Theme potentially crashing emulation station?

mr_no_love

@sleve_mcdichael
thank you for responding! I do wonder if I am doing something wrong. I did input the line “nano /home..” command in the terminal, from there it just takes me to a black screen with some commands at the bottom. There’s no line for me to edit. Is there something I’m missing?

mr_no_love

Just realized after entering the command you recommended, it says “read 0 lines” so I guess that’s why I’m unable to edit any lines. I entered the “nano /home” command in the terminal after emulation station crashes

sleve_mcdichael

@mr_no_love said in Theme potentially crashing emulation station?:

from there it just takes me to a black screen with some commands at the bottom.

That indicates the file does not exist at that location (or exists but is empty) and so you are editing a new/empty file. Did you double-check the spelling? Note the leading period in .emulationstation?

Note: ~ is your $HOME directory; it is a shortcut to /home/[user] or in our case, /home/pi. You should already be in this directory when you drop out of ES. From there it should be just one step to .emulationstation/ and then edit the file directly:

pi@retropie:~ $ cd .emulationstation
pi@retropie:~/.emulationstation $ ls
collections       es_log.txt       es_temporaryinput.cfg
downloaded_media  es_log.txt.bak   gamelists
es_input.cfg      es_settings.cfg  scrapers
es_input.cfg.bak  es_systems.cfg   tmp
pi@retropie:~/.emulationstation $ nano es_settings.cfg

Also note: ~/.emulationstation is a symlink, like a Windows "shortcut" it is just a pointer that points to the location of another file or folder. In this case, the directory /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation. So, any of the following actually all point to the same file:

/home/pi/.emulationstation/es_settings.cfg
$HOME/.emulationstation/es_settings.cfg
~/.emulationstation/es_settings.cfg
/opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/es_settings.cfg

Final note: filenames with a .leading period are hidden files and will not be shown with the ls (list) command; you have to use ls -a to show (a)ll files:

pi@retropie:~ $ ls
RetroPie  RetroPie-Setup
pi@retropie:~ $ ls -a
.              .config            .profile
..             .emulationstation  RetroPie
.asoundrc      .gnupg             RetroPie-Setup
.bash_history  .lesshst           .selected_editor
.bash_logout   .local             .skyscraper
.bashrc        .lr-atari800.cfg   .wget-hsts
.cache         .openMSX
pi@retropie:~ $

mr_no_love

@sleve_mcdichael

IT WAS THE THEME! Thank you! I figured out what I was doing wrong. I’m on my phone and the “.cfg” was cutoff, I needed to scroll over. I do have one other question, if you wouldn’t mind? I’m playing on my 4K 65” tv, a lot of the games I’m playing are 2D arcade games. Alien v predator, TMNT, Street Fighter Alpha, I like playing on a bigger monitor but they look really pixelated. Is that something I can adjust/fix?

sleve_mcdichael

@mr_no_love said in Theme potentially crashing emulation station?:

I like playing on a bigger monitor but they look really pixelated. Is that something I can adjust/fix?

Shaders: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Shaders-and-Smoothing/#installation

I use zfast_crt_standard, and zfast_lcd_standard for handhelds. Looks okay on my 720p tv but should look even better in 1080p.

4k tv

You'll also want to force 1080p resolution, if you haven't yet:

raspi-config >> Display Options >> Resolution

mr_no_love

@sleve_mcdichael

Thank you very much for your help! I really appreciate it!

mr_no_love

Unfortunately forcing 1080 has prevented me from being able to play….again. I went through raspi-config and forced 1920x1080. Afterwards it asked if I wanted to reboot, which I did. After rebooting I was met with a rainbow screen and an error message..

“[ 166.138934] EXT4-fs error (device mmcblk0p2): ext4_lookup:1703: inode #2040: comm emulationstation: deleted inode referenced: 2393114

Seems as if I can’t catch a break lol. Wife and kids sleeping, there goes my night of gaming.

Also I don’t have a way to type in any commands. Appreciate any help

dankcushions

@mr_no_love file system corruption. see https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/17881/ext4-fs-error/9

if you can’t access a command line prompt, you’ll just have to re-image.

you’ve never pulled the power without first shutting down. i hope?

you never said what image you’ve used?

mr_no_love

@dankcushions never have pulled the plug without shutting down

This was my second time hopping on after correcting my issue from earlier. I’m using the official raspberry pi OS, I wrote it using the raspberry pi imager.

So am I pretty much starting from scratch?

Also does that mean next time I can’t force 1080p? Seems like every time I want to make a small tweak it causes another an issue

dankcushions

@mr_no_love if your sd card is corrupting with no obvious cause it is likely to be a hardware issue. either: damaged/fake SD card, unreliable/inadequate power supply, damaged SD slot, etc. performing such basic tasks should not cause corruption.

mitu

@mr_no_love said in Theme potentially crashing emulation station?:

So am I pretty much starting from scratch?

Try to change the theme to the default, as @sleve_mcdichael has indicated. If you have access to RetroPie via file shares, you can also edit the es_settings.cfg file from your PC - the location is \\retropie\configs\all\emulationstation.

mr_no_love

@mitu thank you for helping! I’ve resolved the issue with the theme. I’m having an issue with a rainbow screen/error message after forcing 1080p from raspi-config.

No command lines available

mr_no_love

@dankcushions I may try another SD if I need to rewrite the image. I just purchased a new Sandisk extreme from a Best Buy last week. The one I’m using currently I bought from someone, so it’s possible it’s a fake, idk at this point.