Retroarch - mednafen crashes on game launch

RetroArch Windows devices
#1

Hey all!

Brand new to retroarch, hadn’t even heard of it until about an hour or two ago.

So I watched some tutorials, read some videos, setup my SNES which works great, but then I went to add a PSX game following the same steps and I am getting a crash as soon as I launch. I am on Windows 7 64bit. I googled around and the first thing I did was check that my CUE sheets matched the file name, and they do. Secondly I made sure I had BIOS files in system folder. For some reason when I load the mednafen core and go to info, it was showing no BIOS present so I put them various places trying to find why (bios folder and main retroarch folder) then suddenly they showed as “present”

Sooo, I thought I had fixed my issue but upon trying a game again, it still crashes.

Unsure what else to try especially being new. I googled for 30-45 mins but only find the cue sheet and bios options.

Thanks in advance and for your patience with this newb.

(I forgot to mention I am using Launchbox, which possible this whole post should have been posted on their forums, my apologies.)

Here’s the error message in Windows


Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:    APPCRASH
  Application Name:    retroarch.exe
  Application Version:    0.0.0.0
  Application Timestamp:    00000000
  Fault Module Name:    mednafen_psx_libretro.dll
  Fault Module Version:    0.0.0.0
  Fault Module Timestamp:    566ce68e
  Exception Code:    40000015
  Exception Offset:    000000000017aa9a
  OS Version:    6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1
  Locale ID:    1033
  Additional Information 1:    73e6
  Additional Information 2:    73e62435f3d37cfa3ad8e3cb16123da8
  Additional Information 3:    4759
  Additional Information 4:    4759e434fc7def958579da3b6e946f7a

And here is the last bit of the log, saying no such file or directory, might be the issue?


RetroArch [INFO] ::     disabled
RetroArch [INFO] :: Environ GET_RUMBLE_INTERFACE.
unhandled setting UI: psx.input.port1.gun_chairs
unhandled setting UI: psx.input.port2.gun_chairs
unhandled setting UI: psx.input.port3.gun_chairs
unhandled setting UI: psx.input.port4.gun_chairs
unhandled setting UI: psx.input.port5.gun_chairs
unhandled setting UI: psx.input.port6.gun_chairs
unhandled setting UI: psx.input.port7.gun_chairs
unhandled setting UI: psx.input.port8.gun_chairs
RetroArch [libretro ERROR] ::  :: Error opening file No such file or directory
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'MDFN_Error'
  what():  Error opening file No such file or directory

I found something on google same error and they said it was bios and they changed where Retroarch looks for bios…but I cannot find anywhere ot change this directory?

(I didn’t realize there were specific areas for mendafen, please move if necessary, thanks!)

#2

The directories are configured under system/directory

#3

That error is indeed usually a BIOS or cuesheet issue, and in your case it’s probably BIOS (cue sheets matter more in case-sensitive filesystems, which Windows doesn’t have). Most likely, your BIOS file(s) have the wrong checksum, and mednafen-psx is extremely picky about it. The core info file will tell you which checksum you need.

#4

I am not sure how I missed that, it was right in my face, and yes this worked, thanks, what I don’t understand is by default I thought the system folder was set to default and it should have looked there…but it didn’t unless I set it specifically there.

Now a new problem has arised (probably need a new topic), per core configs, I could have swore they work yesterday…but now they do not. It always loads the default cfg and no matter what I tried (based on several video tutorials) any time I load a new core it always just reloads the main default cfg.

I am so frustrated! Going on about 10 hours alone trying to make per core configurations work properly.

I tried everything, making sure auto save was off, making sure overrides were off and per core were on, etc etc…but it just never works. Done fresh installs and started over following several tutorials on YT but same thing always happens where it won’t load per core cfgs.

#5

Hmm. That sounds like you’re doing everything correctly (i.e., overrides OFF, per-core ON). Are you manually naming them or letting RetroArch handle it? If manually, it’s pretty picky about what they need to be called. Personally, I think doing the override thing is probably easier unless you just need wildly different options for each core.

#6

I finally got it working, I still have no idea what I was doing wrong. I deleted all configs and started fresh. Slowly learning. Then I had a game bug where sprites were floating, turned out to be caused by the filter I applied, which I couldn’t figure out how to remove filters or shaders…then I found RETURN to be default setting so I fixed that.

Now I just need to continue learning and setting things up.

I got SNES and all 2D consoles looking nice but PSx is tricky…I usually do fullscreen stretched on PSX instead of 4:3 but I can’t figure how to do that. setting 16:9 mode and widescreen hack is closest I could fine. Maybe I should stick to 4:3 and just use a border like wtih SNES/Genesis/GBA etc. I wonder what other people do but cannot find any people posting images or configs they use online.

#7

Yeah, PSX is tough. I usually just use a CRT shader, since they look fine/good on all games. Smoothing shaders like xBR or xSoft look great on some games and terrible on others.