Hiding (not removing) emulators from emulation station

Alturis

@alturis said in Hiding (not removing) emulators from emulation station:

Where is this file? I cannot find it and using linux "find" fails to locate it either.
I am trying to hide all the advamame artwork rom.zip files showing up as games that are playable. As I keep all my arcade roms in the roms/arcade folder I would like to just keep the advmame system hidden all the time

Nevermind I found it. /etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg

And in reading the docs you are supposed to copy it to ~/.emulationstation/es_systems.cfg and then edit that instead.

cp /etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg ~/.emulationstation/es_systems.cfg

That solved my problem of being able to hide the mame-advmame system from the menus. But because this is still linked back to roms/arcade/advmame the folder still shows up there.

Is there any way to hide a roms folder from within a system?

mitu

@alturis I think you're taken the wrong approach.
If the arcade/advmame folder is empty, then it's not shown under the Arcade system or as a standalone system.
If you'd like to keep a single folder for arcade games, then just copy them under the arcade folder directly and configure the ROMs you'd like to run with advmame individually.

Also, you should remember that if you copy the es_systems.cfg file in your home folder, it will not be updated by the RetroPie setup script whenever a new emulator/system is added:

The default version will be overwritten whenever you make updates to your RetroPie system so any manual changes such as a new system will be lost. Remember if you do make any updates to RetroPie then you should add any updates to /etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg to the custom version in the /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation folder.

Alturis

@mitu said in Hiding (not removing) emulators from emulation station:

@alturis I think you're taken the wrong approach.
If the arcade/advmame folder is empty, then it's not shown under the Arcade system or as a standalone system.
If you'd like to keep a single folder for arcade games, then just copy them under the arcade folder directly and configure the ROMs you'd like to run with advmame individually.

Yep that is exactly what I have done:

Its not empty, it was created by advmame or emulationstation (not sure which) when I first ran an advmame rom from .../roms/arcade

The actual structure is:

roms/
roms/arcade
roms/arcade/advmame
roms/arcade/advmame/artwork <link> -> roms/mame-advmame/artwork

I didnt set any of that up advmame just did it on its own.
The artwork folder contains <romname>.zip files for showing in-game art for various roms that I use advmame to emulate.

I am looking to hide the roms/arcade/advmame folder and anything below it from the Arcade system menu.

mitu

@alturis said in Hiding (not removing) emulators from emulation station:

Its not empty, it was created by advmame or emulationstation (not sure which) when I first ran an advmame rom from .../roms/arcade

It was created by the RetroPie setup script when you installed advmame, which is ok.

The artwork folder contains <romname>.zip files for showing in-game art for various roms that I use advmame to emulate.

I see. I don't use any artwork, so that folder is empty for me, so that's probably the reasone why I don't see it in ES.
Can you try and copy/move the .zip files with the artwork in /opt/retropie/configs/mame-advmame/artwork and leave your artwork folder from the roms/mame-advmame/artwork empty ? Do this and restart ES, maybe you'll get the desired result.

Alturis

@mitu Well that certainly gets them out of the system list indeed.

However, advmame then fails to find any of the artwork. And that is with me also updating the advmame.rc to have

dir_artwork /home/pi/RetroPie/configs/mame-advmame/artwork

Edit: And the strange thing is that it does seem to be looking at this setting because if I have the zips in the roms/mame-advmame/artwork but the dir_artwork pointing somewhere else they will also fail to work.

Feels a bit like a bug. That advmame isnt able to find its artwork in whatever path you specify.

mitu

@alturis said in Hiding (not removing) emulators from emulation station:

However, advmame then fails to find any of the artwork.

I was afraid of that :(. Which advmame version or you using ? 1.4 or 3.5 ? There might have different config files (advmame-1.4.rc vs advmame.rc). Check to see if you don't have multiple dir_artwork configuration lines in the .rc file.

Alturis

@mitu 3.6 actually. I just installed it very recently.

And nope just the one entry.

mitu

@alturis Stupid question - does the folder /home/pi/RetroPie/configs/mame-advmame/artwork exist ? On my (stock) image it does not. If you tried my advice, can you replace it with /opt/retropie/configs/mame-advmame/artwork. Note that this folder is what you get via \\retropie\configs\mame-advmame\artwork if you're using Samba shares.

Clyde

@alturis said in Hiding (not removing) emulators from emulation station:

Where is this file? I cannot find it and using linux "find" fails to locate it either.

You found it by now, so just for the records: locate is your friend.

locate es_systems.cfg
/etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg

If it complains about the age of its database, you can execute this command to update the database (takes some time).

sudo updatedb

Alturis

@mitu Yep /home/pi/RetroPie/configs/mame-advmame/artwork does exist. I don't think I even created that folder it was created when I installed advmame I believe.

But aha! Yes indeed. Moving the artwork zip files to /opt/retropie/configs/mame-advmame/artwork seems to have done the trick!

Thank you @mitu. ;)