I’m very new to retroarch and am currently trying to set it up nicely for myself to game from the comfort of my couch. Whenever I load a game up from retroarch, the fullscreen window temporarily closes and then a full screen window of the game opens up. Is it possible to have something there in between so my desktop doesn’t appear every time I load a game? Perhaps a splash screen or simply a black screen? Or is this just the way it is? Thanks
I never noticed that before—had to try it myself. A simple black screen might give things a more cohesive look. But there might not be an elegant way to execute it technically (not that I would know…).
If you’re making a media center PC, you could maybe write a program to open a black, windowed fullscreen window, then make a bat file to open that, then Retroarch on top of it. Kind of a hack but it might work.
If you run in windowed fullscreen I don’t think it needs to completely tear down the context each time. However, that negatively affects input latency and may cause vsync stutters.
@Mr.Figs I thought about doing something similar to that, but honestly I just don’t have much of a background in computer programming past MatLab lol. Maybe I’ll try that out if I can’t find a simpler solution and it irks me more than it does now.
I tried out the windowed fullscreen toggle and it doesn’t seem to be affecting the situation. Possibly reducing the time with the desktop open but not completely. I checked out a few videos of people using retroarch and they don’t seem to experiencing this issue. I admittedly have a relatively old, unimpressive laptop that I’m trying to run this on. Could that be the stem of the issue? Or could any of my other settings affect this?
@Mr.Figs Your solution was simpler than I expected! Making a batch file is super simple. The only thing I had to do was use a program that would set up a black screen behind retroarch. I didn’t learn how to program something like that, but I easily found a program online that could do it. Thanks for the suggestion
[QUOTE=htoj;49140]@Mr.Figs Your solution was simpler than I expected! Making a batch file is super simple. The only thing I had to do was use a program that would set up a black screen behind retroarch. I didn’t learn how to program something like that, but I easily found a program online that could do it. Thanks for the suggestion[/QUOTE] You should share exactly how you did it (which program you used, how you set it up) so other people looking at this thread with the same problem can do what you did.
Yea, for sure I’ll go into more detail.
I used this program. It just creates a black full screen, you just gotta remember to use Alt+F4 to close it after you’re done playing retroarch. Also, I added a hide mouse cursor program. When I open up roms for emulators that I have overlays for (all of em, lol) my mouse pops up and stays unless I move it. I want to just be able to use my controller to operate everything, so I addedthis program to the batch file to fix that.
The batch file was super simple, just opened up notepad and put this in:
@echo off
start "HideCursor" "C:\Users\Your_User\Desktop\Emulator\AutoHideMouseCursor.exe"
start "black screen" "C:\Users\Your_User\Desktop\Emulator\BlackScreen\BlackScreen.exe"
start "RetroArch" "C:\Users\Your_User\Desktop\Emulator\Retroarch\retroarch.exe"
Just replace the paths with your own, save it as .bat file instead of .txt and then you can click on the batch file whenever to open all three at the same time.
I also created a shortcut for the file, made a custom icon for it and pinned it to my taskbar. This was more complicated but all the info is online if somebody ever wants to do the same.
Thank you! I’ve worked around this issue keeping an empty black desktop on my HTPC and using AHK launchers to hide the taskbar while a game is open. I use this method a lot for windowed games (mostly because I have a huge collection of Mega Man fangames that run better on a borderless window than in fullscreen)… But now, having an instant black screen generator on the back will help me simplify things a bit 
I think you could use && after the retroarch line to close those programs when you’re finished, like this:
start "RetroArch" "C:\Users\Your_User\Desktop\Emulator\Retroarch\retroarch.exe" && taskkill /F /IM BlackScreen.exe /IM AutoHideMouseCursor.exe
@hunterk I tried that code but it seems to close the other two programs immediately after launching retroarch. I did some more digging around and I figured out a code that would open them all at once and then close them all at once when you close retroarch:
@echo offstart "HideCursor" "C:\Users\Your_User\Desktop\Emulator\AutoHideMouseCursor.exe"
start "black screen" "C:\Users\Your_User\Desktop\Emulator\BlackScreen\BlackScreen.exe"
"C:\Users\Your_User\Desktop\Emulator\RetroArch\retroarch.exe"
taskkill /IM BlackScreen.exe /IM AutoHideMouseCursor.exe
I’m using autohotkey for this kind of stuff ('cause I’m more used to it and I like that it works silently by default), so in case anyone wants to try this that way, here’s how I’m using this:
run "blackscreen.exe"
run "retroarch.exe" -D --menu
WinWait, RetroArch
Process, WaitClose, RetroArch.exe
Process, close, blackscreen.exe
exit
(I skipped the no mouse thing because I handle that in other ways, but you can keep stacking stuff up by adding “run whatever.exe” at the top and “process,close,whatever.exe” right before “exit”.)
Ah, I guess Windows cmd shell handles double-ampersands differently from linux/bash, which waits for the command preceding it to finish successfully before it moves on to the next command.