Emulation central - recommendations in 1st post

[Duraframe300]

Some new (expected and unexpected) things I noticed in the new QT-PCSX2 Gui

- Integer Scaling
- Per Game Settings (Not yet working)
- Save/Load on Exist/Resume (Know this feature from Duckstation, works very well.)
- Frame Pacing controls (Max Latency, Optimize Frame Pacing, Adjust to Host Refresh Rate)
- Game List / Grid Mode (as seen above)
- Generally everything's better organized, though there's still room for optimization

Edit: Reposting Screenshot for convenience, because it put me on a new page

 

[Duraframe300]

On that note: Duckstation is now officially put on hold by Stenzek (unless someone wants to take over for maintenance).
Reasons are a bit of drama and a bit of the Retroarch guy being his usual shady self resulting in Stenzek not having any motivation for it.

Duckstation is pretty complete anyway with the biggest regret being that he was working on a better solution for Texture replacement than what Beetle does. But maybe he'll pick that up sometime in the future, who knows?

 

[Puukko]

I look forward to when emulators are developed by AI... until that AI inevitably develops personality disorders.

 

[Duraframe300]

I look forward to when emulators are developed by AI... until that AI inevitably develops personality disorders.

I mean I kinda get it. The RetroArch guy is shady and manipulative as fuck, but instead of engaging, just ignore and don't let him get to you. He can spend 10'000 hours porting shit and taking credit for it, if he wants to. Who cares?

Same with annoying users, where too many devs get emotionally invested and end up losing motivation or be overly harsh to those who ask normally.

Too many open source projects go down because of silly shit. Internet communities are cancer.

 

[lightbane]

Internet communities that invite trannies and lunatics are cancer.

Fixed. While these communities have never been good, things have gotten MUCH worse over the last 10 years or so due the above.
I remember that old man that stopped translating because the game he translated (Goemon something) had a word similar to tranny. He didn't want to deal with the drama so he retired said mod and left the scene.

 

[Great Deceiver]

[

Wanted to add to this as the same commit has now near eliminated Input Lag, thanks to the new host window, for a lot of people (a lot of other reasons have been eliminated prior in the past 2 years).

I just tried the latest commit (v1.7.2305) to check about input lag as that's always been my main beef with PCSX2 and why I consider it nearly unplayable, but no difference for me at all. Still over 5 frames of delay.

 

[Duraframe300]

[

Wanted to add to this as the same commit has now near eliminated Input Lag, thanks to the new host window, for a lot of people (a lot of other reasons have been eliminated prior in the past 2 years).

I just tried the latest commit (v1.7.2305) to check about input lag as that's always been my main beef with PCSX2 and why I consider it nearly unplayable, but no difference for me at all. Still over 5 frames of delay.

Zero difference is a bit weird, since the new host window mostly bypasses DWM. So, at least a few frames should be saved on that, even if everything else fails. (You're on Windows, right?)

I'm personally not sensitive enough for input lag to make a statement (as said, just posted from seeing reactions like these ones:
https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/pull/5224#issuecomment-1008657040 ).

You can try lowering the *Vsync in MTGS Queue* to 1 or 0 in the General Settings, though I don't know if you already knew that.

Edit: Wrong link, the previous one was about frame pacing. Corrected.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Frame pacing was one issue that has really improved in recent builds of PCSX2. Thanks for the heads up about "Vsync in MTGS Queue", I wasn't aware of that option and setting it to 0 definitely seems to have shaved off some frames. I'll do some more testing and report.

edit: definitely much improved. Can play DDP DOJ properly now (best port with accurate music, MAME has a shitty sound driver for this game). Thanks!

After lowering audio latency to about 25ms, I can honestly say this is a complete game changer for me regarding this emulator. Really great stuff.

 

[v1rus]

Does anyone have any experience with using DosBox pure with RetroArch?

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I finally watched this video:

 

[Duraframe300]

Replicating old home computers is for me by far the most interesting use of FPGA (with building an arcade machine just behind).

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I need to look at the videos on its old computer replication cores. I wonder how many japanese computers are in there or planned?

 

[Hellraiser]

Replicating old home computers is for me by far the most interesting use of FPGA (with building an arcade machine just behind).

Not to mention creating new great accessories for old hardware. It starts with cables and upscalers but ends with amiga accelerator cards, SNES flashcarts with almost all custom cart chips supported, an optical drive emulator within a sega genesis flashcart that doesn't need the actual Sega CD hardware and also does save states Virtua Racing that used a special chip, or a PC Engine ODE that outputs HDMI. These things weren't even dreamed of 15 years ago.

 

[Duraframe300]

Replicating old home computers is for me by far the most interesting use of FPGA (with building an arcade machine just behind).

Not to mention creating new great accessories for old hardware. It starts with cables and upscalers but ends with amiga accelerator cards, SNES flashcarts with almost all custom cart chips supported, an optical drive emulator wthiin a sega genesis flashcart that doesn't need the actual Sega CD hardware and also does save states Virtua Racing that used a special chip, or a PC Engine ODE that outputs HDMI. These things weren't even dreamed of 15 years ago.

Have no interest in any of those tbh. Cool though.

 

[abnaxus]

I deleted zsnes. It has been on my pc since 1998 but used it for three games in total. But now I discover it doesn't run several games.

 

[Morenatsu.]

true retro gaming is emulating zsnes emulating snes

 

[ferratilis]

Any recommendations for a good CRT shader on RetroArch? I've messed with a few, and easymode looks nice, but if there are any better, please recommend.

 

[Puukko]

Any recommendations for a good CRT shader on RetroArch? I've messed with a few, and easymode looks nice, but if there are any better, please recommend.

I've used the crt-royale composite shaders at 320/256px depending on the system. Which my friends can't stand so I have to turn it off whenever streaming, lol.

 

[Duraframe300]

Any recommendations for a good CRT shader on RetroArch? I've messed with a few, and easymode looks nice, but if there are any better, please recommend.

Guest-Dr-Venom

 

[Great Deceiver]

Any recommendations for a good CRT shader on RetroArch? I've messed with a few, and easymode looks nice, but if there are any better, please recommend.

I really depends on your target resolution. Most advanced CRT shaders only really pay off in 4k and up.

For arcade I use CRT-Royale (with some slight changes, I remove the curvature), but for home consoles I really like GTU-v050. Try it sometime, just make sure to up the gamma a little bit.

 

[Puukko]

There's probably a number of people out there who got 4K monitors mainly to get the most out of CRT shaders. I suppose that's a valid use case, but the thought of it is just really funny to me.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I think it's a better use case than most things, honestly.

 

[spekkio]

As some of you may know, some Awakening's "Paralogues" require SpotPass connection to be enabled. These six so-called "SpotPass Paralogues" (#18 - #23) can be unlocked after beating Chapter #25. Which was very hard to do in Citra, due to the weird way the game interacts with SpotPass and save files (it "unlocks" these chapters only for "current save", instead of using setting stored in Global file (most unlocks are stored there). So, in order to unlock these chapters in Citra, you had to reach Chapter #25 in emu, then transfer your saves to real 3DS, unlock bonus chapters via SpotPass and transfer unlocked saves back to emu.

Fortunately, thanks to brave redditor u/heritorofrain, it can now be done much easier - via romfs mod, which modifies game's exe, changing these paralogues' flags from "require spotpass" to "does not require spotpass".

More info + link to the mod here

I wasn't able to test it yet, since I'm still in the beginning, but users reported that it works fine.

I've reached the endgame:

And after applying the mod, voila:

All 6 spotpass paralogues unlocked.

:modderswillfixit:

 

[Duraframe300]

Thanks to Stenzek, texture dumping and replacing is back on the menu for PS2 games.

https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/pull/5547

 

[spekkio]

BROs, same as with previous 3DS games I've completed, I've dumped some character textures from FE13 for use as avatars, etc. OFC you can find them online, but whatever (plus I've edited some mugs to remove things like parts of weapons left in the frame, etc).

256x256 "big" portrait + 128x128 mugshot. Some examples below.

1) oldfags:

2) newfags:

3) non-fags:

I've also added some other, good stuff:

Link:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/tkdrxal2f0qlkg5/