since being the very first reply in this thread, to this reply, it is absolutely mind blowing what you have achieved with this project.
Incredible work my friend.
Thank you for all you are doing
If you want to try to troubleshoot these issues, feel free to elaborate. Sometimes it could be as simple as RAM throwing errors. After years of replacing bad DIMMs almost automatically, I now have a 100% success record with restoring them to full functionality using my own fine tuned reflow method. It only takes about an hour or 2 to complete the entire process including before and after cleaning. If you simplify the cleaning stages it could take less than an hour.
You seem to have a penchant for building PCs, trust me, I know the feeling.
I hold back quite a bit now because of new priorities and responsibilities but I recently did an internal upgrade of two of my systems just by swapping around some parts I had lying around. I had to give up the SLi option on my secondary gaming/HTPC PC in the process but I plan to wean myself off SLi anyway and that PC has been running single GPU ever since one of my GTX 970s started having some issues.
I’m glad to see prices and availability of parts getting closer to pre-pandemic levels. I took a stance that I’m not going to support the gouging as much as I could have avoided it. I was also turned off by nVidia’s strange product segmentation when it comes to VRAM sizes and also the side effects of high power usage due to using a different manufacturer this gen with very few smaller form factor graphics card options with enough oompfh to justify replacing my current setup.
So for my next GPU upgrade I’m looking for something at least as powerful as an RTX 2080Ti or 3060Ti with at least 11GB VRAM that can do 4K60, and not longer than 8.75".
That’s the normal max GPU length my current case can handle, which goes up to 14" if I remove the hard drive cage which also acts as a housing for the single front intake fan that the case can accommodate.
I recently got the idea of simply moving that cage and fan over to the side location which currently houses my hard drives in order to free up the extra space for a longer graphics card. This length restriction is one of the reasons I went with dual X70 series mini graphics cards for two generations instead of one large X80 card.
This is my HTPC Case here:
https://www.silverstonetek.com/legacy.php?pid=199&area=en&model=LC13-E&tno=
The hardware is little used and rock solid. It is really just a lack of support for the x58 chipset in newer versions of Windows 10. (The issues are related to the ICH10/ICH10R storage component.)
The following generation consolidated the two North Bridge chips and has much better support.
It is likely that switching to an older version (Pre “Creators Update”.) and turning off updates would have solved the issues. (Or using a non-approved software driver.) In the end I felt she deserved something brand new. Just the speed of the M.2 drive alone will probably blow her away.
I will most likely keep the MB around for future projects. I have a twin set of components in my HTPC running Windows 7 that has been pretty much powered on for 9 years. (I was storing these parts as replacements but never needed them.)
Sometimes the installers may not work on newer OSes so you can probably try manually extracting and installing the last version of the driver that you can find that works properly. I run into these types of issues from time to time on older stuff even with different manufacturers. Sometimes the latest official compatible driver might be buggy and you have to dig a little deeper through some trial and error in order to find the one that works.
You can try Windows 7 or Windows 8 drivers as well or even the pre Creators Update ones as you have stated.
Nice! I am currently using this nMediaPC case.
https://www.newegg.com/black-nmediapc-htpc-6000b-atx-media-center-htpc-case/p/N82E16811204037
I’m fairly certain in will accommodate my Z170S and GTX 1070 after I finish my R&D.
I’m honestly kind of hoping it won’t. Once I get my living room painted and a new OLED TV mounted on the wall… I might like to try this case and do away with my TV stand.
https://www.newegg.com/space-gray-thermaltake-core-p-series-atx-open-frame-chassis/p/N82E16811133153
It reminds me of this case I saw a couple years ago:
This one looks pretty elegant and stylish. Dust might be an issue over the long term though.
Just in case everyone is as far behind as I am… there have been some new cores added to RA. a5200, (Which makes running both Atari800 and Atari 5200 ROMs a lot easier by using separate cores.) WASM-4, (Which is already on my list.) Same CDi, (Which greatly increases the CDi playable library.) Arduous, (Which has now been added to my handheld list.) and Jump 'n Bump.
Also added to my list but will just needs a TV7 Mod. (So far the games I’ve tried are fairly pointless but it runs and looks good so…)
I love the fact that advances in RA will make this a never ending project!
Thanks to @TVsIan I will be adding the Interton Electronic VC 4000 to my MAME SL list.
It doesn’t require the traditional software list method so was missed during my search. I wonder how many other systems have been missed for the same reason.
The graphics are simple, and the game controls a bit weird, but it does have 37 games in the SL which is more than some systems.
I can’t get the NDS presets to work properly with the touch screen. I’m using melonDS in Touch Mode, but when the shader is applied the viewport is not aligned with the boundaries of the touch screen. So basically you need to click not where the screen is displayed but where it would be displayed without the shader, if that makes sense. What am I missing?
I have no experience using touch mode with the Mega Bezel.
Does it work correctly with the handheld border shader?
Other discussions by @hunterk lead me to believe not. I will assume you need to use a standard overlay with touch mode.
No indeed. So is it an issue with this core specifically? What’s odd is that the touch screen correctly understands scaling, if the window is in 1x 2x 3x or whatever, the touch screen zone is still placed correctly, but when an shader is applied it doesn’t follow.
Basically what happens is the core outputs an image and the touchscreen surface corresponds to this image. Then the shader adjusts the image by scaling and moving it, and the touch screen area is unchanged, and therefore doesn’t match the image you see.
To have a fix for this we would have to send the new window coordinates of the scaled and moved screen out of the shader, which is not part of the framework.
So if you really need the touch screen interaction then you’ll have to use a standard overlay like Duimon suggests. I don’t think there is any way around this at the moment.
I see. But I’m not sure it can be solved by an overlay, can it? With the DS in mind if I want the final result to look like that screen posted in the OP I’d still need a border around the rendered area. Even if I find out how to do that, the problem might be still the same. Unless the overlay is able to resize the whole image + touch area. Hm.
Makes me wonder though, how do you all use your DS games, without the touch screen? Mouse mode has awful acceleration on my end.
The mouse is mapped to the right joystick on a gamepad.
I believe the overlay system is compatible with touch mode. I have overlay versions of my graphics in my overlay repo.
https://github.com/Duimon/Retroarch-Overlays
I can help you with the coordinates if you’d like to try them.
Here is my NDS Vertical Alt overlay using the “lcd-grid-v2-nds-color.slangp” shader.
For 4K the needed info is:
X Position = 1363
Y Position = 83
Width = 1112
Height = 1976
Screen gap = 70
If gap distance is more important to you than screen size, my NDS Vertical (Not Alt) has the ideal gap distance.
I updated the above info with accurate coordinates taken from Photoshop.
If you are using DeSmuME you can create a DeSmuME.cfg text file and put it in your /config/DeSmuME
folder.
DeSmuME.cfg contents:
aspect_ratio_index = "23"
input_overlay = ":\overlays\Duimon\Nintendo_NDS\NDS_Vertical_Alt.cfg"
input_overlay_opacity = "1.000000"
custom_viewport_height = "1972"
custom_viewport_width = "1106"
custom_viewport_x = "1367"
custom_viewport_y = "85"
This assumes you have put my “logo” overlay set in Retroarch\overlays\Duimon\
It also assumes you are using Windows. For Linux you would have to define the path ":\overlays\Duimon\Nintendo_NDS\NDS_Vertical_Alt.cfg"
without the :\
.
You will also need a “DeSmuME.opt” with at least…
desmume_screens_gap = "70"
desmume_screens_layout = "top/bottom"
Also in the config\DeSmuME
folder.
Thank you very much for your help, this is all working perfectly
So… I used my Potato graphics as my new standard overlays. The overlays are 4K while the Potato have been resized, using the “Mitchell” algorithm, to 1920x1080.
My Potato source is using a perfect mask, generated by the Mega Bezel, that can be used to get screen coordinates for the overlay configs. I have updated the above with new coordinates taken from this mask. (The difference is slight.)
I will be adding my potato source to my Mega Bezel source repo very soon, along with a guide in the overlay folder on getting the coordinates with Photoshop, Affinity Photo, Paint.Net
, and Gimp. (For Gimp I will make use of a python script that displays coordinates.)
I will also be adding an example core config and a guide for it’s use.
Once I have the guides done I will add it to my GitHub Pages site as well.
The source is in the repo. To keep the size of the source repo below 10GB I created a new…
…repo. Guides are yet to be completed.
Edit: I need to split the commit into batches. It will be done later today.
I am thinking about handling the source for the overlays differently.
I think I will create a guide on how I created them, using the Mega Bezel tools, and include only some source. The vast majority use the same coordinates, and the PSDs are only two masked layers, one with a drop shadow.
I will still create the other guides, since they will benefit the community, and the methods can be used for any overlay.
It just doesn’t seem prudent to take up almost 3GB of GitHub space for something that can so easily be recreated.