Has RetroArch made individual emulators kind of obsolete?

[Marc_LFD]

Or at least retro emulators? (I don't know how it goes for Wii U, PS3, X360, Switch emulators)

I used to have Project64 installed on my computer, but since I got so familiar and used to RetroArch I'm using it a lot more for N64, Dreamcast (oh, man, I LOVE it!), GBC, GBA, PS1, Saturn, etc (with their respective bios to make them function better) there's no need to have Project64 anymore. Bye bye, Project64 (I had to use a "cracked" exe to bypass their bs paywall).

P.S. Stadia via Bluetooth Mode works wonderfully with it and it's a very comfortable controller (that coming from someone who immensely favors the Xbox/Nintendo layout over the PlayStation-like layout).

 

[FAST6191]

I still go with https://gbatemp.net/threads/what-has-retroarch-ever-done-for-us.554714/ , though I have similarly made no effort to engage with the community (what little filters out just seems like pointless drama that even the old MAME and MESS dramas could not hope to match). At best a unified frontend devs could maybe do things like have a reasonable complement of cheats, features and such without having to reinvent the wheel or, worse still, fork it from something else.

To that end much like 20 years ago I usually still go on https://www.emulator-zone.com/ , select whatever system has caught my fancy and then investigate current versions of the things it lists.

 

[Marc_LFD]

To that end much like 20 years ago I usually still go on https://www.emulator-zone.com/ , select whatever system has caught my fancy and then investigate current versions of the things it lists.

I tried finding that website the other day as I'm nostalgic about it, but the search results were inundated with others.

 

[Dyhr]

Frontends were always going to replace individual emulators. The bigger thing to happen, I think, is the use of "launchers", such as the infamous EmuELEC and so on, where you can just look at your consoles, then pick a game, and it automatically loads (usually via RetroArch, but it's not even important that it is since you can generally change out the emulator if you want) the game.

In a way I guess launchers replaced frontends. With those, we just have a nice and clean interface to pick our games instead of putting up with RetroArch's admittedly awful and unintuitive UI that hasn't changed once in over ten years. The open source community, they do great work but seem to have a bitter hatred for user interface and any suggestions regarding it...

 

[JuanMena]

Sure!

Why spend hours looking for a compatible MAME version that supports whatever romset exclusice for that particular version of MAME, when I can just download MAME2000/2003/FBA cores and have a complete MAME "no-intro" romset that works with each core?

PLUS AUDIO/VIDEO FILTERS!

 

[Reploid]

I don't need anything beside RA on consoles. But on PC it's still preferable to use PS2/GCN-Wii emus as standalones. They still are a bit tricky to config properly, some games are more than the others.
On PS2 I can't use savestates, HD textutures, fine tune scaling properly using RA.
With dolphin on RA you still can't run single core games or properly set ultrawide image, if you use one.

 

[Deleted member 194275]

Why do we use windows? Why we don't find any car that is not an obese people's car (automatic SUV)? Why do we use steam? And finally why do we use RetroArch?

none of those opinion are the better option but all of them are the standards, that's means that things we want are locked to those options.

For emulation on PC I like to do it as a separate OS (batocera), but for many systems I have to launch that disgusting RetroArch thing because some cores don't work otherwise

Before I had a SSD I was using bigbox (launch box) and I had to do the same.


Anyway, a standard do not turn other better option obsolete, It just remove our choice in many situations.

 

[Marc_LFD]

Why do we use windows?

I've been trying to move away from using Windows, but the alternative (Linux distros) take some getting used so if Microsoft also screws up Windows 12 like they did with 11 then I'm going with a Linux distro of my choosing (Zorin OS, Elementary OS, etc).

These days I prefer using Android over Windows so that certainly helps.

 

[Deleted member 194275]

I've been trying to move away from using Windows, but the alternative (Linux distros) take some getting used so if Microsoft also screws up Windows 12 like they did with 11 then I'm going with a Linux distro of my choosing (Zorin OS, Elementary OS, etc).

These days I prefer using Android over Windows so that certainly helps.

that's exactly my point. I'm using windows right now and I like mint better but I can't swap.

Small business like mine do hire softwares/developers on the cheap side. They can't do Linux, Mac and Windows development on their stuff at the same time, so 99% of the time it is windows only.
So I'm economically locked to windows because I can't justify the cost to migrate to tools that have multi OS support.

 

[FAST6191]

that's exactly my point. I'm using windows right now and I like mint better but I can't swap.

Small business like mine do hire softwares/developers on the cheap side. They can't do Linux, Mac and Windows development on their stuff at the same time, so 99% of the time it is windows only.
So I'm economically locked to windows because I can't justify the cost to migrate to tools that have multi OS support.

Virtual machines not cut it? You can even instance them to do handover to the customer and recall them when you get a call in 4 years wanting a tweak and find the dev tools lack backwards compatibility.

 

[Deleted member 194275]

Virtual machines not cut it? You can even instance them to do handover to the customer and recall them when you get a call in 4 years wanting a tweak and find the dev tools lack backwards compatibility.

I'll go deep out of topic here, but for my use-case VMs probably will work, wine do not work.

For small business here we do find very cheap and clever software for our needs, but if you look under the hood all are very reliant on windows SDKs (and very bodge reliant too). I believe that is something that happen everywhere. The elegant and ultra compatible SAPs and alikes will beforever out of reach of John Does like me, and we are the majority, even in rich places far from here.

This windows monopoly situation is getting better tho. Servers and gaming only computers are very comfortable away from windows today, it was not like that 10 years ago.

 

[Fugelmir]

There were a few instances where RA just didn't perform as well as individual emulators for me (Saturn/n64/ps2), but generally speaking, it's a titan that simplifies everything.

 

[Dyhr]

Why do we use windows?

Well in my case, it's because after decades of Linux users clamoring for Linux to be used more, they refuse to ever acknowledge laptops are a thing. It's a coincidence when Linux supports a laptop decently, not intended.

All too often Linux distros have wonky support for basic things like lid-closing, have no idea how to handle wireless cards (despite the actual cards often not differing in function or even port (PCI-E still) from desktop equivalents), and important to me... undervolting.

The mere use of ThrottleStop for Windows (as Intel's own XTU doesn't work as well, mostly because it doesn't take into account any change in voltage coming in (power flickering/laptop being unplugged) and just crashes) allows me to improve performance by up to 20% in some areas, massively improve temperatures, and increase battery life by a large amount, usually 30-50%.

And ThrottleStop is able to instantly change profiles if you lose power. Power flicker, unplugged, etc., to a battery profile. So it avoids the issue Intel's XTU has entirely.

And Linux has no such equivalent. Yes, Linux, the OS where you can delete or alter anything you want, has no such equivalent to a voltage program that someone was able to make for the far more closed off Windows. The best you get is that some distros will, for some CPUs, support you... manually setting each individual voltage setting in a command line, functioning similar to Intel's XTU instead of ThrottleStop.

I'm also not a fan of Linux being a primadonna with file systems which is yet another bad problem after decades. ext4 is absurd. Nothing uses ext4. Literally every OS supports NTFS or exFAT but Linux wants to use ext4. Great. ext4 doesn't need defragging. Guess what Linux does when you use it with an external NTFS/exFAT drive too long? Fragments it. Badly.

Had a drive at 0% fragmentation. Had to use Linux Mint on a thumb drive to back up my computer because of a nearly dead HDD. Transferred... oh, I think it was 500GB of data? to an external HDD.

90% fragmented afterwards. It took forever to defragment it. All because Linux doesn't want to use file systems that EVERYTHING else does.

Linux has great aspects but it's the embodiment of everything wrong with the open source community. It's intentionally complicated or poorly performing in some areas to keep "riff raff" out and any attempt to suggest them improve it (usually, by, you know, modernization) is met with hostility and "Go BaCk To WiNbLoWs".

It's a shame because I'd love an alternative to Windows. I abhor the forced and thoroughly untested updates. But it's never worth dropping Windows because too many things simply don't work, and there's never any intention on helping them work either, because it goes against the open source ethos.

 

[Bagel Le Stinky]

No. Some computers are potato's and run standalones better rather than retroarch cores.

 

[Dyhr]

No. Some computers are potato's and run standalones better rather than retroarch cores.

Supercomputers will run a great many emulators better than RA could hope to perform with them.
RA having no (real) PS2/Saturn/GC/PS/DS/3DS/PS3/360/Wii cores is significant.

Some of them RA has "cores" for, but they perform miserably. N64 is iffy. Better on RA for Windows, better elsewhere on Android. DS is one. Its implementation of melonDS must be an early beta build, because melonDS doesn't perform that badly normally.

 

[SeventhSon7]

but can RetroArch do this?

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Well in my case, it's because after decades of Linux users clamoring for Linux to be used more, they refuse to ever acknowledge laptops are a thing. It's a coincidence when Linux supports a laptop decently, not intended.

All too often Linux distros have wonky support for basic things like lid-closing, have no idea how to handle wireless cards (despite the actual cards often not differing in function or even port (PCI-E still) from desktop equivalents), and important to me... undervolting.

The mere use of ThrottleStop for Windows (as Intel's own XTU doesn't work as well, mostly because it doesn't take into account any change in voltage coming in (power flickering/laptop being unplugged) and just crashes) allows me to improve performance by up to 20% in some areas, massively improve temperatures, and increase battery life by a large amount, usually 30-50%.

And ThrottleStop is able to instantly change profiles if you lose power. Power flicker, unplugged, etc., to a battery profile. So it avoids the issue Intel's XTU has entirely.

And Linux has no such equivalent. Yes, Linux, the OS where you can delete or alter anything you want, has no such equivalent to a voltage program that someone was able to make for the far more closed off Windows. The best you get is that some distros will, for some CPUs, support you... manually setting each individual voltage setting in a command line, functioning similar to Intel's XTU instead of ThrottleStop.

I'm also not a fan of Linux being a primadonna with file systems which is yet another bad problem after decades. ext4 is absurd. Nothing uses ext4. Literally every OS supports NTFS or exFAT but Linux wants to use ext4. Great. ext4 doesn't need defragging. Guess what Linux does when you use it with an external NTFS/exFAT drive too long? Fragments it. Badly.

Had a drive at 0% fragmentation. Had to use Linux Mint on a thumb drive to back up my computer because of a nearly dead HDD. Transferred... oh, I think it was 500GB of data? to an external HDD.

90% fragmented afterwards. It took forever to defragment it. All because Linux doesn't want to use file systems that EVERYTHING else does.

Linux has great aspects but it's the embodiment of everything wrong with the open source community. It's intentionally complicated or poorly performing in some areas to keep "riff raff" out and any attempt to suggest them improve it (usually, by, you know, modernization) is met with hostility and "Go BaCk To WiNbLoWs".

It's a shame because I'd love an alternative to Windows. I abhor the forced and thoroughly untested updates. But it's never worth dropping Windows because too many things simply don't work, and there's never any intention on helping them work either, because it goes against the open source ethos.

You're working with quite outdated information at this point if you really believe all of that, most of that hasn't been true for ages.

There's been an equivalent to Throttlestop for nearly half a decade now (and here's a modern GUI that works very well if you don't want to bother with terminal that's also existed for 3 or 4 years). Use the latter on my 2017 Razer Blade 14 specifically to undervolt my 7700hq in Linux Mint.

The only issue with wifi cards in the last 10ish years have been specifically older Broadcom cards and a couple rarely used Realtek cards, but these days anything modern is available by default in nearly every updated distro I've used. I have to use a Linux live USB all the time at work to test hardware functions on laptops from pretty much every brand, can't remember the last time wifi has ever given me an issue. Same applies with lid closing, now that every laptop and their mother uses one of the same 2 or 3 hall effect sensors it's never a problem and they're all supported without issue.

You're 100% correct on ext4 though, I really wish they'd add native exFAT support or something more useful, but I doubt it :/

Linux definitely isn't the answer to all problems that a lot of Linux users think it is, and it still lacks a lot of QoL end-user features you see on Win/macOS, but it's also not some "barebones, nothing ever supported!!" thing you seem to think it is anymore.

/offtopic



As to OP, I doubt it ever will make all standalone emulators obsolete, but most older consoles (like N64/GBA era and lower) it already has. Can't remember the last time I've actually used a standalone emulator for NES or Genesis and the like.

Anything later though and 9 times out of 10 it's better to use standalone. As already noted various times, Dolphin and PCSX2's cores are pretty barebones all things considered, and RPCS3/Xenia I doubt will see anything in the future given the amount of customization you need to get a lot of things to run.

 

[Dyhr]

You're working with quite outdated information at this point if you really believe all of that, most of that hasn't been true for ages.

There's been an equivalent to Throttlestop for nearly half a decade now (and here's a modern GUI that works very well if you don't want to bother with terminal that's also existed for 3 or 4 years). Use the latter on my 2017 Razer Blade 14 specifically to undervolt my 7700hq in Linux Mint.

The only issue with wifi cards in the last 10ish years have been specifically older Broadcom cards and a couple rarely used Realtek cards, but these days anything modern is available by default in nearly every updated distro I've used. I have to use a Linux live USB all the time at work to test hardware functions on laptops from pretty much every brand, can't remember the last time wifi has ever given me an issue. Same applies with lid closing, now that every laptop and their mother uses one of the same 2 or 3 hall effect sensors it's never a problem and they're all supported without issue.

You're 100% correct on ext4 though, I really wish they'd add native exFAT support or something more useful, but I doubt it :/

Linux definitely isn't the answer to all problems that a lot of Linux users think it is, and it still lacks a lot of QoL end-user features you see on Win/macOS, but it's also not some "barebones, nothing ever supported!!" thing you seem to think it is anymore.

/offtopic



As to OP, I doubt it ever will make all standalone emulators obsolete, but most older consoles (like N64/GBA era and lower) it already has. Can't remember the last time I've actually used a standalone emulator for NES or Genesis and the like.

Anything later though and 9 times out of 10 it's better to use standalone. As already noted various times, Dolphin and PCSX2's cores are pretty barebones all things considered, and RPCS3/Xenia I doubt will see anything in the future given the amount of customization you need to get a lot of things to run.

georgewhewell's undervolt is command line only and doesn't handle profiles at all. I also couldn't get it to work on an i7 8750H or 10875H. Neither are uncommon CPUs, the former actually amazingly common because it was a great performer at most wattages, even lower ones like 35W instead of the standard 45W. If Apple used it, and got great performance out of it even at 35W, it's good.

This CoreCtrl looks great and I'm very mystified why it doesn't seem to be discussed... anywhere.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=linux+undervolt+intel+cpu#ip=1

I mean, I can't find anything about it. georgewhewell's is the best I find, or that janky pseudo GUI-based one that doesn't work either.

I want to get another M.2 SSD soon. Would love to dual-boot Linux and Windows. Have to look into that CoreCtrl, then.

It's great to hear support is more common for those cards or features in the case of lid-closing, but why were they ever missing in the first place? One of the most common uses for a lot of distros would be to put on old computers, and old computers are going to be laptops a lot of times... why not support them? It's not like the lid-closing procedure is some mysterious thing no one can determine how it works.

I can't think of a single time Broadcom or Realtek weren't common, major players in Wi-Fi. Not supporting them feels strange.

 

[toolazytosearchitmyself]

I tried an individual emulator on the Switch (I forgot which one) but it didn't perform that well. I tried RetroArch and it performed well. Since then I've used RetroArch exclusively on the Switch. On the PC I still use individual emulators out of habit.

I probably should look into Lakka and whatever other options are available on the Switch but RetroArch works well enough that I don't bother.

 

[Deleted member 194275]

Well in my case, it's because after decades of Linux users clamoring for Linux to be used more, they refuse to ever acknowledge laptops are a thing. It's a coincidence when Linux supports a laptop decently, not intended.

All too often Linux distros have wonky support for basic things like lid-closing, have no idea how to handle wireless cards (despite the actual cards often not differing in function or even port (PCI-E still) from desktop equivalents), and important to me... undervolting.

The mere use of ThrottleStop for Windows (as Intel's own XTU doesn't work as well, mostly because it doesn't take into account any change in voltage coming in (power flickering/laptop being unplugged) and just crashes) allows me to improve performance by up to 20% in some areas, massively improve temperatures, and increase battery life by a large amount, usually 30-50%.

And ThrottleStop is able to instantly change profiles if you lose power. Power flicker, unplugged, etc., to a battery profile. So it avoids the issue Intel's XTU has entirely.

And Linux has no such equivalent. Yes, Linux, the OS where you can delete or alter anything you want, has no such equivalent to a voltage program that someone was able to make for the far more closed off Windows. The best you get is that some distros will, for some CPUs, support you... manually setting each individual voltage setting in a command line, functioning similar to Intel's XTU instead of ThrottleStop.

I'm also not a fan of Linux being a primadonna with file systems which is yet another bad problem after decades. ext4 is absurd. Nothing uses ext4. Literally every OS supports NTFS or exFAT but Linux wants to use ext4. Great. ext4 doesn't need defragging. Guess what Linux does when you use it with an external NTFS/exFAT drive too long? Fragments it. Badly.

Had a drive at 0% fragmentation. Had to use Linux Mint on a thumb drive to back up my computer because of a nearly dead HDD. Transferred... oh, I think it was 500GB of data? to an external HDD.

90% fragmented afterwards. It took forever to defragment it. All because Linux doesn't want to use file systems that EVERYTHING else does.

Linux has great aspects but it's the embodiment of everything wrong with the open source community. It's intentionally complicated or poorly performing in some areas to keep "riff raff" out and any attempt to suggest them improve it (usually, by, you know, modernization) is met with hostility and "Go BaCk To WiNbLoWs".

It's a shame because I'd love an alternative to Windows. I abhor the forced and thoroughly untested updates. But it's never worth dropping Windows because too many things simply don't work, and there's never any intention on helping them work either, because it goes against the open source ethos.

Most of what you said are compatibility issues, for what I understood with a software (ThrottleStop) and with some pieces of hardware (like the wireless device). All of that is true and fall onto what I said, we are forced to windows because stuff is developed for windows a lot more, not because windows is good. The vicious cycle: More users on windows > people/companies develops for windows > people use windows because it has the software they want > more users on windows... and so on...


Now about the lack of compatibility with laptops, that's just not true anymore (like years now). Everything like sleep, close lid, battery management, low battery warnings and actions all will work on Linux. What may happen is that the manufacturer of the laptop may have used a very cheap board that has not linux support on driver side. It is not an OS fault, but it still affects how viable the OS is for many people.

Back on the main topic, retroarch is just that many times. Lots of people are on retroarch, so developers release stuff with that in mind, so more people end up using retroarch and the thing go on in that cycle. Even that you can make emulators cores work otherwise, regular users like the ready to go solution much more.