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

[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.

[TMNTturtlguy]

@lilbud Recall box vidoes is what inspired me last night! I saw @fernbuilds videos that had Batman and Mario and Sonic systems, and thought it would be so cool if we could do that. I can build a bartop machine and put cool TMNT graphics and marquee on it and run all the TMNT games ever made! I probably need to grow up some day!?!

So like @lilbud has asked, any recall box experts out there? @fernbuilds, any thoughts?

[meleu]

OK guys, here is my contribution to the messy creative favorites makeshift method you're trying to implement.

Premises

• It uses symbolic links only. I did this way intentionally. I think that duplicating files is a bad practice. Imagine someone with various PlayStation games as favorites...
  That being said, the step 2 of the OP needs to be adapted. Here is the command to create the symbolic link:

ln -s ~/RetroPie/roms/nes/MyFavoriteNesGame.nes ~/RetroPie/roms/favorites/MyFavoriteNesGame.nes

• There's no need to create the /opt/retropie/configs/favorites directory. Then the step 4 of the OP is completely unnecessary.

es_systems.cfg

Here is my version:

 <system>
     <name>Favorites</name>
     <fullname>Favorites</fullname>
     <path>/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/favorites</path>
     <extension>.zip .ZIP .smd .SMD .smc .SMC .sfc .SFC .nes .NES .bin .BIN .pbp .PBP</extension>
     <command>/home/pi/bin/runfavorites.sh %ROM%</command>
     <platform>all</platform>
     <theme>favorites</theme>
  </system>

/home/pi/bin/runfavorites.sh

And here is the little script that makes the magic (thanks to sed and regular expressions sorcery):

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# testing if it's a symbolic link
if [[ ! -L "$1" ]]; then
    dialog --msgbox "ERROR: \"$1\" is not a symbolic link." 0 0
    exit 1
fi

# getting the name of the file that the symbolic link points to
rom="$(ls -l "$1" | sed 's|.*-> ||')"

# getting the system based on the folder the rom is stored
system="$(echo "$rom" | sed 's|\(.*/RetroPie/roms/[^/]*\).*|\1|' | xargs basename)"

# now launch runcommand normally
/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 _SYS_ "$system" "$rom"

[TMNTturtlguy]

@meleu It looks like you are requiring that the games be placed into a subfolder for each system? The symbolic link is linking an entire folder. This seems to defeat the purpose of what I am doing. I am not trying to create a favorites folder, I am creating a new system, just like the arcade system in which you can put several different platforms into one system. I don't want to have to have a folder in each of my systems, and i don't necessarily intend for people to have duplicates off all of their roms either, unless they choose to do so. The intent is that we can have a favorites, or a Mario, TMNT, Batman, Fighters or Street Fighter system. We can create a system background and system logo for each of these. I can then place all of the TMNT games from all of the systems into one spot. here is a link to a video by @fernbuilds, i am not sure if he is on attract mode or recal box.

I think your script and idea is very good as well! Thanks for your help and time. This may be what @lilbud is looking for so he doesn't have to manually select his emulator for each rom.

[Sano]

@meleu I like the way you presented it :)
This is interesting and plenty of fun to do, but at most a not-so-pretty workaround.
BTW all my roms stay zipped when the emulator allows it, so checking for suffix wouldn't work for me :)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I said earlier, the clean way to do this would be first to replace the gamelist.xml files by system with a common DB (sqlite ?).
This would allow to detach the ES interface from the system>rom scheme.
ES would then be able to sort and present games by metadata (system/editor/genre/keyword/date/favourite...), and launch them with correct emulator according to the rom folder.

I know it would be a huge lot of work, but I don't see any other clean solution to do this.
I also found out yesterday that aloshi worked on a sqlite branch of ES back in 2015...

[meleu]

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

@meleu It looks like you are requiring that the games be placed into a subfolder for each system?

I think you misread my post. I'm using the same folder as you suggested in the OP: ~/RetroPie/roms/favorites/. All the links/favorites for any system will be placed in that folder.

[meleu]

@TMNTturtlguy Here is an example of the results (I used your arcade theme from ComicBook for favorites):

The games:

• G.I. Joe (NES)
• Sonic (Mega Drive)
• Tekken Advance (Gameboy Advance)
• Wall Jump Ninja (Atari 2600)
• X-Men (SNES)

[pjft]

Give me a couple of weeks, as this is in my backlog of "fun things to implement on ES", as mentioned in a few other posts. :)

Just want to make sure the screensaver stuff is merged into the main branch, so I can move on to other things.

[meleu]

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

BTW all my roms stay zipped when the emulator allows it, so checking for suffix wouldn't work for me :)

The script works for everyone that stores the ROMs in valid places (I mean ~/RetroPie/roms/SYSTEM_NAME). The script has nothing to do with suffix and I think it would work for you.

Edit: FYI, all my ROMs on my example above are zipped and they worked just fine.