rom subdirectories required?

t3kg33k

I'm setting up the RetroPie for first time. I'm really new to retro gaming. I wanted to find out if it is absolutely required to put roms in the subdirectories? Or, can I just dump a bunch of roms at the root of the rom directory?
The reason I ask is because I found a different project that has a ton of roms included in the image running on a separate Pi4. They dumped all of their roms at the root of the rom directory so I don't know what game is a part of what game system (snes, psx, Atari, arcade, etc.). I want a bunch of games from that project, not all, from the other Pi4 (I plan on reimaging that other Pi4 for something else) to put on the RetroPie.
Is it possible to just dump what roms I like from that other Pi4 running that other image project into the roms directory on the RetroPi and be played? Or, do those roms have to be put in the correct subdirectory in the roms directory on the RetroPi?

windg

Yes, you must to put the roms to the specific folders. I recommend ot read the RetroPie docs, the Emulators section :https://retropie.org.uk/docs .

Thorr69

I wonder if that project is a FBNEO project and everything in that directory runs with the FBNeo emulator. If that's the case then you might be able to dump the whole thing into the FBneo directory on an official image. I haven't really played around with using FBNeo for non-arcade systems, so I can't say for sure.

sleve_mcdichael

@t3kg33k it could be done, but:

1: there'd be no separation of systems. Having them all in one folder, the front-end has no way to determine what's a SNES game and what's a Megadrive game. So you've just got one big "everything" folder with all your games in it. Suppose you could make custom collections for each system, but you're still sorting them manually and at that point you may as well just sort them proper into folders anyway.

2: it's going to be a lot of manual busywork, setting the specific emulator for each rom because, at most, maybe two or three systems (Sega CD, Megadrive, and Master System for example) will use the same "default" emulator, and everything else will have to be set custom.