Preparing your romsets and fs for the Retropie

massaki

So I'll be getting a pi3 b+ model from the gf for Christmas. I have all my roms and controllers ready roms are already stored on a powered 500gb powered external and everything else in preperation.

To make Christmas day as painless as possible I'd like to know if it's possible to have my romset (mame, genesis, SNES, nes, GBC, ps1, n64) prepared in correlation to the filesystem retropie uses, I'll be running the Roms off the mounted external and want to make it so as soon it's mounted all my roms are ready to go and ready to play.

Is this possible? I'd really appreciate any help if it is.

meleu

@massaki look if this wiki page can help you:
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Running-ROMs-from-a-Network-Share

massaki

@meleu I'll be taking my retropie out the house with me a lot so I can't really do a network share. Thanks for your help though.

synack

EDIT: see @herb_fargus 's post

meleu

I think I misunderstood your issue.

@massaki said in Preparing your romsets and fs for the Retropie:

I'd like to know if it's possible to have my romset (mame, genesis, SNES, nes, GBC, ps1, n64) prepared in correlation to the filesystem retropie uses

I didn't get what you mean with "romset prepared in correlation to the filesystem retropie uses"... You mean the directory tree structure?

herb_fargus

@synack editing es_systems.cfg is not a recommended way of doing it.

This is a more proper guide:

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Running-ROMs-from-a-USB-drive

massaki

@meleu yeah I meant file structure thanks for the help so far guys

backstander

@massaki
To help you with your rom file structure, have a look at the Carbon Theme file name structure here:
https://github.com/RetroPie/es-theme-carbon

All the directory names should be in all lowercase!

For example, the Carbon Theme has a directory called "snes"
So all your SNES roms will be in stored in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/snes
Now on your external HDD, you'll want to put your SNES roms in "X:\roms\snes"
(just replace 'X' with your actually drive letter of you external HDD)

Another example, say you have some Atari Lynx roms. Again the Carbon Theme has a directory named "atarilynx"
So put all your Atari Lynx roms in "X:\roms\atarilynx"

Later when you have your RPi and follow @herb_fargus 's sugestion, /home/pi/RetroPie/ will be linked to /media/usb0/
/media/usb0/ is the equivalent to "X:" so when you go into /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/atarilynx it's like going into "X:\roms\atarilynx" on your external HDD.

Hopefully that makes since to you :)

massaki

@backstander WOW thank you so much, this is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks everyone for your help, merry Christmas!!

backstander

@massaki
What gamepad/controller do you plan to use?

massaki

@backstander I have a few. I was actually planning on using my mayflash 3 in 1 adapter which accepts n64, Saturn and ps1 controllers and using a saturn controller for the genesis, a n64 for the n64 and ps1 for the ps1. I also have a buffalo snes USB controller I could use for the SNES emulator too. I have no idea if that's going to work out or not though.

backstander

@massaki
I've never used the Mayflash adapters but I do read about others having issues with them on this forum. You might search the forums and see what everyone is doing to get it working.

I've also never used the Buffalo SNES USB controller but I think they work pretty well. Might not have enough buttons for PSX, PSP, Dreamcast and N64 games but those are the systems that are at the very limits of the RPi 3, meaning some games work, some have slow downs and most don't work at all. Out of those 4, you'll probably have the most luck with PSX games.

I use Xbox 360 controllers (wired & wireless) and they work very well. I've heard the PS3 controllers work well also.