General Emulation Discussion

megaten · 16-10-2018 10:47am

Looks interesting, I thought people were looking at a dual boot solution for switch though were you could run homebrew without afffecting your official OS tied to your accounts.

Inviere · 16-10-2018 3:30pm

The Last Bandit wrote: »

An Arcbrowser type of frontend would be a brilliant addition in time too, as good as retroarch is, the UI is a bit meh for jut picking up a game and playing.

I'm quite comfortable with the RetroArch UI at this stage, having spent the summer practically living inside it. That said, it could do with some tweaks to simplify/streamline certain things. They've been listening too!

https://twitter.com/libretro/status/1051522388754599936

o1s1n wrote: »

Is it particularly difficult to get homebrew running on a Switch? Amazed to see software of that quality running on it already.

Very simple. You need either a phone, a pc, or something like this which I ordered (no faffing about with cables etc, just insert it before boot & job done). After that you need a memory card for the Switch with the required files for the cfw of your choice, and you're all set.

megaten wrote: »

Looks interesting, I thought people were looking at a dual boot solution for switch though were you could run homebrew without afffecting your official OS tied to your accounts.

I think TLB's solution is a good one, disconnect your account from the Switch you're exploiting, and leave it offline. I'm not a believer or advocate of modded consoles being online anyway, so for me, it works perfectly - my Switch has never been online, and never will be. If for some reason I want a Switch to go online with, I'll buy another one. Modded consoles online should be banned, but not banned in terms of updating (which I believe Nintendo do, a pure arsehole move that one).

16-10-2018 3:35pm

Any jailbreak to emulate on the ps3 superslim yet does anyone know?

o1s1n · 16-10-2018 3:54pm

Inviere wrote: »

Very simple. You need either a phone, a pc, or something like this which I ordered (no faffing about with cables etc, just insert it before boot & job done). After that you need a memory card for the Switch with the required files for the cfw of your choice, and you're all set.

.

That's mad! So do you have to do that every time you turn the Switch on? Or is it just to put Homebrew material onto the unit and then it's loaded in?

I don't have a Switch yet, but if it's that easy I may need to add it to my Chrimbo list!

Inviere · 16-10-2018 4:05pm

o1s1n wrote: »

That's mad! So do you have to do that every time you turn the Switch on? Or is it just to put Homebrew material onto the unit and then it's loaded in?

At the moment, yes every cold boot you need to re-exploit the machine. Mine is on firmware 3.0.1 which is considered low (current is 6.0.1 I think), and they reckon that eventually there'll be a cold-boot exploit for low firmware consoles (meaning it'll boot in an exploited state), so I'll keep it on this firmware for now. Otherwise yes you need to reapply the exploit if the machine is turned off, though it does survive standby which is nice.

All you need to do is power the console off, slide the jig (comes with the Atmosphere dongle I linked to above) into the right joycon rail, put the Atmosphere dongle into the usb-c slot and turn the jig on, and boot with volume up and power on pressed. Job done. It's <5 seconds of work.

I don't have a Switch yet, but if it's that easy I may need to add it to my Chrimbo list!

Be advised, Nintendo have released revised hardware consoles by now, which are currently no exploitable. Try and get old stock if you can.

The Last Bandit · 16-10-2018 4:16pm

I'm using the SX Pro kit and its even easier (little bit more expensive though). I'm on the latest firmware 6.0.1 as well and find it a good overall solution, once setup the slide dongle is no longer needed, just pop in the USB-C dongle on cold boot and press power - this has the side effect on not accidentally booting into OFW as well.

The only reason I've to power off is to remove the SD Card and install stuff on it, could use FTP but for larger files its quicker to write directly to the card.

This exploit has been patch sometime ago at the factory so don't work on newly bought units.

Inviere · 16-10-2018 4:20pm

The Last Bandit wrote: »

I'm using the SX Pro kit and its even easier (little bit more expensive though).

Just to note, you can buy a license to use the SX OS with your own dongle, which can make it a bit cheaper. I'm considering buying it myself after todays news, that you can now connect an external hdd to your Switch dock and use content from that instead of your memory card.

Does the SX PRO use AutoRCM to do away with the need for the rcm jig on cold boot? If so, do you have any issues shutting the unit down or getting battery drain etc? The reason I ask is because there's a way for me to update the firmware without burning e-fuses (this'll allow me to downgrade in the future if a coldboot exploit becomes available), but it needs AutoRCM turned on & I've read conflicting reports about having that on

The Last Bandit · 16-10-2018 4:35pm

emuNAND should let you update the firmware safely I think as well ?

I'm using AutoRCM alright, can't say I've noticed issues with it. The Switch gets chucked in the dock every night so haven't seen any significant power drain using it. I only use the console as a handheld so not sure hdd support will help me much

Inviere · 16-10-2018 4:38pm

The Last Bandit wrote: »

emuNAND should let you update the firmware safely I think as well ?

There's so much conflicting info out there, given this is all so new. Some people say emunand is great, others are saying it's not real emunand. Any chance of TLDR for dummies?

Inviere · 21-10-2018 11:25am

Having added the Sharp X68000 core to RetrArch, and some games, all I can say is wow....what an amazing system! It's the Japanese Amiga we never got

The Last Bandit · 21-10-2018 7:25pm

All I can say is I'm really enjoying playing thru Chrono Trigger on the Switch thanks to Retroarch, the screen size is perfect.
I'll probably retire my GPD XD and GCW Zero now.

Inviere · 21-10-2018 9:16pm

Tomorrow, I'm going in...it's CD-i time...

o1s1n · 21-10-2018 9:28pm

I went over to the dark side this evening and installed some emulators on my Wii. Have had it modded for years but only used USB loader for discs...put off emulation as I didn't want to spoil playing consoles on their original hardware.

Very impressive! Scoffed when the games first came on it 480i but then had them switch over to 240p - look absolutely stunning on the CRT.

Might be my go to way for playing NES games for now as they're in RGB and my Famicom only does composite.

Inviere · 22-10-2018 3:17pm

o1s1n wrote: »

Might be my go to way for playing NES games for now as they're in RGB and my Famicom only does composite.

CiDeRmAn · 22-10-2018 4:38pm

A,R&E, people crossed the street rather than be associated with emulation.
Back to A&R... they can't stop talking about it!

Inviere · 22-10-2018 5:26pm

Inviere wrote: »

Tomorrow, I'm going in...it's CD-i time...

Ok, I've just completed the first level of Lemmings on the CD-i, courtesy of MAME of all emulators. Fecked if I was paying for an outdated and abandoned CD-i emulator while MAME does the same thing. Granted, it's not at all the most intuitive setup. But if anyone wants to see for themselves, the glories of the CD-i...behold....(it looks more complicated than it is, it's actually quite easy once you follow the steps)

Obtain a version of MAME (I went with .172 because it's known to work, later versions probably work fine though).
Extract MAME by double clicking on it.
Place the CD-i bios files in the "roms" folder (cdibios.zip, cdimono1.zip, cdimono2.zip - I can't link these, so you'll have to find them yourself).
Obtain some CD-i games - again, I can't help with this, they're out there though. Ideally you want these in *.chd format in order for MAME to run them, if you get them as bin/cue's though, you can convert them using this tool.

If you need to convert them to *.chd, place your bin/cue's in the directory that you have the above tool downloaded to, and double click on the "RUN ME.bat" file, which will use chdman to automatically convert the bin/cue's into *.chd files....really nice process, very quick, and all you have to do is double click the .bat file to do it. Once finished, it spits out your new *.chd file, ready for use with MAME.

Now, create a folder in the MAME directory called "consoles" (without the inverted commas).
Within this folder, create a folder called "cdi", again, without the inverted commas.
Every game will need its own folder in this "cdi" folder you've created, but it needs to be named a certain way, so MAME can see it (this is where it gets a little tricky).

I'll use Zelda's Adventure to demonstrate. I have a file called "Zelda's Adventure. chd", and I need to create a folder for it and place it in the "cdi" folder, under "consoles", in the main MAME directory. I can't just call the folder for the game anything though, MAME needs it named a certain way. To find out what MAME expects, I'll use the "CDI_blank.zip" I've attached to the post, and find my game in there. At the bottom of this file, I can see mention of "zeldaadv", which to me, suggests Zelda's Adventure.

So in the main MAME directory, I've created a folder called consoles, and within that, I've created one called cdi. So inside this cdi folder, we need to create folders for our games...I'll create one called "zeldaadv" (without the inverted commas), and place my Zelda's Adventure.chd file inside this. We're almost there, but not quite. The folder is named correctly, but the game isn't. The game file needs to be specifically named also. To find out what MAME is expecting here, I'll look inside the cdi.xml file (see step 6 in this link to get the file), and search for mention of Zelda's Adventure in there. Voila, after a ctrl-f for Zelda, I find this entry - "Zelda's Adventure (1995)(Philips)(EU)". I'll simply copy this name, and rename my CHD to match. So now I have a CHD file named "Zelda's Adventure (1995)(Philips)(EU).chd", located in the "zeldaadv" folder, which is located under the "cdi" folder, which is located under the "consoles" folder, in the main MAME directory. Phew!

Now, fire up the command prompt, and locate your MAME directory. Type "mame64 -createconfig" and this will generate a mame.ini file for you. Open this ini file, and locate the "rompath roms" line, and change to it read "rompath roms;consoles". Save the ini and quit out of it.

Now we can try run the game. In the command prompt, navigate to your MAME directory, and type the following command, "mame64 cdimono1 -skip_gameinfo zeldaadv", with any luck (!), it'll boot the game for you.

I used the following guides as a basis:
https://forums.launchbox-app.com/topic/29631-quick-mamemess-philips-cd-i-tutorial-mame-0-172/
https://forums.libretro.com/t/guide-play-non-arcade-systems-with-mame-or-mess/17728

Inviere · 22-10-2018 5:32pm

I've incorporated the above into Launchbox too, so I don't have to bother launching games with the command prompt, they're available at a click through Launchbox. If anyone wants info on how to do it just ask

Inviere · 22-10-2018 6:34pm

Hotel Mario....wow

:D

Retr0gamer · 22-10-2018 7:01pm

Inviere wrote: »

Hotel Mario....wow :D

And it's mostly downhill from there

Skerries · 23-10-2018 11:32am

The Princess is in another hotel

Inviere · 23-10-2018 3:46pm

https://twitter.com/libretro/status/1054530190905430017

Not sure how I feel about overclocking my Switch, I wouldn't be confident the cooling would be adequate.

The Last Bandit · 23-10-2018 4:10pm

Give it a couple weeks to let others test it out... N64 performance really needs a boost

o1s1n · 23-10-2018 4:48pm

I don't think you'll run the risk of overheating it with an N64 emulator seeing as most of the games will be switched off after 5 minutes. :pac:

Inviere · 23-10-2018 5:01pm

Daphne up next. To my knowledge, I've never tried Daphne or any of the laserdisc games because years ago, the file sizes were just too big to justify

Should be interesting anyway...

Hellrazer · 24-10-2018 7:04pm

Inviere have you had a chance to try out Coinops2 forgotten worlds yet?

Definitely recommended for a small build at only 17gb extracted including roms,cabinet art,music etc.

Id recommend it to a user starting out with emulation for the first time.

Inviere · 25-10-2018 3:34pm

Hellrazer wrote: »

Inviere have you had a chance to try out Coinops2 forgotten worlds yet?

Definitely recommended for a small build at only 17gb extracted including roms,cabinet art,music etc.

Id recommend it to a user starting out with emulation for the first time.

No I've been too busy still adding systems & configuring my own Launchbox setup. Had a quick look at CoinOps 2 Forgotten Worlds there, looks ideal for someone wanting a compact build, or perhaps starting out. As I mentioned earlier, I personally am not a big fan of those "ready to go" builds because the user is presented with a finished product, not knowing how any of it ties together, how to add new games/systems, and the whole thing is easily borked as a result.

I've a few systems left to add, mostly all less common things that might be a bit more involved to get working.

Laserdisc (Daphne SINGE which increases the amount of compatable games over the normal Daphne)
Game & Watch
Sega Naomi 1 & 2
Sega Model 3
PC8801
PC9801
PCFX
PC Engine SuperGrafx
Amstrad GX4000
Colecovision
Intellivision
Commodore 128
Commodore Vic20
Amiga CD
Atari ST
Atari 800
NesicaXLive
Teknoparrot
Fujitsu FM Towns Marty
Fujitsu FM-7
Magnavox Oddysey 1 & 2
Nuon (not sure if this'll work, I have to look into the Nuance emulator a bit more - sad story about the author of Nuance actually)

That'd be pretty much everything I could want then, and at that stage, I'll have no choice but to actually, y'know, play some games!

Inviere · 25-10-2018 4:53pm

RetroArch has a core for PC Engine Super Grafx, nice & easy. Done. Never really looked into the system, only 6 games for it...seems like it was supposed to be a true 16bit machine, but just became a slightly beefier PCE.

Andrew76 · 28-10-2018 7:07am

Yer some man for the tinkering I'll give you that.

Is there any point doing the Atari ST if you already have the Amiga configured though?

Inviere · 28-10-2018 9:47am

Andrew76 wrote: »

Yer some man for the tinkering I'll give you that.
Is there any point doing the Atari ST if you already have the Amiga configured though?

Honestly, I’m not sure

I don’t have much experience with either system, is there much crossover?

Skerries · 28-10-2018 10:14am

there was a lot of games made for both systems but there were also system only exclusives

Atari ST

Amiga

Inviere · 28-10-2018 11:07am

Skerries wrote: »

there was a lot of games made for both systems but there were also system only exclusives

Atari ST

Amiga

Excellent, I’ll most likely only add the exclusives to the Atari ST platform in that case

Inviere · 29-10-2018 12:48pm

Set the below up this morning in Launchbox.

Sega Model 3
Sega Naomi (carts & gdroms)
Sega Naomi 2 (carts & gdroms)

Surprised by how well the Naomi stuff is emulated. Under Defeat is glorious :cool:

Doge · 30-10-2018 5:31pm

The EMUVR Beta has been live the last 2 weeks! I only spotted it on facebook yesterday:

Basically you email the owner and he sends you a discord invite link where you can read lots of info and get the download link.

http://www.emuvr.net/beta

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

Inviere · 30-10-2018 5:41pm

Incredible looking thing, must dust off the CV1 and give it a bash at some stage. Probably be nearer to Christmas again I have the time to invest in it though.

Is there anything like this on the horizon that lets you design/map out your own VR environment, and populate it with cabs/consoles etc? Would love to bring XL Bowl back to life

Inviere · 30-10-2018 6:28pm

Amstrad GX4000
Atari ST
ColecoVision

all set up and configured with LaunchBox today. Man, the ColecoVision is WAAY better than I expected it to be, it's more like an Atari 7800 than the 2600 I figured it was competing with.

Doge · 30-10-2018 6:34pm

Inviere wrote: »

Is there anything like this on the horizon that lets you design/map out your own VR environment, and populate it with cabs/consoles etc? Would love to bring XL Bowl back to life

I just threw that into feature requests channel on their discord earlier on both your and my behalf, and one of the mods replied "soon!"

The game scanner is excellent btw, when you add a folder for a certain platform it figures out which platform it is by the spelling! Nice bit of automation.

Edit: Just realised that i could have pressed autofill instead of selecting the folders individually, doh!

Only one i had to adjust was the c64 and select Floppy Disks instead of Cartridges as thats what I currently have in the folder.

Its the little things like that, which know you're in good hands with the Devs.
I can see this eventually surpassing New Retro Arcade Neon once the room designer is released.

Its now halfway scanning all the ROMS, will report back when its done.

Inviere · 30-10-2018 6:52pm

Doge wrote: »

will report back when its done.

Please do

I'm particularly interested in hearing how the tv image looks, from the screenshots you posted a few months back, it's nothing short of supernatural how good they've got it to look!

Just added Intellivision there to LB (getting the hang of this now

). Another nice little system I'd never tried before!

Doge · 30-10-2018 8:59pm

Okay had fierce problems getting to run after scanning all the roms (about 10,000) in oculus, Steam VR and even desktop mode.

Silly me I should have RTFM properly.

"Note: EmuVR loads labels textures for all of your games into your video card memory (VRAM) at launch. As such, adding a large number of games could freeze EmuVR when loading them at start. There is no known upper limit, but keep in mind that migrating a full list of ROMSs from a previous library is not recommended (e.g., thousands of games). You should start at around 200~300 games, then go up."

Anyway got it to load after only dropping in a few roms at a time, and WOW!

The CRT Emulation is amazing and even the reflections in the tv's when the screen goes dark.

The reflections actually fooled me into thinking there was a real door behind me and I even looked back at it wondering if someone was about to come in!

The emulation is super repsonsive too, i couldnt feel any lag.

The 3D models for the consoles, games etc... aren't there you must install them yourself.

Thats next on the list.

If someone out there doesnt have the room for a retro gaming setup, I would highly recommend this as its the closest thing youll get to the experience.

Inviere · 30-10-2018 9:07pm

Doge wrote: »

The 3D models for the consoles, games etc... aren't there you must install them yourself.

Are they readily available? I'd hate to have different models with differing quality etc.

o1s1n · 30-10-2018 11:10pm

Well this is kind of cool. While randomly searching for obscure Sony pro video gear from the 90s, I came across the XV T550. It's a Sony Titling machine.

To be even more specific, it's a hidden MSX2! If you open it up, there's even a cartridge slot in there.

Apparently you've to do a bit of work to get it outputting video for games, but interesting nonetheless.

http://msxarcheology.blogspot.com/2016/02/sony-video-titlers-xv-t550-and-xv-j550.html

Doge · 31-10-2018 1:02am

Inviere wrote: »

Are they readily available? I'd hate to have different models with differing quality etc.

They were in the original videos so they're available alright, must figure out where.

And the quality looked too notch in those videos.

I think there's a section on the discord channel dedicated to models and textures that people can submit so we should be in good hands.

Doge · 31-10-2018 1:03am

o1s1n wrote: »

Well this is kind of cool. While randomly searching for obscure Sony pro video gear from the 90s, I came across the XV T550. It's a Sony Titling machine.

To be even more specific, it's a hidden MSX2! If you open it up, there's even a cartridge slot in there.

Apparently you've to do a bit of work to get it outputting video for games, but interesting nonetheless.

http://msxarcheology.blogspot.com/2016/02/sony-video-titlers-xv-t550-and-xv-j550.html

Emulation or GTFO!

o1s1n · 31-10-2018 10:01am

Doge wrote: »

Emulation or GTFO!

I was wondering where my post went!

Both the General chat and the emulation thread start with a 'G' and end with an 'N'...that's my excuse anyway

Inviere · 31-10-2018 10:08am

o1s1n wrote: »

Both the General chat and the emulation thread start with a 'G' and end with an 'N'...that's my excuse anyway

This thread emulates the general chat one, it's great.

CiDeRmAn · 31-10-2018 2:58pm

Inviere wrote: »

This thread emulates the general chat one, it's great.

But it does so in 1080p and fake scanlines, all at 60fps!

Inviere · 01-11-2018 5:10pm

Ok, finally done adding/configuring systems in Launchbox. It's been a whopping task, but I shouldn't have to really ever tinker with it much again, unless adding the odd game here or there. Just to emphasize the scope of RetroArch, here's the following systems I have set up, and what I use to run them:

3DO - RetroArch
Amstrad CPC - RetroArch
Amstrad GX4000 - MAME
Arcade - MAME
Atari 2600 - RetroArch
Atari 5200 - RetroArch
Atari 7800 - RetroArch
Atari 800 - RetroArch
Atari Jaguar - RetroArch
Atari Lynx - RetroArch
Atari ST - RetroArch
ColecoVision - MAME
Commodore 64 - RetroArch
Commodore Amiga - FS-UAE
Commodore Amiga CD32 - FS-UAE
Daphne Laserdisc - Daphne
Game & Watch - RetroArch
GCE Vectrex - ParaJVE
Magnavox Odyssey 2 - RetroArch
Mattel Intellivision - MAME
Microsoft MSX - RetroArch
Microsoft XBOX - Cxbx
MSDOS - DosBox
NEC PC Engine - RetroArch
NEC PC Engine CD Rom - RetroArch
NEC PC Engine SuperGrafx - RetroArch
NEC PC-9801 - RetroArch
NEC PC-FX - RetroArch
NEC TurboGrafx 16 - RetroArch (same as PC Engine, but I wanted a way to split regional roms)
NEC TurboGrafx CD - RetroArch
Nintendo 3DS - Citra
Nintendo 64 - RetroArch
Nintendo 64DD - Project64
Nintendo DS - RetroArch
Nintendo NES - RetroArch
Nintendo Famicom - RetroArch
Nintendo Famicom Disc System - RetroArch
Nintendo GameBoy - RetroArch
Nintendo GameBoy Advance - RetroArch
Nintendo GameBoy Color - RetroArch
Nintendo GameCube - Dolphin
Nintendo Super GameBoy - RetroArch
Nintendo Virtual Boy - RetroArch
Nintendo Wii - Dolphin
Nintendo Wii U - Cemu
Philips CD-i - MAME
Sega 32X - RetroArch
Sega Dreamcast - Redream
Sega GameGear - RetroArch
Sega Master System - RetroArch
Sega Mega Drive - RetroArch
Sega Mega-CD - RetroArch
Sega Mega-CD 32X - RetroArch
Sega Model 2 - Model2 Emulator
Sega Model 3 - Supermodel
Sega Naomi - Demul
Sega Naomi 2 - Demul
Sega Saturn - RetroArch
Sega SG-1000 - RetroArch
Sharp X68000 - RetroArch
Sinclair ZX Spectrum - RetroArch
SNK Neo Geo AES - RetroArch
SNK Neo Geo MVS - RetroArch
SNK Neo Geo CD - MAME
SNK Neo Geo Pocket - RetroArch
SNK Neo Geo Pocket Color - RetroArch
Sony Playstation - RetroArch
Sony Playstation 2 - PCSX2
Sony Playstation 3 - Rpcs3
Sony PSP - PPSSPP
Super Famicom - RetroArch
Super Nintendo - RetroArch (same as SFC, again I wanted regional separation for roms though)
Super Nintendo MSU-1 - RetroArch
Super Nintendo Satellaview - RetroArch
Taito Type X - (built in launcher)
Taito Type X2 - (built in launcher)
Windows - (built in launcher) (these are Windows games like SoR Remake, not Steam etc)
WonderSwan - RetroArch
WonderSwan Color - RetroArch

So out of 79 systems, RetroArch handles 51 of them for me. It really takes all the work out of things, once you put the work in by setting it up. Adding systems to it is as simple as downloading cores from the built in browser.

CiDeRmAn · 01-11-2018 8:57pm

The n00biest of n00b questions, but what sort of PC might one need to run all of that?

Inviere · 02-11-2018 9:17am

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

The n00biest of n00b questions, but what sort of PC might one need to run all of that?

The majority of it really runs well on quite dated/modest specs. The only emulators right now that require proper grunt are Cemu and Rpcs3. If you remove those systems, you'd not need anything considered remotely high end.

Inviere · 02-11-2018 9:26am

Apparently Super Mario Odyssey is now fully playable form start to end on Yuzu. There are still some visual hitches, but at the rate its been progressing, I'd say it'll be visually perfect in a matter of weeks. Regardless of your stance on the ethics of emulating a current machine, the technicalities of what they've achieved are hugely notable.

Inviere · 03-11-2018 1:30pm

Man, they really got it wrong with the PC-FX. Coming from the glorious PC-Engine, to a glorified FMV machine

I can’t help but think what the machine could have been

General Emulation Discussion

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