Clearing the lastplayed and playcount from gamelist.xml's

HurricaneFan

@pjft When I test new roms it makes my last played list huge. Being able to clear the last played and play counts values would be super handy.

pjft

I can see the use case per ROM, and could be added to the edit metadata menu. Was curious about removing them all and what was the problem with the list's content.

HurricaneFan

@pjft In my case, after testing, I back up the gamelist files. So keeping them without playcounts and last played values is nice.

tanstaafl

@pjft not sure what you mean by what is the use case, but if you mean what is the purpose, it is simply to clear the lastplayed and playcounter values, hence clearing the lastplayed. I use both the lastplayed and favorites collections. Adding to favorites as I go and in testing/checking different roms the lastplayed gets HUGE.. so I wanted to be able to clear it, nothing more, nothing less.

Cheers!

pjft

@tanstaafl Thanks. I didn't mean it as in "there's no purpose" - I try to understand the use cases from people to see if this is something that can affect a wider audience vs being niche, whether it'll be recurrent vs rarely used, etc. That can inform future developments.

I suspect there are a few options there.

One, which I have ran into in the past, is that probably the play counter should only be incremented if you stay in the game for at least <insert period of time - I was thinking 1 min>. Quite often I launch a game for testing or by mistake, and it adds up quickly. The first game in my Arcade list has only been played perhaps 5% of the times it reports, because of that. Still, this is likely the wrong solution for the problem.

The other is to allow users to clear the last played/play counter metadata from an individual game. That would probably be the most helpful.

The last one could be to keep the "Last Played" list shorter, to maybe 100 games or so, tops. There likely isn't much interest in a "Last Played" list that spans a lot of games - even 50 would probably be good as well.

So that's what I was trying to understand the use case for:

Trying out games
Leads to long list
Wants to remove irrelevant items from list /wants list not to be long (unclear what is the actual goal here, I'm assuming #1 and part of #2).

Still, this will not be implemented in the short term, unfortunately, as I'll have no access to a development environment for the coming weeks. I'll keep it on my to do list.

Thanks.

tanstaafl

@pjft changing the code to a specific rom directory would take care of the 'individual game' item. Limiting the number of 'lastplayed' would be moot if you are using this I would think.

And yes, for trying out games, removing long lists in their entirety (unless you opt to change the code as above) would be the goal.

I like to keep a tidy ship and that lastplayed list is handy to look back on, but there reaches a point where it is an annoyance so I clear it. If it is a game I want to remember I simply add to my favorites.

papinist

@tanstaafl
I was searching for this feature for a while, thank you!
Since I don't know much about linux systems, what do you mean with "make it executable"?
What's the correct procedure to use your script?
I should probably create a new text file called clearlastplayed.sh, copy\paste the code you wrote, transfer the file somewhere on the retropie's sd card and.. ?

thanks!

mitu

@papinist said in Clearing the lastplayed and playcount from gamelist.xml's:

make it executable

Run chmod +x clearlastplayed.sh to make it executable, then run it by executing with ./clearlastplayed.sh

papinist

@mitu
thank you very much, I'll try it tomorrow!

papinist

got this error:

-bash: ./clearlastplayed.sh: /bin/sh^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

I placed the clearlastplayed.sh file in roms directory, if this is relevant.

mitu

@papinist That's because of the DOS newline in the file. Run the following command on over the command line, from the same folder where you have the script

sed -i 's/\r//' clearlastplayed.sh

then try running the command again.

papinist

It worked like a charm! Thank you @mitu for the help :)

mitu

@papinist @tanstaafl is the real help here. I'm just browsing.

ganondork

Hey thanks for the script, really appreciate it. I added some stuff, that I‘d also liked to flush for a clean start, Wifi-credentials for example. And I also added a chmod 777 for the gamelist folder afterwards, because the rebuild xmls lacked writing permission.

Still i couldn‘t accomplish to also remove my favorites by adding „-e favorites“ to the grep line. All xmls that had favorites get screwed up, I can‘t see any metadata for the systems games afterwards.

I‘m on my way to work now, so I can‘t provide you with any more information. But perhaps someone has already dealt with this issue?

I‘d also like to remove all registered bluetooth devices with this script. To have just my roms and gamelists left to carry over to another setup. But I couldn‘t find a config file to edit or remove. Ideas?

Riverstorm

Thanks for the script. I would add a +1 as a feature. After setup and testing I have the first game in each emulator in my list which would be nice to flush before imaging.

kactius

Very thanks.
I contribute with a grain of sand, in Spanish, but it is easy to edit, it is a menu with dialog to clean lastplayed and playcount, 3 options:
1 "home/pi/RetroPie/roms"
2 "opt/retropie/configs"
3 "both 1 and 2"
4 "Exit" 2>"${INPUT}"
The code, copy paste and give execution permission:
https://pastebin.com/tGPMehXr

davidgrohl

Hi all,
I've tried this usefull script but it doesn't work for me.
I put it in /home/pi/Retropie/roms folder. Make it executable. Than launch it typing ./name_of_The_script.sh and it says:

file: /home/pi/RetroPie/roms//gamelist.xml'
./clear_played.sh: 7: ./clear_played.sh: cannot create /home/pi/RetroPie/roms//gamelist.xml.tmp : Directory nonexistent
mv: cannont stat '/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/**/gamelist.xml.tmp' : No such file or directory

What's the mistake?

mitu

@davidgrohl The script fragment expects the gamelist.xml located in the ROMs folders, but by default they're in /home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/<system_name>. Try the script posted by @kactius, it allows you to select one of the 2 locations for the gamelist.xml files.

davidgrohl

@mitu said in Clearing the lastplayed and playcount from gamelist.xml's:

@davidgrohl The script fragment expects the gamelist.xml located in the ROMs folders, but by default they're in /home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/<system_name>. Try the script posted by @kactius, it allows you to select one of the 2 locations for the gamelist.xml files.

Thanks @mitu for reply. That scripts works with option 2.
Great! Thanks a lot.

Invisible89

@mitu said in Clearing the lastplayed and playcount from gamelist.xml's:

@davidgrohl The script fragment expects the gamelist.xml located in the ROMs folders, but by default they're in /home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/<system_name>. Try the script posted by @kactius, it allows you to select one of the 2 locations for the gamelist.xml files.

Hi guys.

I'm trying to clear my last played games list, but it doesn't work :(

I've created cleanlastplayed.sh file with this code:

#!/bin/sh
#clear_played.sh

for f in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/**/gamelist.xml
do
echo "file: $f"
grep -e lastplayed -e playcount -v $f > "$f.tmp"
mv -f "$f.tmp" $f
done

It's ok? Or I've to modify it with the name of the system name (**)?

And where should I put this file? What directory?

Thanks