I need help with RetroArch 1.2.2 badly

RetroArch Windows devices
#1

Getting it to play ROMs is the easy part, getting it not set the default File Browser folder all willy nilly not so much. I have several issues I can’t even begin to comprehend.

  • My File Browser folder changes to a random default every time even though I
  • I turned on Settings > Configuration Per Core - to save individual settings for each core
  • Checked each of my currently 3 active Cores Config files and they all have the correct System Directory listing

Here’s an example of what happens and where things go wrong I. Trying to set up a global ROM folder for all my systems, a ROM folder which has many sub folders based on system

  • With no Core selected I set up the default file browser directory to be D:\ROMs
  • I navigate back to the main menu, hit Save New Config and Quit RetroArch in order to save those settings
  • Chances are, the settings won’t be saved and my default directory will be something i previously used, for example D:\ROMs\NES when I reload, with no way that I know of to go back up a level to D:\ROMs

Another example:

II. Trying to save a separate File Browser directory for each Core I use

  • I load a Core, we’ll use FCE as an example
  • I go to Settings > Directory and set File Browser to be “D:\ROMs\NES”
  • Quit RetroArch by navigating back to the main menu and selecting the quit option so the settings save
  • I bootup RetroArch and now the default folder for ALL Cores is set to “D:\ROMs\NES” - from here on two problems can occur
  1. I load up a random ROM, it plays, I hit F1, select close content and when I try to load new content the default directory is stuck on whatever the latest ROM was loaded from with NO way of going one level above that, meaning if I loaded a ROM from my A-D folder that’s where it will be stuck or
  2. The default File Browser directory reverts to a previously used folder i had used/set up at some point as the default file browser directory or best case scenario stays the same, in our case D:\ROMs

I tried to explain this as clearly as possible, but I don’t know if I did it’s a frustrating issue that I can’t even begin to comprehend and info and help on this software is very difficult to go through, there are simply no easy, comprehensive guides I can find though I don’t see why I’d need guides for setting up a bunch of paths, i’m not that stupid.

#2

I think you’re basically doing it backwards. By default–unless you launch with -c /path/to/config.cfg–RetroArch will load “retroarch.cfg”. If you have config ‘save on exit’ enabled, anything you do will be saved to the main config when you quit (using ‘quit retroarch’ from the menu). ‘Save new config’ writes to another config, so anything you do there won’t really show up unless you specifically load that config using the ‘load configuration’ option.

#3

I think the only way to stop this constant directory changing would be for me to just not use the Good sets and simply extract clean ROMs and have RetroArch scan and arrange them by system.

btw how do I uninstall/remove Cores? I downloaded a bucnh i dont need

#4

just delete the dlls you don’t want and they’ll stop showing up.

#5

after getting no intro sets everything seems fine I guess the file broswer thing isn’t what you should be using to run files individually, it’s just what you set for scanning directories and then RetroArch classifies games by system as it finds them

#6

Sorry I’m posting again but there’s a bit of an issue with my ROM lists onece again. The ROM sets I have now are great, clean sets. So I made RetroArch scan my Genesis folder and sure enough it scanned 1655 files, but it won’t show them all in the collection it lists the few files that start with [ which i will remove now and then jumps down to K-Z but ROMs with names beginning from A-J don’t show up. However if I manually navigate to the Genesis folder with the file browser the files are there and are perfectly playable.

Is there a limit to how many ROMs it can add to a collection? If so I guess I should set up a favorites folder manually

edit: reduced the folder to 500something files, removed all sports games, all region duplicates and such and now it detects them.

It would be nice if we could sort our collections in sub folders or by letter so we can avoid big listings that break like this.

#7

More problems, please respond

I set up RetroArch as a backend and Emulationstation as frontend, works fine but when I run Retroarch on its own now RetroArch is messed up even tho i didn’t change a thing, basically the menu is extremely fast and skips like 2-3 menu items, all the animations on the menu, scrolling and what not are very fast

If I run retroarch through emulationstation after running a ROM and hitting F1 retroarch is normal

edit: for some reason it was setting the framerate to something isnanely high automatically on bootup, it would keep doing it on its own, I’d set it back to normal, the next time i start it up bam high framerate again, eventually it fixed itself dunno why or how

#8

That’s how it acts if you disable vsync, generally by pressing the spacebar.

#9

dude I’ve had VSync off since i got it and it wasn’t doing this, but even turning it on still does this also it randomly does it with my controller and i dont have space bar mapped to it :frowning: it’s doing it again btw

Either way i’ll enable Vsync and keep it on hope it doesnt have too much input lag, i normally disable it on all my games

I’ve been using my modded Xbox for emulators since 2003 problem free, why cant i do the same with PC Frontends, everything is such a mess on PC and yes editing config files is the easy part.

#10

fuck it it’s not a Vsync issue I enabled VSync and restarted a few times, worked for the few times now it’s back to crazy ass 800fps on the menu making it impossible to navigate. Only way to fix this shit is to SOMEHOW navigate to settings, get to the framerate counter and hold the left key or controlelr button until it stablizes down to 60fps

this is such bullshit

#11

You can also go to settings > frame throttle and enable ‘limit maximum run speed’ and set the ‘maximum run speed’ to 1.0x.

Vsync in emulators isn’t like vsync in regular PC games. There is latency to be concerned about (enabling ‘hard gpu sync’ with zero frames will minimize it), but since emulators are timed on a concept of 60 fps rather than the internal timers that most PC games utilize, if you disable vsync, it just feeds out as many frames as the CPU/GPU can create, which makes things run too fast.

Also, try not to freak out.

#12

thanks for the info man I hope this fixes my issue since tbh i like RetroArch even as a front end more than emulationstation it just needs a bit more fluff and an automated scrapping system

#13

And yet another problem, it’s as if every new step I take with this program is met with a problem…not fun if you ask me, but thankfully you guys are helpful here. I have a short fuse when it comes to comptuer problems, sorry, they irk me more than anything in life and i tend to avoid doing anything with computers that isn’t straigtforward gaming, my job/drawing/illustration and movies and music, that’s it lol

Anyway Now RetroArch won’t scan my SNES folder I assume it’s because I have sfc and not smc ROMs, though if I ask it to scan individual sfc files it seems to be scanning them I read something about allowed extensions on some random forum when searching google for retroarch extensions but nobody explained HOW to add extensions for retroarch to scan. I know how to do it in emulationstation, but I looked around the retroarch config files and didn’t see/notice anything.

Any help would be appareciated

EDIT: I had to completely remove and reinstall RetroArch, redownload the cores and now everything works fine I’m sorry for all the posts, I honestly don’t know why i have so many issues it’s not lke I don’t know how to edit cfg files, find my way around a computer or anything. My system is clean, no bloatware, spyware or any kind of malware, runs games on highest perfectly smoothly but it appears my retroarch was some kind of messed up and why i couldn’t tell you even if i wanted to.

all seems well for now, well until the next hang up lol

I’m genuinely beyond impressed with RetroArch and when it works which is most of the time it’s downright incredible. 10/10 program for me even if it’s buggy at times, im sure in time everything will be sorted out

#14

Turns out, IF you use Load Recent on ANY ROM RetroArch deletes it from the folder, that’s why it crashes. Sure enough I went to my Genesis folder and both ROMs I tried to load from recent are simply gone. Now I’m not that incompetent with computers not to know what actually happened.

#15

Wow that’s bad. The usual behaviour is: retroarch open a zip file and uncompress the rom, then kill the rom when you’re done playing, the zip stays there.

Loading a rom directly is perhaps triggering the deletion while it shouldn’t.

edit: no problem here loading an unzipped rom, and then launching from recent. Haven’t tested with playlists though.

#16

I was able to replicate it 5 times all 5 times with Genesis games if that helps

edit: Now it won’t delete it anymore, but I’m on a 3rd clean install I don’t know what triggered it but it deleted a bunch of ROMs earlier 3 Ninjas Sonic 2 [World] Sonic & Knuckles World Alien Storm US

I can’t remember what the 5th one was

now it doesn’t do it anymore, but it seems the bug is there

other than that works great like playing games is flawless just the menu itself has weird bugs

Shame I have such a short fuse with computers, id love to help and do more bug testing because i love this program a lot but im just not a computer guy lol

#17

Yeah I don’t know, I tried with XMB menu, made a folder for genesis unzipped games, opened from playlist with Genesis Plus GX, loaded recent… No deletion.

Could be some weird combination.

#18

Definitely a weird combination, but the files were definitely 100% gone. I wish i could replicate it again to post a youtube video just to give the devs a good idea of what was going on

#19

Yeah, that’s definitely a pretty awful bug. If you can figure out how to reproduce it, let us know and we’ll focus on fixing it ASAP.

As for scanning, RetroArch’s databases only work with unzipped No-Intro ROMs. If you’re scanning zips or smcs, it won’t find them.

I’m glad to hear it’s (mostly) working for you now. :slight_smile:

#20

Thanks and yeah I only like non intro ROMs, not sure why it wouldn’t scan, maybe i got the wrong core and thought i clicked on Snes9x but clicked on something else by mistake.

my ROMs are sfc, no intros and they all work now, really really cool actually Performance is also absolutely stallar with RetroArch AND the shaders, in fact ive been playing with some shaders most gamers seem to hate but it’s so cool and fun to mess around with that.

I might take some time and create some wallpapers too down the line since I’m a graphics designer and illustrator, so we’ll see how that turns out