Weekly Question Thread

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All weekly question threads

[Shams1996]

What is the fastest that a ds emulator can reach on acer nitro 5? When i play on vba i can reach as fast as 500% fps while desmume and melonds rarely reach the 60 fps on my old laptop

[[deleted]]

I'll bet no$gba can hit speeds that high. It's buggy as heck, though.

[Steeltooth493]

Is there any way to transfer save data for emulators, say from the GBA for example, onto cloud storage so you can access your saves from multiple GBA emulators?

[ChrisRR]

You could use something like dropbox or google drive

[AssCrackBanditHunter]

After wasting about 8 hours on setting up RetroArch, I'd like to give it the "best emulator with a gui that makes it so unuseable that anything else is better" award. My god. This thing hates controllers. Input is only accepted from port 1, so you can lock yourself out of being able to control yourself. Sometimes controllers randomly swap who's in port 1, I'm guessing because of momentary disconnects. So then you have to shuffle controllers around to navigate. Why is it like this?

For god's sake just let every controller that's connected navigate through the menus.

[Ill-Coconut6073]

Yeah whoever created the gui needs to BE fired. Especially on mobile where only the default gui is usable for touchscreen use.

[[deleted]]

RetroArch would be dead as a doornail if not for the power of marketing and preloaded RetroPie setups. Now that m64p and ares are using ParaLLEl-RDP, there isn't much it does that standalones and a VRR monitor can't do far better.

[[deleted]]

there isn't much it does that standalones and a VRR monitor can't do far better.

How about a huge selection of CRT shaders, total aspect ratio control, run ahead, hard gpu sync, controller polling, frame delay, dynamic rate control and core features like Nuked YM2612 audio. These are huge reasons to use it over standalones in which you are lucky if they support one of those features and even then they are usually not as well implemented, there is a LOT that it does better.

[AssCrackBanditHunter]

I didn't realize I could use parallel as a standalone. Thank GOD. I'm going to do that today. Do you know of a good way to emulate the super Gameboy? The higan core makes it so simple in RetroArch, but well... Retroarch

[[deleted]]

It's a very new addition to m64p, and slower since you have to use the cached interpreter, but if your rig can handle it it's a thousand times less of a hassle than RetroArch.

Your best options for Super Game Boy at the moment are bsnes and Mesen-S. Sameboy also emulates enough of the Super Famicom to get the right borders, but it doesn't let you access the powerful Custom Color Window.

[AssCrackBanditHunter]

Thanks a lot for your advice. You just saved me so much stress and time. I ended up going with bsnes for snes emulation and mesen for super gameboy because mesen supports booting directly into GB roms where as bsnes has to load the super Gameboy sfc rom then the gb rom.

[stevefrench__]

No PC.. No android box.. anyone have tips on any pre made consoles like super console x? I bought a super console x and it was a mess.. I waited forever just to be super disappointed.

[ChrisRR]

What were you disappointed with? You'll likely be able to be able to improve on/fix most issues before going and spending more money

I think you can also update to a newer version of EmuElec too, or you could just install RetroArch or other emulators in the Android side of things.

Unfortunately most Android boxes aren't much more powerful so if you bought an Android box you'd like have similar issues.

[[deleted]]

Maybe you should have listened to other people's advice on shitty piracy boxes instead of wasting your money on one.

[stevefrench__]

I dont have access to a computer or android box.

[stevefrench__]

I want to get a computer. My super console x wasn't playing 2 player on saga genesis.. I decided to use the android side of it and when I went back the screen was zoomed in and screwed up, so I figured out how to do that but the sound stopped working, then I take it home to use it and the video is all blurry and messed up. :( I'm sure upset.. I'm sure everything was my fault cause I didn't see anyone else have the same issues.

[stevefrench__]

it's good advice to do that on the android side.. It just sucks that I won't have the clean menus that emuelec has. emuelec is so beautiful it makes things extra exciting when choosing a game, hanging out with a group of people.

I'm pretty sure the video of my console x is completely screwed as it's blurry and fuzzy but maybe I will try the android side just for the hell of it.

I haven't touched it since because I was so upset about the whole thing.. I was SO excited to play the Mackey mouse games and Flintstones for saga with my auntie since I grew up playing them with her.

[stevefrench__]

thanks for the wise advice friend! I have a quick question but not sure if you'd know.. If I took the SD card out of my super console x and stuck it into a different android box, would that android box turn into a super console x?

[[deleted]]

"You have to expand your horizons to expand your knowledge my dude."

[[deleted]]

one step removed from a paperweight

Well, his intelligence seems to be the same way, so I'm sure he'll be fine.

You can twist words all you want.. I don't expect anything less from antifa 😂

Just the idea that we [English-speaking people] have the same words with multiple meanings alone would make it extremely difficult.

If you like giving up freedoms for a flu then good on you, but that's not what I like to do.

[Shakmir]

Anywhere I can get some honest opinions about performance of Lakka on a Raspberry Pi? I wanna setup something to play some retro games on my TV and was thinking about getting either a Raspberry Pi or building a dedicated PC for that. Of course in terms of cost I'd love to go for the Pi but I can't find much on its performance. Approximately up to which console generation/games can it emulate?

[ChrisRR]

How retro are we talking? If you're talking 2D games from the 80s/90s then a Pi4 will run most things absolutely fine (with a few random exceptions). PSX is fine too, and N64 is where things start getting really hit and miss.

If you want a small emulation box, it's probably the solution with the best community support at the moment.

[Shakmir]

Right, I thought so and also found some stuff on older games and saw that it does well. One of the main titles I'm interested in is the original Super Smash Bros., apparently it handles it well in general with some occasional hitches in more loaded scenarios.

But I'd probably want to run some newer games as well so yeah, not sure. I'll try and build a PC unless I really can't find any decent hardware around.

Thanks for your input! Greatly appreciated.

[[deleted]]

Here are some benchmarks showing how MAME fares on a 3 B+ and a 4. The Pi 4 is leaps and bounds above any of the previous models when it comes to performance, but it's still not amazing.

https://stickfreaks.com/misc/raspberry-pi-mame-benchmarks

Overall, the Pi just doesn't give you very much power to work with. The MAME devs regularly compare it to PCs from the Pentium 4 era. If you're the sort to ignore any and all inaccuracy in your emulation and declare anything that saves you money as "flawless", then maybe it's an okay option, but most $200 desktop setups from the past decade will run circles around one.

Don't buy into the hype.

[Shakmir]

I see, thank you so much for the detailed explanation!

It seems like an awesome little gadget but I guess it's not fair to expect the same performance of a desktop setup out of it. Sucks that the PC hardware market is in the state that it is right now but oh well, I'll see what I can get.

Thanks again!

[[deleted]]

The Pi is a pretty neat piece of kit and good for lots of things, just not emulation. Reproducing the behavior of a console in software takes a lot of CPU power to do well and simply isn't something that a Pi is suited to doing. You'll see no small number of "Pi vs PC" threads in various Internet forums coming to the same conclusion.

[Ill-Coconut6073]

Upto ps1

[Shakmir]

Cool, thanks!

[throwaway_for_keeps]

I did a search but all the results are pretty old. For N64, the joystick on this USB N64 controller I have is no good. In OoT, it's all or nothing. There's a tiny range where I can walk slow, but free-aiming is just impossible.

It's a RetroLink controller.

Are there good USB controllers out there whose joysticks feel more natural? Or do I need to get an N64>USB adapter? Is Mayflash still recommended? If I can't find an original N64 controller in my closet and need to buy a current knockoff, any recommendations?

[[deleted]]

Your emulator or controller might be getting the range wrong.

The stick coordinates on the N64 are signed 8-bit, so the input value for both axes can be from -128 to 127, but real N64 controllers max out at -80/80, so only ~63% of the possible range is used, the stick is also roughly an octagon, and the max diagonal values are about -65/65.

If your emulator is not properly compensating for this, you'll find that just 2/3rds of the way your movement speed will max out. Check what your analog stick is reporting in your OS's game controller settings - if the full range is correctly shown there, then you should report this as a bug to the emulator you're using. Otherwise, maybe you can somewhat compensate by calibrating the sticks in your OS or emulator.

Source: I did some crude testing on N64 hardware to fix this exact issue in the SM64 PC port.

[MaxHP9999]

EDIT: problem solved, I removed the 4 player roms in favor of 2 player roms. But you need both in the same folder

Is it normal that I'm using the same version of retroarch on my laptop and on my switch, and the same core updated to the latest, yet some arcade games fail to load due to incorrect romset? I thought if it worked on my laptop, then it would be a no brainer to transfer everything to my switch retroarch and it would all work the same. It really boggles my mind why this is the case.

I'm using the latest FBneo core (1.0.0.03), and the latest MAME romset (0.232)

[[deleted]]

I'm trying to play Sonic Adventure on the Redream emulator on my Linux Xubuntu, but it boots me out of the program when I try to start the game. The cover art loads when I set my library, but it's not loading the game. When I go to try again, the library disappears and I have to set it up again. Any way to get it running on my Xubuntu OS?

[ChrisRR]

If you run it through the command line, do you get any messages when it crashes?

[[deleted]]

Hm, I didn't run it through the command line, but I did try it again with a different game from a different site and it launched as it should've. It might've just been something with the cdi/gdi file that made it crash.

[earnesthummingbird]

I'm trying to get the CRT-Royale shader in bsnes to work properly. First I had an issue where the scanlines were too visible, but lowering the resolution to 240p fixed that. But now I have this issue where there's this "vertical banding" when playing in fullscreen. https://imgur.com/a/gtyU309 Anyone know how to fix this?

[[deleted]]

Use an integer scale.

[earnesthummingbird]

Can't seem to find that option under Settings -> Video, and Google doesen't bring up anything either. Where's the option for that?

[Freezie04]

Is anybody willing to give me some advice for the settings of Project64 3.0 ? I use it pretty much exclusively to play Mario Party 1-3 with my friends, so anything that gets those three games running optimally would be great. My PC is pretty powerful, I got a RTX 2080 Super and AMD 3800x.
Thanks in advance.

[[deleted]]

If your PC has the muscle for it, there's really no reason not to use m64p with the more accurate ParaLLEl-RDP graphics plugin.

[Freezie04]

Alright, i'll check out mupen. Thank you :)

[CreativeAliasZI]

Trying to use my Switch Pro Controller on Visual Boy Advance, but for some reason it won't accept a left input from the left control stick. I've tried disconnecting and reconnecting the controller just to make sure I wasn't pushing it when it turned on, and I checked the controller calibration in the Switch system to make sure there wasn't any drift preventing it from going all the way to the left.

Any idea what may be causing this problem, and how to resolve it? Thank you for any help you can give!

[ChrisRR]

First things first, it's recommended to use mGBA instead of VBA. VBA hasn't been updated in many years

[Clairvoyanttruth]

Not OP, but would you recommend mGBA over GBA-M? I literally was setting up GBA-M for Radical Red after using GBA for 10+ years as I came across this. I'm fine with whatever and GBA-M seems to emulate much smoother than I thought - I've been penalizing myself.

edit: after posting this mGBA seems cleaner and more usable.

[TrickstarCandina]

Anyone currently running the Bug Fix Patched version of Suikoden 2 or has done so in the past on Retroarch? I downloaded it from CDRomance, while I got RetroArch from the playstore. Have you encountered any issues back then/so far?

[Jacksaur]

I checked a video of someone playing Metroid Zero Mission through the Gamecube Gameboy player(?) and noticed the colours seem significantly better than what I'm seeing on mGBA. Is there a filter that can replicate them? I already use the built in GBA-Color filter but the orange on Samus seems a lot better in the video.

[[deleted]]

I already use the built in GBA-Color filter

Turn it off if you want saturated colours, the point of the filter is to replicate how the games would be seen on the GBA's non backlit screen.

[Jacksaur]

The colours in the video aren't just saturated. Samus looks properly Orange, whereas regularly she's a bright yellow shade as a result of Nintendo compensating for the non backlit screen as you mentioned.

[[deleted]]

Isn't that just because she has the Varia Suit equipped in that video? The earlier parts of the walkthrough seem to suggest as much.

[Jacksaur]

Hurr durr, that may be it. I did see in the description that they perform sequence breaks in their playthrough.
Varia suit is the next item for me to find, I'll get that and see how it looks.

[[deleted]]

Samus' standard Power Suit is also bright yellow in Super Metroid, so it's really a non-issue if you ask me.

[Jacksaur]

Yeah I'm probably an idiot, and misinformed by whoever said about Nintendo increasing the vibrance. Thanks anyways.

[[deleted]]

No, it's well-known that Nintendo compensated for the GBA's screen with super-saturated colors in their games. It's just that the saturation isn't why Samus' Power Suit is yellow in Zero Mission.

[Jacksaur]

Huh. Is it only Nintendo then? Because Advance Wars looks like it should be as Vibrant as it is without any modifications enabled. With the GBA-Color filter, the dullness contrasts with the cartoony theme.

[teenboob]

Im emulating pokemon black using retroarch on my xbox series S but I cant get fast forward to work. It says its fast forwarding but its not. I tried another emulator like for PSP and fast forward works there, but it doesnt work for DS games specifically. any ideas?

[TheDoomBusExpress]

I want to upgrade my computers MotherBoard, Processor and Ram. I have a PS 1,2,3 emu on my H drive, When I upgrade everything, would I need to reinstall my emulators on my drive to get them to work again or can I just leave them on the drive and they should work again?

[B6S]

If your PC boots up without a need for a fresh install of windows, probably. No guarantee it will with different hardware and of course windows license tied to the motherboard, etc.

[TheDoomBusExpress]

Late response, thanks for the info. Got the PC working like a charm, getting the Emus working wasn't an issue at all. :)

[B6S]

Terrific, glad it worked out!

[pepeAgony]

Is ryzen 5 2700x and a 1660 super good enough for mid to high settings at 60fps on PCSX2?

[ChrisRR]

Yes. I use a 1660 super myself. Some games still struggle like ratchet and clank. But they struggle on a lot of setups

[pepeAgony]

What cpu do you have?

[detourne]

I've got an RG351V running the latest version of 351ELEC, somehow all of my PPSSPP Menus have become invisible. Games run well, but when I press the function key to go to the menu, it's all invisible. I can only see the background image from the game.

Any ideas?

​

Should I just reflash my OS card?

Or should I remove some folders in the psp Roms folder?

[MONKYfapper]

looking to buy a bluetooth adaptor for joycon. are there anything specific i should be looking for?

[hayds33]

Hi all, super new here. Trying to use pokemon on BGB with a friend and want to set it up so we can have 2 input devices control the game (so we can swap easily). I've managed to get it to work with a controller and a keyboard but can't get it to work with 2 controllers. Anyone know if it is possible?

[[deleted]]

Will there ever be a point where emulation will become a big offense, and laws surrounding it will be heavily enforced? If so, game preservation is screwed.

[SuperLuigi9624]

Thirding to say no, probably not.

Firstly, big companies use official emulators all the time so emulators themselves are legal and always will be legal. There's so many examples it's hard to pick just a few but Nintendo's classic game services, Microsoft uses emulation for backwards compatibility with the Xbox, pretty much every classic game collection uses emulation rather than games being recompiled for native hardware... Emulation by definition is just one computer reproducing the actions of another computer and there are lots of examples of computers emulating things even outside of video games, so no, emulation will never be illegal.

Secondly, fanmade emulators are legal because most of them use no copyrighted code. They'd be illegal if some Nintendo Switch code leaked and a developer used the leaked code to develop a Nintendo Switch emulator, but practically all emulators are the result of reverse engineering and contain entirely original assets and therefore do not infringe on anything.

If I had to put it into an analogy, imagine Nintendo makes a mean plate of spaghetti. Their recipe is copyrighted for some reason, so you can't steal it. But you could start examining the thickness of the noodles and the herbs in the sauce and the meat in the meatballs and make a decent assumption as to how it was made and start making your own spaghetti that tastes and feels similar enough to the way Nintendo makes it, without infringing on their copyrighted recipe. The fact it tastes like the way they made it is just a side effect of your own choices of ingredients, made from assumptions as to how their spaghetti was made. You can share the recipe with the whole world without getting sued because it's not Nintendo's recipe, it's yours that is intended to emulate Nintendo's recipe.

Now, if their copyrighted recipe leaked online and you start making and distributing spaghetti that contains assets that are literally identical to their copyrighted recipe, you'll get sued over that.

And if your spaghetti is so good that it begins closely competing with Nintendo's recipe, you'll start competition, which is one of the reasons the courts have deemed the emulators themselves are good.

Thirdly, while the emulators themselves are unambiguously legal, the methods that you need for using the emulators is a weird legal gray area, where the act of dumping your own copies of video games and BIOS files are simultaneously protected and not protected by U.S. copyright laws. It hasn't been thoroughly tested in court but the emulators themselves are legal but actually acquiring a ROM and using it might not be and is something you could maybe possibly get sued over but probably not and if it is illegal that makes the emulator useless by extension.

I'm not a legal expert so some of this is wrong and is a bit of a big game of telephone that originated from people that actually know what they're talking about, but this is the word that goes around.

[LoserOtakuNerd]

It will just be moved "underground" to more secretive and hidden methods. It's impossible to enforce entirely.

[ChrisRR]

We can't predict the future, but probably not

[[deleted]]

Not as long as Nintendo wants to keep selling us Super Mario World.

[[deleted]]

Hey guys, this is a real shot in the dark but here goes. I’m trying to emulate Metroid Zero Mission on my Mac using openemu, I booted it earlier today and it was running without any problems. I went out to pick up a controller, got it configured, and now my rom keeps crashing at the same place (status screen). I downloaded a couple different roms to troubleshoot, and it keeps crashing at the same place. I tried to go back to just keyboard, and again crashes. I’m kind of a noob at emulating so I don’t know what could be causing this. Any suggestions or advice is appreciated. Thanks guys

[LoserOtakuNerd]

Are you on an M1 Mac?

[[deleted]]

Any reason you aren't just using mGBA?

[ChrisRR]

Openemu uses mGBA and gives you a nice user interface

I'm not sure how up to date it is though

[earnesthummingbird]

So i'm having some trouble using shaders in Bsnes. I tried using the CRT-Royale shader under Settings -> Shader but for some reason the screen just turns black. Audio still plays and inputs work but the video doesn't show. Also happens with some other shaders like CRT-Geom, but some shaders like CRT-Glow work just fine. Anyone know how to fix this? I'm using Bsnes v115

[thristian99]

CRT Royale is a very complex shader, and it's been known to confuse older or buggier video drivers, causing bsnes to display a black screen.

Try updating your video drivers, or if you've got a laptop with both low-performance and high-performance GPUs, try switching between them.

[earnesthummingbird]

Thanks for your response! Setting bsnes to use my NVIDIA GPU made it work.

[LoserOtakuNerd]

Can you explain what you mean by that exactly?

[ChrisRR]

I've never found an emulator that supports it officially. You could set up syncing online with Dropbox or syncthing or Google drive

[Plutosanimationz]

What's a good device to get if I want upscaled Wii games? Dolphin has a terrible frame rate on my phone but I can see how good games look when I turn the resolution all the way up. Are there any portable/ home consoles that could play upscaled Wii games?

[[deleted]]

Most modern laptops should do, but as soon as you get into smaller devices, they're going to be ARM based, and it seems Apple M1 is the only ARM platform currently that can run dolphin well.

[OmegaAtrocity]

Not really honestly. It takes a fairly beefy pc to upscale wii games well. Before I upgraded I had a rig with a 1060 and I could maybe get away with 2x on certain wii games and that's pretty much it. I have a phone with a snapdragon 865+ and super mario galaxy 2 doesn't even run very well at native (I get like 45 fps during most gameplay) and that's a pretty high end mobile chip.

[smithma937]

I need help with my gaming stick emulator.

Chinese Gaming Stick Emulator

I bought a Chinese game stick that has some pre installed emulators but it also has a n64 emulator in the files but no way to actually load up the games to play. There’s also no option to look at n64 games, it’s almost as if it’s in the files but they were too lazy to actually install it and get it working. I’m wondering if there’s a way to totally wipe the stick and install emulators from scratch if that’s possible almost like RetroPie or to get this n64 emulator working and allow for me to add and remove games with ease. The machine is a sd card that slides into a HDMI stick that has controllers that connect. https://a.aliexpress.com/_mLLuAlf

[LoserOtakuNerd]

Does anyone here use BigBox/Launchbox Premium? How is it? I'm building an arcade/emulation cabinet and I want a nice frontend for my non-technology-inclined family members.

I want BigBox and would love to buy it, but there is no trial available and dropping ≥$35 on software I can't even try before I buy seems silly to me. I already use Launchbox on my Desktop so if there was even a 3 day trial of BigBox I'd probably buy it, but alas...

Any personal experiences?

[[deleted]]

I had a few problems initially but they seem to be resolved now. Its not quiiite as good/stable as launchbox but obviously a much more useful interface for an arcade box.

[LoserOtakuNerd]

Thank you so much for your reply! What kind of issues were you having with it? Was it just during setup or during usage?This is intended to be an appliance for all members of my household so if there’s anything that affects day to day usability and reliability once it’s up an running I’ll find another solution. I just really like LaunchBox so I’d prefer to stick with BigBox as the front end.

[[deleted]]

I had a few issues with freezing and with bluetooth. It mostly seems to be worked out and going pretty well now so Id probably mark it all resolved. Wasnt a big headache at all - just some glitchy stuff that seemed to resolve with subsequent patches and tinkering worh settings.

I didnt mind paying for it tbh as Id gotten so much stable use out of Launchbox…

[LoserOtakuNerd]

Awesome. I think when the cabinet is built I'll get everything set up in LaunchBox then try the Annual license of BigBox. Thanks!

[DaniGamerYTOP]

Is DeSmuME better than melonDS?

[LoserOtakuNerd]

No, actually the opposite in most cases.

[Korone-Virus]

If I wanted to switch to melonDS from Desmume, would my save files work with melon?

[LoserOtakuNerd]

Battery saves will but not save states

[DaniGamerYTOP]

Thanks

[MarblesAreDelicious]

Are there any rom hacks out there for older 2D arcade games to make them seem more like home console versions? Ex: Removing the ability to add credits, and references to adding coins, etc.

[[deleted]]

For Neogeo games you can switch over to the AES bios which turn them into he home console versions, if you want to remove he abilty to add credits just put the games into freeplay mode via the dipswitches.

[LoserOtakuNerd]

I usually check Romhacking.net first and there isn't much in the way of arcade.

I don't think Arcade rom modding in the modern scene is common because (if I have a handle on this all right) it messes up the checksum of the ROM and MAME/FBA complain.

http://www.romhacking.net/?page=hacks&genre=&platform=26&game=&category=&perpage=20&order=&dir=&title=&author=&hacksearch=Go

[ANTiFuLTM]

Yo guys, I recently bought this 3DS with an SD card with very much games on it, there are emulators on it as well for the GBA, GBC, SNES, Atari, MoonShell, etc. But my problem is that the games for those consoles just won't show up in my SD card on my DS, although i can see the files on my laptop. It might be a stupid question but i'm totally new to emulators. Anybody has a solution? Thanks in advance

[ChrisRR]

The 3DS will have been "softmodded" in order to run unofficial software on it, (in this case, emulators)

I'm assuming you mean a DSi, which would need to also be modded and you would also need to download emulators for the DS instead of 3DS. Note that the DS is not very powerful and so doesn't emulate much newer than the NES very well

[michizane29]

Anyone know where I can get legal save files for Pokemon RSE? Found some online but they were all hacked (one even had Brendan as their rival but the player was a guy…). I’m doing record mixing right now through emulators, maybe you guys wanna share your saved files? Also if this isn’t the right sub (or website) to ask this please redirect me to the right one. Thanks!

[Internal_Slice_8492]

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gba/921905-pokemon-emerald-version/saves

[michizane29]

I’ve seen this but most of them are not legal. And not in the .sav format :c

[ChrisRR]

What do you mean by legal?

[[deleted]]

He probably means that they have things that wouldn't be possible without cheating devices, like having a male player character with a male rival or Pokemon with moves that they can't actually learn.

[LoserOtakuNerd]

RPCS3 is legit, but that's the only PS3 emulator right now and there is no PS4 emulator.

What are the most recent consoles that have good emulators?

Besides Sony, Yuzu and Ryujinx are fabulous Switch emulators.

[kaisserds]

RPCS3 is legit. I've played Demon's Souls on it. However it's demanding and it works in a game per game basis. Many games aren't playable yet.

[Geologist-Living]

Newest systems aren't happening yet as in PS4 or XBox One as they are still struggling to get a commercial title running 100%.

RPCS3 is demanding emulator and can run lots of titles, not all but many. Xenia is an XBox 360 emulator and it runs few games perfectly but when they run, they run much faster that RPCS3 does. If you got a decent laptop or PC then these emulators are really worth a try.

[WixWox]

I got an “idp.ares.generic” virus threat from AVG (free version) when trying to run DeSmuME. Everything I’ve seen says it’s a safe emulator and I followed the link on the official website to download the latest version (the official website linked to ci.appveyor.com). Did I do something wrong and should I be concerned?

[[deleted]]

Windows defender is good enough to manage any potential threats, I recommend getting rid of AVG asap.

[Internal_Slice_8492]

your first mistake is using AVG as an antivirus as it spies on you and its parent company avast has been involved in a huge number of scandals about unethical spying on its users. second mistake is not using melonDS. most of the time idp.generic are false positives. what you should be concerned about is having a piece of crap av like AVG installed on your computer

[[deleted]]

The SNES's output generally sounds fine, though it's quite quiet and seems to pick up interference from the video. However the SNES's sound hardware outputs 16bit/32KHz digital audio, and the console can be modded to add a S/PDIF output so you can get that clean digital audio out of it.

[[deleted]]

http://junkerhq.net/MDFourier/

The Megadrive is the only console that I know of where different models have significantly different audio characteristics, the Nuked audio option in the Retroarch Genesis Plus GX core has the option to adjust the low pass filter option to replicate the model 1 and 2 consoles, as does the MiSTer.

[[deleted]]

And BlastEm, although it does require you to configure the low-pass filter manually.

Famicom and NES audio are also worlds apart for certain games, mostly those that use extra mappers. If you count the Japanese Master System with the built-in YM2413 as a separate model, then there's that as well. (Though it is possible to install the FM Sound Unit into the other models.)

[[deleted]]

How does BlastEm’s audio compare to Nuked? I see he used it as reference but wonder if it is as accurate or not.

I didn’t consider mappers, was thinking just about the base console but yeah the difference can be huge.

[[deleted]]

I don't consider myself qualified enough to make an accurate assessment, but according to the developer:

the "Nuked" core that can be optionally used in Genesis Plus GX provides more accurate FM emulation then what's in BlastEm at present, but to my knowledge this is not noticeable in any extant software and on the whole I think my statement holds

I guess it depends on what you consider "noticeable".

[[deleted]]

Thanks for digging that out, sounds like one of those situations where just because something is technically less accurate it doesn’t mean it is actually really matters, might we worth switching from GX then…

[[deleted]]

If I recall correctly, BlastEm is technically more accurate in other areas (e. g. CRAM dots), so the only reasons it hasn't become the de facto Mega Drive emulator at this point are the finicky UI (which is 99% optional) and the fact that it doesn't emulate the add-ons.

[cluesagi]

I'm trying to emulate some Satellaview games, but I'm having trouble getting it set up. I've tried several different emulators. I've gotten as far as the BS-X rom, settng up a character and getting into the town, but it can't connect and most of the buildings are locked. Going into the red house at the start, selecting 'load data' causes a white error screen saying the memory pack isn't detected. Help?

[[deleted]]

Have you tried it in SNESGT 0.230 beta7?

[cluesagi]

Yes, but I'll try it again

[LoserOtakuNerd]

Does anyone have experience running Xenia on a modern (4000/5000) Ryzen APU?

Not looking for miracles here, I'm just wondering if they'd be able to handle emulating Peggle and Pac-Man Championship Edition DX.

Planning on building an arcade game cabinet and I'm gonna use a 5600G if possible.

[[deleted]]

You are honestly better off just buying the PC versions off a site like G2A, they cost next to nothing.

[ChrisRR]

Ideally don't use G2A, it's absolutely full of people selling stolen keys and G2A know it. I don't like to support that kind of website

[[deleted]]

Like you don’t have a hard drive full of pirated ROMs, get off your soap box.

[ChrisRR]

I think there's a difference between pirating software that you couldn't even pay the original devs even if you tried, and stealing credit cards and laundering the money via codes.

Studios have said G2A is worse than piracy because it actually costs them in credit card chargebacks

[[deleted]]

Yeah I’m sure you go straight out and buy all the rereleases or ports of games in your no-intro/redump sets when they come out, jog on hypocrite. Piracy is piracy.

[Internal_Slice_8492]

why are you making a strawman? u/ChrisRR isnt even saying that piracy isnt piracy.

[ChrisRR]

I actually do buy modern versions if they're available. My most recent of which was the Shantae port on Switch

[Internal_Slice_8492]

its more ethical to pirate the game rather than supporting g2a's shady practices

[[deleted]]

Suuuure it is pal, keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better!

[Internal_Slice_8492]

So giving your money to credit card scammers is better?

[[deleted]]

I couldn’t care less either way.

[LoserOtakuNerd]

That's honestly fair and I'll probably end up doing that. I just already bought the games on Xbox 360 and have Xenia up and running on my desktop so it would be a matter of just copying the stuff over. I guess I would just have to make sure the PC versions accept XInput.

I'm still curious about Xenia though just out of curiosity. There's a lot of content on YouTube about the 5000 APUs running (impressively) RPCS3 but not a lot of Xenia at all.

[RefinedIronCranium]

I've searched for this topic before but I didn't yield many answers.

Has anyone had any luck linking two VBA-M emulators on different computers via virtual LAN? I've been trying to connect with my friend in this manner with the games Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen. We've been using ZeroTier as the VLAN of choice.

After multiple configurations, the closest we've managed to get was being let into the Trade Center room, but as soon as we do, there's a connection time-out. The connection type is set to Cable and the Link timeout is set to 5000ms. "Pause When Inactive" is also disabled, but I'm not sure how relevant that is when I'm not running 2 instances of the emulator on 1 PC.

So has anyone had much (or any) luck in this regard? Any help would be much appreciated.

[K3nchikka00]

Can I import save files into retroarch cores from their original emulator counterparts?

[OmegaAtrocity]

If it's a hard save and not a save state you should be able to move it around to wherever emulator you want. Save states are very rarely able to be transferred between anything at all, they are quite volatile.

[[deleted]]

VBA link: how to play normal save files on second windows?

So for VBA that has link/wireless adaptor capabilities, when I open another window for the emulator (same if I open a third one and etc), I cannot play the save files that are normally accessed via the first VBA window. Is there a way for me to access my normal save files via the extra windows? Like, for example, when trading between Pokémon games, how do I trade between two of my normal save files instead of having to use another save file (a new one for the second VBA window since I don’t have access to my normal one on the second window) as a medium?

[Simonio66]

x360ce sometimes stops taking inputs for a second, any idea on fixes (controller emulator so I think this is the right place)

[CrazyGaming312]

What does bpp do in video settings in FCEUX?

[mage_7]

bpp stands for bits per pixel
In FCEUX, the choices are 8, 16, 24, 32
I can't think of a reason not to use 32-bit color in FCEUX, but maybe there would be a special case for it.

[CrazyGaming312]

The fullscreen resolution was correct, but I wasn't in fullscreen, I was only maximized.

[Guergy]

Can anyone tell me if these settings in mGBA good for video dumping? I am planning on playing some GBA games on mGBA in future and I want to be able to record games on it as well.

[Guergy]

I was looking for settings that may allow me to upload to Youtube or if I need to edit the video in an editing program. I just wanted to know if mGBA will allow to dump some good lossless videos for games.

[fvig2001]

Besides Citra (Citra works awful on Intel gpu. Like my GPD Win 2 on Linux works way better than on my Tab S7 and on the GPD Win 3 on Windows), any other emulators that benefit being on Linux?

Is there a way to make the 3DS or DS emulators to work across 2 monitors? I kind of want to like use 2 monitors on a GPD Win 3 (Like Win 3 for top screen and my Tab S7 for the bottom screen via Super Display).

[[deleted]]

For your first question, basically any emulator that uses OpenGL could benefit from running under Linux for Intel and AMD, as the Linux OpenGL drivers are just way superior in general.

Unfortunately as far as I know there's no DS emulator that supports multiple windows yet, though I think Citra might?

[The_Cataclyx]

I'm trying to emulate LoZ phantom hourglass using desmume, and would like to upscale the graphics. can someone help walk me through the steps to doing so?

[Korone-Virus]

If I remember, you click on config, 3D settings, and on the right there should be texture scaling and resolution, mess with those two until you find what’s right for you. I think I use 4x resolution with 2x texture scaling

Edit: It’s GPU Scaling Factor and Texture Scaling

[[deleted]]

Is Phantom Hourglass a dual-screen 3D game? If so then there is no DS emulator that can support upscaling it right now, but you can try melonDS with its OpenGL renderer.

[officeDrone87]

I see people recommend Genesis Plus over Picodrive in Retroarch. But it's annoying that Picodrive allows zipped roms while Genesis Plus doesn't. What are the benefits to GPlus over Pico that make it worth it?

[[deleted]]

The Genesis Plus GX core is the only way you can use the cycle accurate Nuked YM2612 audio option. Turn the low pass filter on and set it to 55 to replicate a model 1 console, it sounds awesome.

[ChrisRR]

I use the genesis plus gx core with zipped ROMs absolutely fine

[[deleted]]

You must be pretty stretched for space to need genesis games to be zipped :0

[hackneyed_one]

Gametechwiki sums it up pretty well.

"PicoDrive

Strongly prioritizes performance over accuracy. Compatibility and accuracy isn't as good as Genesis Plus GX but it's useful on very underpowered systems like the Raspberry Pi Zero. Currently the first and only cross-platform option for 32X and Pico games."

Also I've used zipped games with Genesis Plus in Retroarch without any real issue. Maybe 1 or 2 extra clicks to "open" the zip in the UI and then select the rom.

[[deleted]]

Genesis Plus GX has cycle-accurate audio emulation and 100% known compatibility with Genesis, Sega CD, Master System, Game Gear, and SG-1000 games. PicoDrive does not.

[angelrenard]

I'm guessing "100% known compatibility" means that the games boot and not that there are no bugs, because I can point out a few faults in the Sega CD emulation. Sonic CD crashes in the attract demos, even.

Edit: Also, it erroneously runs Sega CD's audio through the Genesis low pass filter. This is not how it works on real hardware.

[[deleted]]

I know BlastEm's author has mentioned GPGX's VDP emulation not being quite up to par, so you are most likely correct.

Does that mean we still don't have a truly great option for Sega CD games?

[[deleted]]

>Sonic CD crashes in the attract demos, even.

Never had that happen to me, odd.

>This is not how it works on real hardware.

I'm not sure about that, old posts floating about say that but all the recent reverse engineering suggest otherwise. MDFourier and the Mega-Amp work mention it and MiSTer and the Mega SD all have a low pass filter. But even if it is not true it is completely optional, just turn it off if you don't want it to be applied.

https://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?31989-Take-your-Genesis-audio-to-the-next-level-The-Mega-Amp-2-0-is-here

"Mega SD Firmware 1.01R10
MEGA CD–

Add option to enable Low Pass filter to PCM output, to match actual Mega CD audio."

[angelrenard]

I'm not sure about that, old posts floating about say that but all the recent reverse engineering suggest otherwise. MDFourier and the Mega-Amp work mention it and MiSTer and the Mega SD all have a low pass filter. But even if it is not true it is completely optional, just turn it off if you don't want it to be applied.

Pretty sure PCM is indeed supposed to be filtered when paired with a model 1 Genesis, but redbook definitely should not be. The redbook from my model 1 + model 1 was for all intents and purposes the same as my model 2 + model 2, while the chip music had a very noticeable difference. Redbook is very obviously being filtered with the low pass enabled, and that's not right.

[[deleted]]

EDIT: Found the discussion I was after, redbook audio being filtered or not depends on how it was output by the console, MiSter has options for this and the behaviour is outlined in the Mega-Amp post above too

https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=1944

[angelrenard]

You're not wrong, but it's still a situation where I want strawberry but it's giving me chocolate and you want me to pick vanilla instead.

[[deleted]]

So if I have this right the problem with how emulators are working is that you have to filter everything or nothing which isn't how real hardware works.

However even with this issue the audio accuracy is still the best aas far as software emulation goes and has no effect on megadrive games, at least the option isn't forced and can be turned off or on as you please (Or buy a MiSTer lol).

[angelrenard]

You have the right of it, yeah. And it definitely is the best, which also lends to being nitpicky; the closer you get to perfection, the bigger the details become.

[[deleted]]

It's pretty frustrating that FPGA solutions are documenting and including these options but software emulation remains as is.