Homebrew RetroArch - A new multi-system emulator

[wiismodrome]

For you guys trying to achieve proper CRT-like emulation on a LCD or Plasma I have to say "Dear God no! Please!"

Your best bet is to find a cheap Trinitron CRT and use it exclusively for standard definition content.

Agreed. Through component, 240p looks great on an SD Trinitron set.

 

[kineticUk]

Ok while we are on the subject of scanline generators...
MassiveRican have a read of this thread (from the beginning) and check the link I posted.
http://gbatemp.net/threads/wii-virtual-console-differences-stiffer-controls-worse-image-ect.340239/
(note: oracles don't read, cant read or just like to act like only they know..straight hijackin')

 

[Hielkenator]

For you guys trying to achieve proper CRT-like emulation on a LCD or Plasma I have to say "Dear God no! Please!"

Haha......

Seriously though, the scanline generator is a great idea, but the timing is too early. Current displays just have no where near high enough contrast ratio to really benefit from scanline shading and the kind of filtering these games need to look as they were intended to look. And lets not forget the motion blur that is inherit in all flat panels currently, even Plasma, whether you notice it or not, its still there and turns a sharp image into a soft image while in motion. If you really want a convincing CRT look, then OLED will "most likely" be the solution due to its super-high contrast, and "supposedly" zero motion blur. But OLED has been delayed over and over again, so who know's when it will finally be released in affordable fashion?

Your best bet is to find a cheap Trinitron CRT and use it exclusively for standard definition content.

Actually, input lag and ghosting is not noticable any more using the SLG3000 generator.
It comes with a price though. In the end it also come down to the quality of your tv and the scaler used ( NEEDED FOR VGA INPUTS )
Any tv lcd/plasma capable of 640 x 480 and witha aD-sub 15 connector is compatible.

Take some time to watch these:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=slg 3000&oq=slg 3000&gs_l=youtube.3..0i10l2.5793.7591.0.7914.8.8.0.0.0.0.83.464.8.8.0...0.0...1ac.1.09WKuyOTOrY

 

[nintygaming]

Actually, input lag and ghosting is not noticable any more using the SLG3000 generator.
It comes with a price though. In the end it also come down to the quality of your tv and the scaler used ( NEEDED FOR VGA INPUTS )
Any tv lcd/plasma capable of 640 x 480 and witha aD-sub 15 connector is compatible.

Take some time to watch these:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=slg 3000&oq=slg 3000&gs_l=youtube.3..0i10l2.5793.7591.0.7914.8.8.0.0.0.0.83.464.8.8.0...0.0...1ac.1.09WKuyOTOrY

Ummm......

Input lag and Response Time are not the same thing. Response time (pixel ghosting) has nothing to do with input lag. Please for the love of God READ THIS: http://shoryuken.com/forum/index.php?threads/the-new-definitive-hdtv-lag-faq.55593/#post-2622391

This a common misconception. You see, TV/Monitor manufacturers refer to "Ghosting" as "Response Time" (ie; the amount of time it takes a pixel to respond). They will never, I repeat NEVER tell you how much their TV lags (ie; the amount of time it takes for mario to jump after you press the A button). In fact, they don't even have a clue as to how much their TV's lag, none whatsoever because 1. They don't give a crap and 2. They don't test them and 3. They consider gamers a minority and market TV's towards movie lovers.

To further solidify things, a specific TV can have 200ms of Input Lag, and 8ms Response Time. Please read the following post of mine for more info - http://gbatemp.net/threads/retroarch-a-new-multi-system-emulator.333126/page-91#post-4543884 - read the second half entitled "P.S." and while your at it, check out my other posts on the same exact page for more detailed info concerning why Digital display's will always lag and why Analog (CRT's) will never lag (interestingly enough, CRT's have never EVER had input lag OR ghosting, and always have had perfection in both areas. How can it be that old technology destroys modern tech when it comes to these things? Hahaha......)

And one more thing, there is absolutely, positively no device whatsoever that can eliminate Input Lag, which is determined by the TV and not an outside source. AND there is no device that can eliminate ghosting (ie; reduce response time) ether. EVERY SINGLE LCD TV ON THE MARKET has ghosting. This is a fact, period. The amount of ghosting will be determined by the panel and digital post-processing used (remember, processing creates less ghosting and MORE lag......ie; the more processing the more lag). And I've seen the SLG3000 in many videos and again, current displays do not have a high enough contrast or DPI to give you a convincing CRT emulation no matter how great the scanline shader (it will always appear too dim with current modern contrast ratios). Plasma gets close, but LCD doesn't have a prayer. OLED might be the ticket. Still though, even 4k resolution might not be high enough for a near perfect CRT emulation. These new technology's are just not mature enough to give you a substitute for a cheap $10 CRT from Goodwill.

 

[nintygaming]

At least RetroArch filters the screen. Sorry to those who like the pixelation, but it look like crap and filtering looks like how CRT "bled" pixels together. This is the closest I can get without getting a CRT TV.

Exactly. Due to CRT's not having pixels, it will display 2D retro games properly because it will blend the pixels together for an anti-aliased effect that is not possible on pixel based displays (here's looking at you plasma, lcd, etc). Trying to display these retro games on a flat-panel display will result in a lego-block like appearance. Even current emulation shaders and filtering cannot give us proper CRT emulation. They will ether look too blurry or too dark. Once we have Ultra-High Definition (4k at the minimum) OLED displays with a much higher contrast and DPI, then perhaps people can finally give us a truly convincing CRT emulation. Till then, we should treasure our SD-CRT's for showing us 240p content in its most beautiful possible light. When I compared some SNES games on a HDTV upscaled and filtered, and then on a CRT @ 240p, my jaw dropped at the beauty and sparkle that I witnessed on that cheap CRT. No amount of words can express the beauty I witnessed. It was a night and day difference. No amount of tweaking ever made those games look "good enough" on even a $4000 Pioneer Plasma. After revisiting them on the CRT, I fell in love all over again with retro games and switched back to CRT for all my retro gaming experiences. There is just no substitute for the kind of beauty these games show off on their intended displays.

 

[MassiveRican]

Ummm......

Input lag and Response Time are not the same thing. Response time (pixel ghosting) has nothing to do with input lag. Please for the love of God READ THIS: http://shoryuken.com/forum/index.php?threads/the-new-definitive-hdtv-lag-faq.55593/#post-2622391

This a common misconception. You see, TV/Monitor manufacturers refer to "Ghosting" as "Response Time" (ie; the amount of time it takes a pixel to respond). They will never, I repeat NEVER tell you how much their TV lags (ie; the amount of time it takes for mario to jump after you press the A button). In fact, they don't even have a clue as to how much their TV's lag, none whatsoever because 1. They don't give a crap and 2. They don't test them and 3. They consider gamers a minority and market TV's towards movie lovers.

To further solidify things, a specific TV can have 200ms of Input Lag, and 8ms Response Time. Please read the following post of mine for more info - http://gbatemp.net/threads/retroarch-a-new-multi-system-emulator.333126/page-91#post-4543884 - read the second half entitled "P.S." and while your at it, check out my other posts on the same exact page for more detailed info concerning why Digital display's will always lag and why Analog (CRT's) will never lag (interestingly enough, CRT's have never EVER had input lag OR ghosting, and always have had perfection in both areas. How can it be that old technology destroys modern tech when it comes to these things? Hahaha......)

And one more thing, there is absolutely, positively no device whatsoever that can eliminate Input Lag, which is determined by the TV and not an outside source. AND there is no device that can eliminate ghosting (ie; reduce response time) ether. EVERY SINGLE LCD TV ON THE MARKET has ghosting. This is a fact, period. The amount of ghosting will be determined by the panel and digital post-processing used (remember, processing creates less ghosting and MORE lag......ie; the more processing the more lag). And I've seen the SLG3000 in many videos and again, current displays do not have a high enough contrast or DPI to give you a convincing CRT emulation no matter how great the scanline shader (it will always appear too dim with current modern contrast ratios). Plasma gets close, but LCD doesn't have a prayer. OLED might be the ticket. Still though, even 4k resolution might not be high enough for a near perfect CRT emulation. These new technology's are just not mature enough to give you a substitute for a cheap $10 CRT from Goodwill.

Well then in that case I should count my blessings for my hi-scan Trinitron 4:3 CRT. I was curious because I wanted to use a single TV to play both retro and HD games but alas, I'll just get an extra set of cables and power cords and switch the Wii between 2 sets. There is nothing like playing games in their intended manner. It's not only aesthetically pleasing, but good for the soul lol.

 

[the_randomizer]

Well then in that case I should count my blessings for my hi-scan Trinitron 4:3 CRT. I was curious because I wanted to use a single TV to play both retro and HD games but alas, I'll just get an extra set of cables and power cords and switch the Wii between 2 sets. There is nothing like playing games in their intended manner. It's not only aesthetically pleasing, but good for the soul lol.

I wish I had a CRT to play legacy games on, because nothing can beat playing 240p on one of those, no doubt about it. My brother has one, so if I ever get desperate, I could always hook up a Snes to his, but in the mean time, RetroArch will suit my needs, and input lag is nearly nonexistent on my LCD (and the response time is also quite low, but not as low as my 23" Asus LED, which is 2 ms).

 

[Jiro2]

?, no it's not.
Bleu msx does not need xml editing to get the games working.
At least the version I got does'nt. ( it came with all games...)

It certainly came with a lot of games, but there were games that were not included (especially unofficial translations). To play those you needed to edit the XML.

 

[nintygaming]

Well then in that case I should count my blessings for my hi-scan Trinitron 4:3 CRT. I was curious because I wanted to use a single TV to play both retro and HD games but alas, I'll just get an extra set of cables and power cords and switch the Wii between 2 sets. There is nothing like playing games in their intended manner. It's not only aesthetically pleasing, but good for the soul lol.

Your right, it is good for the soul. Its not just another case of being a "graphic whore", not at all. Its a case of seeing these games the way they were meant to be seen. When you strip away a SDTV CRT from these games, its almost as bad as stripping away "color" from a High Definition display. Could you imagine watching a movie that has heavy use of color in black and white only? Or try to imagine panning and scanning a 2.35:1 movie to 1.33:1, completely cropping off both the left and right sides. Or try imagine stretching a 4:3 image to 21:9 (stretching 4:3 to 16:9 is bad enough, but much more than that and the human head gets shaped like a football). Its something to that effect (ie; not what the developer of the media intended for you to see), but still much worse.

 

[Hielkenator]

Ummm......

Input lag and Response Time are not the same thing. Response time (pixel ghosting) has nothing to do with input lag. Please for the love of God READ THIS: http://shoryuken.com/forum/index.php?threads/the-new-definitive-hdtv-lag-faq.55593/#post-2622391

This a common misconception. You see, TV/Monitor manufacturers refer to "Ghosting" as "Response Time" (ie; the amount of time it takes a pixel to respond). They will never, I repeat NEVER tell you how much their TV lags (ie; the amount of time it takes for mario to jump after you press the A button). In fact, they don't even have a clue as to how much their TV's lag, none whatsoever because 1. They don't give a crap and 2. They don't test them and 3. They consider gamers a minority and market TV's towards movie lovers.

To further solidify things, a specific TV can have 200ms of Input Lag, and 8ms Response Time. Please read the following post of mine for more info - http://gbatemp.net/threads/retroarch-a-new-multi-system-emulator.333126/page-91#post-4543884 - read the second half entitled "P.S." and while your at it, check out my other posts on the same exact page for more detailed info concerning why Digital display's will always lag and why Analog (CRT's) will never lag (interestingly enough, CRT's have never EVER had input lag OR ghosting, and always have had perfection in both areas. How can it be that old technology destroys modern tech when it comes to these things? Hahaha......)

And one more thing, there is absolutely, positively no device whatsoever that can eliminate Input Lag, which is determined by the TV and not an outside source. AND there is no device that can eliminate ghosting (ie; reduce response time) ether. EVERY SINGLE LCD TV ON THE MARKET has ghosting. This is a fact, period. The amount of ghosting will be determined by the panel and digital post-processing used (remember, processing creates less ghosting and MORE lag......ie; the more processing the more lag). And I've seen the SLG3000 in many videos and again, current displays do not have a high enough contrast or DPI to give you a convincing CRT emulation no matter how great the scanline shader (it will always appear too dim with current modern contrast ratios). Plasma gets close, but LCD doesn't have a prayer. OLED might be the ticket. Still though, even 4k resolution might not be high enough for a near perfect CRT emulation. These new technology's are just not mature enough to give you a substitute for a cheap $10 CRT from Goodwill.

Still it's the best option to enjoy retro games on a flatpanel
Lag is dramatically reduced because of some simple facts when you connect the SLG 3000 via the vga input.
#1 No scaling by the TV. ( need seperate scaler )
#2 No post processing by tv. ( pure VGA )


Furthermore, ghosting is reduced and the image in cleared up due to the fact the SLG 3000 add/deletes lines and the scaler doubles, upscales the image.
In other words it separates pixels to get the scanline effect.

But I agree, nothing beats a Good crt with RGB scart for retro gaming!

 

[Coto]

uhm i'm using retroarch 0.9.8.4 on PS3 and I can't seem to save my custom controls under the fbacore. There is the PS3 text input popup saying how your custom config should be called, but if I press OK, or define .cfg by extension (seems cfg is the only format readable while loading a custom control input scheme), nothing happens.

a small bump. any ideas why is this happening?

 

[Charco]

Looks like King of Fighters '98 is being released on the US Virtual Console today. What the hell kind of compression are they using to get the larger Neo Geo roms working?!

 

[nintygaming]

Still it's the best option to enjoy retro games on a flatpanel
Lag is dramatically reduced because of some simple facts when you connect the SLG 3000 via the vga input.
#1 No scaling by the TV. ( need seperate scaler )
#2 No post processing by tv. ( pure VGA )


Furthermore, ghosting is reduced and the image in cleared up due to the fact the SLG 3000 add/deletes lines and the scaler doubles, upscales the image.
In other words it separates pixels to get the scanline effect.

But I agree, nothing beats a Good crt with RGB scart for retro gaming!

Just keep in mind that not all HDTV's are created equal on their VGA input. Some or most of them actually do scale the VGA signal to their native resolution. And many of them actually do have post-processing on the VGA (albeit not as much as HDMI for example)

Even if a HDTV doesn't scale the signal or use post processing, it will still have some lag simply due to the display being digital (yep, even with a analog source, as it has to convert it to digital). I've seen some ridiculously high input lag reports on VGA inputs of some HDTV's, so its rarely a "sure thing". And, most current TV's are doing away with VGA altogether almost as fast as they did with S-Video.

And the SLG 3000 will give you a "faux" sense of reduced ghosting due to what you said, it adds the scanlines, thus reducing the total amount of pixels seen, thereby "covering" the amount of pixels seen which would "ghost" or "blur" while in motion, but, you cannot see them anymore. Still its a fake effect and does not actually reduce the TV's response time at all. (Its just as fake as frameskipping, in the sense that frameskipping deludes you into thinking the game is running faster, but its actually not and instead is using a "fast-forward" function). If a person is using scanlines to "cover" up alot of motion blur, then at this point he might as well add more and more scanlines to cover up the whole darn screen and get rid of the blur altogether.....

Its all garbage to me. We never had ghosting or input lag (or pixelation) in older technology, and if this "so-called" better technology cannot at the very least match the old in all areas, then I don't want it. Sure the old CRT's are bulky, but, so is your couch, furniture, refrigerator, bed, recliner, and toilet. Until something better comes along, then the only way to perfectly emulate a CRT is to get one. I do however believe that maybe 5-10 years from now though we will have HDTV's with high enough contrast, dpi and resolution to allow us to show a convincing CRT shader.

 

[Charco]

Just wondering what we can expect in future releases, I know SCUMMVM and perhaps larger Neo Geo rom support are down the line (9.9.9 I think?), will the point releases between now and then have additional core support, or more bugfixes/greater rom support for FBA etc?

 

[aea]

Hey, could anyone tell me how do you configure the wonderswan core to use gamecube controls? I can already start some games, but after that it seems I need certain button combination to activate one button in the wonderswan.

 

[nintygaming]

Or, you know, play them on the Wii? Kinda defeats the purpose of getting a Wii U, the games look better on the game pad than the TV. Nintendo had no reason to support 240p, and there's not a damn thing that can be done about it. Either use the Wii's VC or the Wii U on the game pad.

What's weird is that they used the "jaggy" filter on the Gamepad for F-Zero, yet on the TV its not filtered. It should be the other way around. Why on earth would they leave it jaggy on the big screen, and smooth on the small screen? Makes no sense.

And maybe I'm wrong, but I'm going to have to disagree in regards to 240p and say that they DO have a reason to support it. Just look at the 3DS Gameboy VC games. They allow you to play VC games on 3DS in their native resolution if you wish, and even give you a shader for green coloring like the original Gameboy. So that means that they took their time with "accuracy" on the Gameboy VC, yet not on the Wii-U? Makes no sense. Ah well, I'll stick with the original Wii for retro emulation.

 

[the_randomizer]

What's weird is that they used the "jaggy" filter on the Gamepad for F-Zero, yet on the TV its not filtered. It should be the other way around. Why on earth would they leave it jaggy on the big screen, and smooth on the small screen? Makes no sense.

And maybe I'm wrong, but I'm going to have to disagree in regards to 240p and say that they DO have a reason to support it. Just look at the 3DS Gameboy VC games. They allow you to play VC games on 3DS in their native resolution if you wish, and even give you a shader for green coloring like the original Gameboy. So that means that they took their time with "accuracy" on the Gameboy VC, yet not on the Wii-U? Makes no sense. Ah well, I'll stick with the original Wii for retro emulation.

Yeah, my guess is that the game pad is 480p and doesn't have to scale that high, but since the Wii U is HD, most people probably have it set at 720 instead, scaling it even farther, I don't know, but it is weird nonetheless. I'll stick with RetroArch instead; at least that filters HDTVs.

 

[nintygaming]

Yeah, my guess is that the game pad is 480p and doesn't have to scale that high, but since the Wii U is HD, most people probably have it set at 720 instead, scaling it even farther, I don't know, but it is weird nonetheless. I'll stick with RetroArch instead; at least that filters HDTVs.

At the very least they could have given us scanlines and filtering. I mean, that's like a basic thing with emulators these days, heck even Capcom gave us Scanlines with some of their VC Arcade ports and even made the Scanlines adjustable in brightness. So maybe Nintendo will release updated patches when they finally release the VC service, but I'm not holding my breath. I do however like supporting Nintendo, but if they expect me to repurchase games that I've already repurchased (cart, then VC, then Wii-U VC) and insult my repurchase by downgrading the graphics, then I'll have no choice but to boycott future NES and SNES Wii-U VC games until they get a clue and show us some love. As for N64 and GCN Virtual Console, I think they will be fine due to their polygonal nature. Polygon's look awesome upscaled and uprezed.

 

[Dogway]

Is it possible to remember last used path in retroarch, or is this a by-design decision?

 

[Toad King]

Releases and support has moved here: http://forum.themaister.net/viewtopic.php?id=347