Retro games and emulation - Discuss retro shit in case you're stuck in the past or a hipster

[Pissmaster]

Once again I'd like to point out that the libretro team had a stroke over the Retron 5 using RetroArch because they were allowed to under the GPL. In RA's defense I think that the Swanstation dev went in for profit on his own without RA's involvement, but it's not like RA is new to autistic licensing spats.

This put Duckstation on my radar and I'll probably start using it when I don't load PSX games onto my PSP for use on my CRT. Looking at it's compatibility list there's like 10 games that aren't playable on it, so I'd just keep using it whether it's "active" or not. Hell, Stenzek is even still working on the closed-source Android version and PCSX2. (Source, no new information that isn't already in this thread)

Oh, thank goodness. Duckstation on Android is really, really good.

One thing I meant to post but never got around to recording was an odd thing in Chrono Cross, playing it through Duckstation with upscaling. In the starting village, there's a gigantic fish as a background prop. I never knew it was a full 3D model, so it really stands out from the rest of the prerendered environment. The thing is, it wriggles around every now and then, which doesn't look out of place or anything normally, but it's weirdly disturbing to see when scaled up. Strange how that is.

 

[Dark Master Xbox]

God what a bunch of losers, why does this community have to be filled with so many shitheads?

 

[Stasi]

That's a shame about duckstation but understandable, feels like I've seen stuff for years about retroarch being absolute cunts to other devs.

At least the guy is working on PS2 stuff which seems to be spilling over into the pc version of PCSX2. There has been nothing for ages and we got an Android emulator and vulkan in the pc version in quick succession. Now just need them to fix the god awful UI and PCSX2 might actually be something that isn't a pain in the ass to use.

 

[Product Placement]

Duckstation is still the best PS1 by far even if the devs didn't do everything they planned with it.

Retroarch is really shit, far more of a headache to use than pretty much any standalone emulator.

 

[Dojima's Dragon]

Okay so, in a nutshell, it looks like Stenzek wanted to just distribute his PS1 emulator for free, but he didn't want anyone else making money off of his work royalty-free and libretro screeched and bellowed "BUT MUH GPL ALLOWS IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"?


View attachment 2947816

Wait isnt this from yakuza whats next panty thieves

 

[Dom Cruise]

I have a really weird question.

Does there exist romhacks for DS games that flip the top and bottom screens and disable touchscreen features (save for games that are totally reliant on it) so that if you say had a DS flashcart and put the rom on it, on an actual DS you'd see the screens flipped from what it originally was?

 

[Finder of Games]

I have a really weird question.

Does there exist romhacks for DS games that flip the top and bottom screens and disable touchscreen features (save for games that are totally reliant on it) so that if you say had a DS flashcart and put the rom on it, on an actual DS you'd see the screens flipped from what it originally was?

I can only assume your DS' touch screen is screwed, or you're trying to use a retropie?
In any case, no. It's not so simple, sadly. Especially not as a utility that you might just feed ROMs into.
There are some romhacks that do some of what you've asked. Like, say, MegaMan Star Force DX (Romhacking link) which disables all touchscreen elements and replaces them with button presses (It's only for SF1 Pegasus, although they did create a minor QOL patch for 2), or Rhythm Heaven Touchless, which does the same thing, making touchscreen elements able to be completed with button presses. Also Dawn of Sorrow NRTS which, again, removes touchscreen requirements for the magic seals and ice and stuff.

As for flipping top and bottom screen, DS is way out of my wheelhouse so I won't say anything definitively but that's pretty damned tough to do from my pathetic attempts at messing with stuff. I've never heard of this as a feature in a romhack, where you actually adjust the way the game renders on the screens. Possible? Sure. Done as of right now? I haven't seen any myself.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Does there exist romhacks for DS games that flip the top and bottom screens

I did some thinking, and the 3DS the top and bottom screens are different resolutions. Google says the DS top and bottom screens are the same resolution, but I've not looked into other details.

 

[Syikeblade]

Duckstation is still the best PS1 by far even if the devs didn't do everything they planned with it.

Retroarch is really shit, far more of a headache to use than pretty much any standalone emulator.

What makes retroarch difficult?

 

[Friendly Primarina]

What makes retroarch difficult?

Retroarch is a lot like Linux in that people have wildly different experiences based on tiny differences in their hardware.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

What makes retroarch difficult?

If you are navigating through the settings with a keyboard, because you can't use a mouse for normal RetroArch reasons, and you open a menu, what key would you hit to close, cancel or back out of that menu? Will it be the key that people have been trained to use by every operating system and program known to mankind? No. Well that's not so bad, you can always try another key. No, you made your choice and is currently looking at the windows desktop wondering what the fuck happened.

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

If you are navigating through the settings with a keyboard, because you can't use a mouse for normal RetroArch reasons, and you open a menu, what key would you hit to close, cancel or back out of that menu? Will it be the key that people have been trained to use by every operating system and program known to mankind? No. Well that's not so bad, you can always try another key. No, you made your choice and is currently looking at the windows desktop wondering what the fuck happened.

It really is hilarious how something so simple is so fucked and it's still the best program in its class somehow.

 

[Pee Cola]

RetroArch is the reason why I install a separate emulator for each machine I want to emulate.

I've probably mentioned it before, but once you've tried bare metal emulation on a Raspberry Pi, it's really hard to go back to traditional emulation running on a host system. Although the number of bare metal emulators out there is still kinda limited, and most of them won't work with the RPi4/400.

 

[Pissmaster]

What makes retroarch difficult?

Here's a story I posted about (twice) ITT:

So I hacked my PS3 and installed Retroarch and the NES controls were mapped to X for B and O for A, so I tried to remap [_] to B and X to A, but then that changed around the global controls, so I tried to figure out how to change the controls for just the NES cores, so I tried browsing through one of the control menus where it maps what control you'll be using, and upon scrolling to "Disabled", it immediately disabled the controller, softlocking me, and even plugging in a keyboard and restarting Retroarch left it completely locked up, so I'll have to reinstall it, and failing that, FTP into my PS3 and edit an INI file or whatever to fix my controls.

The Retroarch Experience™, ladies and gentlemen.

Just about everything I've tried to run Retroarch on has had it not just crash, but hardlock the system to the point where I have to either pull the power or force a shutdown by holding the power button for ages. It is a cursed piece of software, and I wish it weren't the go-to thing for all things emulation nowadays.

 

[UzumakiLeaf]

What makes retroarch difficult?

We have a thread venting about retroarch. Major issue I have is the UI really really sucks and it can be a nightmare mapping controllers especially if you multiple types of controllers. Not only is it a guessing game but good luck if you want to use different controllers with different emulators. Make sure you save it correctly.

 

[Tom Nook's Gloryhole]

Retroarch sucks because for some fucking reason I can never get the same settings from my standalone emulators to work on the same emulator within Retroarch.

Entire ISO files that just straight up disappear, directories that don't scan, ROMs that refuse to play etc. Also good luck trying to transfer your saves from standalone emulators to Retroarch, dozens of emulators somehow have a completely different save type and directory for some weird reason because the entire Retroarch file structure is fucking pozzed.

 

[Stasi]

I knew you could play backup PS2 games on original hardware with a HDD or over the network (I've got a HDD myself) but now apparently you can do it through the memory card slot with a micro SD adapter

 

[byuu]

Entire ISO files that just straight up disappear, directories that don't scan

I was about to say that RA doesn't really make it clear that scanning a directory doesn't just add every file but then I actually checked:

I guess it could also say that disc images often don't match against the database because they're so many differences between different rips.
Anyway, use Manual Scan.

 

[Pissmaster]

I was about to say that RA doesn't really make it clear that scanning a directory doesn't just add every file but then I actually checked:
View attachment 2994785
View attachment 2994786

I guess it could also say that disc images often don't match against the database because they're so many differences between different rips.
Anyway, use Manual Scan.

This is yet another reason why Retroarch is terrible. This shouldn't be a thing.

When you first start Retroarch, it should ask you "Hey, what consoles do you want?". You go through and select the ones you want, and then it'll silently poll your machine's specs, and download the appropriate recommended cores. Then, it should ask you to map out your controller based on the common Xinput standard, and ask if you want any two-button controllers (NES, PCE, SMS, etc) to map their left and right buttons to X & A, or A & B respectively. Then, ask you to point each console to its appropriate rom directory, and just let you access your roms as-is from there.

"Scan directory and exclude anything that doesn't match up with our internal database" options should be relegated to plugins, for anyone that wants to get fancy with their setup. Retroarch desperately needs an easy mode for people who just want it to work like every other emulator out there. This shit isn't hard. I loathe the proliferation of arrogant autistic trannies who can't be told their design philosophies are impenetrable to anyone of sound mind that doesn't take enough adderall to kill a horse.

 

[Dojima's Dragon]

I knew you could play backup PS2 games on original hardware with a HDD or over the network (I've got a HDD myself) but now apparently you can do it through the memory card slot with a micro SD adapter

This is seriously good news for me given now i might actually consider getting a ps2 slim also is it true that certain models of the 9000x can be jailbroken