separating snes/super famicom games

backstander

@groviar
Once you have a theme installed, you can use/change to another theme from the "UI Settings" menu in EmulationStation by pressing the Select button on your controller:
https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Themes/

groviar

Okay so right now I have the carbon-custom folder. It's the only folder I can see now in the themes folder through Windows explorer.

Currently all 84 themes are in there from the carbon zip file I downloaded. Do I just need the 3 folders for tg16, famicom, and superfamicom?

I copied the nes theme and named it famicom.
I copied the snes theme and named it superfamicom.

Do I just leave those and the tg16 theme in there? I'm still a bit confused over which folders need to be in my carbon-custom folder.

FlyingTomahawk

@groviar

Either is fine.
Leave them there or delete the not needed system theme folders. I would leave them if they don't disturb your overview.

backstander

@groviar

Do I just leave those and the tg16 theme in there? I'm still a bit confused over which folders need to be in my carbon-custom folder.

I'd recommend leaving them there. They don't take up much room at all and they don't hurt anything being there.

I found the supported platform names that the EmulationStation built-in scraper can use. Scroll down to "Platform Names":
http://www.emulationstation.org/gettingstarted.html
I don't see "tg16" on the list but they are bundling it with "pcengine"

It also says this list is in the source code in src/PlatformId.cpp

groviar

@backstander,

Great work finding that list of platform names! As you said it seems to bundle pcengine together with turbografx-16, so I'll make that change back to "pcengine" in the config. I'll also change famicom back to "nes" since the list doesn't show entries for the famicom.

groviar

How about these items that jdorina posted:

-make a copy of the nes folder in /opt/configs/ and rename it famicom so you have /opt/configs/famicom

-edit the emulators.cfg in /opt/retropie/configs/famicom to change any references from /opt/retropie/configs/nes to /opt/retropie/configs/famicom

-double-check the retroarch.cfg in the same folder for similar things.

I haven't done those yet. Should I wait until I finish up with the custom famicom and superfamicom themes tomorrow before I tackle that? Will I need to do that for famicom, superfamicom, and tg16?

backstander

@groviar
I believe this is the src/PlatformId.cpp from the current source of EmulationStation that RetroPie uses:
https://github.com/RetroPie/EmulationStation/blob/master/es-app/src/PlatformId.cpp

This will be the supported platforms for scraping in EmulationStation.

groviar

@backstander,

Perfect. That settles it then. I'll just keep the <platform> entries as they originally were.

Still not 100% sure if it's better to leave the <command> lines as they originally were or change them. Jdorian mentioned:

"changing nes to famicom in the <command> portion of es_systems.cfg will tell retroarch to look in the /opt/configs/famicom folder for its emulators.cfg and retroarch.cfg files when launching a rom. It's not 100% necessary, but would help if, for instance, you are doing the "All" folder thing and want the savegames for nes and famicom to be saved in the correct folders."

Would that be any benefit to me in my situation or should I just leave <command> as it originally was?

backstander

@groviar

How about these items that jdorina posted:

That's talking about making your own command directories which I don't see the benefit here. You set yours to
<command>/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 _SYS_ pcengine %ROM%</command>
So you don't need to do those steps.

The only benefit I can think of is for separating out SuperGrafx games so you can just use lr-beetle-supergrafx emulator only:
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/8263/pc-engine-turbografx-16-super-grafx-all-in-the-same-folder/10

I'm learning something new about the scraper <platform>. I've been doing it wrong all this time using "tg16"

groviar

Oh, so that's even easier then since I can just skip those steps and leave <command> as it was originally? Perfect!

jdorion

Yeah, the benefit for that for me was so that I can specify the save state folder for each of the "new systems" I added - famicom, sfc, tg16, tg-cd, etc. If you leave it as 'nes' then when you save state for a famicom rom, the save state file will be in /home/pi/Retro-Pie/roms/nes instead of /famicom. :)

backstander

@jdorion

Yeah, the benefit for that for me was so that I can specify the save state folder for each of the "new systems"

I didn't think of that but yeah this can be a benefit.

groviar

Oh, I see. So if I leave it alone then my savestate folder will be shared by nes/famicom (nes), snes/superfamicom (snes) and pcengine/turbografix16 (pcengine)? Other than both systems sharing the same directory, there won't be any issues with Retropie finding and saving those savestates for each system, right? They'll just be saved in the same places.

backstander

@groviar

Oh, I see. So if I leave it alone then my savestate folder will be shared by nes/famicom (nes), snes/superfamicom (snes) and pcengine/turbografix16 (pcengine)? Other than both systems sharing the same directory, there won't be any issues with Retropie finding and saving those savestates for each system, right? They'll just be saved in the same places.

I've never gone down this road so I'm not sure ;-)

I've always thought in RetroPie (unless you over ride it) that RetroArch puts the save states in the same folder as the ROMs but I could be incorrect. Some users what the save states to be somewhere else which is perfectly fine but I'm okay with the defaults.

groviar

Hmm, maybe I should hold off for now then and step back and wait to see what FlyingTomahawk thinks about this. Ideally it would be great to keep savestates separated for each system, but I'm not sure if it's worth the extra work.

Right now my <command> lines are set as they originally were, and I haven't done these extra steps:

-make a copy of the nes folder in /opt/configs/ and rename it famicom so you have /opt/configs/famicom

-edit the emulators.cfg in /opt/retropie/configs/famicom to change any references from /opt/retropie/configs/nes to /opt/retropie/configs/famicom

-double-check the retroarch.cfg in the same folder for similar things.

I'll see what FlyingTomahawk thinks tomorrow.

backstander

I did just notice something in src/PlatformId.cpp
I see both "megadrive" and "genesis" but those are the only ones not bundled? Not sure if it makes any difference.

groviar

Interesting. I was just wondering why those 2 were separated. I see in my custom-carbon folder there are separate folders for genesis and megadrive. I'm wondering now if I should copy my games over to the genesis or megadrive rom folders? I guess I can deal with that later though.

groviar

Okay, so following up on jdorina's advice:

I copied the nes, snes, and pcengine folders from /opt/retropie/configs, and renamed them famicom, superfamicom, and tg16. For now they're on my desktop so I can work on them.
I then edited the emulators.cfg and retroarch.cfg files in each of the three folders, and changed all of the following references:

/opt/retropie/configs/nes
to
/opt/retropie/configs/famicom

/opt/retropie/configs/snes
to
/opt/retropie/configs/superfamicom

/opt/retropie/configs/pcengine
to
/opt/retropie/configs/tg16

So as long as everyone think it's safe to do this, I'm ready to copy the new config folders back to /opt/retropie/configs through Filezilla.

Then all I would need to do is go back and change the <command> entries to famicom, super famicom, and tg16.

I'm going to take a break and leave things where they are for now. If you guys think I did this right, all I have to do is copy the config folders over tomorrow and change the <command> entries.

groviar

Okay, I wanted to finish this up for today, so I went ahead and copied the new config folders as mentioned above over to /opt/retropie/configs through Filezilla. And I changed the <command> entries in es_systems.cfg to:

<command>/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 SYS famicom %ROM%</command>

<command>/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 SYS superfamicom %ROM%</command>

<command>/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 SYS tg16 %ROM%</command>

So unless I'm missing something, I'm done for now. I just have to wait for FlyingTomahawk to post his custom logos tomorrow so I can finish up the famicom and superfamicom themes.

Thanks a ton again to everyone in here! There's no way I could have figured this out without your help. This seemed very daunting but somehow I think I'm getting through it.

backstander

@groviar
It is looking good. Hopefully you got all your i's dotted and your t's crossed ;-) We'll know more when you start launching games from those famicom, superfamicom and tg16 systems.

When that times comes we can debug this by look at your "Runcommand debugging log file" which is located at /dev/shm/runcommand.log after you try to launch a game.