A few things that would improve the interface experience (specific suggestions)

[GemaH]

I see that many people who are new to RetroArch don’t like the interface and pretty much abandon it without even experiencing the benefits of the program.

So here are a few specific suggestions that would make the interface a bit easier to understand.

-Most people seem to have a problem with the controller options. This is understandable. I remember when i first used RatroArch i was confused and had problems configuring all the systems. At first i wasn’t even aware that there is a different setup for the menu and cores have a separate one after you load them. So, the first thing i would do would be to make this more obvious in order to avoid people messing their GUI controls thinking they are setting up a system (like i did).

-Another improvement would be using controller pictures/icons for each system. RetroArch handles a lot of systems and has to work with many different controllers. So having pictures to help you match the buttons of your controller for each system would make configuring controllers MUCH easier. OpenEmu does that and it’s actually one of it’s best features that gets a lot of praise.

-A slightly more advanced core updater menu would also be nice. The one it has is barebones. You only see the core names but you don’t see if they are newer than the ones you already have. So updating the cores is a bit of a guess game. Sure, you can go to the buildbot to see what cores have been updated but it would be great if you could do this through the main interface, to make the experience more seamless.

-Make some other important options less hidden. I just recently discovered that you can save specific core options per game (game name.opt), even though i use the program for more than a year now. I don’t know if it’s a recently added option but i discovered it by luck. IMO this is a very useful option that, along with the other overrides for controls, video/sound and shader options make each game feel like it’s working in it’s own sandbox.

-Maybe a first time setup wizard would help new users with low attention span.

-Fix the few remaining cores that are much worse than their standalone versions. I get there are many cores and this could mean a lot of work but really, there are only a couple that are noticeable broken. Mainly PPSSPP. And maybe 4DO and Virtual Jaguar, although the later got fixed recently i think and it’s more in line with the standalone. So just PPSSPP then.

I believe that, with these improvements, less users will complain and more will be able to enjoy the benefits of RetroArch, for they are many.

[hunterk]

Thanks for the constructive input. We’ll keep it in mind

[yztlyrn]

I would like to start of with THANK YOU for an AWESOME multi emulator aggregation system. I am soooo addicted it isn’t even funny. But there are a couple of ideas I’d like to recommend, if possible.

First, the interface seems backwards. On all systems when you launch RetroArch you are in the “Main Menu” that gives you the Load cores, updates, Information… etc. I load RA to play games. That should be what is presented when I launch unless I have no games yet. The next menu over is the “Settings” then “Previous” then “Screenshots”… etc. The !@#? GAMES are LAST??? Why??? This doesn’t seem to make any sense. Why not flip this so the Games are first? The Android interface has the same problem. Why not list the games, or at least the recently played then the game systems, if they are there, FIRST?

Also, this one may not be possible, but, if the game systems listed could be done so in order of the “Age of the system”, that would be nice. I currently have Atari 2600, NES, Genesis, SNES, and N64. It would be great if they were in that order. But instead they are in alpha order: Atari, N64, NES, SNES, Genesis. This feels odd. Again, I’m not sure that this can be fixed, but it would be nice.