this is what it turned out to be, I think I got it sorted now. it wasn’t the lost progress so much as not knowing what happened and if it might happen again, so I think this was just from updating recently
also I have yet to ever get a disc based emulator that’s not ps1 to load anything in retroarch and the playlist scanner only recognizes like a third of the isos. if it weren’t for other people saying otherwise I think I would of just assumed saturn and dc emulation never went anywhere and wasn’t playable. I’m pretty sure I have all the bios stuff, so I don’t even know what the deal is there.
I was proud of myself the time I got the punisher arcade game running though, since I was never able to puzzle out how the hell to get mame to do anything outside of retroarch before, I did have to hunt down some decade old forum post to figure out I needed some specific file that wasn’t in any bios collections for some reason to get sound working though.
Higan/BSNES, which is the cycle-accurate SNES emulator whose cores are in RA as it is
Higan boots and runs without any fancy options and also you need a decent CPU to run it (my laptop is 2c/4t and running the BSNES core in RA means I need threaded video toggled or else I stay at 55-58 fps)
I appreciate retroarch because the dumb, niche shit it does is worth the hassle of all the other goddamn nonsense it puts you through (fuck yeah run ahead and rewind and crt-switchres, though that last one is its own special ball of hell)
The problem with retroarch is that it’s basically two things: libretro, a multi-core emulator library, and a front-end. The front-ends are all varying types of terrible. libretro, however, is fantastic, because it standardizes how each emulator core handles things like input, sound, blitting, etc to a very high-standard in terms of clean signal chains, low-latency, etc. In many cases, using the libretro version of an emulator will be better than using the standalone version … once you’re in-game. Before that point, well, someone will crack the frontend at some point. (I’ll do it myself after I finish my stupid letterboxd-but-not-shitty-and-also-no-social-stuff project, if I have to.)
has anyone made a retro indie pc game that as part of the gimmick you have to load it up as a fake rom in a nesticle/zsnes ui first? has to have happened already.
twin peaks 2, the sequel to twin peaks: the game, is like tinkering with a recorded playthrough of the first game, and you have access to a debug room for reality that lets you move forward and backward in time, but itself exists outside of time, so it’s the only safe place to make a save state while messing with reality. your mistakes pile up while you fruitlessly attempt to modify things to achieve a perfect outcome and your left lost in world that will always feel off
My biggest two issues with Retroarch are that I can’t figure out how to get more than one savestate to work (#0), and screenshots are black when using the DirectX drivers (outside of like, 9, I think?), which if Google is to be believed, has been an issue since at least 2016.
revelations abyss mode stages are insane. can’t even imagine how i’ll manage to get the trinity bonuses in some of the stages going forward (considering you can’t get hit even ONCE!!)
Been awesome rediscovering this after almost 20 years, got a lot of thoughts shots and video to do something with. Probably after a ng+. Yep, still very noteworthy and thick with ideas worth returning to. Every leg of Lea Monde I feel more accomplished and attuned, when I first played barely scraping by with (what trickled down like) scraps of new gear, stat increases, and spells. Small victories only.
Watching every major story beat again I’m freshly re-impressed with how well it’s done! At least relative to the psx library and alongside (or shortly after) MGS1.
samurai warriors 4 has this mode where you create a character and play a wandering ronin writing about the exploits of all the warriors you meet at the behest of the local warlord but also you have personal life goals youre trying to fulfill. i pledged myself to become the greatest swordsman in the land so im wandering around getting into trouble with my best friend musashi miyamoto while shoving my nodachi thru chump ass samurai’s chests and racking up gambling debts
