Possible to edit directory metadata in emulationstation?

[bbilford83]

Hi all,

Requested basic info: Pi 4, official power supply, RetroPie Version 4.7.21, homemade build (built from scratch off blank SD image on RetroPie website), no USB devices connected, 8bitdo SN30+ pro bluetooth controller, relevant error message below.

This might be more of an emulationstation question, and if so my apologies. I just successfully added a Super Game Boy system to my Pi, and had the idea that rather than add duplicate roms to the sgb system I just created, I could simply link to the existing files in the gb and gbc roms subfolders with a gamelist that only listed the sgb compatable games. That worked once I changed the sgb system filepath in es_systems.cfg to just end at /roms, rather than /roms/sgb, but when I launch into the system I created it shows the two subfolders there - i.e. it says "gb" and "gbc" and then I select between the two folders to launch roms in bsnes. This is great, except that ideally I'd like the gb and gbc folders to have metadata themselves - I'd like to rename them "Game Boy" and "Game Boy Color," and more importantly, I'd like to be able to add metadata so it doesn't say "unknown" for everything on the right of the screen in my emulationstation theme (Pixel). I tried editing the entries directly in emulationstation, and that actually worked perfectly. But when I restarted emulationstation, even though it added entries in my gamelist (beginning and ending with <folder></folder> tags instead of <game></game> tags), the display reverted to how it was. And I saw the following errors pop up:

Error finding/creating FileData for "home/pi/retropie/roms/gb/", skipping.
Error finding/creating FileData for "home/pi/retropie/roms/gbc/", skipping.

In short, it seems emulationstation is doing exactly what I want it to do here, but retropie is still throwing me an error and ignoring the gamelist entry. Anyone have any ideas on how to fix this? Or if it is even fixable? TIA!

[mitu]

AFAIR folders don't have the metadata saved in the gamelist. I know It worked at some point, but only by accident and a bugfix/update for EmulationStation removed this possibility.

[bbilford83]

@mitu said in Possible to edit directory metadata in emulationstation?:

AFAIR folders don't have the metadata saved in the gamelist. I know It worked at some point, but only by accident and a bugfix/update for EmulationStation removed this possibility.

Thanks for the quick reply, @mitu. I guess that's consistent with what I'm seeing, though it is odd that in emulationstation you can edit the entry for the folder no different than a game. Forgive the lousy photo but this is what happens when you try:

I didn't create that entry, I guess emulationstation did when I edited the display title with a keyboard directly. But when I restart that's when I get the error I described above. Oh well.

[bbilford83]

Aha, I actually figured out how to make it work, for anyone reading this in the future!

The problem is for whatever reason the entry that emulationstation creates just starts with "roms/gbc." It works once you simply replace "roms/" with "./" in front of that, which is what is listed for the paths for games before the rom name too (and I suppose substitutes for the entire filepath to the root folder). So adding this to my sgb gamelist...

Creates this in my emulationstation system for SGB:

Which is exactly what I was hoping for. Clicking through those two directories takes me to all my SGB-compatible GB and GBC games, and I didn't need to add duplicate roms to do it as the gamelist points to the GB/GBC rom locations I have for those systems. Woohoo!