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

Stasi said:
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 :stress:
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Oh shit, seriously? I've got to get me one of these.
 
Tom Nook's Gloryhole said:
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.
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You have to click on Window > Toggle Desktop Menu in order to add any games in your console playlists that Retroarch may refuse initially through Scan Directory/Manual Scan. This is especially true for any rom/iso that don't match up with the database, such as english-patched titles or rom hacks. I also use the Desktop Menu to add cover thumbnails since RA can't manage to download anything in the JP side.

I did manage to get through the hassle personally but I do agree with @Pissmaster that RetroArch is a big mess and that it's fairly easy to screw up or miss things

Edit: Duckstation is pretty cool on Android btw
 
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Pissmaster said:
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.
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First run wizards are annoying.
And I can't see polling for specs working well. Some games are more demanding than others with the same emulator on the same machine.
 
So the other day I was having issues with ePSXe not picking up my controller inputs and that was enough for me to decide that I had finally had enough of dealing with ePSXe and led to me making the switch over to duckstation.

All I can say is that I'm kicking myself for not doing it sooner, Duckstation is much better to work with and I was even able to get my PS5 controller to work with it, something ePSXe wouldn't have any dice with forcing me to use my logitech controller which I've never found to be a particularly outstanding controller. I'm gonna have to have a play around with settings and do some research because i'm sure I can probably get it more optimized for my computer but regardless of that I'm still very happy with making the switch.
 
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Crystal Head Reloaded said:
So the other day I was having issues with ePSXe not picking up my controller inputs and that was enough for me to decide that I had finally had enough of dealing with ePSXe and led to me making the switch over to duckstation.

All I can say is that I'm kicking myself for not doing it sooner, Duckstation is much better to work with and I was even able to get my PS5 controller to work with it, something ePSXe wouldn't have any dice with forcing me to use my logitech controller which I've never found to be a particularly outstanding controller. I'm gonna have to have a play around with settings and do some research because i'm sure I can probably get it more optimized for my computer but regardless of that I'm still very happy with making the switch.
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I also tried Duckstation after reading this thread and it is really an eye opener. ePSXe was always comfortable because, according to my memory, the interface haven't really changed that much since 1999 and a program offering that kind of familiarity for longtime users is rare these days... the interface not changing in 23 years is absolute bullshit though.

I also just learned that ISOs can be compressed to and played from the CHD format in many emulators, this offers some significant space saving. A game can be 90MB compressed and when extracted the image is 560MB.

Save Disk Space for ISOs - Emulation General Wiki

emulation.gametechwiki.com emulation.gametechwiki.com
 
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Smaug's Smokey Hole said:
I also just learned that ISOs can be compressed to and played from the CHD format in many emulators, this offers some significant space saving. A game can be 90MB compressed and when extracted the image is 560MB.

Save Disk Space for ISOs - Emulation General Wiki

emulation.gametechwiki.com emulation.gametechwiki.com
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This is pretty crazy, I just messed around with this today and shaved off like 40% off my PS1 folder. Some of the gamecube compression is insane, I don't exactly understand the technicalities behind it (I think the disk images have a lot of useless padding/junk on them?) but some games have gone from 1.4gb to 200mb.
 
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Stasi said:
I don't exactly understand the technicalities behind it (I think the disk images have a lot of useless padding/junk on them?) but some games have gone from 1.4gb to 200mb.
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Reading the article @Smaug's Smokey Hole posted, it seems to be a developer decision for one of two reasons:
  1. To fuck with Pirates to make it harder for them to pirate the game. This is done by scrambling the garbage data and PURPOSEFULLY increasing the data disc size
  2. So the game functions properly. Might be due to the way the game was formatted on the disc or something, because if that data isn't found in a specific section of the disc, the game breaks.
Other than that, back before the PS1/Saturn era, devs were just making "mixed" CDs that were Data + Audio (e.g. Sonic CD for the Sega CD/PC), so those audio files were uncompressed, which of course increases the disc size.
 
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SSF2T Old User said:
Reading the article @Smaug's Smokey Hole posted, it seems to be a developer decision for one of two reasons:
  1. To fuck with Pirates to make it harder for them to pirate the game. This is done by scrambling the garbage data and PURPOSEFULLY increasing the data disc size
  2. So the game functions properly. Might be due to the way the game was formatted on the disc or something, because if that data isn't found in a specific section of the disc, the game breaks.
Other than that, back before the PS1/Saturn era, devs were just making "mixed" CDs that were Data + Audio (e.g. Sonic CD for the Sega CD/PC), so those audio files were uncompressed, which of course increases the disc size.
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You are making the mistake of thinking that original rips was made to fuck with pirates. You can see the same thing, size wise, at the same time with PC ISOs. The purity of a release was a thing.
 
Try looking for Cylum Rom sets per console. Not only do they usually have all the games but more importantly organized everything to also include hacks & translations already patched in.
pastebin.com

Cylum ROM Sets - Pastebin.com

Pastebin.com is the number one paste tool since 2002. Pastebin is a website where you can store text online for a set period of time.
pastebin.com pastebin.com
 
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There is/was a fantastic rom set on Piratebay for SNES that was complete, all versions of every game, split into territories, with bad dumps, demos etc. Search "snes roms" or something and it will show up.
 
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Car Won't Crank said:
What about Vimm's Lair? I've had good luck with that bar the slower downloads. Site doesn't look sketchy.
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First time I ever heard about that website. The sole other place I'm familiar is NoPayStation because I've contributed to a lot of Vita (mainly DLCs), PSP and PS1 Classics from the japanese PSN back when I had a PS Vita. CDRomance itself also hosts the nippon PS1 Classics I've shared for the database.

For anything from the 5th gen (plus Gamecube/Dreamcast for the 6th gen) and below I stick to Archive org otherwise
 
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Back me up! said:
Try looking for Cylum Rom sets per console. Not only do they usually have all the games but more importantly organized everything to also include hacks & translations already patched in.
pastebin.com

Cylum ROM Sets - Pastebin.com

Pastebin.com is the number one paste tool since 2002. Pastebin is a website where you can store text online for a set period of time.
pastebin.com pastebin.com
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are those the successor to the goodrom sets or the same under a new name? haven't really kept with emulation the last few years.
 
ZMOT said:
are those the successor to the goodrom sets or the same under a new name? haven't really kept with emulation the last few years.
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You know.... I'm not sure. I just randomly found then and always followed the person/group since they include pre-made hacks to made it easier to just drag and drop across computers.
 
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