Fade and emulators (and cleaning up the HS/windows experience)

[Guest]

Hi everyone, I'm relatively new and am getting towards the end of my first setup so I'm messing with some bells and whistles.

I spent some time tinkering with fade and really got nowhere. It seems that no matter what I set things to, I could not skip seeing the windows desktop and emulator(s) loading. Searching the forums, many of the questions/answers about fade were from 2012 and older versions of hyperlaunch/modules so they didn't prove to be as relevant now.

Basically I will just throw some questions out there, forgive me if I'm the 800th person to ask any of them!

Note: I'm not messing with any images/layers yet, though I do plan on eventually using fade to display controller configs. For now I'm focused on just figuring out the timing/settings so that when I launch a game I get the cleanest experience. I'd love to never see any emulator windows, command line windows, or the windows desktop. Not even sure if this is possible but figured I'd throw it out there since I know this is a goal of many others as well. Also, I'm using windows 7 x64 and am fully up-to-date with git.

1. I know fade's mortal enemies are true fullscreen emulators. Which ones are known to be most problematic? Are there settings that can sidestep this? (such as turning full screen off in the emulator and depending on commandline instead?) If not, which alternative emulators have you used to solve this issue (assuming you are as OCD as I am)?

Here are the emulators/systems I am currently using (in case anyone has any suggestions for settings or alternatives):

• MAME (Arcade) / 0.152 with no-nag & directinput
  
• Final Burn Alpha (NeoGeo) / v0.2.97.29 <---- do people just use MAME instead?
  
• KEGA Fusion v3.64 (genesis/32x/segacd)
  
• Project64 v2.1.0.1 (N64)
  
• RetroArch v1.0.0.2 (NES-nestopia/SNES-bsnes_balanced) (retroarch was the only thing that wouldn't give me vsync or input lag issues on NES)
  
• NullDC v1.0.4r150 (Dreamcast)
  
• MagicEngine v1.1.3 (TG16)
  
• PSX (haven't set this one up yet, open to suggestions!)
  

2. A related question... do any of you run hyperspin.exe as the windows shell instead of explorer? I know obviously making a black windows background and setting HS to the shell would make it so you would never see the 'desktop' and would give a cleaner experience. I do this with XBMC on my main HTPC and so far it has worked out very well. I just have xbmc load explorer on exit (which I see is possible in hyperHQ as well).

3. Any other HS or Windows tips/tricks you use to "clean up" your experience?

Thanks everyone for a great community!

[Fromlostdays]

If you are launching an emulator fullscreen, you should make sure that the emulator is set to the same resolution as your desktop. Another option is to launch windowed and use bezels. Other than that, its a lot of trial and error to make it seamless.

[Guest]

If you are launching an emulator fullscreen, you should make sure that the emulator is set to the same resolution as your desktop. Another option is to launch windowed and use bezels. Other than that, its a lot of trial and error to make it seamless.

Ahh, I'll try that out... though it could be a challenge for some of them. My monitor is a 21" LCD that is 1600x1200 native. I know for sure that nullDC chokes if I set it to 1600x1200, same with Project64. Maybe i'll set windows to 1024x768 or even 800x600 and see what happens.

[Fromlostdays]

Yeah, on my old PC I had to set windows res down for the same reason. I just did it when someone was coming over and I wanted to show off. I also find that often if you set an emulator to run in a higher resolution but to scale to the screen or keep native aspect ratio, they run a lot better. Many do not like being stretched.

That's if you don't mind the black borders, which I don't, but can in many cases be filled by a bezel.

Goodluck,

Edit edit: I use mednafen for every system it will run. No screen tear. The only slightly annoying part for me was changing the config file with the right shaders for each system. The emulation is amazing, especially for NES, Super NES, and Sega, BUT.... mednafen does not like bezels on some systems for some reason, and it blips a little every time I launch it.

For playstation, use Xebra if you can set it up. But keep the most up to date epsxe. The tradeoff is Xebra compatibility is unmatched, but no real shader support so it looks like a real psx. Epsxe looks amazing, but low compatibility. I always test first in epsxe and so far it seems like RPGS are the only things it has a problem running, specifically chrono chross and Final Fantasies, which run flawless on Xebra.

Everyone says that Project 64 1.6 is the best most stable version. There is a patch that allows you to use updated plugins on it. Search for "Jabo" I think. In this way, though, my best advice is download every emulator there's a module for, for every system, and see which emulator runs best as you go.

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply!

Yeah, I think I'll jump down to 800x600. No reason to go beyond that... and since I'm only doing older systems and PC games, nothing would really take advantage of more than that anyways. I'll give mednafen a whirl and same with xebra/epsxe. The latter might be better since I don't plan on using any RPGs on my bartop. I started off using Project 64 1.6.1 but the lack of integrated keyboard config was a real pain so I went with 2.1 and it seems to be working so far for me.

When you say bezels, you mean using hyperspin to layer a bezel around the edge of an emulator running in a centered window? I assume that's just because you want to avoid full screen to have fade working properly?

[djvj]

Hyperspin has nothing to do with bezels, that is a HyperLaunch feature only. But yes you have it correct on what it does.