/vr/ - Retro Games

>>10101221
Me to! My friends told me it could make me not gay. Did it work for you? Hasn't for me. Yet.

>>10101236
thanks for the good post anon

>>10101221
>license
People pay to emulate?

>>10101221
I use Launchbox, but I've seen people recommend Playnite. Both seem to be similar and are still heavily supported. You also have Pegasus but I haven't used it in years so I can't tell you much. Just stay away from deprecated garbage like Hyperspin.

Launchbox is on the heavier side, but it is the most feature rich and has the best media downloader. Populating playlists with it is the fastest.

>>10101272
It's a front-end, made by one dude who constantly updates it. Felt it was worth the money after using the free version.

>>10101291
Playnite is quicker but doesn't have a bigbox mode if I remember right.

I just use the crack for 12.10, shame there isnt a more recent one but it is perfectly usable and to be honest i couldnt ask for more
Slipstream best theme

>>10101562
Honestly, you're not missing that much aside performance improvements and 3D boxes. Performance is really good though, way faster image loading and caching, making it more or less stutter free. On the other hand, the 3D boxes tax my gpu way to much, so I don't even bother. I still use the ancient CityHunter 2 and never felt the need to replace it. Simple and with big videos, don't need anything more.

Is this better than RetroArch?

>>10101846
If you're using Launchbox, you're using it to launch Retroarch.

>>10101907
Thanks, not interested anymore I guess. I was hoping to replace this shit.

>>10101924
Any reason not to just use individual emulators? I dropped RetroArch and went back to using separate ones and like it a lot more.

>>10101924
Lanchbox, Playnite, RetroFE, etc. are just a frontend, they don't emulate anything. You can set up emulators for the frontend to manage. The idea is that you set the emulators once and done. You just double click the game cover and it will boot the game with your emulator of choice. Like adding a game to Steam, they are just a shortcut to all your roms.

>>10101924
this: >>10101907

is not true and he's a spastic. You can set Launchbox up to use any eumulor that takes command line inputs for launching roms. I have to use standalone Flycast and Project64 or whatever because the cores are shit on my PC

>license
*vomit*

>>10102042
Batocera is a free alternative. It runs off external SSDs, too, so if you're one of those faggots who are ashamed of your hobby you can use it to hide it from your girlfriend/wife/friends.

>>10102080
Do people like this actually exist? I've literally never had anyone look down on me for my collection of roms or tinkering with emulation software. I HAVE had friends and members of my wife's family ask me to help them set it up for their homes though.

>>10101221
I used to mess around with LaunchBox, making everything look nice and all. But then I realize that I mostly play on original hardware, so I guess I'm only wasting time messing around with something I hardly use.

>>10102247
Depends on where you live. I've seen football fans cross paths with Star Trek fans and despite them both being dressed up in ridiculous costumes (face paint, wigs, guts hanging out etc.) the football fans thought they were superior.
Humans are really fucking stupid sometimes.

>>10102460
Fair enough. I live in nowheresville indiana, but most of my friends are just as oldfaggy as me and the opportunity to play every and any game from their youth supersedes any bravado bullshit. If someone said something snide to me about it, I'd probably just not hang out with them anymore.

>>10102476
you in randolf county?

>>10102541
Laporte

>Pays up for LaunchBox
>Have all the trouble setting it up
>Still feeling hungry
It's lawsuit time, boys

>>10102652
...what/

>>10101272
>>10102042
>(You)

>>10102652
Does this sound like the actions of a man who had all he could eat?

>>10104014
That could have been me!

>>10104014
Please, sir. All I wanted was to fill my belly.

>>10101846
IMO yes, unless Retroarch significantly improved its interface. I fucking hate that XMB look/layout.
>>10101907
false

>>10102247
>I HAVE had friends and members of my wife's family ask me to help them set it up for their homes though.
That's why you should hide it.

I used Launchbox a long time ago, pretty much when it came out, before they had Bigbox. Now I just use retroarch.

Launchbox is great. Helped me actually start playing all of the games I collected over the years. Love to arrange it all in chronological and have all the systems nicely together in one list.
Also, check out my power level. It's over 9000. Can any of you faggots do better?

>>10105782
I don't mind it because they're normally happy with the absolute bare minimum. I have a flash drive I just copy and add shortcuts off the emulators to their desktops...it's like 3 minutes.

>>10106071
That screen clutter is horrendous.

EmulationStation-DE (fork of original project) as frontend for RetroArch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM75pQ7Eg-o

>>10101272
>people try out shitarch
>completely dissatisfied
>now willing to pay for a FUCKING FRONTEND

>>10106339
Didn't even try brother. But yeah I played a lot of games I wouldn't have tried without launchbox.

>>10106920
I gave ES-DE a shot. It's lightweight as fuck and runs very snappy, which is a huge advantage over launchbox which is honestly pretty slow loading images and stuff. However, their scrapper is the slowest thing I ever used and getting all metadeta takes forever. Ended up sticking to launchbox instead.

>>10101962
Only reason I found is for using shaders to make some games look like they were on a CRT TV. Also it makes it easier to play with people on Parsec with controllers because it defaults controls for everyone instead of manually having to set it for each emulator and player.

>>10101221
I've been trying to setup a desktop as an emulation console, and it's been nothing but annoyances all the way down.

First I tried Lakka, because I'm already used to RetroArch's interface and how it works, and other than some initial trouble I had setting some things up like WiFi and figuring out how to transfer games through the network, it just werk'd. Problem is, I began wanting to emulate 6th-gen games, and RetroArch's Dolphin and PCSX2 cores are outdated as fuck, and if you want newer shit like WiiU and Switch or whatever, you're shit out of luck.

I then tried Batocera, since that's supposed to work with standalones as well as RetroArch. Straight away I didn't like how bloated it felt, with all this useless eye candy. I much prefer to see a ROM list and call it a day. And then when I tried using RetroArch with it, it kept conflicting with Batocera's settings in the stupidest ways. Let's just say Batocera really, really doesn't like when you mess with any of RetroArch's settings that it doesn't outright expose in its own RetroArch settings menu.

Now I'm trying a regular Linux distro that boots into some kind of frontend. I first tried Steam in Big Picture Mode combined with Steam ROM Parser, but the scraper doesn't seem to differentiate between ROM revisions, so they all show up as the exact same game, which is stupid. I'm now trying ES-DE, which seems to work better, though I'm still fiddling with it and figuring it out how to make it work better with emulators that don't have controller hotkeys to exit back out into the frontend. Not sure how I'll deal with that just yet. So far I have RetroArch and Dolphin working well with it, though.

>>10107164
I was actually surprised that emulators like Duckstation and MAME have really good CRT filters now. That was my main thing for Retroarch too, but seems like that's becoming more common.

>>10107164
Uhhh, Anon? I don't think that's the right aspect ratio for a Saturn game

>>10106929
>try free product
>does exactly what you need it to do
>pay for complete product at a price you think is fair
Do you get irrationally angry at milk prices too?

>>10107271
Not him but I wouldn't call it a fair price for a front end. What is even the difference between the free and premium versions anyway

>>10107350
Basically the biggest feature is BigBox mode which is a fullscreen controller-aimed frontend instead of the regular one. Think hypserspin or emulation station.
Anyway Launchbox was made by one dude initially, there's a good amount of new stuff and constant updates despite this being fairly old software and the utility I got from it outweighs the cost I paid for it personally. I do agree it's a steep price considering most of us never pay for software but there are sales once in a while and there's no DRM or anything like that. Just a simple license file that you keep and you don't have to be online to activate it.

>>10106874
I like minimalism, but not in my /vr/. You can make it so though.

>>10101846
No

>>10108894
>>10101846
Yes.

>>10101962
Yep, retroarch is only ok for ps1 and earlier, otherwise gets buggy (least the one I use did)

>>10110139
Maybe

>>10101846
Just for the benefit of other anons, and this is purely from my own understanding (someone can correct me if I get some details wrong), RetroArch is not a frontend in the same way that Launchbox, Emulation Station and others are. What it is is a frontend for libretro cores, which are useless by themselves (they're literally .dll files on Windows, .so files on Linux).

Basically, It's almost got a GNU/Linux "I'd just like to interject for a moment" thing going on, in that the RetroArch frontend, combined with a libretro core, makes up a whole emulator. As such, emulators have to be ported to specifically target the libretro API that RetroArch uses to interface with cores, which means stripping them down to a pure core and modifying them to use said API. This is quite different from what LaunchBox et al do, which is just serve as a platform to launch existing standalone emulators. And of course, once the RetroArch+libretro core coupling is complete, you have a fully functioning emulator, which itself can be launched through LaunchBox and other such programs.

>>10111459
Ask again later

>>10111494
AFAIK this is completely accurate.

>>10111494
Does that mean LaunchBox is a glorified folder with shortcuts?

>>10111494
You use EmulationStation DE as the frontend and configure it to launch the games with the appropriate Retroarch core, standalone emulator or game exe. You don't fuck with Retroarch's anemic frontend features unless your are into self-harm.

>>10101272
>People pay to emulate?
Anon...SOMEONE had to pay at some point to emulate.

Someone had to pay for the arcade boards.

Someone had to pay for the equipment to dump the roms.

Someone is getting donation money to continue updating Mame and other emulators.

Someone continues to pay to host the files on whatever website you downloaded your roms and emulator from.

Do you think this is all magically free? Just because you are a leech doesn't mean you are stupid. You are intelligent. You know better. Someone is always paying the bill. Be grateful.

>>10113663
>Someone had to reddit

>>10113592
Kind of, but a little better. That's what frontends are: they aren't essential, but add convenience. Once properly configured, LaunchBox (or any other frontend of your choice) will present, sort and filter all of your games and associated media in a convenient way, and load them up in their respective emulator. Again, mostly convenience and eye-candy. You can do without it, but it's also nice if you go along it.

>>10113732
>reddit
More like... Plebbit LOL! Amirite or what? Plebbitors need not to apply!

>>10113663
and someone HAD to take all that community effort and make bank on it

>>10114334
That's what I do. I don't really NEED it, but when the kids or friends want to play, it's all there easy to find with pretty pictures. You can also discover a lot of interesting games you never knew existed.

Does it run well on Wine? I'm going to need to use this on my Deck because sorting through 500+ games on the Steam library is a pain in the ass.

>>10114417
>sorting through 500+ games on the Steam library is a pain in the ass.
There's categories you can make and auto ones as well.

>>10114460
I know, but it still isn't very helpful. You just end up having to sort through a bunch of categories

>>10114417
Try ES-DE first, since it officially supports both Linux and the Steam Deck.

>>10114540
Oh shit, that's true. I forgot it existed. It even comes with EmuDeck, kek. I'll get to it, thanks anon

>>10101221
emuhawk

the mod in the launchbox forum is a fucking asshole

>>10115106
>internet mod is an asshole
In other news, water is wet.

One nice feature I don't see discussed a whole lot is that you can set a controller hotkey to open a "pause menu" through Launchbox that has different options programmed for things like save states. This is nice cause it lets you operate non retroarch emulators still entirely with your controller. Do any others do this?

>>10115148
Depends on the mentality of the mod and admin, among other things.

>>10115106
AJAB

>>10106071
MY EYES

>>10115429
you got skill issue

>>10106339
>>10107113
I've seen people with more but they have to cheat to get there

1. Big Box can be aesthetic as fuck
2. The license is only for Big Box mode pic related, you can use the desktop mode in OP's pic for free

>>10117506
I think there's a very similar theme for the free EmulationStation.

>>10106071
>>10115429
>>10117386
>>10106874
>>10107745
I feel like this almost looks good... it's just too fuckin visually busy. Like, do you need the LibRETRO logo in the top right, AND the box, AND a Playstation banner, AND a background based on a screenshot from the game... with ANOTHER screenshot from the game on the top layer, and ALSO a picture of a PS1, AND a weird geometric floor pattern, AND text overlaid in all 4 corners of the display, AND a list of various stupid box icons (1 player/memory card 1 block/compact disc/etc)?
This would look way better with half of this shit removed.

>>10117570
>LibRETRO logo
part of the background that I got online
>box
where the logo is? it separates stuff. part of background
>banner
looks good, part of background
>background based of screenshot
it's not, it's based on the console, part of the background. if I change to another game it still shows Tekken, like Sega Genesis shows Sonic, I think
>another screenshot
again, it's the only one
>picture of the PS1
part of background, I like it
>geometric floor
looks rad, I like it, part of background
>text on all 4 corners
I could probably remove those, didn't bother to
>box icons
looks good, it's what's on the CD case
>would look better
for you. you're free to download it and edit all the images, one by one

>>10117545
That's fair, I always had issues with EmulationStation - it seems like it's better for curated small lists, not fullsets. That's why I started looking into alternatives.

>>10117598
>for you. you're free to download it and edit all the images, one by one
well I solve this by just not using retroarch trash

>>10117635
good for you for getting filtered

>>10117636
>he thinks people don't use retroarch because it's too complicated
let's see if you can filter my dick from your ass, pretty boy

>says it's too complicated
>is also a faggot
>likely american too
Makes sense.

>>10117738
Who said RetroArch was "too complicated" ESL anon? Do you think being visually cluttered for no reason is "complication"?

>>10101291
damn that actually looks quite good
I used to use launchbox but only the free version

>>10119128
That is the free version I believe, they've changed the default theme a few times.

>>10119089
shut the fuck up dyel. ywnmi

>>10120430
ywnsbaet&ppydn

>>10115148
did you really just defend a mod? How about you go back to plebbit? I agree, the mod on the launchbox forum is a fucking idiot.

>>10122653
I think he didn't defend a mod...

>>10122653
ESL?

>>10122653
retard

>>10101221
overloaded shit, and dont let me strat on the forum. There is one mod who is a total dick.
fucking psycho.
He is the reason i stopped using this software.

>>10101962
>>10107164
>>10110198
At this point it's just because a lot of individual emulators still don't have runahead and good shader support, though that's slowly changing.