RetroPie Setup - Auto-installer/updater for RetroArch gaming

[Flipp]

Okay, that's really weird. Try just running "clear", running ES, then immediately closing ES (press F4). Does the resolution info show up on your terminal then?

no, nothing, it shows just

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EmulationStation cleanly shutting down...c   USB   Joystick   stems.cfg"...

Edit: But now i have something in my log.txt.

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Creating surface...720x480...success!

But the screen is still the same, cutted away at the left side. I can see it at about the 6th letter of the game name.

[Aloshi]

Hmm, have you tried playing with your overscan settings? It might be related to that.

[Flipp]

Yes i tried it, but it didn´t change anything. Maybe the ES-Menu is just not working with that low resolutions. I don´t know. If i try 320x224 pixels ES crashes completely.

[Aloshi]

Yes i tried it, but it didn´t change anything. Maybe the ES-Menu is just not working with that low resolutions. I don´t know. If i try 320x224 pixels ES crashes completely.

Did you do the binaries-based installation or build from source? Trying the build from source might help, I'm not sure how up-to-date the binaries are (update RetroPie, run the "custom" install, only select EmulationStation from the list). The only thing I can think of is an overscan problem, as ES is selecting the right resolution.

[Flipp]

Did you do the binaries-based installation or build from source? Trying the build from source might help, I'm not sure how up-to-date the binaries are (update RetroPie, run the "custom" install, only select EmulationStation from the list). The only thing I can think of is an overscan problem, as ES is selecting the right resolution.

I did the binaries install but now i try it from source. I don´t know if the overscan is the problem, because there is no screen problem ingame, in terminal or in this startx graphical thing.

Maybe it is just the Theme because the in first site "Doom" the font is in the center of the screen and this is working fine. But at the other console sites with the images in the background everything is to much on the left side.

If the sorce installation will not help, i will make some Screenshots with my Digicam, so you can see whats going on. A few minutes ago i realised, you are the coder of ES. Thanks for it and for your Time, it´s really great!

[JRT]

Can someone help me, I've added roms into both the nes and gba folders but when I load emulationstation all there is on the screen is Doom and prboom - I can't go up or down with the keyboard but pressing enter closes everything then the same window pops up again . Very confused

Did you try pressing left or right to switch to the other emulators?

Yep , but nothing happens. My keyboard and mouse are ps/2 and connected via USB, and I installed retropie from binaries: would that make any diffence?

Shouldn't do. Are your roms unzipped and of the correct formats? If it can't find them, it doesn't let you switch screens to that emulator (no point if there's no games!)

[Flipp]

@ Aloshi

Thanks for your help man, after the source-installation the text is centered on the screen and everything works fine!

[petrockblog]

..., after the source-installation the text is centered on the screen and everything works fine!

All right, I will update the binaries soon!

[robertybob]

Shouldn't do. Are your roms unzipped and of the correct formats? If it can't find them, it doesn't let you switch screens to that emulator (no point if there's no games!)

Ah yes, my bad

Now that I've sorted that out I have a couple more questions (I was contemplating starting a thread but hopefully this message won't get lost among the numerous others lol)

Firstly, how do I get to the scraper? I can't find anything in the GUI, and if it's burried in some confusing command line somewhere, are there plans to add it there are some point? Secondly, is there an easy way to change where RetroArch looks for rom files? I want to keep mine on a USB stick which I wish to insert into the Pi as and when I want to- what's the best way to set up for the usb to mount and be read by RetroArch when it boots up? Finally, the Emulation Station menu doesn't fit perfectly into my tv screen, how can I change this?

Please keep the answers simple

[JRT]

I'm not near my pi for a while so can't answer these in detail, but here's what I know:-

- Firstly, how do I get to the scraper?

I don't use this, so I don't know, sorry!

-Secondly, is there an easy way to change where RetroArch looks for rom files?
Yes there is, I have mine on a usb HDD. You need to find the config file (which I've unfortunately forgotten the location of), and edit the data in there. There should be info somewhere in this thread.

- Finally, the Emulation Station menu doesn't fit perfectly into my tv screen, how can I change this?
I think they said this will be solved in the next script (see above)

Sorry I can't be more help, it's all from memory!

[Aloshi]

Firstly, how do I get to the scraper? I can't find anything in the GUI, and if it's burried in some confusing command line somewhere, are there plans to add it there are some point?

I'm not sure where RetroPie installs the scraper to, but you can see it on GitHub here: https://github.com/elpendor/ES-scraper
(use "git clone https://github.com/elpendor/ES-scraper.git" to download the repository into a directory named ES-scraper in the current working directory)

It's a Python script, so you'll need Python installed. You'll also want to install the Python imaging library as mentioned in the GitHub README. RetroPie automatically adds the platform IDs to the ES config file, so you shouldn't need to do that. To run the script, you'll do something like "python scraper.py -w 300". The -w bit is to resize the images to be smaller so they load faster.

I would like to integrate the scraper into ES some day, but it's written in Python, so it would have to be rewritten in C++. It's not very high on the priorities list.

Finally, the Emulation Station menu doesn't fit perfectly into my tv screen, how can I change this?

I have no idea! All I can suggest is playing with your overscan settings. I worry that ES needs to be doing something special to account for overscan, but I'm not sure what. It probably doesn't help, but you can control the resolution ES uses through the command line -w and -h arguments: "emulationstation -w 800 -h 600".

EDIT: Oh, and you might wanna try adding "overscan_scale=1" to your config.txt. I found it here: http://raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic ... 67&t=15700

[petrockblog]

Firstly, how do I get to the scraper?

You can start the scraper with the RetroPie Script by selecting "setup" (the third menu item) in the main menu.

Per default, the rom paths can be found in the config file

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/home/pi/.emulationstation/es_systems.cfg

[xalixo]

I've read through this whole thread and I can't help but wonder if it would be a good idea for a stable setup to be imaged so that people wouldn't have so many problems with little things like missing certain software, not doing an update correctly, or everyone having so many different variations in the config.txt (incompatable memory split for example).

It wouldn't have to be a brand new distro, but look at how the media centre distros have been done. Xbian for example is just raspbian optimised for xbmc to work, surely the same could be done with RetroPie. Couldn't it be a distro based on raspbian and optimised for RetroArch and EmulationStation to work?

The media centre distros are so easy to get up and running because all you need to do is download an image and then use software like ImageWriter to write it to an SD card.

If this was done just think how many recurring problems could be solved, like driver issues for example.

Sorry if I've got it all wrong and an image would be more hassle than it's worth, but I would have thought it'd be quite a simple thing to do?

[petrockblog]

I've read through this whole thread and I can't help but wonder if it would be a good idea for a stable setup to be imaged so that people wouldn't have so many problems with little things like missing certain software, not doing an update correctly, or everyone having so many different variations in the config.txt (incompatable memory split for example).

It wouldn't have to be a brand new distro, but look at how the media centre distros have been done. Xbian for example is just raspbian optimised for xbmc to work, surely the same could be done with RetroPie. Couldn't it be a distro based on raspbian and optimised for RetroArch and EmulationStation to work?

The media centre distros are so easy to get up and running because all you need to do is download an image and then use software like ImageWriter to write it to an SD card.

If this was done just think how many recurring problems could be solved, like driver issues for example.

Sorry if I've got it all wrong and an image would be more hassle than it's worth, but I would have thought it'd be quite a simple thing to do?

Actually, I have already thought of that. However, Emulation Station, the setup script, the firmware itself, etc. are developing so fast that I will produce an image as soon as the whole project is "mature" enough.

[xalixo]

That's great news!

Makes sense to let it mature.

Thanks for the fast reply.

[robertybob]

-Secondly, is there an easy way to change where RetroArch looks for rom files?
Yes there is, I have mine on a usb HDD. You need to find the config file (which I've unfortunately forgotten the location of), and edit the data in there.

Would you mind explaining how to change "PATH=~/ROMS/NES/" for example to point to a USB drive, and from what I understand there's no drive letters in Linux , so how can I be sure it's going to point to the correct USB ? I really appreciate the help

Firstly, how do I get to the scraper?

You can start the scraper with the RetroPie Script by selecting "setup" (the third menu item) in the main menu.

Per default, the rom paths can be found in the config file

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/home/pi/.emulationstation/es_systems.cfg

Ohhh , you're referring to the Setup menu (used during installation) ! Why didn't you say

I can't find the es_systems.cfg file, I'm assuming this is because when I installed everything by Binaries I guess it didn't copy over(?)

I'm going to try to install EmulationStation from source and then regenerate a new config file.

Man I need to stop spending the early hours of the morning working on this , it's tiring and stressful

Thank you for your answers

[petrockblog]

I have written a short interim report about the idea of the Raspberry as a retro-gaming system. You find the post at http://petrockblog.wordpress.com/2012/1 ... rim-report.

[robertybob]

Sorry to be a pain and keep adding my problems to this thread. Last one I promise!

I've been having problems with the emulationstation es_systems.cfg file.

I can't for the life of me find it in the folder it should be when using the desktop environment , I regenerated the file using the option in the emulationstation setup menu.

I then realised one way to get to it was to use nano ~/.emulationstation/es_systems.cfg to load it. I found what I was looking for (the path the roms are loaded from) but didn't make any changes.

Now when I try and run EmulationStation I this occurs



..but it does contain something.. ?! How can I fix it?

I thought I should try to install EmulationStation from source to correct the above message, but for some reason it updates Pi libraries (I think) , which I expected, and then it starts to install RetroArch- I pulled the plug when it started because I'm assuming it's going to install everythiing again, I don't want to wait another 4hrs45 for that to complete!


What am I doing wrong?

Why is es_systems.cfg not showing up in the folder (and I've got the "show hidden files" option ticked)?

[Aloshi]

Odds are the systems are defined, but you don't have any ROMs in any of those directories. If you want a more complete view of what ES is trying to say (for some reason when text should scroll and the SDL window is open, it displays garbled), try running ES with "emulationstation > log.txt" to redirect output to a file, then using "less log.txt" to view the log.

I really should revise that error message.

[xalixo]

Does anyone know about this script? http://tukuyomi.kuro-hitsuji.net/stuff/rom_checker/

ES-scraper is ok, but it's not always accurate. I ended up with about 40 incorrectly identified master system roms which were showing up as "champions of europe" just because they were european versions of games and had (europe) in the filename. Lots of other games were also misidentified.

I was searching for a linux rom manager that uses the no-intro database and that's how I came across this script. No-intro seems to be a lot more open than Cowering's GoodTools, so it's probably the best system for naming conventions and dat files this project could use.

I noticed that pendor mentioned using no-intro with ES-scraper on page 6 of this thread and I think it's a good idea. There wouldn't be any more incorrectly identified games. It might take a long time to checksum roms, but that's better than selecting a game and then having it turn out to be something completely different.

Would it be possible to incorporate this script into ES-scraper?

I'm not trying to bad mouth ES-scraper at all, I just think it needs improving a bit and maybe this script could help. All the work you guys (petrockblog, Aloshi, ToadKing and anyone I missed) have done on this so far is brilliant, just want to say thanks.

petrockblog, I liked your report. The future of this "universal console" looks exciting.

[Pendor]

ES-scraper is ok, but it's not always accurate. I ended up with about 40 incorrectly identified master system roms which were showing up as "champions of europe" just because they were european versions of games and had (europe) in the filename. Lots of other games were also misidentified.

I guess I could try to remove these tags on runtime to avoid the errors you mentioned but at the end of the day it's up to how properly named your files and whether you entered the correct platform on the config file (and of course TheGamesDB's info).

I was searching for a linux rom manager that uses the no-intro database and that's how I came across this script. No-intro seems to be a lot more open than Cowering's GoodTools, so it's probably the best system for naming conventions and dat files this project could use.

I noticed that pendor mentioned using no-intro with ES-scraper on page 6 of this thread and I think it's a good idea. There wouldn't be any more incorrectly identified games. It might take a long time to checksum roms, but that's better than selecting a game and then having it turn out to be something completely different.

Would it be possible to incorporate this script into ES-scraper?

I've been working a little bit on that but the fact is that usage of either my script or that one just accomplishes one thing: identification. As in getting -what that DAT file considers- a "proper name". There's no guarantee it'll be compatible with any other database (such as the one used by the scraper).

Also, DAT files have no metadata whatsoever (boxarts, release dates and other info) except for the name of the game and checksums used to ID each file.

I think Xevin mentioned the idea of console "gamepacks" (basically, a file or group of files containing the above (all metadata) for each platform) but those would have to be done from scratch. I have built some partial packs using DATs as reference. But then, there's another problem: the use of DAT files means people will have to use specific sets for that file.

So, to sum up: using DAT files to identify files it's definitely doable. But you'll only get the game's name, all the other stuff is missing. And, of course, you're somewhat restricted in the sense that you can only use the set that DAT was built for or else it won't work.

The script you linked to works only with uncompressed files. Mine supports 7z files so far (since that's the "standard").

That said, I wouldn't mind cleaning the code and sharing my ROM checker as long as everyone understands the pros and cons of that approach.

[CPOKashue]

This is probably a question for one of the retroarch threads, but i installed retroarch with the script so...

I did the build install option and the next day i had an apparently complete setup. NES roms are detected correctly and launch from the browser, but once a game is running, the keyboard is no longer recognized. I don't mean i can't play it (set your binds noob), i mean nothing works. I can't even kill the program.

I know this is sometimes caused by outdated pi firmware, but I did an update as prep for running the retropie scripts. Anyone have any thoughts on the matter? Is this my stupid somehow (probably)?

[portets]

Are you running it from the desktop? Try running it outside of X(ctrl+alt+f2). I think I get that behaviour while in X.

[USiT]

This is probably a question for one of the retroarch threads, but i installed retroarch with the script so...

I did the build install option and the next day i had an apparently complete setup. NES roms are detected correctly and launch from the browser, but once a game is running, the keyboard is no longer recognized. I don't mean i can't play it (set your binds noob), i mean nothing works. I can't even kill the program.

I know this is sometimes caused by outdated pi firmware, but I did an update as prep for running the retropie scripts. Anyone have any thoughts on the matter? Is this my stupid somehow (probably)?

I had the same issue, did wright about it some page(s) back. The problem for me was that did think that my keyboard was a gamepad. So before running i had to do a sudo rmmod joydev and disable the joydev, after that the keyboard did work for me.

[CPOKashue]

great, i will try both fixes. Thanks!