Booting straight into rgui?

cyberBoy90

Hi!

I wonder if there is a way to boot straight into Retroarchs rgui and not use Emulationstation at all? Somehow I find the rgui more pleasing and thematically fitting for my CRT setup. Don't get me wrong, Retropie's fork of ES is great, and with the theme I use, everything is totally readable on my CRT, but somehow the pixelly rgui (that I use to tweak settings all the time anyhow) tickled my fancy once I discovered how to customize it.

I know I could just use Lakka, but I like having a full Raspbian under the hood. And if there is a way to bypass Emulationstation, would I be able to shut down the Pi from the menu, just like I do in ES every time I'm done playing?

mitu

You want Lakka without using Lakka :).
The boot-to-RGUI can be done, since you can edit the autostart.sh [1] script and instead of emulationstation you can just run retroach --menu, but the retroarch configuration in RetroPie is not suited for a standalone operation (updater is disabled, cores are not in the same folder and rely on runcommand to set the runtime dir, configurations are set per system, etc.).

And if there is a way to bypass Emulationstation, would I be able to shut down the Pi from the menu, just like I do in ES every time I'm done playing?

You can add a shutdown command in the autostart.sh file ,after the retroarch command, so once you exit retroarch, the system would stop.
RetroArch does have some special functionality and menu items that are enabled when compiled with Lakka support and I think shutdown/restart may be also added. You'll have to re-compile retroarch to get it.

[1] autostart.sh is found in /opt/retropie/configs/all. See these entries in FAQ:

cyberBoy90

@mitu Thank you! That may be a few to many caveats, I thought I could just configure in ES once and then only touch it for updating. I guess I just try after making a backup, so I can see how messed up I can get my install:)

WeirdH

@cyberBoy90 Why not just use a theme that's optimised for crt's? Like this one.

cyberBoy90

@WeirdH It has more to do with the fact that I use the rgui all the time for tweaking and I like a consistent experience. Call it ocd, maybe. I also like its barebones look and I don't use scrapers, as I like to have the pure no-intro titles without any artwork or info. The theme you linked looks great though, from the preview jpeg I've seen. Is it shipped with Retropie already or do I have to add it manually?

WeirdH

@cyberBoy90 I don't know. I happened upon it by chance and it looked cool, so I saved the Github page. The 'Readme.md' in my link does state "Emulationstation Theme (AVAILABLE IN RETROPIE THEME LIST !)", so I'd wager it probably is.

EDIT: I just checked and it is in there. There are also a couple more that mention stuff like 'pixel' or '240p' or what have you in their titles, so those might be worth checking out as well. There are a few minimal themes out there with no metadata or art, so maybe you'll find something to your liking.