How To Create Favorites System in Retropie (yes system, not folder!)

[HoolyHoo]

@TMNTturtlguy Thanks for posting. I did this quite a while ago and decided to organize the "Favorites" into subfolders by consoles. (See this thread:https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/4233/sub-folders-default-emulators). All worked well but never really found a way to automate the emulator per rom used which can be a pain if you add lots of favorite roms. It would be great to somehow automate this with a script from the run command that would copy the rom to the "Favorites" console and set the emulator per rom automatically per rom.

[lilbud]

@TMNTturtlguy Only having to manually select the emulator for each rom. I tried to create a batch script to automatically select the emulator for the rom extension. But it never worked... probably cause I don't know how to code.

[TMNTturtlguy]

@lilbud yeah, that is the downside. I tried to read through the runcommand file to see if I could figure it out, but it is still over my head and it was about 3am when input this post together. I am going to keep looking at this, but I just don't see how it will be possible. The one idea I have would be to write instructions that all .nes files always default to a certain emulator. That way we are not trying to match settings from another file/folder, but just generally stating that a certain file is always run by a certain emulator. Downside to this is that .zip files probably wouldn't work, the roms would have to be unzipped, for just this folder anyways.

Next issue at hand, gamelists. Since this is a new roms folder, it will need a new gamelist. My first thought is to manually create it by copying out each game entry from their original list and pasting into a new file. Then manually changing the image and video snap locations to add in the path to their original location so you don't have to have art on your system twice for the same rom.

Future wish idea, can I create a shortcut file in the favorites rom folder so it shows on the favorites game list and have the runcommand Follow the shortcut path and actually open the original rom from its original folder. Now this idea solves all issue! It would use the original emulator and artwork by default.

Problem is i am better at art and idea generation than writing code!

[TMNTturtlguy]

@HoolyHoo said in How To Create Favorites System in Retropie (yes system, not folder!):

I did this quite a while ago and decided to organize the "Favorites" into subfolders by consoles. (See this thread:https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/4233/sub-folders-default-emulators).

Like I said in the top post, I assumed that this has been done before, I just didn't find anyone who shared how to actually accomplish it. See my reply to @lilbud about launching emulators. I think that the main benefit to setting up this type of folder is to have 20-30 roms in it, not hundreds....otherwise it defeats the purpose of favorites. I am also interested in the all MARIO and all TMNT possibilities, it won't be the end of the world to launch 15-20 roms and set the emulator one time. Any additional thought you have learned would be a huge plus. Thanks

[Sano]

Very nice tweak.

Juste thinking of something similar, but that would unfortunately require huge modifications on ES :
Being able to modify the carrousel to switch components between Systems/Game Genres/Editors/Custom keyword (Mario, Sonic, ...)

This would probably require to replace the gamelist.xml files with a global DB, but could be so nice, and would easily allow to implement game search too...

My 2 cents.

[TMNTturtlguy]

Update: I am currently trying to figure out all the runcommand code and how we can get the emulator to autoselect so we don't have to manually set it up. Here is what i think i have determined so far:

/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh tells us that if "sys" is called out then we use argument 3 = which says to look to the favorites folder we created in /opt/retropie/configs/. Nothing earth shattering figured out here. If we keep looking down in the file we find the function default_emulator() { Again, i don't know what i am doing here, but it looks that this is telling us to go to the folder we created in /opt/retropie/configs/ for favorites and look at the emulators.cfg

In emulators.cfg we list out all the emulators that can run in our system. We can also call out ONE single emulator to run as the default launch emulator. the runcommand.sh file says we can do this by stating default = "emulatorname" for example default = "lr-mame2003"

So now what i need to try to understand is if we can create code in the runcommand.sh that allows us to do an ifstatement that says "if rom = .nes " Then:

local key
local config="$EMU_SYS_CONF"
 
case "$type" in
    emu_sys)
        key="default NES"
        ;;

Then we can go into our favorites/emulators.cfg and add the following: default NES = lr-fceumm

I am probably waisting a lot of peoples time here, so i apologize. I am sure this is much more complex than what I am thinking, my hope is that this might jump start a few ideas that others can expand upon or point me in the right direction. OR tell me I am way off base! Thanks for your time.

[lilbud]

@TMNTturtlguy Here is the script I tried to write

#!/usr/bin/env bash
 
for file in /tmp/*; do
if echo "$file" | grep -q '.gb$'; then
/opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-
gambatte/gambatte_libretro.so --config /opt/retropie/configs/mario/retroarch.cfg "$file"
elif echo "$file" | grep -q '.nes$'; then
/opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-
fceumm/fceumm_libretro.so --config /opt/retropie/configs/mario/retroarch.cfg "$file"
elif echo "$file" | grep -q '.sfc$'; then
/opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-
snes9x2010/snes9x2010_libretro.so --config /opt/retropie/configs/snes/retroarch.cfg 
"$file"
fi
done

If anyone is good with bash, tell me what i did wrong.

[TMNTturtlguy]

@lilbud I think i might have it for you, right now you are telling the script to write the launch for the .gb files to emulator list, that list does not actually run/startup the emulator. The emulator set as default is what will launch unless the rom itself has directions save to /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg

What we could do is create the script to add the following output for each rom in your mario folder. Here is what the required output is:

mario_romname = "emulator"
for example my turtles system - TMNT
TMNT_tmnt22p = "mame4all"

So all the script needs to do is look in your mario folder for file types .nes and then output mario_supermario = "lr-fceumm" to /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg

I am not good with scripts, but maybe you can test writing this and report back?

[meleu]

Hey guys, I didn't read all the thread, sorry. But as far as I understood the OP is about creating a theme for favourites, not implementing a way to manage its contents.

If the user is supposed to manage files/gamelist.xml manually I would suggest to use symbolic links (or full path in gamelist.xml).

But why don't we test the branch of this PR?: https://github.com/RetroPie/EmulationStation/pull/131

[lilbud]

@TMNTturtlguy said in How To Create Favorites System in Retropie (yes system, not folder!):

mario_supermario = "lr-fceumm

Shouldn't that say:

mario_nes = "lr-fceumm" ?

[lilbud]

@meleu yeah, but we get sidetracked easily. Could you look at the code above and see what's wrong?

[meleu]

@lilbud sure. Will do as soon as I get home.

[TMNTturtlguy]

@lilbud said in How To Create Favorites System in Retropie (yes system, not folder!):

Shouldn't that say:
mario_nes = "lr-fceumm" ?

no, it should say the name of your system folder: mario then then name of the rom: supermario = emulator

I am just using supermario as the name of your rom

[lilbud]

@TMNTturtlguy So, like this:

mario_supermariorpg="lr-snes9x-2010"

[TMNTturtlguy]

@meleu i just read the PR branch, not sure it is doing the same thing?

[TMNTturtlguy]

@lilbud yes, but you need a spaces between (either side of the =)

mario_supermariorpg = "lr-snes9x-2010"

[TMNTturtlguy]

SO i am still working on the runcommand.sh file from above.....i am making progress with the default idea, but now it reads both defaults as launch. I need a way to tell the runcommand which defualt to use. Can someone tell me what "$type" is signalling? Here is what i am trying to do:

function default_emulator() {
    local mode="$1"
    local type="$2"
    local value="$3"
 
   local key
   local config="$EMU_SYS_CONF"
 
 case "$type" in
    emu_sys)
        key="default"
        ;;
    emu_cmd)
        key="$EMULATOR"
        ;;
    emu_rom_old)
        key="$SYS_SAVE_ROM_OLD"
        config="$EMU_CONF"
        ;;
    emu_rom)
        key="$SYS_SAVE_ROM"
        config="$EMU_CONF"
        ;;
esac
default_process "$config" "$mode" "$key" "$value"
 
case "$type" in
    emu_sys)
        key="default NES"
        ;;
    emu_cmd)
        key="$EMULATOR"
        ;;
    emu_rom_old)
        key="$SYS_SAVE_ROM_OLD"
        config="$EMU_CONF"
        ;;
    emu_rom)
        key="$SYS_SAVE_ROM"
        config="$EMU_CONF"
        ;;
esac
default_process "$config" "$mode" "$key" "$value"

}

I added the second case and when i launch it is picking it up. But now it says it is launching from both emulators. So i need to tell it to launch default NES for only .nes files. Thanks for any help or thoughts you might have.

[TMNTturtlguy]

@lilbud @meleu I think the issue with having to run a script is that you will have to do this each time you create a new "favorites" or "Mario" or any system. You would also need to run the script any time you add a new game to the "Mario" system.

If we can find a way to get the runcommand.sh to do this for us, it will work all the time. What i have done is created a copy of the runcommand.sh file and named it runcommandfav.sh. In my es_systems.cfg, i have just changed the runcommand file to the fav.sh file and left all the normal systems running off of the standard runcommand.sh file. This way we don't effect anything we already have set up.

[TMNTturtlguy]

Just an FYI for anyone reading through this thread. The directions at the top in the very first post do work without any issues. I have now implemented this on 2 separate builds with 2 different branches of ES running (main branch and screensaver branch).

The long line of posts are simply @lilbud and myself trying to find a away to avoid having to set the emulator for each rom in your folder. You can follow the directions in the first post and create any system you want, like "Fighters". You can put any roms from any systems in there, you just have to manually set the emulator the very first time you launch the rom by pressing "A" button and setting the emulator for that rom.

[lilbud]

@TMNTturtlguy Does anyone know Recalbox manages favorites? Cause watching the videos, it seems like they got this figured out.