General Emulation Discussion

Colonel Panic · 28-04-2021 3:02pm

It's similar on MiSTer and even some Everdrive variants where you need to go to the menu for it to write in-memory save data to flash. I've been stung a few times.

Skerries · 28-04-2021 8:53pm

this seems a bit redundant

Inviere · 11-05-2021 5:16pm

Xenia has seen some very impressive lovin' lately...

Inviere · 30-05-2021 12:38pm

Very impressive HD Pack for the original Mega Man

sprucemoose · 04-06-2021 9:31am

The_B_Man wrote: »

Don't remind me. My 2 recoil guns are getting shipped on Monday apparently. I'm hoping I don't get stung for customs...

did you get stuck with customs in the end?got mine the other day and i didnt have to pay anything but wondering was that just a lucky break

The_B_Man · 04-06-2021 8:59pm

No I didn't have to pay customs either.

I threw the box out so can't have a look now but maybe he put down that they're only worth €20 or something. The people paying customs seems to be in the minority so he's gotten around it somehow.

How do u find them anyway? I have them hooked up to the telly via a pi 4. Works great! They also managed to get them working on CRTs (or at least my Nanao one) so they can be used on any TV and most arcade cabinets.

I'd recommend joining the discord, if you haven't already. They're very quick to respond to help requests.

sprucemoose · 09-06-2021 2:07pm

The_B_Man wrote: »

How do u find them anyway?

a bit mixed so far i have to say. when its working well its great, but ive had issues a few times with it just flat out refusing to work apart from the buttons. occasionally the trigger pull will register as one of the face buttons too. these may be down to the ps1 emulator possibly but ive had similar issues when playing straight pc

having said that i like it. have only tried it with emulated time crisis and typing of the dead overkill, but it seems quite accurate. its maybe a little on the heavy side, i find after a little while playing time crisis using the slide for cover/reload i start to cramp a bit, although that could be just my positioning i suppose. the recoil isnt anything amazing either to be honest.

overall happy enough with it but maybe a little overpriced.

The_B_Man · 11-06-2021 5:40pm

Ye I'd agree with you for the most part.
Their stance is that it maps the buttons from the gun as a mouse and keyboard so if the emulator is buggy with a mouse and keyboard then thats on them, not the gun. They're probably right to be fair. I think expectations weren't managed and people were expecting a silver bullet/holy grail of light guns.

There's a lot of talk about coding in native support to the emulators. If that gets done, there'll be a lot less issues.

sprucemoose · 14-06-2021 10:01am

The_B_Man wrote: »

Ye I'd agree with you for the most part.
Their stance is that it maps the buttons from the gun as a mouse and keyboard so if the emulator is buggy with a mouse and keyboard then thats on them, not the gun. They're probably right to be fair. I think expectations weren't managed and people were expecting a silver bullet/holy grail of light guns.

There's a lot of talk about coding in native support to the emulators. If that gets done, there'll be a lot less issues.

oh some of it is definitely down to the emulation (and im far from an expert on that subject so im probably doing something(s) that won't help everything run smoothly) but its just a few of the same quibbles happened with HOTD too and i wouldve thought that should be fine since its a straight PC game (much as its actually a bit of a faff with steam). I'll have to try it out with a few more games/emus etc, before I fully decide i suppose. having said that, time crisis is just too fecking addictive at the moment.........

The_B_Man · 14-06-2021 10:33pm

Ye they're great once u get passed the initial setup.
I had awful hassle at the start. Couldn't get the calibration screen to open and nothing worked except a few of the buttons/D-pad. Turned out my TV was on some power saver mode so even though it looked plenty bright, it was still too dim for the gun camera to pick up the borders. Was so annoying.

You'd be quick to blame the gun but then u can't expect them to work on every brightness level of every panel in every TV. Maybe a firmware fix could increase sensitivity. But ye it's probably not ready for your average end user. It'll be interesting to see if the AE Lightgun fares any better...

Inviere · 27-06-2021 4:21pm

Spent the last while adding a few previously troublesome systems to my BigBox setup. For whatever reason, this time it all worked a charm (maybe there's been some updates in the last year or so)

Apple II (some gems on there! Looking forward to trying Castle Wolfenstein)
Apple IIGS (interesting system!)
Atari 800 (again, some very interesting games here)
BBC Micro (purely for Granny's Garden, oh the nostalgia! There's some other decent looking titles to explore)
Commodore VIC20/C16/Plus4/128 (mostly similar, nice to try the few exclusives)
Sinclair ZX81 - 3D Monster Maze, the first ever 'survival horror'

Inviere · 03-07-2021 8:38am

Just tried this wizardry out, it's amazing

Andrew76 · 17-07-2021 9:42am

@Inviere - for someone who hasn't dabbled with emulation since Hyperspin was a thing - is it much of a pain in the arse to get a basic Mame setup going on a PC these days? Most of my retro gear is in the attic these days but now and then I get the urge to play Aliens but cba when I think back to the hassle of configuring stuff. Would love to just plug in a USB arcade stick and double click an icon and everything works (and doesn't look too awful on a monitor).

P.S. What does using '@UserName' actually do? Do you get a notification or something?

Inviere · 17-07-2021 6:33pm

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117623155#Comment_117623155

I got a notification, but only AFTER I clicked the bell...so it needs some work.

Re emulation, absolutely there exists one click solutions, such is my own. I double click the game and the frontend handles everything else. Tbh with the way this site is it'd be harder to communicate with you than actually set it up, so fire me off a PM with your email address Andrew, and we'll sort things out for you.

Inviere · 17-07-2021 7:01pm

@Andrew76 testing mention, see above

Andrew76 · 17-07-2021 7:06pm

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117625156#Comment_117625156

I see your mention in my Notifications list but there's no red indicator to say I have a new notifiction - and I only looked in the list because I saw your post. 🤣

I do have 'Notify me when people mention me.' selected in the Popup column, maybe I missed the popup if I was typing. Who knows. 😁

Sent you a PM cheers.

This automatic empty line is annoying...

Inviere · 11-09-2021 11:44am

Still very very early days, but there's a PS4 emulator in development called Spine. It can now run many commercial games in various states of playability. I wouldn't consider it useable/playable for any games just yet, it's Linux only for now, & naturally 2d content works a lot better than anything 3d for now. The video below shows Persona 5 Royale 'running', and while it isn't what you might expect yet, the game is actually running. Incredible accomplishment, with further progress it can be open sourced and take on community contributions too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXpaSoOxPXY

Sonic Mania

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RE2Cc_HQeiA

Blade Arcus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGJHyJFQg4U

Mr.Fantastic · 12-09-2021 1:00am

Thinking about getting a larkbox pro , to stick behind my TV for some emulation?

Bit concerned over the celeron chip inside it reckon it could be a bit **** ?

Inviere · 12-09-2021 6:56am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117879125#Comment_117879125

I read Celeron, and immediately thought nope......but its actually pretty decent seemingly

https://youtu.be/xmzijWC_gwc

Mr.Fantastic · 12-09-2021 8:52am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117879248#Comment_117879248

Same, but even to run GameCube looks pretty good , I had retroarch on my series X but going in and out Dev mode is a pain.

Inviere · 12-09-2021 8:59am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117879363#Comment_117879363

Aye that'd annoy me too. I know there's a way to get it in retail mode, but not sure how safe it is.

Retr0gamer · 15-09-2021 10:10am

Logged on to steam to see that retroarch is now on there. Did not expect that.

Inviere · 15-09-2021 12:02pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117893572#Comment_117893572

Honestly I don't get the whole point. Sure it'll auto update, but you've to manually manage your cores so it's swings and roundabouts. Cloud saves I suppose is the big thing people are buying into, but ultimately you're using a frontend to launch a frontend to launch a core to launch a game.....

Standalone RA remains the way to go imo.

Retr0gamer · 15-09-2021 12:13pm

I think it's a steam deck thing but not having auto updates is ridiculous but understandable.

Retr0gamer · 27-09-2021 3:01pm

Messing around with Dreamcast emulation at the weekend. Can't get flycast to run in retroarch. It defaults to OpenGL which carshes on RDNA2 architecture so I can't get into the core to change it.

Got it to boot with a standalone emulator.

Visually it's really nice, the Dreamcast had hardware close ot PC but did have it's own renderer's and API but they are actually quite modern so translate well to PC API.

Direct X looks awful but Vulkan looks great. Again I can't try Open GL. Had one graphical glitch with polygons going insane in Maken X but it was a once off and it hasn't happened again.

Inviere · 27-09-2021 3:45pm

@Retr0gamer run the flycast core, change the backend to vulcan, and save a core override. Exit Retroarch gracefully, and try again then to run the core/game

Retr0gamer · 27-09-2021 4:37pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117945992#Comment_117945992

I'll give it a try but at least I have an option outside of retroarch.

Retr0gamer · 04-10-2021 1:13am

Emulation horror stories #139:

Wanted to play some horror games this october and thought it would be a good chance to play through Enemy Zero on saturn.

It works perfect but.... mednafen and any emulators built off it have an issue with disc swapping games. If you eject the disc it kicks you back to the bios menu.

Now this is fine if you can save at the disc swap like FF7 or Panzer Dragoon Saga. Not so much when you can't save at the disc swap.

Looks like there's no work around until they fix it.

I'm going to try the PC version of the game but very much doubt I'll have much luck with a 1998 game on windows 10.

Inviere · 04-10-2021 7:58am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117972899#Comment_117972899

Sounds like a few things wrong here:

1) Best practice with multi disc games is to ALWAYS create and use *.m3u files to manage disc swapping. Very very easy, very simple to do.

Eg:

virtua cop (disc 1).bin

virtua cop (disc 2).bin

virtua cop (disc 3).bin

virtua cop.m3u

Inside the m3u file (which is just a text file with its extension renamed), are the full names of each disc, all on separate lines.

You then load the m3u file in Retroarch instead of any disc, and the first disc will be loaded. To change disc, enter the Retroarch menu, go to disc swapping, eject the current disc, append the next disc, close the virtual disc tray, and continue on your merry way. The m3u file tells Retroarch exactly what discs are available and where to find them.

Even better is to convert those bin/cue files into chd files, and just replace the extensions in the m3u file from bin to chd. Not necessary but saves space, and much cleaner to manage files this way. It's archival quality compression, non lossy.

2) depending on what name you give your m3u file, you'll have to rename your save file to match it. This only happens because you've got a save file existing before the m3u was created, normally the save file would be created with a matching name and this wouldn't be an issue.

3) I've read you might need to change the default browsing location for Retroarch, to anything but it's default. This is something I've done anyway, to the root of where my games are stored....if anything it just saved scrolling through directory after directory just to find games. Not sure if this step is needed if you follow the above, but it's worth doing anyway.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroArch/comments/eeuapv/how_to_switch_cds_on_sega_saturn_beetle_core/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

Retr0gamer · 04-10-2021 9:06am

Yep I've tried all that.

It works perfect for ps1 emulation.

The issue is with mednafen which beetle is based on. If you hit eject it will boot to the bios menu which I think the Saturn would do but some multi disk games over wrote this at the disc swap screen.

It's fine for games that let you save at the disk change but some like enemy zero don't so the game boots you to the menu and when you start with the new disk the save is still for disc 1.

No way around it until its fixed.

General Emulation Discussion

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