Can't Launch Any Emulators in EmulationStation?

AlphaBetaPie

Every time I try to slecet a game from within EmulationStation, the emulator will try to load but the window will crash and it returns me to my game select list. I have tested the emulator directly, and it works fine outside of ES on my desktop. Any idea why this is happening? My code is below for my system file:

<system>
<name>nes</name>
<fullname>Nintendo</fullname>
<path>~/.emulationstation/roms/nes</path>
<extension>.zip .nes</extension>
<command>%HOMEPATH%.emulationstation\system\nes\nestopia.exe "%ROM_RAW%"</command>
<platform>nes</platform>
<theme>nes</theme>
</system>

mitu

ES logs the command in ~/.emulationstation/es_log.txt - try checking what command it tries to run and see if it's the same as your direct launch command.

AlphaBetaPie

Thanks for the heads up. Went and checked the log, but I'm not seeing anything that jumps out at me. Here is what it says at the bottom:

lvl2: Attempting to launch game...
lvl2: getting volume as 16 ( from float 0.159944)
lvl2: %HOMEPATH%.emulationstation\system\nes\nestopia.exe "C:\Users\Windows Seven.emulationstation\roms\nes\Super Mario Bros. 3 (USA).zip"
lvl1: ...launch terminated with nonzero exit code 1!
lvl2: Creating surface...
lvl2: Created window successfully.
lvl2: Added/Updated 1 entities in 'C:/Users/Windows Seven/.emulationstation/roms/nes/gamelist.xml'
lvl2: EmulationStation cleanly shutting down.

mitu

Replace the %HOMEPATH% with the actual path to the emulator, I'm not sure ES expands the environment variables on Windows.

AlphaBetaPie

Yup, that was it! Forum comes through as usual, thanks! Just needed to extend the path and put in in a more friendly folder as well.

That problem was actually holding up my real question, which is how do I enabled the load screens between EmulationStation and the emulator? I have some custom console images that say "loading" I'd like to see after I select my game and before it loads. Can you direct me to the link that has the doc explain this (or perhaps just let me know if it's something simple). Thanks again!

KN4THX

@AlphaBetaPie See if this helps

https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/runcommand#adding-custom-launching-images

AlphaBetaPie

Unfortunately I'm not working on this on a retro pie setup (even though this forum is based on that). That links seems to only show how to do this in a pie environment, and I need it to work on a desktop. No chance that works is it? Also, I assume if you can load a image, you can also load a small compressed video as your load-screen as well?

mitu

@AlphaBetaPie the loading of images/videos are a feature of Runcommand, which is part of Retropie. For other setups, you're going to re-invent it with something else.

AlphaBetaPie

Makes sense, just making sure I was leaving no stone un-turned. Thanks!

AlphaBetaPie

UPDATE/FOLLOW-UP

Quick follow up question. My friend and I went to a barcade last night and they had a NES EmulationStation set up. They were just running the simple theme, nothing fancy, with a list of games. However, one cool thing did happen. When you selected the title, before the game started, a full screen picture of the box art would pop up. Then the game would start. Was that done using the runcommand of RetroPie? I assume this wasn't any kind of setting or feature inhering in the theme/ or EmulationStation itself right? They had to use a second third party program/plugin in addition to the standard front-end to accomplish this (per the comment above). Which would mean that I'd need to also install something like that on a desktop setup if I want it do this as well?

Annunakitty

Apologies for the thread necromancy but I was running into a similar problem as the OP using EmulationStation on Windows; emulators weren't launching for some reason even though they worked fine when I ran them manually. I found this thread and tried making sure I was using full paths & %ROM_RAW% and etc., and the emulators still just weren't launching. I was just about to give up when, when I had the thought that perhaps the space in the directory name my emulators were in might be mucking things up and sure enough--I renamed the directory without a space and everything worked! I wanted to add to this thread in case anyone else came along hitting the same brick wall, hope it helps.