. Edited January 14, 2019 by CDBlue Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joelfabiani Posted January 14, 2019 Author Share Posted January 14, 2019 36 minutes ago, CDBlue said: Some of the stand-alone emulators I use for different systems. I do use RetroArch for many systems, and in some cases the below systems also have Retroarch cores. But I find the stand-alone emulators works better/faster for the below if they do have a Retroarch core alternative... IMO. In many of the systems below I've tested multiple stand-alone emulators, but ended up with these as they seem to work best for my system/preferences: Arcade - Mame - https://www.mamedev.org/ Atari 5200 - Altirra - http://www.virtualdub.org/altirra.html Commodore 64 - Hosx64 - http://www.hoxs64.net/ Commodore Amiga - FS-UAE - https://fs-uae.net/ Nintendo 3DS - Citra - https://citra-emu.org/ Nintendo 64 - M64P - https://m64p.github.io/ Nintendo Entertainment System - Mesen - https://www.mesen.ca/ Nintendo GameCube/Wii - Dolphin - https://dolphin-emu.org/ Nintendo Wii U - Cemu - http://cemu.info/ Sega32X - Kega Fusion - https://segaretro.org/Kega_Fusion Sega Dreamcast - Demul - http://demul.emulation64.com/ Sega Saturn - Mednafen - https://mednafen.github.io/ Sony Playstation 2 - PCSX2 - https://pcsx2.net/ Sony Playstation 3 - RPCS3 - https://rpcs3.net/ Sony Playstation Portable - PPSSPP - https://www.ppsspp.org/ Great summary, thanks a lot CDBlue. I'm following DOS76 advice and organizing the emulators hierarchically. These definitely will be present on this tree. I'll try as possible to alternate between the RA core and standalone to get my own impressions but the feedback from you guys its already helping to know the route to follow. Thank you all. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ItchyRobot Posted January 21, 2019 Share Posted January 21, 2019 @joelfabiani Can you explain the way you are organizing your folders a little better for us noobs? I couldn't really follow the previous posts instructions =( I am going to start adding other emulators soon and want to organize it correctly the first time. I currently only have MAME set up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joelfabiani Posted January 21, 2019 Author Share Posted January 21, 2019 (edited) 16 minutes ago, ItchyRobot said: @joelfabiani Can you explain the way you are organizing your folders a little better for us noobs? I couldn't really follow the previous posts instructions =( I am going to start adding other emulators soon and want to organize it correctly the first time. I currently only have MAME set up. Hey ItchyRobot, not sure if my scenario can help you but the only thing I did was to structure the Emulators instead of all of them on the same directory. I attached a screenshot here in case it can shed some light. Edited January 21, 2019 by joelfabiani Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ItchyRobot Posted January 21, 2019 Share Posted January 21, 2019 Thanks @joelfabiani This helps a lot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fromlostdays Posted January 21, 2019 Share Posted January 21, 2019 To broaden this list a bit, you're definitely going to want MAME standalone, but not just for arcade/mame roms. It's good to have for stuff like Aamber Pegasus, as to my knowledge, MAME and MESS are the only emulators which emulate it. MAME now emulates a ridiculous amount of systems, so for obscure stuff its often best to start there, and I'm not going to list all the systems I use MAME for here. But to broaden the list in case you ever want to get into lesser used systems where mame either isn't an option or isn't the best: RPCEmu - Acorn Archimedes PRoject Tempest - Atari Jaguar CD (This barely works) Snes9x (standalone) - Bandai Sufami Turbo WinVice - Commodore 16 / Vic 20 etc. DICE - Dice games (some of the oldest games that exist, think pong) Flash Player Projector - Flash Games Dosbox - Microsoft MS Dos including exo's set and win3xo set BlueMSX - Microsoft MSX/MSX2/ Spectravideo T98-Next - NEC PC-9801 Demul - Sega Hikaru Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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