@Lolonois

The ES version you are using

I have just updated and the lists still act weird in emulationstation-dev latest binary:
Branch: master
Commit: 9e594dfe
Date: 2025-05-19

...but I think this is more about the XML's format being messed up, than any bug in ES.

The paths of one system to its ROMs, to its gamelist and its media and respective any changes made to inputFolder, gamelistFolder, mediaFolder or CLI switches provided (-i, -g, -o). (I do not assume you applied the cacheFolder / -d between 3.16.1 and the current version)

For the SNES paths I have:

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/snes /home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/snes /home/pi/.emulationstation/downloaded_media/snes

In config.ini this looks like:

[main] ;; define paths ; inputFolder="/home/pi/RetroPie/roms" gameListFolder="/home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists" mediaFolder="/home/pi/.emulationstation/downloaded_media" ; cacheFolder="/home/pi/.skyscraper/cache" ; importFolder="/home/pi/.skyscraper/import" ;; misc unattendSkip="true"

The (truncated) gamelist as it was in 3.16 and how it was generated with 3.17, also as a "twice", "triple" effect version

In 3.16.1, a fresh list generated with --flags unattend looks like:

gamelist.xml.3161.1.unattend.clean

https://pastebin.com/mzAZrdAG

In 3.17.3 and ran with unattendSkip this becomes:

gamelist.xml.3173.1

https://pastebin.com/XuH9PYY5

...and running it one more time produces:

gamelist.xml.3173.2

https://pastebin.com/RWG8aSfp

A "clean" 3.17.3 with --flags unattend:

gamelist.xml.3173.3.unattend

https://pastebin.com/TyRN0Dae

And once more with unattendSkip, looks much like before but missing the original 3.16.1 entry:

gamelist.xml.3173.4

https://pastebin.com/6zV4KWSE

...all of these so far have been with relativePaths="true". If I change that to "false" and then run --flags unattend once more, I get this working list:

gamelist.xml.3173.5.unattend.relativePathsFalse

https://pastebin.com/dzwh2PAm

At this point, it seems to behave normally. If I run unattendSkip then it finds No files to process in cache for platform 'snes'., and then Skyscraper came to an untimely end. Or if I manually remove a game from the XML and rerun, then it processes just the missing entry.

This is the correct behavior I expected, previously.

However, with relativePaths="false", then if I take the original 3.16.1 list and run it unattendskip then it still duplicates the entries, additionally misinterpreting the path (./ActRaiser (USA).zip) from the original entry:

gamelist.xml.3173.6.relativePathsFalse.from3161

https://pastebin.com/tvemFHsN

A truncated gamelist which you used to scrape from with -s esgamelist

This I can't reproduce without using 3.17.2. The cache did become corrupted after I scraped a single file in 3.17.2 -- the subsequent built list contained only that single game and "not found" for all the rest. But since this only happen in the outdated version I'm calling it moot.

PS: FYI the path processing has been reworked with 3.17

"Front end output: input folder and media folder are relative to the gamelist folder." Isn't that wrong (for ES, anyway)?

I think it should be "gamelist and media folders are relative to the input folder."

This works, and always has:

<path>./ActRaiser (USA).zip</path>

As I understand, the ./ there refers to the <path> defined in es_systems.cfg, or ie. the rom folder/input folder.

This...is a very long route back to the same place:

<path>./../../../RetroPie/roms/snes/ActRaiser (USA).zip</path>

For images, this works:

<image>./../../../.emulationstation/downloaded_media/snes/screenshots/ActRaiser (USA).png</image>

Meanwhile, this doesn't:

<image>./../../downloaded_media/snes/screenshots/ActRaiser (USA).png</image>

Edited to add:

After playing a game, then ES itself writes the paths as (rom, relative to romdir):

<path>./ActRaiser (USA).zip</path>

And (image, absolute with ~ shortcut):

<image>~/.emulationstation/downloaded_media/snes/screenshots/ActRaiser (USA).png</image>

Compare Zombies Ate My Neighbors (entry generated by Skyscraper 3.17.3 w/ relative paths OFF) vs ActRaiser (entry generated by ES):

https://pastebin.com/G938dJWY

Favorites gone after Skyscraper run