where do the gamelists go?

alexxx

I had an SD card failure and I'm getting tired of it - so I wanted to go the USB way.
I read in https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Running-ROMs-from-a-USB-drive/ about how to put the games on the USB.
But I didnt see anything about where to put the gamelist xml files and associated images, which I keep carefully edited for each game: for this reason I hoped to keep them safe on the USB too.
Unfortunately I saw in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/13331/symbolic-links-and-external-storage-potential that using symlinks is better to be avoided - so which solution do you suggest instead?

mitu

@alexxx The gamelist.xml file can stay in the ROMs folders - each system folder can hold its game list file. You can also add the artwork/videos on the USB drive as long as the gamelist.xml references them properly.

alexxx

really?

I always thought they went respectively to
~/RetroPie/roms/<system name>
~/.emulationstation/gamelists/<system name>
~/.emulationstation/downloaded_images/<system name>

soooo - you say that I could have e.g.:
~/RetroPie/roms/psx/gamelist.xml
~/RetroPie/roms/psx/gamelist-img1.png
~/RetroPie/roms/psx/gamelist-img2.png
...

???

also, what happens to ~/.emulationstation/gamelists/psx/gamelist.xml if it does exist too?

mitu

@alexxx Emulationstation searches a gamelist.xml file in this order

(1) ~/RetroPie/roms/<system>/gamelist.xml
(2) ~/.emulationstation/gamelists/<system>/gamelist.xml
(3) /etc/emulationstation/gamelists/<system>/gamelist.xml

First file found is loaded and used by Emulationstation. So if you don't have a file in the gamelist.xml in the ROMs folder, then (2) location is used by ES. If (2) location doesn't exist, ES will create a new one and populate it with the list of ROMs found in the system's folder.

You could have something like

gamelist in ~/RetroPie/roms/psx/gamelist.xml
media files in ~/RetroPie/roms/psx/media/images or ~/RetroPie/roms/psx/media/videos - this is really up to the scraper used to add the artwork, the images can be anywhere as long the their paths is correctly stored in the gamelist.xml file. Most scrapers can be instructed where to store the downloaded media.

alexxx

@mitu : very kind, and useful answer - thank you!
Since I'm not using a scraper (I prefer to keep a curated list of my games) this will allow me to have a perfectly self-contained system on the USB.

thank you!

BuZz

where do the gamelists go?

After a leading a hard but virtuous life, I hope they go to heaven.