Saving game core overrides in Retroarch

[Wayne100]

Hi all, I am obviously a new user on the forum, however I have been a Retroarch user for a few years now. I have been slowly building an arcade machine, and after getting sick of trying to figure out HyperSpin, I decided to start using BigBox as my GUI, and running every platform I can through Retroarch, using various cores. To be honest, I have had a bit of help from the guys on the Launchbox forums (great guys, very helpful).

I have managed to build up a pretty substantial system (40+ systems/15,000 games). However, I am literally pulling my hair out (whats left of it) with this situation. Probably missing something stupid, but here goes:-

I have come to setting up some of the newer(trickier) platforms, and have just started on PSX. I have set up the Beetle PSX HW core, got it running pretty well (to be honest, looks like a very good core). However, a few games need the core specific options tweaking a bit (ie CPU Overclock, PGXP Mode etc) to make them run correctly.

I am trying to save Game core overrides for these games, but all that seems to happen is the settings are saved for every game on the core, not just that specific game?

I have saved my basic overall settings using ‘Save Core Overrides’, and then I am trying to ‘Save Game Overrides’ for the odd games that need tweaking. I have disabled ‘Save settings on Exit’, but no change.

Am I missing something obvious here?

Any help much appreciated!

[hunterk]

It’s a confusing distinction, but the core options aren’t included in the overrides. Instead, go into the core options menu, tweak whatever you need and then ‘save game settings’ (or something like that)

[dvessel]

I recently discovered this on my own. What you can do to have game specific core option overrides is to create a game specific config file then add the core_options_path pointing to a game specific one.

For example, lets say you want overclock WipEout (USA), you’d need to create the game specific config within config\Beetle PSX HW\WipEout (USA).cfg with the line core_options_path = “:\core-options\Beetle PSX HW\WipEout (USA).cfg” then create that core options file with the custom settings. That last path and file name can be anything but you should be consistent with so many games.

Doing this will cause the game to ignore any values in your main retroarch-core-options.cfg file and read the game specific file.

Don’t confuse core options with general core specific settings. The core and game overrides shown in the menu only relates to the settings that are typically set in your main retroarch.cfg file. Core options go a little deeper and are specific to the core which are held in retroarch-core-options.cfg. The wording makes it a lot more confusing than it has to be but there is a big difference in the two types of files.

[Awakened]

@dvessel

I recently discovered this on my own. What you can do to have game specific core option overrides is to create a game specific config file then add the core_options_path pointing to a game specific one.

For example, lets say you want overclock WipEout (USA), you’d need to create the game specific config within config\Beetle PSX HW\WipEout (USA).cfg with the line core_options_path = “:\core-options\Beetle PSX HW\WipEout (USA).cfg” then create that core options file with the custom settings. That last path and file name can be anything.

Doing this will cause the game to ignore any values in your main retroarch-core-options.cfg file and read the game specific file

This still works, but the cleaner method hunterk mentioned is much better. It creates a “GameName.opt” file in “RetroArch\config\CoreName” with your per game core options. The only thing is that it copies everything from retroarch-core-options.cfg, including options from other cores. You can manually edit them out, but it will still add all the core options from the core every time you run the game. Ideally it’d just include the options you want to override for that game like the frontend settings overrides do.

[dvessel]

Oh, wow. I had no idea. Good to know.

I never noticed a ‘save game settings’ option so I didn’t catch onto his post.

EDIT: it’s at the top staring at me this whole time and I never noticed it was for saving the game specific setting. I assumed it was for the game save file for some reason. Duh… Thanks!

[dvessel]

I broke up the main core options file by core with the method I mentioned above so when I do save a game specific file, only the core settings specific to the one running are copied in so this works out pretty well.

[Wayne100]

Thanks for the replies guys - much appreciated! I’m glad its not me missing something obvious. To be honest, I assumed that the save core overides would save the actual core settings, bit confusing.

I have not really made any custom config files yet - to be honest, I would not really know where to start. I have managed to get this far by just using LaunchBoxes and Retroarch GUI. And copying and pasting a few bits here and there.

It is something that I need to learn though!

With regards to the ‘save game settings’ (which I never noticed before as well) - does it matter if it copies the everything from retroarch-core-options.cfg? What effect would this have on the other cores?

[Wayne100]

Thanks for the help, will have a look at it tonight.

[Wayne100]

Just had a look, and found it straight away - ‘Game-options file’. Cant believe it was staring me in the face the whole time.