ok so after finally having time to work on this all day, since school is out. I figure it out. Thanks to all the good posts and people that help out. Thanks Patrickm, Floob, and patl. I’m going to post what I did.

I first follow floobs video.

and I also added patrickM scanlines both the regular and 5x. I generated a cfg file for both and then I put them in the folder 16-9 found in floobs guide.
http://smartretro.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=85

I then use this thread to find the correct scaling I found out that for the snes 1280×1120 is perfect 5×5 scaling. I didn’t want to go through the whole RGUI setup because I could never find how to save it. So in the idividual retroarch file for everysytem I put this created by patl

This one is for the snes, but you can easily adjusted for other systems just change the width and height. I also added video_scale_interger = “true” to the list of commands. Without this on my retroarch file I was getting a crop image from the bottom. Below is the edited code.
video_shader_enable = false
# We dont need them
video_fullscreen_x = 1920
# Horizontal Monitor resolution
video_fullscreen_y = 1080
# Vertical Monitor resolution
custom_viewport_width = 1194
# Horizontal emulator resolution
custom_viewport_height = 896
# Vertical emulator resolution
custom_viewport_x = 363
# The first X pixel of the emulator image
custom_viewport_y = 92
# The first Y pixel of the emulator image
aspect_ratio_index = 22
# Aspect Ratio set to custom
video_scale_interger = “true”
# This is to what I added to the instructions
input_overlay = /opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/overlays/16-9/TV_16-9_SNES-MD.cfg
# Overlayimage
input_overlay_enable = true
# Overlay Image enable
input_overlay_opacity = 1.000000
# opacity of the overlayimage
input_overlay_scale = “1.000000”
# Scalesize of the overlay image
video_smooth = true
# Smoth the emulated image, not the overlay, If you set it to false, it will remain sharp but blocky.

Yes, I check this and config (same as psx) folder has drwxr-xr-x permission and user pi.
I also checked all folders and subfolders created by emulator itself and all of them have drwxr-x— premission.

Interestingly, even the emulator refuses to save global pcsx.cfg file, he can save individual game cfg file.
Unfortunately, for some reason emulator cant retreive this saved game config, when starts and it brings us back to the beginning…

I’d love to have plex too, but for now plexbmc is an acceptable solution. https://github.com/hippojay/plugin.video.plexbmc/releases

Themes like Amber, Nova and Black Glass Nova have a go plex setting that swaps the kodi main menu items for your plex main menu items. Set Amber to have a vertical home screen and it ends up looking a lot like plex. It isn’t as stable, but not bad, probably better than dual booting or card swapping.

Because by design the other configs should override the main config – and the video smooth setting is set for all that have shader configs. It was a bug before that the individual ones did not override the main config due to the ordering in the files.

just remove the setting from each config, and you are done.

[quote=102341]what I’m doing is giving the settings for a CRT TV that would display 224 lines, whereas[/quote]

And I’m trying to get you to appreciate the wide variance with which CRTs were calibrated, which you don’t seem to understand. The 224 line thing is truly pulled from nowhere with no source to back it up (this is a criticism of the wiki you linked to, not you). You need to understand that CRTs were analogue- controlling the paths of individual electrons with magnets. It wasn’t an exact science. As such, even individual TVs of the same manufacturer and model number could vary widely in the amount of overscan they displayed. CRTs were calibrated by hand after they were put together. It wasn’t like there was a whole batch that displayed 224 or something like that. You couldn’t even generalize about a particular model. Each CRT is unique, like a fingerprint or something. I encourage you to actually look at a few different CRTs and measure the overscan they display- you will most likely find that no two measurement are exactly the same even when looking at TVs of the same model. Literally the only generalization one can make here is that “the important game graphics were displayed within the safe area.”

[quote]u’re not understanding what’s going on here. your screenshot is displaying 216 lines (you can tell by the amount of ‘ground’ is displaying – compare to my screenshots above of a 224 line in 1080p scaled version). your scanlines are displaying 1:1. you won’t see any scaling of the overlay unless you turn off integer scaling – ie attempt to stretch 224 or 240 lines on a 1080p[/quote]

Nope, I’m afraid you are mistaken. The output seen in the screenshot is 240 lines with crop overscan off. That’s how many lines are being put out by the emulator in the screenshot I provided. 24 of these lines get cropped off by stretching the picture with 5x scaling so that the edge of the picture extends beyond the edge of the screen. So I’m displaying 216 lines but the output is the full 240.

The scaling artifacts are resulting from something you’re doing in gimp most likely. Below is a screenshot taken with the internal resolution set to 224 and scaled up by 6×5. 224 makes no difference in the appearance of the overlay vs 240.

http://s1309.photobucket.com/user/Patrick_McCleery/media/image.jpg1_zpsnt9eagkf.jpg.html

[quote]…or you use my method. you’re welcome[/quote]

And it will result in artifacts. Sorry, but there’s no method other than the one I described that won’t result in artifacts. Bilinear filter results in artifacts by definition, that’s just a function of how it works. It takes the average of four adjacent texels and determines the color based on that.

[quote=102160]

yes, but as i said (4 times, now), I a similar effect because of my TV, even when using no scnaline. I do NOT get this effect when using lower opacity on the scanlines, scaling or not. Apparently you are unable to take my word for it, so here’s some screenshots (ignore the vertical white ‘ovals’ as they are just an effect of my phone camera):[/quote]

All opacity does is adjust the darkness of the overlay. The artifacts are most likely there even at lower opacity; you’re just not able to notice them at that opacity.

[quote]
i say again, most TVs displayed the centre 224 lines. http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/Overscan: “Actual TVs show about 224 lines of the signal, hence the commonly reported 256×224 resolution. But the vertical position may be slightly off center.” – this is why almost all games will render the playing field for the full 224 lines, knowing that most users would see it, rather than show borders because some users wouldn’t. “In fact, even some CRT SDTVs made in the 2000s show more of the bottom than the top; this may be so that tickers on cable news channels aren’t cut off.” – this might account for your TV, but for those of us who want to emulate TVs from the era, showing the full 224 lines is accurate (and shows more of the game).[/quote]

the statement “most TVs displayed the center 224 lines” is misleading. The wiki page provides no source for the claim, and the claim does not account for the very wide variance in how CRT TVs were calibrated. There was no single standard, only a correct range. The safe area is 90% of the picture, and is where game developers placed important graphics. That’s all that really matters for the purpose of displaying games. The developers didn’t plan for a hypothetical average, they planned for the maximum amount that a TV would crop so that the games would look right on anyone’s TV.

(http://www.nab.org/xert/scitech/pdfs/tv031510.pdf)

One problem is that it looks like you are not taking into account how crop overscan behavior alters the internal resolution of the game. For example with SNES9x, turning it on alters the reported internal resolution, so when you scale up, more gets cropped off than when you leave it off.

Furthermore, the number of lines displayed by the TV has no bearing on what the internal resolution of the system is, or what it should be set to. NES for example put out 240 horizontal lines, no exceptions. The TV would display anywhere from 90-100% of these lines so anywhere from 216-240 lines would wind up being displayed. There is no “more accurate,” here, since the amount that got displayed varied widely by manufacturer, model, and individual set.

[quote]clearly you haven’t tried it. here’s what nearest neighbour scaled (224 lines in 1080) scanlines look like close up:[/quote]

Clearly I haven’t tried it?

It looks like you’re scaling up from the wrong resolution and/or using bilinear filter on the overlay in Gimp. Here’s what nearest neighbor looks like with the 5x scanline overlay I’ve provided at 5x scale, using 240 as the native resolution. It’s fine. It seems like you’re doing something strange on your end that is causing the issues you’re describing.

http://s1309.photobucket.com/user/Patrick_McCleery/media/image.jpg1_zpswuxdykgm.jpg.html

[quote]For people who want to play neogeo or (many) arcade games, at full screen, without cropping information – this is the only solution. The rest comes down to personal opinion about what parts of the screen are important/not important, and what CRTs you are used to.[/quote]

It’s a fact that the safe area is defined as 90% of the screen- see the link I provided above. This is the area that console developers used when designing graphics. Of course, arcade games are going to be different because they were designed to run on arcade monitors which were better made and didn’t have overscan. In other words, most arcade games probably don’t use padding, which is why important stuff gets cropped off at the edges when you use 5x scale on an emulator. Another factor complicating this is that arcade monitors often used different resolutions than standard CRT TVs.

If it really is 224 with no overscan (I think this is true for CPS) then the best you can do on a 1080p display if you want *perfect* scaling is scale up to 896, and have letterboxing equal to 184 lines, which is more than 17% of the total display area dedicated to letterboxing.

I’m not familiar with the neo geo emulator (or the neo geo for that matter) but it’s also very possible that it’s doing something weird with crop overscan.

However, these are unique cases- 5x scaling shouldn’t result in anything important being cropped on any other console system if the right settings are used.

I’ll definitely take the new image. Will be easier for others. It looks like your rom names matched the mame file names (from dat files) and console ones matched no-intro so it all worked perfectly. I took your rom list, put them in a batch file, then copied out all the roms you had as my baseline.

I then added my own roms and used emumovies downloader to get new images and appended -image to each picture and created a new gamelist based on a script i saw on your image.

It all just works. I been diving into your image, very creative with the dualboot, noobs, and scripts to switch and mount back and forth.

Love the transition in the theme, bigger posters and now it finally makes sense while you killed the menus. No one can screw it up and looks so clean. Another thing i like is how you cant scroll left or right within a system and you have to back out to scroll.

The little things you did make it my favorite so far.

Thank you.

I only had 1 issue, when creating my own navigation for emulationstation, the keys would be in es_input_temporary) something like that, but not in es_config so i just copied them over and bam!! worked.

Luis

Great job!!!!

+1

I use Plex as my Media Server and would love the ability to run RasPlex from EmulationStation. I too tried berryboot to dual boot my Pi2 but ran into tons of errors. if anyone has made any progress with this I’d love to know.

Hi Vulga,

Thank you for the xsls file. I am using the xin-mo dual controller as well, and I want to ask you which one of the wiring drawings I should use. Should I just ignore the drawing that comes with the Xin-Mo (The one at the bottom in your xsls file) and set it up as you suggest? And then configure it in the retroarch.cfg?

Also – do you know if it matters if I use pin 9 or 18 as the ground?

Thanks in advance..

I am new to retropie. I just installed it and got it up and running on a RP2 a couple of weeks ago. I wish i would have discovered this forum sooner, i was trying to get my DualShock 4 controller working with retropie last week ago. I finally after many trial and errors managed to get it paired using the “jessie” build of BlueZ (5.23 i believe). After getting that up it works perfectly in games, i am having an issue though with the accelerometer. If you launch a game it seems to always get caught up in the runcommand.sh launch script asking you if you want to modify any settings, it does this because the axises detect the slighted movement and it triggers it somehow. Also if you are in the retropie-setup.sh script any movement of the DS4 will knock you out of the script. My question is, is there anyway to disable the accelerometer, or to tell retropie to ignore that axises? or as a nuclear option just disable the runcommand.sh so i do not end up in it every time i launch a game.

wow, this would be GREAT to have. Im new to the RP2, and all I plan on using it for is to be able to dualboot retropie and openelec.

if you could help me out too with an img, that would be awesome. Good vid too btw. Thanks in advance!

With these settings, the overlay is being scaled with bilinear filter, which is blurring some of the scanlines and causing the moire effect you were describing. IMO this can be very distracting, particularly with vertically scrolling games.

I’ve detailed a way to get pixel perfect scaling at 1080p while cropping both the letterboxing (the black bars) and the overscan, so that the picture fills the vertical area of the screen and the scanlines line up perfectly without scaling artifacts, cf., “how to get perfect video scaling” and “how to get scanlines.”

There are a couple incorrect assumptions you’re making, one of which is that most systems put out 224 horizontal lines of resolution, which is not the case. If you’re losing important score/credit info, as you said you were at 5x scale, it’s likely because you are using 224 as the internal resolution instead of 240. What gets cropped at 5x scale corresponds exactly to the overscan area on an NTSC CRT TV. The remaining area is referred to as the “safe zone,” and game developers would always make sure that important game graphics were displayed within this zone (with a few rare exceptions), and they frequently made use of the overscan area to store information that the player wasn’t supposed to see (usually, to compensate for the variability in how CRTs were calibrated).

Also, regarding opacity, IMO you’re better off setting your display’s “backlight” setting higher to compensate for the loss of brightness. (This is not the same as the “brightness” setting). For example, with 4x scanlines at 100%, you would lose 50% light output, so you compensate for this by increasing the backlight by the same amount (eg., if your backlight is at 50%, you would turn it up to 100%).

Also, regarding the dotmask shader, it will cause a drop in frame rate and input lag, but it is slight. I’m sensitive to these things, so it ruins it for me, personally.

With this said, could you please correct the misinformation contained in your post regarding the horizontal resolution of console systems? This kind of information can quickly and easily spread once posted, leading to more confusion and problems, and it works against the efforts of those who are working to preserve authenticity and accuracy. Thank you. :)

The correct horizontal resolution is 240 for NES, SNES, Genesis, PS1, N64, PC Engine. This can be readily corroborated by using Google and searching “internal resolution (system name)”

However, there are individual core differences and bugs where the internal resolution isn’t right, Picodrive being a notable example. So the correct resolution for a system may not be the “correct” resolution for an emulator. I’ve saved you the work by providing a list of resolutions to use in “how to get perfect scaling.”

I haven’t tested Neo Geo, but I think it varied, with the most common being 264 with overscan (240 without)

I usually just ssh and copy them over on winscp the only benefit to the USB stick may be if you don’t have a network connection or sometimes it will copy over faster than the network depending on your hardware of course. One thing that you’ll need to take note of are which ROMs are parents and which are clones. If you get clones without parents (like pacman is really a clone of Puckman) they’ll give you a missing ROM error. You can see the compatibility lists on aforementioned managing ROMs wiki page and they list which ROMs need which parents. Usually I’ll just build the whole romset and copy the whole thing over or I’ll build a merged set which puts all the clones in the parent folder (its not the most efficient on space though.) Sometimes rebuilding won’t work regardless (like in my case donkey Kong) and I just had to find an older romset for some of those or at least individual ROMs.

I had the same goal. I ended up ordering this controller board and built a power cable for it that plugs into an USB socket.

The good news is, it works. The 5V are plenty enough when plugged directly to a 2A USB power supply. The bad news is that it doesn’t work so well when plugged to the Raspberry (+controlblock, which would’ve allowed me to power everything up and down using the controlblock’s power switch). The backlight flickers. I’ve read somewhere that reducing the brightness might help but I don’t want to do that, so right now I’m using 2 separate USB cables, one for the raspberry and one for the lcd, both plugged the same dual-output USB charger.

Hi all-
I’m at a complete loss trying to get my joysticks/buttons to work. I have a Xin-Mo Dual controller, two joysticks and 20 buttons. I had joystick 1 and all 20 buttons working initially. Joystick 2 was never showing up in dmesg, nor was /dev/input/js1 present.

I installed feederchain’s kernel update, and voila, joystick 2 shows up now! Unfortunately, only the following work now:

Joystick 1 left/right/up/down
Player 1 A and B buttons
Joystick 2 left/right/up/down
Player 2 A and B buttons

No other buttons work now. Start, Select, Exit, hot-key, C, X, Y, etc… do NOT work now.

My /opt/retropie/configs/all/retoarch.cfg file shows the proper directory for my joypad config:
joypad_autoconfig_dir = /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-joypads/

I’ve tried everything possible, from using my original working config…to removing “player1/player2” from the variable names…to changing axis numbers and joypad index numbers. I’ve removed quotes, added quotes. Nothing seems to matter. Here’s my latest config:

input_player1_joypad_index = “0”
input_player1_up_axis = “-1”
input_player1_down_axis = “+1”
input_player1_left_axis = “-0”
input_player1_right_axis = “+0”
input_player1_a_btn = “0”
input_player1_b_btn = “1”
input_player1_x_btn = “3”
input_player1_y_btn = “2”
input_player1_select_btn = “6”
input_player1_start_btn = “7”

input_player2_joypad_index = “1”
input_player2_up_axis = “-1”
input_player2_down_axis = “+1”
input_player2_left_axis = “-0”
input_player2_right_axis = “+0”
input_player2_a_btn = “0”
input_player2_b_btn = “1”
input_player2_x_btn = “3”
input_player2_y_btn = “2”
input_player2_select_btn = “7”
input_player2_start_btn = “6”

No matter what I do, I only have control of the joysticks and the A & B buttons. Nothing more. It’s almost as if some other config file is being used. I ran jstest against js0 and js1, and they both show all the buttons and axis’ working as expected.

Is there a way to see what config file is being loaded? What should permissions be on all the retroarch config files?

Thanks!

Hi! I just started using retropie now (the V3.0 beta 4), and I’m having kinda the same problem. I’m using a generic controller, and can’t save the config of the analogics.

I’ll leave the topic that me and another users where trying to find a solution, as reference:

Dualshock 4 SNES problems

Falcon found a solution for his dualshock 4, but he is using it for playing snes and gba. So, I dunno if his analogs have the same problem as mine:

[quote=100876]I also am using a Dualshock 4 (PS4) controller, and had the same issue, but I finally found out a solution!

After looking through some of the setup options, one of the options was Install Retroarch autoconfigs (or something like that, it was very similar). I decided to just give it a whirl and install this, and it ended up working! I rebooted my Pi, went into Super Mario World for SNES and it worked perfectly.

Also tested on The Legend of Zelda Minish Cap for GBA. Works fine! I hope this helps!

I did not have to go back in and configure the controller manually after this. I just rebooted my Pi and it was already configured correctly.

[/quote]

[quote=100876]I also am using a Dualshock 4 (PS4) controller, and had the same issue, but I finally found out a solution!

After looking through some of the setup options, one of the options was Install Retroarch autoconfigs (or something like that, it was very similar). I decided to just give it a whirl and install this, and it ended up working! I rebooted my Pi, went into Super Mario World for SNES and it worked perfectly.

Also tested on The Legend of Zelda Minish Cap for GBA. Works fine! I hope this helps!

I did not have to go back in and configure the controller manually after this. I just rebooted my Pi and it was already configured correctly.

[/quote]

Thanks for the help, Falcon! :D
For anyone that couldn’t find the option, it’s located at:

Retropie menu, retropie-setup
"setup/config (to be used post install)"
[Option 318] "Install Retroarch joypad config"

Now the joypad almost works!

What I find peculiar is that now I have 3 dragonrise cfgs:

DragonRise_Inc.___Generic___USB__Joystick__.cfg
DragonRise_Inc.___Generic___USB__Joystick__.bak

(these ones where created “manually” while trying to setup before)

DragonRise_Inc._Gamepad.cfg
and
DragonRiseInc.GenericUSBJoystick.cfg
(these where download automatically, and are almost empty. The GenericUSB one only have “input_driver = “udev”)

And Retroarch is reading… That one the I created before! Very weird.
I’m sure of that, because I placed the code to go back to the ES menu pressing select+start, reset emulator, etc, inside this one, and he can understand that.

But I still can’t make my analogs work. Here is the analog part of the code (auto-generated by the retroarch joy config before):

[...]
input_l3_btn = "10"
input_r3_btn = "11"
input_l_x_plus_axis = "+0"
input_l_x_minus_axis = "-0"
input_l_y_plus_axis = "+1"
input_l_y_minus_axis = "-1"
input_r_x_plus_axis = "+3"
input_r_x_minus_axis = "-3"
input_r_y_plus_axis = "+4"
input_r_y_minus_axis = "-4"

Again, I tried to place it inside each of dragon’s cfgs, placing it inside “\\RETROPIE\configs\all\retroarch.cfg”, “\\RETROPIE\configs\psx\retroarch.cfg”, etc

I’m starting to think that this code have something wrong, but I can’t really understand what :o Maybe the axis notation?

I’ll keep trying to figure out what is the problem, but any help is appreciated :)

[EDIT]
I discovered how! :D Thanks to this video from TechTipsta:

His video is more indepth, configuring the .cfgs using a usb keyboard, directly on the Raspy. But you can do all using a wifi dongle, and sharing your config files via samba (already comes preconfigurated, at least in this version of retropie [v.3.0, beta 4])

First, you need o configure 2 Retroarch specific buttons: one to toggle the hotkeys, another one to bring the retroarch config menu.
On the video, he used select + f1 (the f1 is already on the “\\RETROPIE\configs\all\retroarch.cfg”, but it’s commented by default; you just need to open it, and uncomment the line, deleting the “#” in front of it), but you can use any button from your controller. can use any button you wish.

In my case, I used the select + the equivalent of the triangle button on my generic controller. This code goes inside your gamepad cfg, located in

\\RETROPIE\configs\all\retroarch-joypads\[yourjoypadname].cfg

I’m my case, the code is:

input_enable_hotkey_btn = "8"
input_menu_toggle_btn = "0"

After that, you just start the psx emulator, push your enable_hotkey button, the input_menu button, and voilá, you should bring up the retroarch menu.

Now, you should be able to use your keyboard or your joypad to navigate thru the menus. But when I tried to use the joypad, the menus goes ballistic, and I can’t select anything. So, keep your keyboard with you, just in case! You are looking to go to:

options> core options> pad1 type

Change the pads type from STANDARD to ANALOG

Now just go back 1 menu, select “resume content”, and you are done! :D
I still have to test if this config “sticks” after shutting down the PI, and this menu have many more options to mess. I’ll edit this post in the case that I find something important! :D

Ops, it doesn’t stick. That’s what I get for skipping the video :/

After changing from standard to analog inside the core options, go back to settings > Input settings, and change “User1 Devicetype” from Retropad to Retropad w/ analog

Go back to the “root” menu, and choose “Save New Config”
It will change the “configuration files” above from retroarch.cfg to libretro.cfg. Everytime you save it again, it creates a new file (libretro-1.cfg, 2, 3, etc).

After that, exit the emulator, press f4 on your keyboar to reset the Retropie. On the command line, we will append the libretro config file to the retroarch one, so it (theoretically) load the settings everytime.

(Via samba, you can just open the 2 files, and ctrl+c, ctrl+v the settings from inside the libretro file to the retroarch one, but let’s do it the “clean” way)

Type in the command line

cd /opt/retropie/configs/psx
(in the video, the path is …/configs/all; i think it changed since them, because retroarch saved everything inside the psx folder)

Now type ls; You’ll see all the files on this directory, including the newly created libretro.cfg. To append it to the retroarch.cfg, just type

cat libretro.cfg >> /opt/retropie/configs/psx/retroarch.cfg

Theoretically, Retroarch should read this, and autoset the analog everytime. But isn’t working yet, I still need to manually change to analog everytime I restart the emulator :/

I’ll keep messing with it, but as I said before, any help or hint is appreciated :D

I also am using a Dualshock 4 (PS4) controller, and had the same issue, but I finally found out a solution!

After looking through some of the setup options, one of the options was Install Retroarch autoconfigs (or something like that, it was very similar). I decided to just give it a whirl and install this, and it ended up working! I rebooted my Pi, went into Super Mario World for SNES and it worked perfectly.

Also tested on The Legend of Zelda Minish Cap for GBA. Works fine! I hope this helps!

I did not have to go back in and configure the controller manually after this. I just rebooted my Pi and it was already configured correctly.