General Emulation Discussion

Hugely impressive tutorial here for setting up Amiga (and ultimately with Launchbox) emulation. It's an hour long, but really easy to follow. Have just spent a while setting my Amiga emulation this way, and it works like a dream. If using Launchbox and fancy some Amiga, look no further!

Steve X2 wrote: »

I really need to start setting up my Launchbox thing. I mean I paid for the pro or whatever they call it version.

Launchbox Premium. It gives you Big Box mode and other goodies. I'm redoing my entire emulation drive from scratch, and the best way to go about it is to get the regular Launchbox set up, working, and running exactly as you want it...and only then have a look at Big Box mode which is the spit and polish end of things.

Although I do find myself going back to the real hardware to play rather than emulators recently.

With a set up like yours Steve, it's not that surprising, you've some amazing pieces of kit and it all seems to be very well put together. You've put some great work into the way you have things chained up

Steve X2 wrote: »

Yeah the setup is good, but even with that if I see a tiny bit of interference or something(which can happen easily with analogue video/audio) I can end up trying to track the source of the barely perceptible interference for hours rather than enjoying the game. With emulators and front ends you don't get that, so can just play.

I suppose too that emulation would give you a basis of comparison towards your chained video setup, ie, if you feel something isn't quite right display wise etc

Hellrazer wrote: »

Is there an easy solution to have the same controller act the same in every emulator?

Sort of. If you set up and install RetroArch as an emulator within Launchbox, that (via different 'cores'), will emulate the majority of the systems you want. RetroArch auto configures the detected controller, and gives you that real 'one click to play' feel. When you want to play something not covered by RetroArch, you then need to use standalone emulators, and they will need to be configured individually.

This video covers most everything you need to know about setting up RA in LB...it's seriously well worth watching and getting to grips with (it's really not difficult at all)

RetroArch 1.7.4 released - https://www.libretro.com/index.php/retroarch-1-7-4-released/

A few nice updates, new UI, real time shader editing, and in-app updating (finally!)

Hellrazer wrote: »

If I was to ask you which platform is best what would you recommend.

Imo, PC hands down. If you have the power, you can run anything from Atari to Wii U...all from within Launchbox. You could set Windows to load up Big Box Mode at Startup, and just have it as a dedicated emulation machine.

Hellrazer wrote: »

OK that's a start.
So I dl retroarch, launchbox, install both. Get my cores downloaded.
Now here's my issue.. The 16 bit stuff runs fine. Neo geo and mame is where I'm struggling.
I have my roms and neo geo bios etc but nothing launches.
I've been following videos about some - l command line that tells launchbox which core to use for the above. I've tried everything to get this working but no luck.
It's not like I don't know what I'm doing. I'm quite tech savvy and don't usually give up but this has me stumped!!!!

MAME can be tricky, for several reasons...the primary one being the roms not matching the particular MAME you have downloaded. Ie, if you download the current MAME today, there's a high chance the older roms don't work for it. Then there's BIOS issues, directory issues, etc.

If I were you, and what I did, was to run MAME outside of RetroArch. Grab a standalone version of MAME, with the recommended/matching roms, and work from there. Get it up and running outside of Launchbox, and when everything is working as it should, you can integrate it into LB afterwards.

1) Grab MAME
2) Grab matching roms
3) Set up a folder for MAME
4) Put your BIOS and ROMS into the folders that MAME will create
5) Get content running
6) Integrate into LB

^^ ask away at any point in the above (except ROMS obviously, those I can't help you with on thread, and unfortunately it's critical that they match the version of MAME you have).

Hellrazer wrote: »

It's not seamless if u get me.

Yeah, you need to ditch them and get MAME handling everything in order for it to be seamless. NeorageX and Nebula are ancient if I recall, Or are they still in development?

MAME is fantastic, once you have it set up and working. You won't go back to those older emu's when you do

Hellrazer wrote: »

To be completely honest they were the only 2 emulators that I could get working

Ok so how do I set up mame? Theres so many different versions of it (along with rom versions) that Im going to confuse myself even more. Is there a single version that will do all romsets along with neo geo etc.

MAME encompasses all the systems it's designed for, including NeoGeo. The issue is, version 0.78 of MAME needs the roms for .78. Version .156 of MAME needs the .156 roms. Version .200 needs the .200 roms, and so forth. You couldn't download roms meant for .78 and feed them to MAME .200...it's just not going to work.

So you need to download MAME. It's not illegal, so I can link to it here. You'll more than likely want the x64 version if using a modern Windows OS - https://www.mamedev.org/release.html

I can't help you finding the roms here, but what I can say, is that you need roms meant for the version above (which is .201b). It'll likely be hard to find these roms on public websites, there's tonnes of older roms floating around, but again, no guarantee they'll work. The latest ones I can find publicly are the .197 ones (as a complete set), on a certain internet based archive. It might be worth trying these first, perhaps pick a few rather than grabbing the whole set (a decent torrent program will allow you to pick/choose which files you want to download from a full set).

You extract and run MAME, and it'll generate its own folders etc. You place the bios files and the roms in the Roms folder. Run MAME, and run the game you choose. Once you're at that stage, and the games work, that's the hard work done.

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Christ, I remember the nightmare of using clrmame I think it was, auditing my rom collection to try and get Galaga working again.
Pain
In
The
Ass.

Yeah clrmame was able (when fed a DAT file) to update certain roms so you didn't have to redownload them, amongst other things. These days, with the speeds we have, it's prob simpler to just redownload entire sets

BGOllie wrote: »

been given a raspberry pie 1 board by a colleague at work. initial though was to get some form of linux to mess around with but I'm tempted to turn this into a retro thing.
is it good/ fast enough to run a retropie ?

Seems to be acceptable except for Super FX Snes games, N64, PS1, and above - https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/16039/raspberry-pi-1b-too-slow-for-most-games

Inviere wrote: »

Latest version of Dolphin
F-Zero X
Internal Resolution bumped x3
Official Wii U Gamecube Controller Adapter
Official Gamecube Controller

Wow.

Latest version of Dolphin
Metroid Prime Trilogy
Internal resolution bumped x3
Bluetooth chip from a real Wii adapted to USB
Official Wiimote & Nunchuk

Wow.

(I'm redoing my emulation setup from scratch, and am obviously at the Dolphin section:o)

It's a truly lovely emulator to use. Plays beautifully with Launchbox too

Chardee MacDennis wrote: »

What are you running Dolphin on?
I cant get F-Zero X to run smoothly.

PC. I had issues originally because Dolphin uses your user documents folder to build/store configs and shader cache etc...thus needs Admin level read/write access to the folder. As a result, F-Zero was laggy and unplayable for me (it wasn't generating a shader cache as it hadn't got ther permission to do so). There's a tiny and easy little registry edit you can make to enable Dolphin to use a folder of your choosing for shader cache generation, and once I made the change, it was buttery smooth and a pure joy to play (I made my own CONFIG folder within the Dolphin folder, and pointed Dolphin to use that via the registry). I use the Synchronous Ubershaders setting in the graphics settings too, which will compile the shader cache before play (one time only needed per different game)...works absolutely brilliantly.

If you need any help/tips on setting it up, by all means shout. Your specs will come into play as well, but I think Dolphin is fairly well optimised.

Chardee MacDennis wrote: »

What's your spec like?

Decent enough.

i7 7700K
16GB DDR4 2666
GTX 1070

Hellrazer wrote: »

Inviere--finally got everything working.I acquired a romset of .197 and an older version of mameui .197 (cant find .201s anywhere)

So I managed to get it working on my main pc. I now have a fully functioning mame machine working (I didnt bother with chds)

I got in integrated into launchbox and that end is working fine aswell.

So I just wanted to say thanks for the help..Ive been pulling my hair out for weeks trying to get this working.

Now to get my NUC working and LB / Mame installed on that. Once that's up and running I can get going with the coffee table style build.

Thanks again for the help.

Deadly, glad you got it sorted, & glad to be of any help with it! Coincidentally, Launchbox rolled out an update there yesterday or the day before, which allows you to import an entire Mame set with one button, & creates loads of different playlists for games like Shooters, Fighting Games, Driving Games, etc if you like that kind of thing.

Hellrazer wrote: »

Then Id have to put castors on it

Pfft, put the castors on your chairs

Joking aside, yeah, I guess you would. I still think it’d be worth it. LCDs bad viewing angles just kill these things dead in their tracks imo

rubadub wrote: »

LCD viewing angles will vary. A laptop or PC monitor is expected to be viewed pretty much straight on, so can have a lower viewing angle, while a LCD tv could be in a room surrounded by people, so typically will have a wider angle.

The majority of them just show backlight bleed once you go beyond what they were intended for

Anybody here use Redream? It's a relatively recent Dreamcast emulator with a free and paid version (the paid version allows you to increase the internal resolution). Half thinking of dropping the €5 for a lifetime license...