KickStarter Fallout 2 Mod play through.

[Jigby]

There is now a Retroarch window capture core with vk backend, i.e. technically you can run any windowed app in RA.

https://forums.libretro.com/t/official-release-thread-for-windowcast-core/40464
https://gitlab.com/johnsirett-public/libretro-wincapture
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mv6mMEsBsQW7iRXrpB6HUU2YtNQ2g9UL/view?usp=drive_link

A bit awkward, but it does work.

Works even with other emulators/VMs. Tried in on a Win98 QEMU .img, works perfectly fine . Too bad there's no Linux version. Also alt-tabbing sucks, have to live without it.

 

[deama]

There is now a Retroarch window capture core with vk backend, i.e. technically you can run any windowed app in RA.

https://forums.libretro.com/t/official-release-thread-for-windowcast-core/40464
https://gitlab.com/johnsirett-public/libretro-wincapture
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mv6mMEsBsQW7iRXrpB6HUU2YtNQ2g9UL/view?usp=drive_link

A bit awkward, but it does work.

Works even with other emulators/VMs. Tried in on a Win98 QEMU .img, works perfectly fine . Too bad there's no Linux version. Also alt-tabbing sucks, have to live without it.

I've been trying to play with it but without luck, was wondering maybe you had an idea?
I've downloaded retroarch, downloaded the software version the guy mentioned in his blog forum post. Then put the cores and info files in the retroarch install. And then I put the capture window to be "Fallout II" in the partials-examples.txt file.
So once I loaded the core, and then loaded the content, it appears to capture the window (I can see a yellow highlight on fallout 2 window), but it then disappears?
Have you encountered something like that before?

EDIT: Well, got it working, turns out you need to switch from using d3d11 driver to vulkan...
But now the issue is that the mouse clicks aren't registering in the game? If I try and start retroarch in fullscreen, then the game, the mouse isn't visible and clicks don't register either.

 

[Jigby]

But now the issue is that the mouse clicks aren't registering in the game?

You switch input focus between WindowCast window and the original window with CTRL+ALT+T. So have the windowcast window in the foreground and then switch input.

 

[deama]

But now the issue is that the mouse clicks aren't registering in the game?

You switch input focus between WindowCast window and the original window with CTRL+ALT+T. So have the windowcast window in the foreground and then switch input.

Ah ok, thanks.

But I just had another question about shaders, how are you meant to run them? When I enable vulkan driver, I can't select any shaders when trying to load from preset? Only driver so far that shows up the shaders is the gl one.

 

[Jigby]

You should be able to use the slang presets, glsl work only on the opengl driver, but that one is not compatible with the WindowCast core

 

[deama]

But now the issue is that the mouse clicks aren't registering in the game?

You switch input focus between WindowCast window and the original window with CTRL+ALT+T. So have the windowcast window in the foreground and then switch input.

Hmm, I'm not sure I'm doing it right. When I've got it highlighting the fallout window and press CTRL+ALT+T, it pauses the retroarch window and allows me to click through it? So is the idea that I overlay the retroarch window exactly ontop of the fallout window and do clickthrough? But then the issue becomes that the retroarch window itself is paused, so nothing happens on it?

 

[deama]

You should be able to use the slang presets, glsl work only on the opengl driver, but that one is not compatible with the WindowCast core

So that seems to load the .slangp ones, but what about the regular .slang ones?
EDIT: ok, I figured out this part, it looks like slangp is a container that points to the actual shaders...

 

[Jigby]

You should be able to use the slang presets, glsl work only on the opengl driver, but that one is not compatible with the WindowCast core

So that seems to load the .slangp ones, but what about the regular .slang ones?

I'm not sure if you can load just a .slang file. Everything is loaded through the presets, both singlepass and multipass presets. If you want to load just some basic .slang, I'd find the singlepass preset that uses it.

So is the idea that I overlay the retroarch window exactly ontop of the fallout window and do clickthrough?

No, the windows can be of different sizes and they don't have to be aligned, most likely you want the windowcast window to be fullscreen upscaled. The whole Ctrl+Alt+T is just a basic hack, that cycles focus between windows without changing Z-order (so the windowcast window stays on top, but all the mouse/keypress messages go to the game's window).

But then the issue becomes that the retroarch window itself is paused, so nothing happens on it?

It shouldn't be paused. IIRC retroarch pauses emulation when it loses focus, although I'm not sure if that behaviour is also present on this core. It shouldn't be paused though. Gotta google a bit for RA settings...

Edit: try this https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroArch/comments/httcal/comment/fyixaqs/

 

[deama]

You should be able to use the slang presets, glsl work only on the opengl driver, but that one is not compatible with the WindowCast core

So that seems to load the .slangp ones, but what about the regular .slang ones?

I'm not sure if you can load just a .slang file. Everything is loaded through the presets, both singlepass and multipass presets. If you want to load just some basic .slang, I'd find the singlepass preset that uses it.

So is the idea that I overlay the retroarch window exactly ontop of the fallout window and do clickthrough?

No, the windows can be of different sizes and they don't have to be aligned, most likely you want the windowcast window to be fullscreen upscaled. The whole Ctrl+Alt+T is just a basic hack, that cycles focus between windows without changing Z-order (so the windowcast window stays on top, but all the mouse/keypress messages go to the game's window).

But then the issue becomes that the retroarch window itself is paused, so nothing happens on it?

It shouldn't be paused. IIRC retroarch pauses emulation when it loses focus, although I'm not sure if that behaviour is also present on this core. It shouldn't be paused though. Gotta google a bit for RA settings...

Edit: try this https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroArch/comments/httcal/comment/fyixaqs/

Ah nice, it all works now! Thanks!