Problems getting pi 3+ to load front end

Efriim

@Lugzyboy82 many of the pre-built images I imagine have an older kernel revision and no support for pi3b+. Also 3rd party images are not supported here, one of the reasons being this.

If you meant front-end like NOOBs, I think NOOBs downloads the latest image from retropie and that is supported. Retropie images have EmulationStation pre-installed as a core-package, and the package manager developed and maintained here for retropie can install the latest upcoming Pegasus-FE.

Lugzyboy82

@Efriim Thanks for your reply. The frontend/image I refer to was downloaded from [some site]. So basically I need to download retropie from here and build my own theme??

mitu

@Lugzyboy82 Yes, we don't support 3rd party images. And please, no links to sites with ROMs, copyrighted material, etc. Re-read the forum rules and https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first.

Efriim

@Lugzyboy82
Well yeah and if the image doesn't have pi3b+ kernel. Sorry if you can't find the theme you want though.
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/themes
I like the switch theme and space oddity theme the best.

I have never used a bezel
https://github.com/thebezelproject/BezelProject

And a scraper will get boxart videos and info for games.
I use skyscraper, some of the videos it gets from screenscraper.fr aren't that great but at least they are uniform.. for the most part, and have a huge collection.

Lugzyboy82

@Efriim that's great. You have been a great help. Do you know if these themes can be edited?? For example change the system images?

Efriim

@Lugzyboy82
Yeah the themes are located at /etc/emulationstation/themes/ they are in xml format. So it would help to have a notepad+, and setup winscp to access the filesystem.

Lugzyboy82

@Efriim sorry for the questions. So, the list of themes on your link are all pre installed on retropie. Is that correct? Or do I have to download them individually?

Efriim

@Lugzyboy82
There is a theme manager, I forgot to mention. It is accessible from the retropie menu and in emulationstation. Themes are around 14-60mb to download, only the carbon theme is installed initially.

Lugzyboy82

@Efriim ok. So this is done through the pi unit itself once retropie is installed.

Efriim

@Lugzyboy82
Yeah. It is a lot of manual stuff but the retropie scripts are there to help automate everything.
Snes-mini and Retrorama are really good themes too. There is also the pegasus front end that has been developed recently, I don't know the latest updates on it. It looked nice last time I checked it out, there were no themes for it yet, I think it is a thing on android too.

Lugzyboy82

@Efriim thank you for your help. Its much appreciated. I will start on this this afternoon. Is it straight forward enough to transfer roms?

Efriim

@Lugzyboy82
oh yeah, just get it connected local network. Or use the USB Rom service,

Lugzyboy82

@Efriim thank you for your help.

Lugzyboy82

@mitu sorry sir

Lugzyboy82

@Efriim just one more thing. Does retropie come pre loaded with emulation station??

mitu

@Lugzyboy82 Yes, Emulationstation comes with the RetroPie image - I really recommend you use the getting started doc page, it has an overview on what's inside RetroPie and even a video.

Lugzyboy82

@mitu Im going through it as we speak so I have answered my own question. Thank you. Time to get started.

Lugzyboy82

@mitu maybe you can help me with my next issue??? I am trying to install retropie on a 128gb sd card. I have ran it through sd formatter and guiformatter and tried to install it with win32diskimager which I can do fine. But after the retropie 4.4 has been written on to the sd card my laptop is partitioning the sd card which is causing performance issues when my pi unit is booting. Any ideas??

mitu

@Lugzyboy82 I don't understand what 'performance issues' does your laptop cause - maybe you explain it better.
Once you've written the SD card on your PC with the install image, your card is no longer useful on your laptop, it should stay in the Pi.

Lugzyboy82

@mitu OK. I have to insert the sd card into my laptop to format. Correct. But when I use the win32diskimager to write retropie 4.4 to the sd card, when the process is complete, my laptop seems to partition the sd card. I have drive E (boot) and drive g on the same sd card.