I used to swear by RetroArch up until late last year as I love the CRT-Royale shader but I use USB controllers (Mega Drive, NES and Saturn so far) and getting them to work properly with each core was just too much of a hassle so now I use mednefen and standalone emulators. I still have RetroArch installed in case I need to emulate a certain computer or console and for Netplay although I haven't used it with anyone yet.
Not a hot take. While useful, its interface suffers from less than ideal user experience decisions. And that's for the platform it was designed for, it gets even worse when you put it on other platforms like android (where it's not prepared with how permissions for external devices work, or decides to switch to keyboard input).
It's good it exists and that it's free, but one cannot deny how difficult it can be when one wants to customize things up.
For now I only use it for PC Engine and MegaDrive, I very much prefer stand-alone emulators if they're good enough. RetroArch menus are innecessarily convoluted, but at least the shaders are cool.
It feels particularly frustrating on PC. They had to really compromise the friendliness to make sure you can use the whole thing with a controller.
To me, the killer thing about RetroArch is the whole cores system. It's really sweet that it's like a generic target for all these different emulators. I guess in theory someone else could make a totally different emulator that's able to load libretro cores, but it's such a massive undertaking I don't think there's a lot of these floating around.
I find Retroarch pretty annoying to configure, but it is something you can get a bit better at, and after hours of tweaking on whatever handheld you have, if you backup that config, you can just use Retroarch for playing games instead of fiddling.
Yeah you’re totally right, the idea is great, but execution: poor.
OpenEmu is a great example of how you can make a multi-core emulator with a killer UI. It’s a visually beautiful app, easy to navigate and customize, and has a a wide range of emulator cores. But, it’s for MacOS only.
Yeah you’re totally right, the idea is great, but execution: poor.
OpenEmu is a great example of how you can make a multi-core emulator with a killer UI. It’s a visually beautiful app, easy to navigate and customize, and has a a wide range of emulator cores. But, it’s for MacOS only.
I recently set up my old PC to be an emulation machine on my TV and decided to use RetroArch for the first time. It for sure was not intuitive at first and took a while to get used to, but I got used to it. I already have a bit of a technical background so I don't know if that maybe gave me an advantage for certain things, but I haven't had much issue with it after the initial learning curve. Especially since I only use RA to set up cores and configurations, and ES-DE to actually select and launch games.
I do use standalone for Dolphin, PCSX2, and anything beyond, though.
I recently set up my old PC to be an emulation machine on my TV and decided to use RetroArch for the first time. It for sure was not intuitive at first and took a while to get used to, but I got used to it. I already have a bit of a technical background so I don't know if that maybe gave me an advantage for certain things, but I haven't had much issue with it after the initial learning curve. Especially since I only use RA to set up cores and configurations, and ES-DE to actually select and launch games.
I do use standalone for Dolphin, PCSX2, and anything beyond, though.
I'm not sure it's possible to have a program with the scope and configuration possibilities of Retroarch while also being intuitive. It's somewhat impressive that the Retroarch devs have managed to wrangle the "core" of dozens of different emulators into a single usable thing.
The opposite situation where i have 25 different emulators on my device, each with different options / control scheme / configuration / storage doesn't seem great either.
I guess it goes back to that old quote: "There's two kinds of software: the kind everyone complains about and the kind nobody uses".
I'm not sure it's possible to have a program with the scope and configuration possibilities of Retroarch while also being intuitive. It's somewhat impressive that the Retroarch devs have managed to wrangle the "core" of dozens of different emulators into a single usable thing.
The opposite situation where i have 25 different emulators on my device, each with different options / control scheme / configuration / storage doesn't seem great either.
I guess it goes back to that old quote: "There's two kinds of software: the kind everyone complains about and the kind nobody uses".
No it's possible, there's mesen, mednafen, ares etc, the problem isn't to get it working, it's getting retroarch to actually implement the more intuitive ui as a option, fun fact retroarch does in fact have a mouse/keyboard ui you can switch to, but it lacks a ton of features and pardon my phrasing, feels half-assed and not worked on much, heck i've had it crash on me when i tried to use it multiple times.
Welllll, I have a lot of different emulators on my pc. Not 25, but as many standalones as I could want, and I vastly prefer just setting them up all similarly and doing things that way.
Completely, 100% intuitive might not be possible. Mednafen I'm used to now, but there was a little bit of a learning curve. But retroarch ain't even at 10% intuitive. It is less user-friendly than several programs that demand you operate them with the command line. The way menus are nested often makes no sense, the nests go frustratingly deep, and it will often not do stuff you take for granted like save/load controller profiles in a way that one would expect. Probably the worst UI/UX experience I've ever come across for what it's supposed to do.
No, OpenEmu is the better example for what I'm referring to.
Mesen is great, but it's not really an actual competitor to retroarch in terms of consoles supported (7-10 consoles up to 16 bit), and it has a very 'Windows 98' vibe, meaning it's very obvious it is a computer program; it doesn't have that console experience at all.
No offense to Mesen, of course, it's great for what it is. But OpenEmu is a direct competitor with Retroarch, but with a vastly superior UI/UX. It supports 31 cores, from Vectrex all the way up to Gamecube and PSP, and, while still functioning as a computer program (you click the games with your mouse to open them), the whole thing is set up as a premium, console like experience. Rretroarch could be like that, and still include all the detailed settings and options OpenEmu doesn't have (mainly just graphical enhancements, since OpenEmu is committed to the authentic limits of real hardware.), but the developers are not concerned or skilled with good UX design.
And that's fine, it's a free program and maybe someone with that concern/skill will make some changes to it some day.
I'm not sure it's possible to have a program with the scope and configuration possibilities of Retroarch while also being intuitive. It's somewhat impressive that the Retroarch devs have managed to wrangle the "core" of dozens of different emulators into a single usable thing.
The opposite situation where i have 25 different emulators on my device, each with different options / control scheme / configuration / storage doesn't seem great either.
I guess it goes back to that old quote: "There's two kinds of software: the kind everyone complains about and the kind nobody uses".
It's most definitely possible (see OpenEmu), but it takes a good working knowledge of UX design, and of course, the time and effort to implement it.
As someone who has not contributed to the retroarch project financially or otherwise, I can't realistically expect them to put a lot of work into it. But it is absolutely possible.
i use retroarch when i need to but its a mess it has potential to be great if it was not so hard to setup all the settings in it
it took me alot of patience the first time i did use retroarch and to really do all the setting changes
now i have used it so many times that i find it easy to do all the settings but still it takes time to do all the changes in settings and emulator settings on top of that
its mutch easier to setup emulators than it is to setup retroarch
I might be too low IQ but, although I quite like RetroArch, it constantly breaks in ways I can't seem to understand. Most recently I've been playing a lot of Panel de Pon, and although RA ostensibly uses a bsnes core, the audio is all scrambled, gameplay hiccups, etc. As others have pointed out, because the settings are shared across cores by default, it's really difficult to get in there and figure out what's breaking it without undoing my whole delicate, beautiful FBNeo setup. As such, I end up just running bsnes in isolation for this particular game... it's a work in progress, but without having any particular insight into the project, its halo of ill-intent is so pervasive that it seems to account for some of the more esoteric interface decisions. It's as if the politics (and by extension aesthetics) of RA lag years behind its technics.
OpenEmu has really great UI but sadly seems mostly abandoned, and has some real technical limitations. If only they could just rip out OpenEmu's frontend and slap it on RA... could it all be so simple
the whole thing is set up as a premium, console like experience. Rretroarch could be like that, and still include all the detailed settings and options OpenEmu doesn't have (mainly just graphical enhancements, since OpenEmu is committed to the authentic limits of real hardware.), but the developers are not concerned or skilled with good UX design.
It's precisely why I use RetroArch. I dont want a console-like experience. I want total user control, tweakability and proper documentation.
I think the Libretro guys are doing the smart thing. They filter the users who wouldnt give them proper feedback, so they can focus on development and relegate the endless support task to the frontends.
Yeah, it's really cumbersome. It's really useful in embedded devices, however. For regular PC emulation I find it's best to just download individual emulators
OpenEMU has stubborn devs that refuse to implement common features such as support for CHD files. I don't find it any easier to use over RetroArch and find it to be much more of a pain in the ass in general.
RetroArch is fine. It is most useful when it is used in conjunction with a launcher. Any system that is connected directly to a device without a dedicated keyboard makes good use of it. For example, using any emulator without an OSD is a giant hassle when you have a PC connected to a TV that boots directly into a frontend. It is unfortunate that the cores for any gen 7 or later system have rather poor performance.
idk if it is a hot take. I've used retroarch on my Vita because I don't have too many other options, but I always did prefer having different emulators for different systems. I don't know how to explain it but it feels more "immersive" when I do that. Like all it takes is for me to decide what emulator to launch and I'll go "today I'll boot up my SNES emulator to play SMT," instead of looking at what I have installed on retroarch and taking like 20 minutes to choose because I have way too many options at hand. I also am not familiar with retroarch at all and don't bother changing any of the filter settings, meanwhile other emulators like FinalBurn Neo for fighting games come prepackaged with CRT filters without having to configure anything and I love it for that.
People have been saying this for a while now. It used to be brought up often on r/emulation when RA was brought up.
One thing that standalone emulators for PC will have an advantage on is that they don't have to be made for controller use. Sure, they support gamepads, but can still rely on you being able to select options with mouse and can make more efficient user interfaces. They also usually only have to account for one system.
RA is made for controller navigation, and you can tell it always used less convenient gamepad first interfaces like cross media bar, which I think should still be default, and ozone.
You'd have to be a certain kind of crazy to think Retro Arch is good. It's objectively atrocious. Clearly made with only the devs in mind because no one has ever heard of any of the terminology used to describe things in that program other than them. It exists in its own dirty bubble of utter unrighteousness.
I can verily say it is 100 percent the PC version of Retroarch that many of us really hate. The whole interface is a pain when I already have things set up how I want them with most of the stand alone emulators I do use. This includes paths for saves, screenshots, and controller configuration. The problem is certain consoles right now don't have the best stand alone emulator and the libetro cores aren't ported.
For example, Sega Genesis. Some games are best with a 3 button setup and some with a 6 button setup, which is really apparent when playing with controllers that have an Xbox, Playstation, or Nintendo Pro controller layout of four face buttons. I can tweak that easily per game in Retroarch but things like ares or Blast Em don't give me an easy option unless I change it each time I load a game. Not to mention how tricky it is getting Sega CD to work on stand alone emulators.
I use Mesen for a lot of consoles now and find its interface to be perfect for PC games, and I have an old front end loading the image files I've curated over time. Duckstation for PS1 and Dolphin for GC/Wii.
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