How on earth did I just invoke the modern Retroarch menu?!

[sad_muso]

So I am trying to understand how config files work as per this mega thread

Reason being is that I always get weird, unexpected results when trying to set things from the GUI.

I've reset the megadrive specific retroarch.cfg back to default, so why wouldn't this work for example?

# Settings made here will only override settings in the global retroarch.cfg if placed above the #include line

input_remapping_directory = "/opt/retropie/configs/megadrive/"

aspect_ratio_index=1

#include "/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg"

I'm trying to force megadrive to 16:9 as a test, but it's still defaulting to core provided

[mitu]

Do you have any configuration overrides for megadrive ?

[sad_muso]

@mitu Um, I've not yet set any overrides at all? That's what I'm trying to achieve here. According to that guide apparently it's not a good idea to use Save On Exit as you can get unexpected results and convolute your config files. I'm starting with a fresh build here and want to understand how I can manually change settings per core (or per content folder so it'll apply to all cores that run against ROMS in the same folder).

So my understanding is that if I edit the global retroarch.cfg file (in /all) it'll affect everything, but if I edit the same file in each specific system folder (eg: /megadrive) then it'll apply to every core that could be used by that system. Is that right?

So as an example I'd like to know the best way to set the aspect ratio to 16:9 for both each individual core and for each content directory (so it applies to all cores)

[sad_muso]

@BuZz Oh yeah, didn't notice the lack of space after the # at 2am 😀

[mitu]

@sad_muso said in How on earth did I just invoke the modern Retroarch menu?!:

So my understanding is that if I edit the global retroarch.cfg file (in /all) it'll affect everything, but if I edit the same file in each specific system folder (eg: /megadrive) then it'll apply to every core that could be used by that system. Is that right?

Yes.

So as an example I'd like to know the best way to set the aspect ratio to 16:9 for both each individual core and for each content directory (so it applies to all cores)

You can change the configuration you want in RetroArch's RGUI until you satisfied, then save a core or content (folder) override.

[sad_muso]

@mitu How would I achieve this without using the front-end, because as I mentioned, I often get weird results that way, eg: if I load up picodrive, set aspect ratio in RGUI and then save core override it won't always stick?

[mitu]

If you're starting from the default configuration, overrides should produce the correct results. Try it and take it one configuration at a time.

[sad_muso]

@mitu Thanks, I will try. Just to confirm, any changes made to RetroPie > RetroArch will affect global file and any changes made when running a game using overrides will make the change relevant to the override, eg: core, directory etc?

[mitu]

@sad_muso said in How on earth did I just invoke the modern Retroarch menu?!:

Just to confirm, any changes made to RetroPie > RetroArch will affect global file and any changes made when running a game using overrides will make the change relevant to the override, eg: core, directory etc?

Yes, that's correct.

[BuZz]

@sad_muso I would add, that it's better imho to edit the global file manually or via the RetroPie menu -> configuration editor (which has some of the settings but allows manual editing also)

Reason being that saving out from retroarch saves every possible setting. All config file "comments" will be lost, and it's a lot of config entries. It won't be easy to know what you have changed if you ever need to check.

But of course you can choose the method you prefer.