How to set up DEMUL properly: Part 2

in the first part of our DEMUL guide, we covered prerequisites and some basic knowledge needed to get the emulator running. In the 2nd instalment we’re going to concentrate on the meat and bones, the emulator itself. DEMUL is easy, if you know whats exactly needed, something that isn’t really explained in detail anywhere. By the end of this guide you’ll be playing Marvel vs Capcom 2 in no time.

Before we start configuring DEMUL, we need to prepare our ROMs directory.

As mentioned before you should have 3 sets of MAME files. They are:

I’m going to use my I:\DEMUL\TEMP as a temporary staging area to prepare the ROMs. Essentially, you’re going to be taking the contents of the 3 MAME ROM sets you downloaded and combine them into one folder. This is so DEMUL has access to everything in one directory and it makes it easy to configure MAME as well (if you’re going to use it).

Our I:\DEMUL\TEMP folder should now consist of all the ROM, CHD, and BIOs files from the 3 MAME sets.

From here you can head down two paths, you can either:

For the sake of this guide I’m not going to separate it out. I will now rename the TEMP folder to ROMS. So if you’ve been following along you should now have I:\DEMUL\ROMS.  Whichever way you chose, our main ROM directory for DEMUL is good to go, we can now move onto the emulator.

Go ahead and download DEMUL from the official website. At the time of writing the latest version is 0.7 Build 111117.

It should then automatically set up your paths. If it doesn’t do this automatically, see the screenshot for what I’ve setup.

There are a few things to note in this section:

That should be in for the plugin setup, once you’re done here hit OK.

We are now going to move onto video configuration. These settings may vary from setup to setup so I can’t promise they’ll work for everyone. I’ve found that below ones work well for me on a decent PC for smooth 60 gameplay.

Go back to the main screen of DEMUL. In the top menu select Config > Video. Set your options as per below

On sound configuration there isn’t much to do here. One thing that I’ve noticed is that the sound buffer size will need to change depending on your PC so I can’t promise what here will work. If your sound is laggy but your gameplay / video is smooth, experiment with changing the buffer size settings until it becomes normal.

From the main DEMUL screen go to Config > Sound.

The final thing we need to setup is of course our controls. In the main DEMUL screen go to Config > Controls.  For any NAOMI or Atomiswave games, you need to setup Joy 1 and Joy 2 (NOT Dreamcast). When you go into each joystick configuration, be sure to set Digital for your main directional inputs and not Analog. Once that’s completed hit OK.

I’ve included below screenshots of all the settings from the various plugin configurations.

Now all that’s left is try and run a game. Back at the main DEMUL screen go to Load > NAOMI / NAOMI2.

Pick a game and if you’ve followed along correctly, then success! You’ll be treated with the NAOMI bootscreen and that should be it.

{0} is a placeholder for your ROM name. To get the correct ROM name, in DEMUL hit File > Load NAOMI or Atomiswave. In the column that says Name, that’s what needs to in place of {0}. Also do not put the full path to the ROM file, just put the ROM file name.

DEMUL functions a bit weird when it comes to this particular setting. You must go into the GUI, at least once, and launch a game after you define the full optimisation option for it to work via command line. Basically if you just try and launch DEMUL from command-line after enabling this, it won’t work. Go into the GUI and launch a game. Then try again via command line, it should launch with no menu bar.

I mainly wrote this guide due to the lack of DEMUL setup instructions out there. Yes there are plenty of YouTube tutorials and what not but none of them really explain what the ROM requirements or even the Visual C++ installations needed which mind you, drove me absolutely insane. Hopefully this guide will make your DEMUL setup experience fairly painless and you’ll be playing Marvel vs Capcom 2 in no time.