# Anti-RetroArch sentiment seems to be growing



## subcon959 (Aug 2, 2021)

I wasn't aware of any controversy regarding the popular emulation frontend, but lately I'm seeing a lot of negativity around the net.

Does anyone have any deeper insight into what is causing this? I see people asking for good alternatives as they can no longer support the abusive authors. Huh?

Is it somehow related to the recent tragedy with Near? I thought that was something to do with Kiwi Farms.


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## Tom Bombadildo (Aug 2, 2021)

They're probably just referring to this:
We have all made mistakes in this scene, none of us are perfect in this scene (yes, not even Mamehaze or you). We are certainly acting very different these days than we did in say 2012/2010. The person you love to villify has had cordial relationships with Near since 2017.— libretro (@libretro) June 29, 2021


It's just people bringing up age old shit from a decade ago and acting like that was a direct cause to what happened so therefore RetroArch=bad.


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## chrisrlink (Aug 2, 2021)

if anything those people opposing retro are the toxic ones stirring the pot


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## fst312 (Aug 2, 2021)

I have nothing against retroarch but I still like to also have standalone emulators. Also I guess I don’t follow what goes on with retroarch too much because I haven’t really heard of any controversy besides someone hacking them sometime ago if that counts.


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## Ryccardo (Aug 2, 2021)

Haven't heard of any drama, the reason I despise retrofail is intrinsic in their goal (port emulators and a common frontend to any* platform) whose flip side is less tuning and minimum common denominator (compare to VBA-GX on Wii, which fully implements Wii features like supporting the wiimote camera as solar sensor, etc)

* also, they started as a compilation of emulators for PS3 - guess what's one of the platforms on which it's most broken, a fair number of other ones listed on the official website also have their issues or are missing a build entirely


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## subcon959 (Aug 2, 2021)

After I posted I tried to find out more stuff (I wish I hadn't) and found a litany of chat logs showing anti-trans rants by twinaphex against byuu (Near's previous alias?). There also seems to be recent discussions about general abuse towards other emu devs. I don't really want to dig any further as it seems like it would be impossible to get to the truth.

Edit: The only reason I was interested is because I follow MVG/lantus360 and he recently voiced some concerns about it.


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## JuanBaNaNa (Aug 2, 2021)

People literally is like: 
_"__*This emulator hurt my feelings"*_
???

Really?







No, *really?*


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## ShadowOne333 (Aug 2, 2021)

OP:
Is because the head of Libretro has been involved into some drama with other developers during its existence, byuu was one iirc, there has been others as well who have had their clashes with Twinaphex and other devs over time.

The whole "anti-Retroarch" crap I keep seeing over Twatter is because they are linking that drama directly to byuu's death, and that apparently some of the people in RA were kinda harsh on people who they had issues with.
It's worth noting that the whole ordeal is multiple years old, for the record (which people on Twitter just love to bring Old-Testament age shit as current events), and given the amount of letters and emails leaked from byuu's contacts, it seems the most tiresome bullying for him came directly from both online and offline harrassment to the point of stalking IRL.

Aside from that, really just don't pay attention to Twatter of all places.
It's the world's most stupid and worst place to take something into consideration from, more so how people like to bitch, moan and echo their crap all over the place, and since that kind of people are the most vocal, they create a false impression of "multitude" when in reality is just an obnoxious group of people trying to make their tantrums stick to get their candy and nothing else.

My word of advice and to others who are tired of similar things, don't even bother reading that. Do as I do, avoid going there as often and/or block/mute all instances for that kind of people (or even mute certain words altogether, that way tweets with certain words won't show up in your feed).
Serves you much more to clean Twitter of the idiocy that is the current state of the social media.


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## hippy dave (Aug 2, 2021)

subcon959 said:


> After I posted I tried to find out more stuff (I wish I hadn't) and found a litany of chat logs showing anti-trans rants by twinaphex against byuu (Near's previous alias?).


I'm assuming twinaphex is a retroarch person? How old are these rants? It's always shitty, but there's got to be room for people to improve their behaviour over time.


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## subcon959 (Aug 2, 2021)

hippy dave said:


> I'm assuming twinaphex is a retroarch person? How old are these rants? It's always shitty, but there's got to be room for people to improve their behaviour over time.


I can't remember now but it was the Dolphin dev that posted them as there was also quite a lot of abuse directed towards that team.

@ShadowOne333 I agree that Twitter can be a horrible place but I find it useful to get the latest news about certain projects there sometimes.


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## Plstic (Aug 2, 2021)

I think the retroarch frontend sucks. I prefer just using standalone emulators.


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## Mama Looigi (Aug 2, 2021)

I just really dislike Retroarch out of preference
I hate the X/Cross style UI and the way the settings are presented can be extremely confusing
Makes things like EmuVR an incredible pain in the ass
I even prefer the way RPCS3 is set up over that

But I mean that's the only thing I can say for me- it's preference
Retroarch isn't bad though


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## osaka35 (Aug 2, 2021)

Plstic said:


> I think the retroarch frontend sucks. I prefer just using standalone emulators.





Mama Looigi said:


> I just really dislike Retroarch out of preference
> I hate the X/Cross style UI and the way the settings are presented can be extremely confusing
> Makes things like EmuVR an incredible pain in the ass
> I even prefer the way RPCS3 is set up over that
> ...


I agree with these folk.

people say it's a "big time investement, but then it works great after that initial setup", but i've never had a smooth operation. Works "great" under only certain conditions after hours of work, then next time I go to open it up, nothing but terrible. And that's after learning the poorly design UI. Love the concept, hate the implementation.

It feels like something that came out this year where the UI was rushed to meet a deadline for release. I'm told it's because "they're linux people and linux people don't understand much about universal design principles". seems offensive to linux users tbh.

As far as the team themselves, no clue. First I'm hearing about it.


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## FAST6191 (Aug 2, 2021)

Can't speak much to the current stuff, and care even less, but I will also note their licensing and general approach to code openness is rather byzantine (possibly by necessity as many of the "cores" are emulators that were built before GPL got big or purposely eschewed it*) which can get very tricky to navigate. This served to rub quite a few the wrong way and start things off badly, and continue it badly too.
There are some egos involved on every side as well but I do also have to ask the question many times of "what has retroarch ever done for us" and the answer is usually not a great deal -- at best some previously well known emulator devs made a plugin or two for effectively the original emulator (now called a core if we are to adopt such parlances), and they had some fun with predictive input. As far as making emulation more efficient, more accurate, making a frontend that those wanting a debugging emulator can play with (debuggers for non Nintendo stuff tends to be a bit wanting, and if you compare it to PC... oh dear), harmonising savestates and directories (especially for older efforts that might be pre the big push to have everything in my documents rather than program files/operating directory)... yeah not the most on that front.

*not necessarily related but MAME (MESS was a somewhat different thing but I will count it in this) for the longest time was not GPL and purposely did things to frustrate various cabinet makers (ostensibly for profit types but it caught others in crossfire). Similar problems and friction with retroarch, ports thereof, spinoffs and remixes has also happened (the Switch stuff but one thing here, though that is its own can of worms full of misunderstandings, hurt feelings, misdirections, dramas and traumas).

From where I sit then individual emulators still provide me with the best experience. A nice frontend would be nice, better yet a frontend that serves to allow me to have effectively the same debugger on every system without having to learn new ones, one that might also be pretty nice for ROM storage, and maybe blows through some of the cruft in older setups (though older setups maybe still representing the pinnacle of things), sorts controller fun... would be nice, and one that also served to advance the cause of emulation that might have stalled out in some places or otherwise fragmented into a million forks with different goals while it was at it, maybe also porting to various other operating systems and devices, would be golden. However seems to not be so pending that day I am probably in the utterly ambivalent camp.


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## Xzi (Aug 2, 2021)

*On Twitter.

Seems like a bunch of melodrama that has nothing to do with the program itself.  I don't have much experience with RetroArch TBH, as I own all the Nintendo and Playstation home consoles anyway.  That might change when Steam Deck comes along, assuming standalone emulators don't provide a vastly superior/more convenient experience on Linux.


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## the_randomizer (Aug 2, 2021)

Xzi said:


> *On Twitter.
> 
> Seems like a bunch of melodrama that has nothing to do with the program itself.  I don't have much experience with RetroArch TBH, as I own all the Nintendo and Playstation home consoles anyway.  That might change when Steam Deck comes along, assuming standalone emulators don't provide a vastly superior/more convenient experience on Linux.



There's no standalone emulators for Genesis Plus GX for example, or gPSP.

People that are hating on the RA team need to grow up and grow a f*cking pair and move on.


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## godreborn (Aug 2, 2021)

Mama Looigi said:


> I just really dislike Retroarch out of preference
> I hate the X/Cross style UI and the way the settings are presented can be extremely confusing
> Makes things like EmuVR an incredible pain in the ass
> I even prefer the way RPCS3 is set up over that
> ...


You can change that.  I think that style is called "amped."  I use the ozone/switch style on the nes, snes, genesis, and psx mini/classics.  It's much easier to manage, at least for me.


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## smf (Aug 2, 2021)

retroarch continues to make $$$ out of mostly other peoples work and pissing over licenses.

Whether you care about that, or their other bad behavior is up to you. I certainly won't lose any sleep either way.

https://retroarchleaks.wordpress.com/2017/03/26/what-happens-with-the-other-650/

They've got a serious case of persecution complex, when they haven't worked out that they are the bad guys.


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## ChronoTrig (Aug 2, 2021)

I try to not look at all the bs behind the scenes of a product and just use the product for its intention. Retroarch works great on my Xbox Series X. Used it previously on my Switch as well.


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## osaka35 (Aug 3, 2021)

smf said:


> retroarch continues to make $$$ out of mostly other peoples work and pissing over licenses.
> 
> Whether you care about that, or their other bad behavior is up to you. I certainly won't lose any sleep either way.
> 
> ...


So they have a bad case of doraemon (What's yours is mine, and what's mine is mine)? big ball of yikes.

For those not wanting to read the link, part of it seems to be not caring some cores are non-commercial and still using those cores when asking for money/earning money off of this. I wonder how much of that is how it appears.

Do you know, out of curiosity, what are all the avenues they make money? and how much do you think they make regularly? Do they work on this project full-time? I've never bothered to think about it before.


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## MikaDubbz (Aug 3, 2021)

Retroarch is very good at what it does.  I'll never not appreciate it being around and being supported.  BUT, I tend to prefer individual dedicated emulators over Retroarch cores.  Retroarch is the software I turn to if there is no great independent emulator for the device in question.  As it's own thing, Retroarch takes a little longer to boot a game after you select it, and the menus are not as intuitive as they could be, finding some options can sometimes be a nightmare, especially after looking around for awhile only to conclude that the option you're looking for simply doesn't exist within Retroarch.  I dunno about any behind the scenes drama as mentioned above, but, this all is how I feel regardless of all of that in regard to Retroarch.  I very much am grateful it's here, I certainly don't dislike it, but it's also typically not the first place I want to go for emulation.

And I don't think there is anything that can really be done to change how I feel here, because this is all baked into the very nature of what Retroarch is, it tries to accomplish so much for so many different systems.  It's understandable why the code isn't always gonna be tailor made for what you're trying to play on what device you're trying to play it on.


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## Kioku_Dreams (Aug 3, 2021)

So... Anything fairly recent then?

Better yet.. Is there a reason to shun them? Don't tell me it's because they make money.


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## JaNDeRPeiCH (Aug 3, 2021)

Plstic said:


> I think the retroarch frontend sucks. I prefer just using standalone emulators.


Well in Raspberry 3 its very diffcult to get delete retroarch,because they are no worthy os to use standlone emulators.If only the raspberry 3 can use opendingux i will ride lakka from my system.


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## Plstic (Aug 3, 2021)

JaNDeRPeiCH said:


> Well in Raspberry 3 its very diffcult to get delete retroarch,because they are no worthy os to use standlone emulators.If only if raspberry 3 can use opendingux i will ride lakka from my system.


Well I don't use raspberry pi's for emulating because they are too under powered.


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## JaNDeRPeiCH (Aug 3, 2021)

Plstic said:


> Well I don't use raspberry pi's for emulating because they are too under powered.


Im simple man,good supernintendo emulatosr and psx are too way to go from me  and the raspberry its what i need for budget motherboard.


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## the_randomizer (Aug 3, 2021)

I'd love to see people create a better frontend, but until then, maybe use standalone emulators and stop bitching about it?


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## subcon959 (Aug 3, 2021)

Lol @ the people getting hurt their precious is being attacked. This topic wasn't supposed to be about the actual software but why there is negativity surrounding the devs.

It's also fine that some people don't care about any of it and have no problems using the software, but not everyone is capable of that sort of cognitive dissonance. For example, I had no interest in using anything by blawar on the Switch after the way he acted towards others. If you read the logs the RetroArch dev comes across a hundred times worse and that's enough to make some people feel uncomfortable using the software.


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## Reploid (Aug 3, 2021)

subcon959 said:


> Lol @ the people getting hurt their precious is being attacked. This topic wasn't supposed to be about the actual software but why there is negativity surrounding the devs.
> 
> It's also fine that some people don't care about any of it and have no problems using the software, but not everyone is capable of that sort of cognitive dissonance. For example, I had no interest in using anything by blawar on the Switch after the way he acted towards others. If you read the logs the RetroArch dev comes across a hundred times worse and that's enough to make some people feel uncomfortable using the software.


Everybody says professional, and personal life should be separated. Yet we have cases when a movie gets delisted because a single actor presumably harassed someone, which is yet to be proven. Lots of collateral damage.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------



the_randomizer said:


> I'd love to see people create a better frontend, but until then, maybe use standalone emulators and stop bitching about it?


On some platforms, RA is the only option to run certain emus.


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## Deleted User (Aug 3, 2021)

Retroarch just workz.
Setting it up takes 5 min max, configuring a game might need another 2 min.


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## RAHelllord (Aug 3, 2021)

Reploid said:


> Everybody says professional, and personal life should be separated. Yet we have cases when a movie gets delisted because a single actor presumably harassed someone, which is yet to be proven. Lots of collateral damage.



That quote isn't there to hand wave abuse away, it's there to let people know that sorrows at work should not be allowed to spill over into personal life and cause more problems there, and vise versa. If someone uses their professional position to facilitate abuse in their private life then that quote loses all meaning.
Bill Cosby being the perfect example of a person where the abuse in private was possible because of his professional life, and thus he doesn't deserve the professional life he had anymore.

Coming back to RetroArch, the devs don't strike me as people that have the best interests of the emulation scene at large in their minds but only their own little garden, but I simply don't use it because I dislike the interface options and the emulators I do care about are better standalone.


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## The Real Jdbye (Aug 3, 2021)

To be fair the person in question was a _*former*_ retroarch team member and I've seen no evidence that any other retroarch team members were involved or have done similar things, only a brief mention with no evidence, so we can consider the issue to be completely unrelated to retroarch and the hate should not be directed at them, the blame lies on the persons directly involved.


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## Goku1992A (Aug 3, 2021)

I always preferred the standalone emulators over RA but the thing is nobody is making standalone emulators anymore. I have to use my PS Vita or my android. 

My take on RA atleast they are still being consistent


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## Flame (Aug 3, 2021)

Goku1992A said:


> I always preferred the standalone emulators over RA but the thing is nobody is making standalone emulators anymore. I have to use my PS Vita or my android.
> 
> My take on RA atleast they are still being consistent



^ this. i was thinking the same.

retroarch is on everything. they trying update and improving it. other stand-alone emulators dont always get updated once a hacked system gets updated.


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## spotanjo3 (Aug 3, 2021)

Retroarch is nice but I prefer standalone games.


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## kevin corms (Aug 3, 2021)

This is part of "cancel culture", its not just political nonsense. Some miserable people will do anything for likes on social media.


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## krakenx (Aug 3, 2021)

The best and worst thing about Retroarch is that it provides the same interface and features across all systems.  Back in the day we had to experiment with a ton of different emulators, installing and configuring each one individually, and that was effort.  But at the end of the day, my Xbox was unique.  Retroarch does so much more, and it's easy to install and use once you learn it.  But, it has the same features and interface across all platforms, so my Switch, Phone, Shield, PC, arcade cabinet and PS4 all look and operate the same.  Throw in the ability to use the same controller on all those platforms and the convergence of modern computing really becomes apparent.  Still, what other platform plays every game made before 2000 with filtering and rewind?

In regards to cancel culture, we live in a world where the laws and the structure of government and business reward bad people for doing bad things.  Public shaming on the internet is the last recourse we a powerless population have for justice.  But far too often, people are wasting that power on shaming normal people who do good things overall just because they don't 100% meet your definition of perfect.


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## the_randomizer (Aug 3, 2021)

Reploid said:


> Everybody says professional, and personal life should be separated. Yet we have cases when a movie gets delisted because a single actor presumably harassed someone, which is yet to be proven. Lots of collateral damage.
> 
> --------------------- MERGED ---------------------------
> 
> ...



Exactly, so people either need to deal with it


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## FAST6191 (Aug 3, 2021)

So sounds like we need to make a project that wades into retroarch and spins off the cores as standalone emulators for those things that are not otherwise updated.



krakenx said:


> The best and worst thing about Retroarch is that it provides the same interface and features across all systems.  Back in the day we had to experiment with a ton of different emulators, installing and configuring each one individually, and that was effort.  But at the end of the day, my Xbox was unique.


That might have been one of the worst systems to base counterpoints on you could have given there; the original xbox was fairly well known for having emulators with much the same UI shared between multiple emulators.


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## MarioMasta64 (Aug 4, 2021)

the_randomizer said:


> There's no standalone emulators for Genesis Plus GX for example, or gPSP.
> 
> People that are hating on the RA team need to grow up and grow a f*cking pair and move on.


https://wololo.net/downloads/index.php/download/878 gpsp is available seperately for psp
as well as genesis plus gx https://segaretro.org/Genesis_Plus_GX


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## ShadowOne333 (Aug 4, 2021)

I'll just drop this here:
The recent round of "cancel RetroArch" has really been rubbing me the wrong way, and I just need to say this publicly. Stop it. Near was perfectly clear who was responsible for his death, and it wasn't them.— qwertymodo (@qwertymodo) August 4, 2021


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## Milenko (Aug 4, 2021)

spotanjo3 said:


> Retroarch is nice but I prefer standalone games.



Standalone isn't always an option


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## MikaDubbz (Aug 4, 2021)

Goku1992A said:


> I always preferred the standalone emulators over RA but the thing is nobody is making standalone emulators anymore. I have to use my PS Vita or my android.
> 
> My take on RA atleast they are still being consistent



Great point, I miss dedicated emulators, especially on the likes of the Wii/Wii U.  VBAGX, FCEUGX,SNESN9XGX, and GenPlusGX are fantastic emulators that are so much more user friendly while offering more options for the system you're emulating and having top-notch UIs.  Would love for some Retroarch cores to see as nice emulators for such systems.  Like the standalone Wii Mame emulator is awful, but if someone remade it in one of the GX styles, I'd be all over using that instead of Retroarch for my arcade games.


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## ShadowOne333 (Aug 4, 2021)

MikaDubbz said:


> Great point, I miss dedicated emulators, especially on the likes of the Wii/Wii U.  VBAGX, FCEUGX,SNESN9XGX, and GenPlusGX are fantastic emulators that are so much more user friendly while offering more options for the system you're emulating and having top-notch UIs.  Would love for some Retroarch cores to see as nice emulators for such systems.  Like the standalone Wii Mame emulator is awful, but if someone remade it in one of the GX styles, I'd be all over using that instead of Retroarch for my arcade games.


Yeah that's the thing too.
Usually doing standalone emulators would require porting each emulator, one by one, particularly for a specific new device.
The thing with RetroArch is usually that, if you manage to port it to a new device, you already have access, to a minimum to 10 or so cores/emulators right from the get go, and that saves up a LOT of time and effort than if you were porting each emu one by one.

That's a huge thing that not many people see the perks of, and it's a huge deal when a new device comes out.


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## MikaDubbz (Aug 4, 2021)

ShadowOne333 said:


> Yeah that's the thing too.
> Usually doing standalone emulators would require porting each emulator, one by one, particularly for a specific new device.
> The thing with RetroArch is usually that, if you manage to port it to a new device, you already have access, to a minimum to 10 or so cores/emulators right from the get go, and that saves up a LOT of time and effort than if you were porting each emu one by one.
> 
> That's a huge thing that not many people see the perks of, and it's a huge deal when a new device comes out.



Oh I totally get why and how the likes of Retroarch exists.  It's a pretty brilliant all-in-one solution.  But by that very nature you lose the attention to detail per emulator that dedicated emulators are so well known for.  Frankly, I'm impressed that Retroarch is as polished as it is. But I don't think there will ever come a time where I find it to be better per individual core than some of the dedicated emulators that exist outside of it.


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## ShadowOne333 (Aug 4, 2021)

MikaDubbz said:


> Oh I totally get why and how the likes of Retroarch exists.  It's a pretty brilliant all-in-one solution.  But by that very nature you lose the attention to detail per emulator that dedicated emulators are so well known for.  Frankly, I'm impressed that Retroarch is as polished as it is. But I don't think there will ever come a time where I find it to be better per individual core than some of the dedicated emulators that exist outside of it.


Yeah I totally understand you.
I also used to prefer standalone emulators instead of RA way back when it was hitting the 1.0 version or near to it on Wii.
With due time I did manage to get the hang of using it, and now I'm really comfortable with it and can customize it at all.

One could probably setup RetroArch in a way that makes it similar to standalone emulators on specific devices, it would just be a matter of making the proper code on RA to make it possible, but should be fairly feasible.


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## lokomelo (Aug 4, 2021)

My take of this is that the frontend exists, it is there for download for free. If one or more creators hurt you or others with their transphobia or whatever, don't feel bad about using the damn  thing. Just don't donate (obviously).

as @subcon959 said, I wish I did not knew about that shit, but if the thing works for you, you are not helping anybody else but you by using it.



Milenko said:


> Standalone isn't always an option


This should be VERY CLEAR. Reading the comments, seems that many people are not aware of that.


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## the_randomizer (Aug 4, 2021)

MarioMasta64 said:


> https://wololo.net/downloads/index.php/download/878 gpsp is available seperately for psp
> as well as genesis plus gx https://segaretro.org/Genesis_Plus_GX



No on PC they're not. People still bitch about it because they feel entitled.


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## ClancyDaEnlightened (Aug 5, 2021)

WITH THAT DISCLAIMER OUT OF THE WAY, here are links to the chat logs. REMEMBER: THIS IS *DESIGNED* TO BE BELIEVED AT FACE VALUE. *EVERYTHING CLAIMED HERE IS FALSE.* YOU NEED TO ACTIVELY TELL YOURSELF THIS WHILE READING. https://archive.is/UcRs9 https://archive.is/a2WQ5 8/15

twitter.com/pgandlabs/status/1421190933744390144

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its gotten crazy

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

links are being ddos'd


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## smf (Aug 5, 2021)

osaka35 said:


> Do you know, out of curiosity, what are all the avenues they make money? and how much do you think they make regularly? Do they work on this project full-time? I've never bothered to think about it before.



I don't know for sure, but I think they have a LLC company or something.

I am part of the mame team, there are people working on it all the time and we don't make any money out of it. We all lose money on it, because it's a hobby.

When they came along and broke our license they went completely berzerk when we bought it up. Like properly psycho. They then act the victim, it happens time and time again. I don't know if it is that they have a persecution complex and are incapable of understanding simple licensing terms, but the leaks of their chats suggest they are just manipulative assholes.

During one argument here, someone from RA sent me private logs that contradicted everything he was arguing in public & they were aware that telling the truth would hurt their argument.

So I don't think they deserve a single cent, if that means they stop doing it then it's fine by me (although I think their ego will keep them doing it regardless). Someone else will then pick it up and work with people for free. At the moment there is no point.

We tried being nice, it didn't get us anywhere.

By all means steal all their stuff for free, but giving them money is offensive to all the people they stole from.


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## jimbo13 (Aug 5, 2021)

I don't like Retroarch, I find it a clunky pain in the ass to use and never seen anything interesting from the sorting or presentation for it to be worth the trouble.  

But wow what a bunch of pearl clutching cry babies a lot of you are.  Congratulations on managing to top circa 1990s religious right outrage culture as the most insufferable obnoxious group of people to ever step upon a soap box. 

This thread > Tinky Winkys purse.


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## mightymuffy (Aug 5, 2021)

Well Brenda, a full-time yummy mummy of 5 from Barnsley, has just just told me on Facebook that Retroarch broke into her house 7 years ago and bummed her for 6 hours straight without consent, so you know what, fukkin arseholes the lot of em, where's me pitchfork....


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## Deleted member 471305 (Aug 5, 2021)

I've always liked the idea of Retroarch but the interface has always been kind of a turn-off for me. I find the XMB-styled menu pretty damn clunky and inconvenient outside of situations where everything is already set up and ready to play. For that reason, i lean more towards standalone emulators or other multi-emulator projects with nicer interfaces such as Bizhawk.


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## Jokey_Carrot (Aug 5, 2021)

the_randomizer said:


> I'd love to see people create a better frontend, but until then, maybe use standalone emulators and stop bitching about it?


Yea. That's why I use ares and mednafen.


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## RichardTheKing (Aug 5, 2021)

I used Retroarch a bit a few years ago, and...eh, nah. Gimme VBA-M and DeSmuME and SNES9x any day; their GUIs are far more straightforward and cleaner.


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## subcon959 (Aug 5, 2021)

Jokey_Carrot said:


> Yea. That's why I use ares and mednafen.


I've only ever used Ares for WonderSwan, are the other systems well-emulated too?


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## Deleted member 514389 (Aug 5, 2021)

FAST6191 said:


> From where I sit then individual emulators still provide me with the best experience



Which is obvious, as they are tailor made for the system.

GBA Link Emulation on retroarch ? Ha!
Basic DS wirelss communication features ? Nope.
Any GC-GBA Connection ? ...

Retroarch is both the most (somewhat) ambitious, yet still lazy and kinda worthless attempt to emulation I've ever seen.
Let's just plug these cores other devs implemented in and call it a day.
(IIRC, they only do x64.. so forget about PCSX2 on many machines with retroargh)

It's like a FastFood Menu that tries to be a Six course meal...


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## osaka35 (Aug 5, 2021)

smf said:


> I don't know for sure, but I think they have a LLC company or something.
> 
> I am part of the mame team, there are people working on it all the time and we don't make any money out of it. We all lose money on it, because it's a hobby.
> 
> ...


oh snap. yeah, normally people here take open-source licensing pretty seriously. The cool reaction is confusing to me. 

Can they be taken to court over licensing? why haven't they yet?


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## subcon959 (Aug 5, 2021)

osaka35 said:


> oh snap. yeah, normally people here take open-source licensing pretty seriously. The cool reaction is confusing to me.


To be fair, I think the cool reaction here is more about the bullying than open source issues. Then again, I think RA has built a big enough fan base over the years that most users wouldn't really care about that either.


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## the_randomizer (Aug 5, 2021)

Jokey_Carrot said:


> Yea. That's why I use ares and mednafen.



Good for you


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## Clydefrosch (Aug 5, 2021)

i'd love if i didnt have to remove like 200 unneeded cores from every update all the time.

do we really need like 10 snes cores? really?


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## smf (Aug 5, 2021)

osaka35 said:


> why haven't they yet?



We'd have to pay to do that out of our own pockets.


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## Minox (Aug 7, 2021)

Luckily nobody is forced to use RetroArch so if they don't like it they can always use something else.


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## ClancyDaEnlightened (Aug 7, 2021)

Why not just create a custom Linux distro, tailored specifically for retro emulation.... literally double click the rom file, boots into the needed emulator like it was an exec


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## Pineapplecake (Aug 31, 2021)

It has always been a love hate relationship.  The devs did a good job hosing any kind of negative sentiment and continue to do so.  Heck reddit doesn't even seem to allow any kind of negative view of RA.  But as a coder and someone who has used computers for 40+ years, it is far from perfect and I am not sure why it receives all of the love and accolades it does at this point.  Things it does well, downloads cores, borks itself with updates, throws out config data, freezes at the startup of games an emulator on a 486 could run.  Things it does not do well, provide a consistently playable experience, run without issue when you are trying to play with friends, operate without substantial support from other users that read verbose logs and tell people they should have known they should need "xxxx.dll v2.9 not 3.4 why are you running the latest drivers anyway bro?  Do you even lift?  A very loud app and community that seems to be short on substance at this point.  Tried and tried to get into RA because that seemed to be the way things were heading but it was just so bloaty and setup was such a consistent nightmare that I just went back to my tried and true .7z of emus from XP days.  All work fine still and holy cow I did not even have to go online to figure out why the install crashed because of a bad line in .cfg    To each their own and more RA fun for you guys I guess but I really still feel like this should be in beta and gonna stick to what works for me.  I guess once my vintage emus start failing, I may move over and help with the RA project and start fixing a couple of things but until then I am just gonna enjoy playing games and not forum diving all day because the keybinding got reconfigged without prompt and it stays frozen and the myriad of other issues I encountered on a range of machines.  Happy gaming to all


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## Deleted member 569451 (Sep 27, 2021)

From a user's point of view, retroarch offers at least a few good things that you don't normally get in other emulators.

* Resizable windows that automatically fit window tiles on tiling window managers. Floating windows are a pain on tiling window managers.
* Well-documented default config options in /etc/retroarch.cfg that can be selectively overriden in ~/.config/retroarch/retroarch.cfg. You can configure retroarch entirely in plain text files and bypass GUI configuration. This is a powerful feature for people who prefer plain text configuration to GUI config. Most emulators I tried don't make it easy to selectively override a few config options in plain text files.

I prefer standalone emulators, but most standalone emulators don't offer these two features.

I can probably live without well-documented plain text config options that can be selectively overridden in separate files because emulators usually don't need much configuration, but I really want resizable windows.


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## FAST6191 (Sep 27, 2021)

Never met the massive desire for windows like that before. Not even sure I can see the use case.
Most seemingly go for the 1x, whole number multiplication (plus filters of varying nature*), widescreen hacks if available (mostly a 3d affair or bodge with 2d) or fullscreen (and probably black bars or surrounding image).
Anything else then ends up looking like smeared nonsense.

*I would broadly split them into classic sai/supersai/eagle/..., any of the texture replacement stuff (includes HD rendering and widescreen as it all falls from the same underpinning tech), http://bogost.com/games/a_television_simulator/ and similar ilk, and maybe a fourth for the more aware filters like we saw specifically for mario platformers to bump res or fun ones for doing 2d widescreen.


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