General Emulation Discussion

Doge wrote: »

Hey Inviere, just wondering which Retroarch shader you're using for games?

I'm messing about with Retroarch for systems like the NES / SNES etc.. for light gun games which will not be included in CO Lightguns.

Theres so many shader presets included with Retorach these days it might save me time trying to find a nice one.

Is there anyway of switching the shaders with a live preview of the emulator?

I'll have to redo the MAME settings and share them with you soon.

The many different types, sizes, video outputs (open gl, vulkan, etc), resolutions (720p, 1080p, 2160p, etc) and quality of displays mean there's no real "that's the one!" shader for everyone. It'll depend on what looks best, for you, on your own screen. So start with a baseline shader that looks good initially, for me on a 42" 1080p panel that's crt-hyllian.glsl (so on Windows, that's Quick Menu, Shaders, Load Shader Preset, shaders_glsl, crt, crt-hyllian.glsl) using OpenGL as the main RetroArch display output.

For most, that shader might hit the sweet spot straight away...it looks great straight away I find. If you want to tinker with it, you can add passes, chain-load more shaders on further passes, etc...I'm not sure if there's a real time way of seeing the differences, but on Windows, it's quite close to it if you make a change, hit F1 & you're straight back into the game, hit F1 again, you're back in the same menu you left off in...so it's extremely quick and easy to judge changes. I use different shaders for handhelds, and I use screen overlays for those too (I HATE fullscreen emulation of handheld systems, so an overlay is a great way to reduce the screen size, and place it within a high quality image of the relevant handheld device you're emulating). The GameBoy shader called dot (I think!) looks exceptional, and really reproduces the original GameBoy screen very accurately sans motion blur (though there's even a shader that reproduces that if you're sick enough to want it)

Regards MAME, I use crt-hyllian for the majority of Arcade systems, sometimes using small tailoring here & there (though I really try not to get bogged down in custom shader options, you could literally spend your life messing with them and ultimately miss the whole point - playing the game!). So yeah, start with crt-hyllian, make changes if you need to, & go from there.

There's shaders that get seriously seriously close to the look of crt's, and there's shaders that look pretty crap to my eye....AND there's everything in between.

^^ Some really nice work there. How are they using those text files, I assume they're being saved as a certain filetype and loaded as a shader though the main menu?

Fantastic, many thanks (though I feel you've probably cost me 2 weeks of my life now as I'll no doubt tumble down a rabbit hole here ).

No I've stuck with GL for the video backend. Have you noticed any benefits in using Vulkan?

Doge wrote: »

There's potential there though as some Vulkan windows games are ridiculously optimized.

Oh for sure, I thought you were talking about purely RetroArch For that, I stick with GL. For modern games, I'll use DX12/Vulkan, depending on what they support etc.

Inviere wrote: »

Hmmm

https://twitter.com/libretro/status/1260439635299360768

And to answer the inevitable regarding the recent source leaks...

https://twitter.com/libretro/status/1260448346902315013

Still, who's to say the code couldn't be glanced at, a solution or method observed, and then an 'alternate' developed on that basis...

So it was a ground up rewrite of the RDP. Low Level Emulation, and for its first release, it looks like it's making huge gains in terms of accuracy. Future releases are eyeing up internal resolution increases, which seems at odds with low level emulation, but the author talks about using a discrete GPU to handle the upscaling, leaving the cpu to handle accurate emulation...so an interesting mix of authenticity mixed with some nice modern-day visual upgrades.

I'll likely not use this at the moment, vanilla N64 graphics are beyond bad (I'll wait for the ability in increase resolution)...but to say that N64 emulation is in good hands is an understatement!

https://www.libretro.com/index.php/reviving-and-rewriting-parallel-rdp-fast-and-accurate-low-level-n64-rdp-emulation/

megaten wrote: »

I wish I knew how Retroarch took over emulation, it has to be the most esoteric bit of software I've ever used. Do people just use premade template configs or something?

Some do, many don't. What are you having trouble with? Once it clicks, it really clicks, and standalone emulators become far less appealing after that. I'm very very comfortable with it, so ask any questions you have & I'll try help!

megaten wrote: »

Nah I'm not that invested so theres no need. But my major problems is it feels like it makes every single thing seem like a major chore. Everything from remapping buttons to setting default directories feels like a major chore. All I really want out of it is a interface you can navigate with a controller but it insists on making everything so awkward.

Well to be fair you'll get out of it what you put into it, there really isn't much to it once you break it down. If you spend the time setting it how you like it, nothing will come near it for functionality, and none of this work has to be repeated again either so I consider it a very worthwhile investment.

Remapping controls:
F1, scroll to Controls, go to Port 1 controls (for player 1 usually), set as you like, then you've three options to save:

1) Save Core Remap File - this saves the controls you've just altered for ALL games used with the current core.
2) Save Content Directory Remap File - this saves the controls you've changed for ANY games sharing the same directory as the current game (very very useful for cores that run different systems).
3) Save Game Remap File - this saves the controls you've just altered purely for ONLY this game (handy for things like vert shooters with MAME, where you only want altered controls for certain games).

Whatever option you choose will generate a remap file, and RetroArch will load that remap file the next time the game or core is ran (depending on your save choice above). For a one off investment, that's really not a whole lot of effort.

Shaders, Overlays, most other things in RetroArch work the exact same way.

Steve X2 wrote: »

Has anyone used the Elgato Stream Deck with emulators or frontends?

No experience with it Steve, & all I can see online for it are Launchbox icons and the likes...so someone out there uses it in that vein.