Emulation central - recommendations in 1st post

[Lyric Suite]

So i finally gave Launchbox a spin.

I noticed there's a "premium" version with a bunch of extra "features" i don't even understand what they are, then i saw the prices lmao. Are they serious? WTF is this 30 bucks for one year, annual fee for future updates etc. That's amazing.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Today i learned that i can make Duckstation portable just by adding a portable.txt file in the root folder. Had to whip out some google-fu to find this shit out.

 

[Duraframe300]

So i finally gave Launchbox a spin.

I noticed there's a "premium" version with a bunch of extra "features" i don't even understand what they are, then i saw the prices lmao. Are they serious? WTF is this 30 bucks for one year, annual fee for future updates etc. That's amazing.

Annual fee is bullshit, considering the lifetime is 75. Jason has never quite got the pricing right on that one.

Main benefit you get is more custimization options and especially Big Box. A console/arcade like frontend (depending on your needs). If you don't need it and don't want to support the development just use the standard version.

That said (aside from extensively using Big Box and Launchbox being pretty good in general) I'll gladly pay the fee and support Jason for having Bible Verses in the About Dialog and thus continuously pissing off atheists.

 

[flyingjohn]

Journey of "Accuracy first" mentality of the Ares devs:
-Copies code from Mame to be more "Accurate"
-Causes specific games to be slow as fuck
-Random github guy comes in and tells the dev that the changes have nothing to do with accuracy
-Dev acknowledges this and doesn't revert the code looking for more "accurate" solutions.

If you ever wondered how professionals made functioning emu's in less then a year compared to the Byuu "Accuracy " cult.
Avoid Ares like the plague.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Wow, this was interesting.

I was mucking around with a translation of a Japanese game for PS2, mostly to see how some of this stuff works. Readme tells me i need a version of GSdx with a feature called "Texture Manipulation". The version in question is as follows: GSdx 0 (MSVC 19.29 SSE4.1/AVX) 1.2.0 [GSdx32-SSE4].

I check my PCSX2 v1.6.0 folder and the version included is actually older, 19.25 instead of 19.29. So i hit google, and i find NOTHING. I can barely even find a mention this thing ever existed, and when i do find it mentioned links are dead:

https://gamebanana.com/tuts/14609

Never saw anything like this. I always assumed that if something ever existed at one point on the internet it will stay there forever but i guess not lmao.

 

[flyingjohn]

I check my PCSX2 v1.6.0 folder and the version included is actually older

The stable version of pcsx2 is years old and not recommended to anybody minus some mods that barely work with it.

 

[Hirato]

You can try the dev version, it has some sort of texture substitution feature.

I'm dubious that would work though, since you'd need to be a special kind of stupid to make each line of dialogue its own unique bitmap.
And that would be a hard requirement to attempt any kind of translation through texture substitution.

 

[Lyric Suite]

The last version with plugins is 1.7.0-dev-1300 and the version of GSdx contained in that is 19.26, not 19.29.

The game in question is Ape Escape 2001. The game is translated inside the iso itself but it requires some texture manipulation because the author couldn't integrade the translation of the menus into the iso, so you have to mod them using this new version of GSdx that's been scrubbed from the internet apparently. I closed the page now but yesterday i found a gitgub discussion with the author of the plugin who basically at the end of it rage quit because, you guessed it, developer drama.

Basically, the few mods that required this specific version of GSdx linked directly to his discord page, and since he took the link out because of drama now the plugin as ceased to exist on the net lmao. Fucking hell.

New version of PCSX2 allows you to dump and replace textures as well but the name it uses is different, so unless the guy who did this translation of Ape Escape 2001 updates his mod you can't use the translated menu textures he provides, unless you are autistic enough to play the game, wait for the right textures to get dumped into the folder, rename the modded texture and replace it, one by one. Not that i'd care to do it for a game like this but i may end up finding an english translation of a game i do care about where this issue might come up again.

It was just odd to find that sometimes things CAN disappear from the internet.

 

[flyingjohn]

The game in question is Ape Escape 2001

The translation entry at romhacking.net includes the plugin?

 

[Lyric Suite]

Nope. There's a link to the dead discord in the readme file and that's it.

BTW, found the github page i mentioned:

https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/pull/4199

@Topaz-Reality has closed this due to a disagreement with another contributor and will be continuing it in his fork of PCSX2. His original closing message has been deleted for targeted harassment

Edit: For those viewing this for Reddit, this PR was closed due to comments by a contributor (not PCSX2 member) on a project completely unrelated to this one. This is all just drama sturred up by them to try and cause problems for us, it's kinda sad, a lot of people were looking forward to this.

Lmao. Like, lol.

This is the option the mod needs:

New version of PCSX2 can do the same thing but the names the mod uses are different.

 

[flyingjohn]

Nope. There's a link to the dead discord in the readme file and that's it.

That is weird. I have a plugins folder with the gdsx.dll when I download the file from google drive link on the romhacking.net page.

 

[Hellraiser]

If you ever wondered how professionals made functioning emu's in less then a year compared to the Byuu "Accuracy " cult.

The accuracy autists have their use for preservation. Eventually the original hardware will die and then the 'sperging they did will be the only thing allowing FGPA recreation of the old hardware, with it's slowdowns, input lag and other stuff. Well the other stuff is that it is easier to do a functional non-accurate emulator that gets the games running and looking almost right than trying to autistically model the innerworking of a completely different machine on a PC.

But that's if they actually study the hardware and understand it and not just throw random shit in because their bellyfeels tell them itz accurate dat way REEEEE.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Nope. There's a link to the dead discord in the readme file and that's it.

That is weird. I have a plugins folder with the gdsx.dll when I download the file from google drive link on the romhacking.net page.

It's probably 19.25. Check it.

 

[flyingjohn]

It's probably 19.25. Check it.

Found something.
There was a fork of pcsx2 and the version of the gsdx plugin is .28 and it has the texture replacement menu:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/712837252279173153/974389136540713030/PCSX2-EX.v3.10.0.7z
You can try to copy the plugin into the pcsx2 folder and see if it works. If not, you can always try running the iso with the plugin from the modified fork.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Nah, doesn't seem to work. Meh, doesn't matter maybe the original author will update the mod for nu-PCSX2. Or i ever get a mind to do it i'll just fix it myself by dumping textures than replace them manually one by one.

 

[Tse Tse Fly]

Anyone here tried playing anything on xenia (x360 emulator)? I'm having issues running Ninja Gaiden II - heavy graphical glitches are making it difficult to make out what's going on in the game at times, character models are standing still with only their weapons and eyeballs (!) moving, instead of moving properly like they should. Also it seems you can't rebind keyboard keys from a menu. And there are almost no settings. I'm using xenia master build downloaded from their site. I'm on Windows 10. Maybe I'm missing something? I've learnt there's something called xenia canary, has anyone tried that?

 

[flyingjohn]

Anyone here tried playing anything on xenia (x360 emulator)? I'm having issues running Ninja Gaiden II - heavy graphical glitches are making it difficult to make out what's going on in the game at times, character models are standing still with only their weapons and eyeballs (!) moving, instead of moving properly like they should. Also it seems you can't rebind keyboard keys from a menu. And there are almost no settings. I'm using xenia master build downloaded from their site. I'm on Windows 10. Maybe I'm missing something? I've learnt there's something called xenia canary, has anyone tried that?

Download canary and try it yourself since xenia doesn't require any real setup. If it still doesn't work, well the emulator is notorious for issues for a reason.

 

[CyberWhale]

Search is not returning anything, but I wanted to bring up the first functional PS VITA emulator - https://vita3k.org/
It's still in the early stage, too resource heavy, filled with glitches and most games don't work, but still, some of the people reading this thread might be interested.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Anyone here tried playing anything on xenia (x360 emulator)? I'm having issues running Ninja Gaiden II - heavy graphical glitches are making it difficult to make out what's going on in the game at times, character models are standing still with only their weapons and eyeballs (!) moving, instead of moving properly like they should. Also it seems you can't rebind keyboard keys from a menu. And there are almost no settings. I'm using xenia master build downloaded from their site. I'm on Windows 10. Maybe I'm missing something? I've learnt there's something called xenia canary, has anyone tried that?

I only tested it with Cave shooters, all of which seem to run perfectly right off the bat, but a couple (like Espagula II) did have some graphical glitches which i was able to fix by setting the following thus:

gpu_allow_invalid_fetch_constants=true

Supposedly setting this to true or false works for some games but not others and vice cersa, but so far seems to be good for the few i have.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Ok, couple of questions about RetroArch. I'm trying the Atari 2600 emulator, and i can't seem to get the aspect ratio right. Every game seems to fill up the screen differently (like, some games are too far to the right, some too far to the left to the point where if i use those bezels from launchbox the game actually goes past the edge of the bezel on either side), and at full screen everything is stretched out no matter the setting. Aspect ratio settings only work if i hit alt-enter and go into a window, but from there if i make the window bigger the game just stretches with it. Only work around i found was to turn on integer scaling, but that just makes the picture smaller (and the position of some games are still off center).

I'm also fiddling around some of the filters for the Atari, but it seems i can only change those for the game i'm playing (in fact i cannot access the core settings at all unless i'm actually playing something). Is there away to just change those settings for ALL games?

Also, which core is better for 2600, Stella or Stella 2014?

 

[Lyric Suite]

Mmmh, seems i fixed the position of the screen and aspect ratio problem by changing the screen to ntsc50 in the core options. This also changes colors, but i noticed that this setting is on by default on the stand alone Stella emulator, so i think this is how it ought to be. I also set it to z26 palette color and TV effect are on rgb. Didn't bother turning on the phosphor mode as i get enough blur on my VA monitor as it is lmao. I think i'm pretty good like this all i need now is figure out how to make those settings work by default for every game.

[EDIT] Ok so i have to save the settings using overrides but clicking on them does nothing. I have three options, save core overrides, save content directory and save game overrides but clicking on any of them doesn't do anything.

[EDIT #2] Got it, i had to turn Use Global Core Options File on.

Sheesh.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Ok lmao more on the aspect ratio thingy. Seems like different regions work differently. The USA version of Battlezone has the correct aspect ratio where as the EU version comes off as slightly stretched no matter what (you can tell because the radar wheel looks squished and not perfectly round like in the USA version. Tank also looks a bit wider).

So i guess some games just want to do what they want to do.

 

[Lyric Suite]

So after a whole day i finally figure out how to save shit on RetroArch. Three different types of overrides, six if you count that shaders are on a separate file fucking hell.

Anyway, i'm starting to see why this shader shit is knewl, but i'm not sure i understand which filter i'm supposed to pick. Like, i tried the Mega Bezel one for a couple of Atari 2600 games (i like this one because it seems to pick the aspect ratio by itself, all though it adds an obnoxious logo when loading up a game that is making me want to drop it), but which is supposed to be the one closest to the type of screens used back in 1984? There's like hundreds of them.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Meh, figured out how to remove the intro from Mega Bezels, had to scroll ALL the way down the shaders settings to see it but sadly i just discovered the shader isn't so good at handling aspect ratio as i first through. Loaded up Black Tiger on MAME and the aspect was clearly wrong. The overlay too is wrong funny how those people spend so much time trying to replicate the visuals of those old arcades and consoles and yet nobody seems to care about something as simple as not having your image stretched out and your guy looking like he gained 50 pounds since the last time you saw him years ago in the arcades as a kid.

 

[flyingjohn]

"Oh boy, now I can emulate ps3 hd collections of ps2 games with issues on pcsx2."
Every single hd collection has bugs or missing graphical features/performance problems.
Never mind, guess I am sticking to pcsx2.