@Squarepusher hey first off wanted to say thanks a ton for 1.0.0, it’s hella sweet!
Had a small request, If you can, could give us a small tut on how to use the new per core config feature properly or a small explanation on how it works within RA and proper use?
Hey guys!
For those interested in the NEO GEO screensizes, it is pretty simple to check that here: http://www.progettoemma.net/mess/gioco. … ist=neogeo
Just insert the CORRECT filename of your ROM on the URL (game=XXX), or browse normally thru the website.
If the image has narrow black bars on left and right sides of the screenshot, this game should run under 604x448 on R.A. video settings. Example:
If the image has no black bars on left and right, this game is a regular 640x448 title. Example:
I studied the DOL carefully once more and finally I was able (using HEX EDIT) to set up several R.A. in separate parallel directories. Now I have one specific R.A. for each core, running on single core, traditionally. No FUSSING and FIGTHING with CFGs anymore.
I am now just struggling to be able to build some very SIMPLE forwarders for this custom R.A.s… However using CustomizeMii is not working for me. The FW wad installs correctly, but it does no load none of the R.A., even the original one.
Regards, C.
Cospefogo, damn dude if I could like your posts I would lol.
In previous versions we had to have neogeo.zip in the same folder as the ROM (bit of a pain for me as I wanted all the correct game titles to display instead of the ROM name so created separate folders for each game with a bios file in each folder, I know, I am OCD!). Not sure why we couldn’t but the bios in the System foder like we do for syscard3.pce and the Mega CD bios files. Maybe FBA works differently to those emulators.[/quote]
I have all my needed bios files in the system folder. There’s no need to put hem in the roms folder anymore! This has been fixed in the 0.9.9 fix1 release I think.
Anyway, this is not what I meant. About the neogeo Unibios: You do not need it. It’s allready implemented, so no need to find and place it on you sd card. It comes with RA1.0 for Free!
Sounds great!! Can you share your DOL files? I’ll test your settings to work with Wiiflow, do your files saves? I remember that SuperSonic used Hex Edit with some dol files, but they didn’t save, that’s why I ask.
I think a forwarder only accepts boot.dol. To make this work you will need also seperate named folders for each core on your SD card containing each core renamed to boot.dol. Then your forwarder needs to have the exact path to the folder names and the boot.dol.
The way you have things now, confuses the forwarder, not knowing with .dol file to load resulting in a black screen probably.
I can see there’s a bit of frustration over CFGs here: I had a a lot of trouble too! There’s problems where the CFGs write to the wrong CFG or just go to default folders. For example, setting things up on the VBA Next core can cause those settings to go to OTHER cores and become unchangable / unsavable, always pointing to VBA Next’s directories!
There is a solution: A combination of manually editing the CFG files, and then loading the cores into Retroarch, loading a game, and THEN changing the settings once a game is loaded.
Step 1: (DELETE ALL .CFG FILES FIRST!) Put the SD card into the Wii. Boot Retroarch on the Wii. Open each core 1 time and don’t change any settings. This will create each default CFG file because none are present. They will have their proper names when created.
Step 2: Put the SD card back into your computer. Find the folder where these .CFGs are stored. Open any CFG in your favorite text-editor: For this example, I’ll use Snes9x Next, whose default filename is “snes9x_next_libretro_wii.dol.cfg”. Note that it doesn’t erase .dol from the filename!
Step 3: Scroll down until you see 'content_directory = “_________” ’ . This is where the work starts. You have to type in the directory where the games are located. On Windows 7, it’s -almost- easy. The location of my games are at “G:\retroarch\16-Bit\Nintendo SNES”, where G:\ is the SD card drive. I can just navigate to that folder, click on the blank space in the Windows Address Bar, and copy the directory by right-clicking and clicking “Copy” (or just pressing Ctrl + C). Then, I paste that into the document between the quotes by right-clicking and selecting “Paste” (or just pressing Ctrl + V).
Wait! That won’t quite work on Retroarch. Retroarch’s directories use forward slashes, not backslashes - you’ll have to replace them manually after pasting. Also, G:\ doesn’t even exist on the Wii, nor any drive letter like it! The SD slot is named “sd:/” by retroarch.
If you’ve converted the directory correctly, it should look something like: content_directory = “sd:/retroarch/16-Bit/Nintendo SNES”
Yes, you must keep the quotes.
Step 4: Do the exact same thing for the ‘rgui_browser_directory = __________’ with the exact same directory. It’s the item directly below the one you were just editing. Except now, you can copy and paste your already-converted directory from above!
And one line below that, all you have to do is paste this exact line into rgui_config_directory: “sd:/retroarch” Because of the way Retroarch works, CFG files go into this folder by default and it should already exist.
You can also take this time to try to put your savestates in a different folder by going to 'savestate_directory = “_____________” ’ to a different value, as this doesn’t seem to write correctly within Retroarch even after these steps. It’s still frustrating to make savestates go into another folder, so it may not be worth it.
Step 5: Once you’ve set up ALL of your .CFGs like this (yes, all of them, the process can take anywhere from 15-45 minutes, INCLUDING RETROARCH.CFG, but with content directory of “default” only!), slap your SD card back into the Wii and boot up Retroarch. Start up your favorite core (I’ll use Snes9X Next again) and boot a game. If you configured the CFG correctly, you shouldn’t have to configure the game directory again.
Why did we just configure that directory, and not do anything relating to any other settings? Well, once the content directory and config directory for each core is set up, the .CFG overwriting issue seems to mostly be solved because Retroarch is now pointed to the right place for its own .CFG files, allowing you to (for the most part) change settings within Retroarch and save them correctly (i.e. Video, Audio, other stuff) without overwriting other configs.
Make sure that, before you start changing settings, you boot up a game - any game for that core. THEN start changing settings. This prevents the core from putting its settings back to default when you leave the core. Once your settings are done, switch to another game within the same core to confirm that your settings have stayed. For a final confirmation, switch to a different core, then switch BACK to the core you were just on, and see if the settings are still correct. If yes, you did it! Move onto the next core. If not, put your SD card back into your computer and try again from the top. That means all the way from #1, deleting your faulty config too.
TROUBLESHOOTING
>> Retroarch isn’t starting! This has to do with Retroarch.cfg, which points to the last core that was loaded in Retroarch and attempts to load it (libretro_path = “______.dol”. Notice it doesn’t point to a CFG, nor a directory - just a .dol file.) If it points to a core that doesn’t exist, or to a core with a CFG file that isn’t working right, it will not load anything. Point it to a different .dol file if the current .dol doesn’t exist. If it does exist, delete the .cfg of the .dol that isn’t working.
>> When I switch to this certain .dol core, I just get a black screen! The CFG of this core is configured in such a way that it will not boot. Delete the .cfg of this core and try switching to it again - it will work. If you don’t want to lose the work you’ve done on the .cfg, back it up, and then start editing it again.
*Genesis Plus GX’s core is a special case, as it blackscreens often if not set up very particularly. For this .cfg, DON’T TOUCH THE CONTENT DIRECTORY . Only modify the rgui_browser_directory and the rgui_config_directory.
>> The savestate directory keeps reverting to savefiles / some other folder! I can’t really find a solution for this. Not a huge deal, but it’s there.
That’s a nice write up, but I’d like to add one thing. There have been several cases (includding my own) where Retroarch won’t boot regardless of the cfg file being deleted. The problem seems to have to deal with folder structures, because at least a couple people (including myself) have reported successfully booting retroarch after removing or changing other folders on the sd card.
First off, love seeing a new Wii release!
Now I don’t know if this is the place to post bug reports, but I have a minor one: If you load a zipped rom, and then go back to the load menu, the unzipped rom becomes available to load (ex: using snes9xnext). If you try to load the unzipped rom, you get a stack dump. I assume because as part of the “unload”, this file gets deleted, and then the core tries to load the non-existant file.
A solution to this could be that any time a file is unzipped, it overwrites one base temporary filename (“retrotemp.rom” or something, in the base folder.) That way it won’t show up in the rom lists, and the application won’t need to worry about cleaning up.
(Thinking about how this works, it would probably be a good idea to just unzip all of my games, to reduce the amount of file I/O that has to occur when a game is loaded. It certainly would also be faster.)
It’s not exactly a bug, more of a minor inconvenience. Kind of like how we can’t automate original video mode.
Several… really? The only other user that I know had issues with folder structure was hielkanator, and his issue was not that RA didn’t start up but that his NTSC roms played at PAL speed, once he moved his sub-folder structure a few levels higher, that issue was no longer present.
I’ve already updated several of my friends Wii’s with most of the cores from 1.0.0 and we’re not the black screen issue as long as you deleted old cfg files first.
@Chetchaka thanks for the great advice on core setup, a bit more tedious than I imagined, but well worth it. Hopefully this is a rough draft and once the RA team continues to improve RA, they’ll make per core configs easier to set up from within RGUI.
Anyone else having problems with the download page? I thought it was just the Wii version at first but they all time out.
They’re downloading just fine, I’d suggest clearing the cache and possibly try another browser…?
Several… really? The only other user that I know had issues with folder structure was hielkanator, and his issue was not that RA didn’t start up but that his NTSC roms played at PAL speed, once he moved his sub-folder structure a few levels higher, that issue was no longer present.
I’ve already updated several of my friends Wii’s with most of the cores from 1.0.0 and we’re not the black screen issue as long as you deleted old cfg files first.
@Chetchaka thanks for the great advice on core setup, a bit more tedious than I imagined, but well worth it. Hopefully this is a rough draft and once the RA team continues to improve RA, they’ll make per core configs easier to set up from within RGUI.[/quote]
Yes, I also removed any Folder numnbering and brackest from the foldernames. I removed these: [1], [2] etc and these ()
Several… really? The only other user that I know had issues with folder structure was hielkanator, and his issue was not that RA didn’t start up but that his NTSC roms played at PAL speed, once he moved his sub-folder structure a few levels higher, that issue was no longer present.
I’ve already updated several of my friends Wii’s with most of the cores from 1.0.0 and we’re not the black screen issue as long as you deleted old cfg files first.
@Chetchaka thanks for the great advice on core setup, a bit more tedious than I imagined, but well worth it. Hopefully this is a rough draft and once the RA team continues to improve RA, they’ll make per core configs easier to set up from within RGUI.[/quote]
If I recall, there was at least one more person talking about it on the gbatemp forum thread. And yes, I deleted the cfg file first. I even reformatted my sd card and deleted the entire retroarch folder in the root directory.
So three-ish people with problems booting, two of which had their problems solved by removing or renaming folders on their sd card. It doesn’t narrow it down much, but I can tell you that when I removed all other folders in the “app” folder, and removed the wad folder entirely, retroarch booted up like usual. After that I could return the folders with no ill effects. I reached this conclusion after about 45 mins of back and forth testing.
So yeah. in the interest of covering all grounds in order for everyone to enjoy, I think it’s worth mentioning.
Edit: tried removing the config file once more with all original files and folders (trying to reproduce the issue) and it still boots fine. Shrug. As long as it works then that’s good enough for me.
If someone is willing to upload a finalised set of configs then fine but there is no way I am going to all that trouble myself!
That would be great. I myself can barely get y head around the cfg thing. As of now I have per core cfg set to ‘off’.
My kids keep screwing up things…
One thing I can’t figure out is when you select certain resolutions it automatically chooses a full screen 16:9 aspect. I was messing around with it last night and on the Neo core I wanted 640x448 and 4:3. But choosing that resolution means you cannot choose 4:3. I don’t quite get it.
Hey, guys!
I did give it up completely of PER CORE CONFIG. Now that I am able to setup each R.A. with a single core separately from each other, things are much more simpler.
I have one RA for PCE. Another RA for GBA, etc etc.
When I load, for example, my custom R.A. PCEngine, I just get it. PCE engine and its roms. That’s it. Don’t need to change cores, go there, back here, load this, change that, etc.
If I want NeoGeo, I load my one of my 2 specific NeoGeos, one for 608x448 and other for 640x448.
And, thanks Hielknator!
The problem with my forwarders was exactly the BOOT.DOL thing. I was pointing them to each R.A. native BOOT.DOL, but this does not work (for some reason) on FW created by CustomizeMii.
Then, I changed the filename of the core’s DOL to BOOT.DOL and my FW are working now! I will take a picture of my setup for you guys!
Regards, Cospefogo.
That’s cool and all but I think it kinda defeats the purpose of RA as an “all in one” emulator package for me. I like to switch between different systems when having a games night with my mate over and would prefer if it was all just from the one menu.