Emulation

Skill issues. And being toxic like that won't help anyone; it lets you look like a clown. Why don't you use standalone emulators instead, if that is what works for you? Nobody is forcing you to use RetroArch.

I personally think that RetroArch is one of the greatest and best software ever made. It is exactly what I always wanted and even tried to do some similar setup before RetroArch was invented. I'm sick of standalone emulators that work differently and each and every of them is a special snowflake and does not do everything I want. If you have only a few simple systems such as Snes9x and Duckstation, then you might not even need RetroArch. But if you have installed over 70 emulators in RetroArch for more than 70 systems, then its a godsend. It was already after 4 or 5 cores added.

The reason why RetroArch is not as easy as a single emulator is simple. RetroArch does:

• bring many different kind of emulators and systems, such as MAME (which itself is a multi system emulator), DOSBox (PCs basically), many consoles and handhelds and tries to fit it into single environment
• can be installed on and works on all kind of hardware and software, such as Windows PC (even on Windows 2000), Linux, on Nintendo 3DS, Android smartphones, Raspberry Pi, on Steam, Xbox, on Web Frontends in your browser, and more
• every system needs to work with the same UI and all configurations are setup the same way
• configurations need to work across all systems and environments, such as controllers
• while being extremely flexible and configurable

The price you pay for all of this is the added complexity to the system to manage everything. And sometimes not everything can be up to date, until they port or update the cores in RetroArch. There is no denying in. But I'm not the one who is crying here.

Retroarch is like the power users emulation front end. Regarding button mapping. Once you realize that there is Retroarch UI button mapping and separate mapping for the core you’re using it gets much easier to figure out. But, yeah, it’s not an easy to use front end for the newbie.

Are things alright with you, man?

Depends on the controller used I guess. Which controller are you using? Most of my 8bitdo controller works out of the box.

If you have a setup that works great. For a lot of people(including me) retro arch also works. There doesn't have to be one solution to a problem, and there shouldn't be. I hate iOS but some people love it. That's how the world works.

I find it works in most cases, but I have also seen it "just not work." I feel like your good "this does everything you need for this one thing and just works" apps like Retroarch and VLC have become FAR less reliable in recent years.

RetroArch is great though. I set it up for my mum on an rpi with a bunch of preinstalled roms and there's been no issues. The controller worked out of the box and everything runs smoothly.

what I hate most about RetroArch, is that you can't do a 'full reset' if you fuck something really up. tried to delete installation directories, nothing helps.

When I was in uni, I was part of a student art club that put on exhibitions in the campus gallery. We decided to do a tech-themed show, so all the art had to contain some digital component or comment on technology. So I decided to make my own short game using a cracked copy of NESMaker someone published online.

Anyway, I really wanted to give it an authentic feel, and it just so happened that a buddy and I found a CRT on the side of the road that looked to be in OK shape. We hauled it back to my place, plugged it in, and sure enough, it worked. A few cracks in the glass here and there, and the built-in DVD player was broken, but I think it added to the charm.

About a week before the show, I’m furiously putting together assets and trying to program a few enemies, along with making sure the controls didn’t hard lock if you moved left (ha ha). I was able to get the game to a playable state, and now needed to find hardware with a component input that also had NES emulation capability. I didn’t want to use my personal laptop because there wasn’t any security at the gallery, plus purchasing an HDMI to component adapter seemed dubious quality-wise. I had an old hacked PS2 slim with Free McBoot but the NES emulator available at that time didn’t support the mapper for my game. I thought I was going to be SOL for the exhibition.

Just my luck, a few days before the show, I stumbled across a port of retroarch for the PS2. It had a working NES core (which technically how they figured that out was beyond me). So fingers crossed, I loaded retroarch onto the memory card with the NES core, plugged in my USB with the game, and booted it up. It worked. And mind you, retroarch had JUST been ported to the PS2.

The exhibition went great and a lot of people liked my game (it was a side scrolling shmup that took place on campus, at night. I couldn’t program music to save my life so I took the midi 3AM theme from GCN animal crossing and slowed the tempo down, which was perfectly creepy/melancholic).

In retrospect, it seemed like divine timing, but that random developer out there really saved my skin, and enabled me to share a cool piece of art that I made with other students. I suppose they thought some other people might have had a use for retroarch on a PS2, as useless as that might seem in today’s age.

So yeah. Retroarch is cool. Sometimes complicated, sometimes bad, and not meant for everyone and everything, just like any software. But if you love video games, and it can play them okay enough, does it really even matter?

I am sure they will be delighted to get your PR to fix said issues! This is how wonderful open source is.