Retroarch Problems

[johnnyskullhead]

Will check that

where are shaders set in default ?

i thought they were only set in quick menu in each core ?

[Lordmonkus]

By default they are off but if you have Save On Exit enabled and you set a shader in a core it will set it in the default and then all cores will load that shader.

This is why I disable Save on Exit and I set up each core separately with their own shaders and configs.

[johnnyskullhead]

tried it mate its just corrupted again

 

dont understand it

 

it work fine for a bit then corrupts and all cores share same settings and dont matter how many times i change they dont stay set as i want

[fromlostdays]

It's been my experience that every time this happens, you're simply not saving things correctly. My recommendation is to start from scratch. 

RetroArch has levels of saves that will override each other.

The levels are Per Game>Per Directory>Per Core> Retroarch.cfg

What this means is that per game settings will override everything else, etc. all the way down the list. If this doesn't make sense to you, it means that your hard drive and retroarch are probably fine and you're just not saving things correctly. Don't get disheartened. It is a bit confusing.

What this means put simply is that you should work your way backwards through the above list. Save things to the retroarch config that you want to be the same across all cores and games. Saves thing per core you want to be the same across any game that uses the same core (and some cores emulate multiple systems). etc.

So how to do this?

Step one: TURN OFF SAVE ON EXIT.

You need to turn this off. Period. And as mentioned it's on by default. With this enabled, any changes you make automatically get saved when you exit the emulator and if you're just fiddling around it becomes impossible to keep track of everything. Turn this off by opening retroarch and going to Settings/Configurations/Save Config on Exit and click it off. IMPORTANT* once you turn this off, you'll need to save all changes manually, and that includes the one you just made turning it off. You're going to want this option off for all cores and games etc, so this brings us to step 2, which you will want to do before you close the emulator:

Step two: Saving changes to the RetroArch.cfg.

In order to save things to the Retroarch config, (this is the main config that will apply everywhere), you don't need a game loaded, just go to Menu/Save Configuration/Save Current Configuration. If you do this after you turn off Save Config On Exit, then it will be off for all cores etc. 

Everything you save here will be applied to every game and core, so, actually you only want to save a few options here, and yours may be slightly different than mine depending on your preferences.

Things to save to the Retroarch config:

Save Config on Exit : Off

Controller Input and Hotkeys

Fullscreen / windowed 

Things never to save to the retroarch.cfg

Shaders!!!! Now, I know I said multiple times that things saved to the RetroArch.cfg will apply to all cores and systems, but that isn't the whole truth. The whole truth is that things saved to the RetroArch.cfg will apply to all cores and games which do not have overrides applied to them. Remember the list above which tells us that basically everything will override the RetroArch.cfg? That brings us to the rest of the steps which I'll just condense into one

Step three: Saving things per core, per directory, or per game.

After we've saved those few settings to the main RA.cfg, we now have 3 deeper levels to work with. ALL of these levels are accessed the same way, and all of them will override the RA config. To save things in this way, you have to have a game loaded. When you do, go to Main Menu/Quick Menu/Overrides. Also note here that shades can be saved the same way by going to Main Menu/Quick Menu/Shaders only here they will be called presets. It's the same heirarchy and system at work.

If you save something per core, lets say a shader, that shader will be applied to every game that uses that core, and some cores emulate multiple systems. 

If you save something per content directory, lets say a shader, that shader will applied to all the games in your rom directory, and won't apply to multiple systems even if the core emulates multiple systems.

If you save something per game, lets say a shader, the shader will only apply to that game.

That's basically it, at least, this is when you have to start really doing your own testing etc. Some systems (like NES for me) I can get away with using mostly per core overrides because I use Mesen, it only emulates nes, and most games don't need individual settings. So I like the same shaders for all NES games. However, for a system like Nintendo 64, I basically have to make per game configs for like every game. It's all in personal taste.

One last thing, lets say I saved a shader, sabr as a per core shader for nes. If I run into a game where sabr doesn't look good, I can still save a per game shader for that specific game and that will take priority over the per core shader. So just remember the list heirachy above and happy gaming!

OH, and all of this is contingent on you not using rocketlauncher. If you're using rocketlauncher to launch per system configs, the methodology is slightly different. 

 

Edited February 3, 2019 by fromlostdays

[CDBlue]

This is why I don't bother with shaders in retroarch, they tend to cause problems unless you do as @fromlostdays mentioned in his post above.  I actually prefer the clean look without shaders on 95% of the systems I run.  But, don't get me wrong, I do understand why people do want some shaders, like scanlines, etc... it does make things look more authentic to what the games looked like back when they were run on their original consoles, on CRTs

Edited February 3, 2019 by CDBlue

[johnnyskullhead]

14 hours ago, CDBlue said:

This is why I don't bother with shaders in retroarch, they tend to cause problems unless you do as @fromlostdays mentioned in his post above.  I actually prefer the clean look without shaders on 95% of the systems I run.  But, don't get me wrong, I do understand why people do want some shaders, like scanlines, etc... it does make things look more authentic to what the games looked like back when they were run on their original consoles, on CRTs

 

14 hours ago, fromlostdays said:

It's been my experience that every time this happens, you're simply not saving things correctly. My recommendation is to start from scratch. 

RetroArch has levels of saves that will override each other.

The levels are Per Game>Per Directory>Per Core> Retroarch.cfg

What this means is that per game settings will override everything else, etc. all the way down the list. If this doesn't make sense to you, it means that your hard drive and retroarch are probably fine and you're just not saving things correctly. Don't get disheartened. It is a bit confusing.

What this means put simply is that you should work your way backwards through the above list. Save things to the retroarch config that you want to be the same across all cores and games. Saves thing per core you want to be the same across any game that uses the same core (and some cores emulate multiple systems). etc.

So how to do this?

Step one: TURN OFF SAVE ON EXIT.

You need to turn this off. Period. And as mentioned it's on by default. With this enabled, any changes you make automatically get saved when you exit the emulator and if you're just fiddling around it becomes impossible to keep track of everything. Turn this off by opening retroarch and going to Settings/Configurations/Save Config on Exit and click it off. IMPORTANT* once you turn this off, you'll need to save all changes manually, and that includes the one you just made turning it off. You're going to want this option off for all cores and games etc, so this brings us to step 2, which you will want to do before you close the emulator:

Step two: Saving changes to the RetroArch.cfg.

In order to save things to the Retroarch config, (this is the main config that will apply everywhere), you don't need a game loaded, just go to Menu/Save Configuration/Save Current Configuration. If you do this after you turn off Save Config On Exit, then it will be off for all cores etc. 

Everything you save here will be applied to every game and core, so, actually you only want to save a few options here, and yours may be slightly different than mine depending on your preferences.

Things to save to the Retroarch config:

Save Config on Exit : Off

Controller Input and Hotkeys

Fullscreen / windowed 

Things never to save to the retroarch.cfg

Shaders!!!! Now, I know I said multiple times that things saved to the RetroArch.cfg will apply to all cores and systems, but that isn't the whole truth. The whole truth is that things saved to the RetroArch.cfg will apply to all cores and games which do not have overrides applied to them. Remember the list above which tells us that basically everything will override the RetroArch.cfg? That brings us to the rest of the steps which I'll just condense into one

Step three: Saving things per core, per directory, or per game.

After we've saved those few settings to the main RA.cfg, we now have 3 deeper levels to work with. ALL of these levels are accessed the same way, and all of them will override the RA config. To save things in this way, you have to have a game loaded. When you do, go to Main Menu/Quick Menu/Overrides. Also note here that shades can be saved the same way by going to Main Menu/Quick Menu/Shaders only here they will be called presets. It's the same heirarchy and system at work.

If you save something per core, lets say a shader, that shader will be applied to every game that uses that core, and some cores emulate multiple systems. 

If you save something per content directory, lets say a shader, that shader will applied to all the games in your rom directory, and won't apply to multiple systems even if the core emulates multiple systems.

If you save something per game, lets say a shader, the shader will only apply to that game.

That's basically it, at least, this is when you have to start really doing your own testing etc. Some systems (like NES for me) I can get away with using mostly per core overrides because I use Mesen, it only emulates nes, and most games don't need individual settings. So I like the same shaders for all NES games. However, for a system like Nintendo 64, I basically have to make per game configs for like every game. It's all in personal taste.

One last thing, lets say I saved a shader, sabr as a per core shader for nes. If I run into a game where sabr doesn't look good, I can still save a per game shader for that specific game and that will take priority over the per core shader. So just remember the list heirachy above and happy gaming!

OH, and all of this is contingent on you not using rocketlauncher. If you're using rocketlauncher to launch per system configs, the methodology is slightly different. 

 

Thanks Mate

will have a look later

Many Thanks for help

[johnnyskullhead]

14 hours ago, CDBlue said:

This is why I don't bother with shaders in retroarch, they tend to cause problems unless you do as @fromlostdays mentioned in his post above.  I actually prefer the clean look without shaders on 95% of the systems I run.  But, don't get me wrong, I do understand why people do want some shaders, like scanlines, etc... it does make things look more authentic to what the games looked like back when they were run on their original consoles, on CRTs

Ok Mate will try again

Thanks again

[johnnyskullhead]

Would you both recommend sticking with specific emus for certain systems , standalone not retroarch ?

Eg ePSXe for PS1

[johnnyskullhead]

If so any recommendations or lists anywhere for best standalone versions for each system ?

Thanks Again

[Lordmonkus]

28 minutes ago, johnnyskullhead said:

If so any recommendations or lists anywhere for best standalone versions for each system ?

Thanks Again

I put a bunch of recommended stand alone emulators in my Beginners Guide to Emulation thread here: 

 

[CDBlue]

I posed this before in another thread.  But, here are some of the stand-alone emulators I use for different systems, and that I recommend. For the most part I do use Retroarch for many systems (no shaders to mess me up lol), and in some cases the below systems also have Retroarch cores. However, I find the stand-alone emulators below work better/faster in most cases even if there is a corresponding core in Reroarch... 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/ (FYI, looks like m64p is now patreon only for downloads on his site, use this for the latest build - https://www.emucr.com/2019/01/m64p-20190126.html for now)
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/

FYI, ePSXe is not a great PS1 emulator.  It's not bad, but the mednafen_psx_hw_libretro.dll is a much better emulator if you use all the bells and whistles in it.

[johnnyskullhead]

4 hours ago, Lordmonkus said:

I put a bunch of recommended stand alone emulators in my Beginners Guide to Emulation thread here: 

 

Many Thanks

[johnnyskullhead]

1 hour ago, CDBlue said:

I posed this before in another thread.  But, here are some of the stand-alone emulators I use for different systems, and that I recommend. For the most part I do use Retroarch for many systems (no shaders to mess me up lol), and in some cases the below systems also have Retroarch cores. However, I find the stand-alone emulators below work better/faster in most cases even if there is a corresponding core in Reroarch... 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/ (FYI, looks like m64p is now patreon only for downloads on his site, use this for the latest build - https://www.emucr.com/2019/01/m64p-20190126.html for now)
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/

FYI, ePSXe is not a great PS1 emulator.  It's not bad, but the mednafen_psx_hw_libretro.dll is a much better emulator if you use all the bells and whistles in it.

Thanks Again

[johnnyskullhead]

Thanks to all for help and advice

 

Really Appreciated

 

??