Too dumb to use Retroarch (partially rant)

Oh I get your frustration.
Even using Retroarch on a PC of all things was a pain in the ass.

I probably spent more time setting up most cores and hacking through hard coded configurations (because the lovely GUI wouldn't allow me to do something as simple as disable keyboard input in the background, so I had to literally "clear" all the entries), than actually use it to run games, and at the end I fell back to the trusty stand alone versions of the cores available, anyway.

@VinsCool you're welcome for that experience! I get you though, hard to come to gripes with initially. Even as someone who can setup RetroArch and use it without a problem, I can recognize the fact that it's not the most user-friendly thing in the world.

And standalone emulators will always be more convenient for the user.

I get your frustration as well. I had several issues with retroarch on the psx classic when I first got it, so it took me about ten hours to figure everything out. most of my issues were getting games to appear or their artwork. now, I have everything up and running, it just took some time. I've even managed to get a psx memory card save work on the classic as well. it's pretty easy to do if you can hex. the psx classic iirc uses full memory cards for its saves, so you just have to place the save in slot 2 (which is technically block 1). you can easily find the save by creating a new save, and the start of the save will say SC in hex (probably for sony computers or something), then it's a hex length of 2,000/block. I tested it with my dragon warrior vii save, and it worked flawlessly.

Yeah RA definitely isn't super user friendly. I know a ton of people who swear by it because it's an all in one emulator, but the GUI is just a mess.

the genesis mini retroarch is kinda a problem as well. if you mess up a setting like fix a button to one of the hotkeys, then no longer want a button tied to it, there's no way to undo it other than reflashing the system. I've had that happen a couple of times, but now I have everything just right. normally, with the pc, you can just delete the config file, but there doesn't appear to be a way to do that with any of the minis.

Hello,fellow (frustrated) Retroarchers.

I have tried it on this Systems

- XBox (original)
- Wii
- New 3DS
- PSP
- PC

I have to make a "little Addition" to @KleinesSinchen ´s Thread Title:
I am too dumb too - to configure/use it as well like any single other Emulator for the SNES/Genesis etc....and I also gave it up......

The only reason I learned how to use Retroarch was so I could play N64, 3DS, and PSX games on my Switch.

I found an error with the box art on one of the officially installed titles within retroarch. one of them is using the big psx box unlike the rest of the bunch, so I fixed that as well. if you don't want that controller text to appear when booting up, I think that option is in the notifications section. fiddle with that and you can get that to go away. I also put my games in 16x9, which is enough to do. I think by default it's core provided.

Retroarch is incredibly good, once you figure out how to get it working. Being able to use rewind, state save, fast forward and slowdown on virtually any game released before 2000 is amazing and breathes new life into games I wasn't good enough to beat when I was younger. The variety of shaders is awesome too, especially hqx4. 2D PS1 games never quite looked right before, and now not only do they look great, but I can rewind them too!

The UI is awful though. It's worth stepping through all of the menus on first launch to see what is available. It's also worth noting that many of the options (core specific settings, but also more) can only be changed from the in-game menu, and each core will have different options. There is probably a tutorial on youtube or something that helps, but it really shouldn't be this bad. I'd suggest trying to learn it on PC, where online works for downloading cores and things like images, and config files can be edited directly.

The worst part is control remapping. Changing buttons globally also affects the menus, so if you remap "accept", then you can't remap anything else. There are separate controls that can be remapped per game or per core, but those tie into the global settings, which are inconsistant per controller, and the visual indicator for which button is which are nonsensical. As godreborn mentioned, you can very easily hose your entire setup when remapping buttons. On PC, I use xpadder to map my controller to the default keyboard controls, and then if I need to swap buttons I do it in xpadder. On my Shield, I have a keyboard plugged in specifically to reset the controls when I break them. On 3ds, this was common enough that I needed to install a separate file manager just to restore the config files on the go. 30 years ago, emulators and PC games had it where you could press the button/key to tell the program how you wanted it mapped. Why does Retroarch still not have this?

Kraken is right. There isn't anything in place in Retroarch to protect users from themselves. There's no "hey, if you do this, it may cause some problems" notification that appears whenever you unmap/remap something crucial.

I don't like the xmb ui with retroarch. the ozone one, the one the switch uses, is much better. that's the default one for the psx classic actually. you can install others with other minis, but the xmb one is no longer called xmb, I think it's called "amped." it's a cluster fuck as to where some options are with just the normal xmb.

Oh, you think that's bad? Try setting up RetroPie on a Raspberry Pi, and setting everything to run off of the SD card itself. You have to FTP everything in Filezilla, and all while the device itself is active. Transfers shouldn't take too long on a wired connection itself, but I can't say for sure on wi-fi.

Maybe you want to use a flash drive? Sure, just make sure it's formatted to FAT32 first to ensure the SBC will read it, then create a folder on the device called retropie-mount, fire the thing up into ES, and now wait for a few minutes. 10 is probably a safe bet. Shutdown the SBC and pull the flash drive out, and hopefully, all of the folders for your, ahem..."legally obtained" games and BIOSes will be there waiting for you to fill them up.

But wait, there's more! Some emulators are standalone optimized for the SBC, and others are libretto cores. How do you know to change the core or emulator? Why, it's simple! Just push the button you assigned as the "A" button (AKA the right face button) a whole bunch while the game is loading, and you get a blue menu with a bunch of options, like which emulator you want for the whole system, if you want to use an emulator for this particular game as opposed to the ones for everything else in that system.

And if you can't find what you want to use? Be sure you're connected to the Internet, and go to the Retropie options menu, and go to Retropie-setup, and look for the packages option, and then be prompted with a menu to select main, optional, experimental, and I think some other option of packages, and slowly scroll down with your controller through the list of 50-something cores for RetroArch (indicated by the (lr-insertcorenamehere) format), or bust out a KB and use the directional keys on said keyboard to scroll through things more quickly...after probably resetting the SBC to have it initialize the KB as an input option.

And then you have configuring controls for games, ESPECIALLY ARCADE GAMES! Yeah, normal console fare should be easy as long as you're not using some funky controller, but arcade games just don't have the buttons mapped where you'd expect them, or in the most optimal places.

Also, if you want to control RA's configuration better, you know that Retropie options menu? There's an option to launch RetroArch by itself to configure stuff like the default aspect ratio you want, whether you want notifications to be displayed on a consistent basis and not check the FPS counter for a game, the buttons to push to go to RetroArch, but not to return it to the Retropie menu.

I did the stuff for the arcade cores, for various controllers, but mainly for the HORI Fighting Commanders I own that actually work for just about every game that most of the more mainstream SBCs can play, including Virtual Boy games' and their control scheme.

The only silver lining is that, once everything's set up like how you want it, you can transfer files shared by a RetroArch installation into another RetroArch setup. So those Arcade button mappings? I could transfer those to my RetroArch build on PC and they'd work with no problem, so long as you put them in the right folders, of course.

But yeah, RetroArch can be overwhelming at first, especially coming from other emulators, but the work invested does make the configuration of how you want it to function on the average end user's end of things can make it worth it if you're the kind of person who likes to tweak everything.

Okay, after sleeping a night and calming down… To not sound ungrateful anymore I have to add the most important thing, the very positive:



This is why I said: "I'm too dumb to use Retroarch!" and not "Retroarch is a bad piece of software!"

The problem is: When turning on a console for gaming I don't want to configure for 10+ hours and tweak every last pixel. I want to play games. This may be shocking for some, but I like actually playing video games. I love tinkering with things and doing experiments. It was just too overwhelming yesterday. @Nerdtendo I do not want to be protected from making mistakes in the configuration. The fact that there is no working standard configuration is baffling. No cores bundled? I could not find any screen filters besides the crappy bilinear filtering (which I now successfully turned off). Do I have to search and download these individually as well? Oh my…

The problem is: Tinkering with an OS is fine. Applying hacks to a console after reading some hours about it. I spent many, many hours with learning about the inside workings of the 3DS and Wii and I use GodMode9 regularly. But when I want to play a game, I do not want to tinker anymore. It should just work.

About the massive library/database functions: I don't need them. Boxart, metadata. My ROMs aren't even named after NO-Intro scheme because @Silent_Gunner the ones that I have are ahem..."legally obtained". I have many games at home, but I still can overview them easily by putting them into the appropriate folders (GB, NES,…) – opposed to just loading thousands and thousands of ROMs taken from complete NO-Intro sets.

Thanks for the comments!

@KleinesSinchen The shaders you have to download are the ones that are applied in the Quick Menu. Like the CRT-Royales, the xBRZ ones, and all that. And yeah, messing around with library and database stuff is unnecessary lest you be working with a frontend the with something like Launchbox or Big Box.

And as for the configuration, it assumes you're using something like an 8BitDo SNES controller. Hence, why it doesn't use the standard layout that you'd expect from a PS or even an Xbox controller.

And as for making mistakes in a configuration, the best protection is just having a backup configuration just in case. I actually think RetroArch includes the default config now compared to older versions of RA, called retroarch_default.cfg. So you don't have anything to worry about...on PC.

As for the PS Classic? I couldn't tell ya'. So many devices can emulate PS1 better than this trend rider of a mini console that the fact that they included the PAL versions of these games (you know, the ones with the lower framerate, and that included Tekken 3 iirc) just goes to show either that Sony didn't really care about making these a success.

The only thing that might have saved this system would be if they included versions of the OG Dual Shock controllers with their d-pads and were compatible with modern PCs. Then, we might have what could be one of the best controllers ever made for just about any game that isn't some motion-control-infested gimmick from the Wii era.

retroarch sux it has one of the worst gui in existence. and if you don't know exactly what your doing from the get go you don't have a hope of using it. not to mention you have to go through multiple screens just to get the damn emu running no point and click here oh no it doesn't exist! i much prefer to downloading the emus separate and use them that's what i do on my sheild tv pro. fuck retroBARF

Retroarch sure is controversial. It's an incredible piece of software (props to the developers, it's huge), but there's definitely a learning curve. I have recently acquired a Retroid pocket 2 and am facing so many issues with retroarch I dont even know where to start. I've rarely felt like a noob but Retroarch makes me feel like I'm a complete dumbass. I can't figure out how to get some of the features to work (last of which fast forward. Several hours of googling and trying different solutions, didnt do the trick). So yeah I totally understand your frustration. I was on the verge of posting a similar blog article a few days ago. lol

@Costello Really!?

I can't say I know much about the Retroid Pocket 2. All of these various devices all have their ups and downs about using them, but shouldn't it be possible to go into the RetroArch settings on the device itself?

If not, then your only hope is getting into the filesystem proper and changing the .cfg itself. Not an elegant solution, but a solution nonetheless.

Once you figure out one system the setup carries over to all. I currently have 40 systems on my 2TB PS Mini:

Game / Core
Playlists - Points to your ROMS
Thumbnails - Make sure rom and thumbnail have identical name





I make all my playlists with PC Retroarch Desktop option then edit the Playlist.ipl with Notepadd++ to make sure paths are correct.

Very nice,thank you for sharing.

.....but also very expensive....