Emulation central - recommendations in 1st post

[pakoito]

How's the switch emulation sphere looking? I own Zelda but my eyes have gone to shit so its hard for me to see the screen anymore and the performance on a tv is trash. Would love to play something like BOTW/TOTK or Xenoblade on my pc.

It does the thing with some minor glitches. You need a somewhat beefy PC.

 

[Vyadhis]

On the subject of MGS2-3 emulation and pressure sensitive buttons, I DID find this but I haven't tried it yet. About to I just need to find where I've put my ps2 emulator folder and bioses.

https://imgur.com/a/qJK2ftO

 

[Puukko]

How's the switch emulation sphere looking? I own Zelda but my eyes have gone to shit so its hard for me to see the screen anymore and the performance on a tv is trash. Would love to play something like BOTW/TOTK or Xenoblade on my pc.

It's very good, generally you can trust most major releases to be entirely enjoyable with occasional minor glitches. Both Yuzu and Ryujinx have their merits (and saves can be safely transferred between them) depending on the game. Xenoblade DE is the easiest of the series to run but you will want something reasonably recent and beefy, I'd say Ryzen 5000 series/Intel 10th for a good experience. Older than that may be doable but you may need to stick to 30 fps. Can bump up the resolution or check out fan patches for an fps unlocker and the like, this greatly varies depending on the game and they're scattered across Gbatemp/personal githubs/etc.

BotW for the longest time was recommended to be played on Cemu (Wii U emulator) but afaik that may have changed?

 

[soutaiseiriron]

BotW for the longest time was recommended to be played on Cemu (Wii U emulator) but afaik that may have changed?

4mo old but doesn't look like it and i dont think they made a 75% performance improvement in those 4mo
cemu also had built in easy mods to get a 60fps patch going since patches and mods are built in. also doubt that you could get any sort of gyro aim on the switch emus, which is pretty easy on cemu.

 

[flyingjohn]

For anybody wondering, PS2 online is easy to setup with pcsx2:

The biggest problem is that the least popular games(ratchet) pretty much require discord to setup arranged games because public matches are practically dead.

 

[beardalaxy]

Should add simple64 to the N64 section. It's accurate and doesn't require messing around with plugins.
Project64 should really only be used on lower powered or older Windows devices and for some mods.

Retroarch sucks. The menus are horrible. The only reason to use it is if you are locked into it based on your system (it's the best experience on Switch, for instance). I really prefer using individual emulators which have easy to use UIs and it's all accessible from my mouse in the form of checkboxes and dropdowns. There is a lot of drama with Retroarch from a few different developers, and there is also the problem of some cores becoming outdated or having their own compatibility issues.

In general, I think that using one emulator with a bunch of different cores to emulate a lot of different systems is inherently a bad idea that comes with a lot of downsides, just for the one upside of "convenience." In reality, the issues I have run into with Retroarch have caused more annoyance than just running individual emulators. If you really must use a consolidated emulator like that, I would recommend BizHawk over RetroArch simply because the UI is standard and not forced into that weird XMB layout.

A few years ago I made a little emulation box and used Steam ROM Manager to incorporate all of my games into Steam Big Picture. If all you are looking for is a frontend, then Steam really gets the job done. You can search, sort games by platform and genre, etc. It takes a little bit more setting up than something like Retroarch does, but the end experience is so much less clunky. I can also recommend LaunchBox, though you'll have to pay for the "big picture" equivalent and it can be pretty pricey. For that reason, I went with Steam ROM Manager, and it worked swimmingly. A lot of the process was automated where I just had to drag and drop my ROM files and it grabbed all of the necessary game information for me, as well as arguments for launching the standalone emulators in full screen. I really liked having the ability to manually decide how each of my Gamecube/Wii games were configured with Dolphin's advanced configuration files, alongside cheats that would remain static for each game like Widescreen patches. Again, it took more work to set up initially than something like Retroarch would, but the end result was a much smoother experience that was so dead simple that my mom could figure it out.

For anybody wondering, PS2 online is easy to setup with pcsx2:

The biggest problem is that the least popular games(ratchet) pretty much require discord to setup arranged games because public matches are practically dead.

The definitive way to play Ratchet Deadlocked and Up Your Arsenal is through Horizon. It's a private server for those games, and they even have a PC client that uses PCSX2 for the backend and Unity for the graphics rendering and some other nice features like KBM support.

BotW for the longest time was recommended to be played on Cemu (Wii U emulator) but afaik that may have changed?

4mo old but doesn't look like it and i dont think they made a 75% performance improvement in those 4mo
cemu also had built in easy mods to get a 60fps patch going since patches and mods are built in. also doubt that you could get any sort of gyro aim on the switch emus, which is pretty easy on cemu.

It definitely is still better to play Breath of the Wild on CEMU just because of the huge performance difference as well as modding being more popular on Wii U, if that's something you want to do.
However, the Switch emulators do support gyro control and have for a few years.

Something else worth mentioning is that there was never any problem with the Wii common key in Dolphin and Nintendo never issued a DMCA. What actually happened is that Valve asked Nintendo if they were okay with Steam having a release of Dolphin, and Nintendo said no while citing DMCA. Valve probably did this because they have a great relationship with Nintendo, especially right now, and they don't want to do anything that would disturb that relationship. If there was something actually wrong with Dolphin, why has nothing happened to it all of these years? There is no legal ground Nintendo has to stand on, and they have often used their relationships with companies to enact takedowns even when one wouldn't hold up. Nobody wants to go against Nintendo though, because of how much of a giant they are in the industry. It's scare tactics, essentially. The same thing happened to Project M, a popular mod for Super Smash Bros. Brawl, with Nintendo threatening Twitch due to them allowing the mod to be streamed on their platform. There was never any official takedown notice or cease and desist served to the dev team.

You can read more about the whole debacle on the official Dolphin blog: https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2023/07/20/what-happened-to-dolphin-on-steam/

 

[spekkio]

BROs,

To commemorate upcoming 10th anniversary of disso treddo, OP has been slightly declined.



IMO people (recently beardalaxy for example) shouldn't worry that much about OP's contents ("BRO, IMO emu X should be replaced with emu Y").

• l33t people don't need this list, since they choose and use emus on their own. For various reasons. "Retroarch has shitty UI" (no, we discussed this 9000 times - it's a multiplatform software with a gamepad-based UI), "standalone emus are more up to date / accurate" (yeah, obviously - so what? another thing discussed multiple times ITT, among plenty reasons to use RA over standalone emus),
• Casuals are too stupid to use ANY emu anyway (proof by prominent 'Dexer ITT).

Ultimately, it's just a list of "shit I like and recommend" in the end. And I'm not that active in the emulation area as I was in the past. I simply played every game I wanted from older consoles.

 

[Morenatsu.]

BRO, Retroarch has shitty UI, standalone emus are more up to date / accurate, IMO RA should be replaced with muh dick

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It's 2023. Emulation for SNES, Saturn, PS1, PS2, etc, has long since been solved and optimized, and extraordinarily powerful hardware is now very affordable. I don't think GTX 1080 Titans are even being made anymore. You usually do not need to have the absolute latest release of an emulator to get noticeably better performance unless it's for a recent platform like the Switch and you're trying to play Xenoblade at higher resolutuons.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Saturn emulation is very far from being 'solved', there's a huge latency issues (upwards of 7f) even in the best emulators and many games with specific problems.

 

[flyingjohn]

SNES

Yes.

Saturn

Not by a longshot. There are bugs /glitches/latency issues with very single game regardless of emulator. And the emuscene is far from solved. Kronos is a hit and miss and mednafen is starting to include hacks because he hit a dead wall for some games.

PS1

Yes, you have duck for a casual experience and mednafen for the native one.

PS2

Hell no. PCSX2 is a complete mess that solved most of the issues by automatically applying hacks as solutions. There will be always be a problem with something.
And if there is no problem you are still gonna need a above medium range cpu for the heavier games.

extraordinarily powerful hardware is now very affordable

Yes, hardware is affordable during a inflation and the biggest price hike for electronic components seen in decades.

 

[Puukko]

On a related note, I was thinking of finally getting to Koudelka, it being nearly the season and all, but damn, I can't get this game looking nice no matter what. It is so aggressively wobbly that PGXP only fixes it somewhat but to the point where it then it still looks bad when characters' faces barely hold together. Might just have to take the loss on this one and play it as it is.

 

[Morenatsu.]

imagine not playing in 240p on a crt tv with pure untouched wobble

 

[flyingjohn]

The definitive way to play Ratchet Deadlocked and Up Your Arsenal is through Horizon.

Not if you aren't a regular. Most events have no participants and almost all games are privately arranged through pm's between friends and long standing acquaintances.

 

[Don Peste]

Did you know this existed?

Mouse Injector for Dolphin 5.0, DuckStation, PCSX2, and other emulators
An external app that injects cursor input into game memory.
https://github.com/garungorp/MouseInjectorDolphinDuck

 

[beardalaxy]

Did you know this existed?

Mouse Injector for Dolphin 5.0, DuckStation, PCSX2, and other emulators
An external app that injects cursor input into game memory.
https://github.com/garungorp/MouseInjectorDolphinDuck

I actually had no idea, that's pretty cool. I know they are doing something similar for Prime Hack, a mod that lets you use KBM for Metroid Prime, but I'm pretty sure that isn't an external program but a specialized fork of Dolphin. Still, maybe they achieve the effect with the same method of memory injection. There are also mods for Perfect Dark and GoldenEye 007 using the 1964 emulator that lets you use KBM, if I remember right. This seems like it is a lot more janky of a solution than those tailor-made for specific games on a dedicated emulator branch, though.

 

[Don Peste]

 

[Don Peste]

Been poking around with C64 Dreams, a beautifully curated collection of two or three thousand of the best C64 games and demos, all meticulously configured with retroarch (using, for once, a proper disk swapping option), launchbox and controllers, including in-game manuals and box covers, all put together by some wonderfully sperggy C64 nut. But I'm being punished for my piracy since using an Xbox emulated DS4 controller with DS4Windows here will cause your PC to become a mass of horrifying instability when you exit a game, forcing you to log off then on again. Serves me right. Plus, you have to configure C64 custom color palettes with each game individually instead of by VICE core so are stuck with the ugly C64 default color palette that looks like two strip technicolor from the dawn of cinema. So, yeah, more eggfarts than rainbows but man does it look and play great.

This was updated with more stuff a few months ago. Current version is 0.60:
https://www.zombs-lair.com/post/c64-dreams-v0-60

 

[flyingjohn]

This was updated with more stuff a few months ago. Current version is 0.60:
https://www.zombs-lair.com/post/c64-dreams-v0-60

24 gb's with a focus on lunchbox and retroarch and no way to download individual games?
Hell no.

 

[Don Peste]

This was updated with more stuff a few months ago. Current version is 0.60:
https://www.zombs-lair.com/post/c64-dreams-v0-60

24 gb's with a focus on lunchbox and retroarch and no way to download individual games?
Hell no.

Yes, you can browse the files. Click on "View contents": https://archive.org/download/c64-dreams-v0.60/

On the other hand, your collections posted here don't allow indiviual downloads. Although they're smaller.

But the point of downloading a big collection of games is probably... downloading a big collection of games. There are plenty of other very convenient resources to get individual games.

 

[felipepepe]

I searched the thread and didn't find any mention of it, but AmigaVision (previously MegaAGS) is a game-changer for Amiga. It comes with a 4GB pack of Amiga games, all pre-configured to run as best as possible on FS-UAE, MiSTer, Analog Pocket and others: https://amiga.vision/

The installation process is simple (if poorly explained), and once it's done you just double-click on a shortcut and it takes you to a launcher with all games sorted into multiple categories, lists and curated packs:

It doesn't have the full library (I noticed some gaps like Captive 2), but it's very extensive and it's an open-source project, still in development.

 

[flyingjohn]

Yes, you can browse the files. Click on "View contents": https://archive.org/download/c64-dreams-v0.60/

Doesn't work and won't properly work when you have a milion+ files.

On the other hand, your collections posted here don't allow indiviual downloads.

Because they are a collection of the majority of English rpg/strategy games(minus mac stuff). Plus, making individual downloads for thousand of mb's files makes no sense. It is easier to download them all if the size is adequate.

Although they're smaller.

Yeah, 300+mb's (that can be cut down to a under a hundred if you are actually selecting good stuff) compared to 20+gb.

But the point of downloading a big collection of games is probably... downloading a big collection of games.

I agree, but the 20+ gb's aren't games but everything else, which is the problem. Even if you download all the tosec commodore 64 stuff you are going to have a size less then 20gb's. I have no problem downloading a terabyte of dos games because I know that the full collection for the games will probably be over 700+ gb's.

There are plenty of other very convenient resources to get individual games.

Unfortunately there aren't. Nobody has really done a curated list with configs. You either go for individual games or just download tosec which is a collection of everything and I mean everything. Any other collections have such a low amount of games that they aren't worth it.

I am not trying to be a asshole but I am just sad that such a nice collection couldn't actually be properly broken down and categorized for people to pick and choose what they want or at least separate game from the non game stuff.

searched the thread and didn't find any mention of it, but AmigaVision (previously MegaAGS) is a game-changer for Amiga. It comes with a 4GB pack of Amiga games, all pre-configured to run as best as possible on FS-UAE, MiSTer, Analog Pocket and others: https://amiga.vision/

Chad checklist:
-Amiga
-Reasonable size
-Simple and easy config tools
-Decent curated selection
-Support for both emu's

 

[Don Peste]

 

[spekkio]

BROs, some more useless trivia from yours truly.

As some of you may know, pcsx2 went through some Qt-related changes recently. Which resulted in a brand new, plugin-free experience and next-gen interface:






You can now use game-specific settings as well (RMB on games' list -> Properties):



In accordance with this change, cheat system got revamped significantly. It's still based on .pnach files, named after game's exe CRC, but these should now have new syntax to work in a "modern" way.

Previously .pnach files were simply text files, with cheats being enabled or disabled with slashes, and descriptions being marked with two slashes. For example, my .pnach file for BOF5 (588CC41B.pnach) looked like this:

comment=Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter | SLUS_204.99 | CRC = 0x588CC41B

// 3 Kits in Item Slot #1 (0B00, OC00, 0D00)
patch=1,EE,1076582A,extended,00000D00
patch=1,EE,1076582C,extended,00000003

// Number of Item Slots (5 x n)
/patch=1,EE,107657B8,extended,00000028

// D-Counter Value (270F = 99,99%)
/patch=1,EE,207657AC,extended,0000000F

// Ryu Infinite AP
/patch=1,EE,1076535C,extended,000003E7

// Lin Infinite AP
/patch=1,EE,1076558C,extended,000003E7

It had two codes enabled (for the "3 kits in item slot #1" cheat)

When you use this file with "modern" pcsx2, you'll get this info:



So cheats will work, but can't be viewed or enabled / disabled via pcsx2 interface. If you want to make this possibile, you have to modify the syntax of the .pnach file, using square brackets and "author=" and "description=" lines.

more info on the new cheat system here

Modified .pnach file for BOF5 looks like this:

// Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter | SLUS_204.99 | CRC = 0x588CC41B

[3 Kits in Item Slot #1]
description=0B00, OC00, 0D00
patch=1,EE,1076582A,extended,00000D00
patch=1,EE,1076582C,extended,00000003

[Number of Item Slots]
description=5 x n
patch=1,EE,107657B8,extended,00000028

[D-Counter Value]
description=270F = 99,99%
patch=1,EE,207657AC,extended,0000000F

[Ryu Infinite AP]
patch=1,EE,1076535C,extended,000003E7

[Lin Infinite AP]
patch=1,EE,1076558C,extended,000003E7

You have to remove all slashes, cheats are now enabled / disabled via the interface:



And info on them is stored in games' .ini files (per-game emulation settings are stored there too):



Unfortunately, to modify cheats' values, you still have to modify the .pnach file directly.

Still, now the cheat system works more like in other emus (PPSSPP comes to mind).

 

[soutaiseiriron]

thanks for the flashbang, asshole. pls use dark mode

having a built in patch menu feels like going from 1999 to 2023 tbh. it's been around for a while in shit like rpcs3 and cemu so being able to enable 60fps patches like a breeze is super nice. inshallah i never have to play another racing game at 30fps again.