retroarch won't work with hyperpause

[epayson85]

Just recently started messing around with retroarch.  Decided to try finally adding it to one of my systems in hyperspin to see how it would work.  Everything works great... except hyperpause.  I'm on the latest Rocketlauncher with all the latest updates.  I'm using nestopia core with GL video drivers.  Heck... if I try using D3d the thing crashes.  If I try to bring up hyperpause its running in the background and it does pause the game.  However, the game is still on top and I can't see anything.  If I use the arrow keys I can hear it moving but I can't see a thing.  Even more fun... if I take retroarch out of full screen and then go into hyperpause it works perfectly.  Is there some setting that retroarch has that won't let anyone overlay / on top of it?  I can't find one.  I'm hoping someone else has seen this issue.

[epayson85]

so I did manage to get D3d to work.. I had to change the gui and it stopped it from crashing when using D3d... Of course now though it seems any core that I use that I prefer GL over D3D like n64 for example I can't use hyperpause???  I hope someone has a solution that I haven't found.

[epayson85]

I figured it out!!  Realizing that if I exit full screen hyperpause works I decided to have hyperpause launch from the same key press as window / fullscreen in retroarch.  If anyone else runs into this issue this is what you do.  Set the pause key the same as the key that sets retroarch to fullscreen / windowed.  Then you need to set rocketlauncher to suspend your front end this allows retroarch to recieve the command again when you exit pause.  Otherwise hyperspin will recieve the command upon exiting pause instead of retroarch so it will remain windowed. Works like a charm and can do it over and over again! 

[damageinc86]

Woah! awesome!  I actually had retroarch working with PAUSE when I first messed with it.  Then after restarting my computer it never even went to PAUSE at all when using retroarch.  I'll try your trick and see if it works.

[epayson85]

I have messed around with it some more NES works flawlessly. Snes / Genesis it's working maybe 80% of the time. Sometimes it gets stuck and other times it won't go back to full screen. I am debating putting those on d3d and having a separate setup for retroarch that uses GL... too many issues with retroarch trying to use both drivers so a separate setup of both will end up working better.

N64 its up in the air. Some games work perfectly like 007 but others just crash and burn like 1080. Can't seem to figure out why.

If I could get launching / exiting hyperpause to send a command to retroarch to toggle full / window it would work perfectly.

[epayson85]

Ok two things.... First my solution and then a rant about retroarch.

 

Here is another solutions with some what better results.

 

HaltEmu:

    disableSuspendEmu := true

    Send, {F}

Return

RestoreEmu:

    Send, {F}

Return

 

I added that to my retroarch module.  NES,Snes, Genesis all works flawlessly. 

 

N64 doesn't work at all. Except for a few games.  Most of the time it crashes.  Even though I can push F myself then push pause and everything works great, my guess is the n64 emulator needs a little more time but I don't know how to add a delay into the ahk script before pause loads.

 

Now for my rant... Regardless I am pretty much done with retroarch at this point.  I really don't understand the obsession with it.  I do like that they are still developing which on a lot of older emulators we don't see anymore especially N64, but its just not worth the headaches.  Heck I was just trying to load up Mario Kart for SNES... it just crashes.  No error no nothing... retroarch just closes.  I tried running it in command prompt to see the log... nothing.  Not errors.  Heck it doesn't even show that it closes.  Same rom runs perfeclty in SNES9x.  I may end up using retroarch for some of the older emulators like atari, but other than that I am done with this thing.  I will probably still continue to test N64 as vulcan drivers start to progress to see what results they get there but as of right now PJ64 is still the better emulator at least on my setup with my configuration.  Also the way controllers are setup / work in retroarch is the most convoluted piece of junk I have ever had to deal with.  I understand their "reasoning" behind retroarch pads but in reality its stupid.  Each core should have its own controller setup with buttons that actually match the pads for that core.  Then the lack of documentation about video drivers and which work with which gui and that if one emulator is using the wrong one in its config it will just crash... in other words good luck having different emulators using different video drivers.  Why would you not make the GUI's work with all your video drivers??? Or since they don't have it auto change... if you change to D3D have it automatically load rgui instead of SMB you know so it doesn't crash.  Clearly who ever designed retroarch absolutely LOVES linux. If you don't know what I mean by that then you have either never used linux or you love linux.

[damageinc86]

Yeah I gave up on certain things with retroarch too.  It will not detect any of my controllers past the xbox and ps1 controllers i have plugged in.  No matter what driver i select.  When every other emulator can see all the rest of the controllers.  To me that's a deal breaker right there.  I only use it for handhelds because of the kick ass shaders and borders I found, and those are only one player so that can use the xbox controller.  But I had to go back to mednafen for everything else I was trying to do, since it just plain works.  It's really weird, and the configs with cores and stuff is really convoluted.  It's just not seamless enough yet, but the progress is really amazing still.  Hopefully they have a paradigm shift in how they present the program to users in the future.

[Haloman800]

Am I correct in assuming that Pause will pause whatever emulator is running? Is it compatible with MAME/NES?

[epayson85]

Am I correct in assuming that Pause will pause whatever emulator is running? Is it compatible with MAME/NES?

Depends on the emulator but most pause automatically when the window is no longer active. Retroarch does have a setting in the config file to make this true. You could also send the pause button the emulator looks for via the halt command I posted above.