Set Default Emulator on a Per ROM Basis?

hansolo77

I can set the system to load a specific emulator when I launch a game by pressing the button during load and selecting "Select emulator for ROM ()". This works all well and good. But what I don't see is an option to select a DEFAULT emulator for ROM. Is such a thing possible? There is a way to "Select default emulator for <system> (corename)". I don't really want to completely override using the same core for EVERY game, just a few trouble ROMs that don't have proper achievments working. For instance, Metroid plays fine in either FCEUmm or QuickNES. But after troubleshooting, we've discovered that the achievements for that game only seem to be working with QuickNES. So I'd like to have it set so whenever I play that game, it will load up that core. Other games work fine with the RetroPie's default setting of FCEUmm. So, yeah, can this be done? I imagine it would have to be done manually rather than through that launch script, but here's hoping!

edmaul69

@hansolo77 when you select the emulator + rom any time you play that game it will be that emulator and all the others that dont have the emulator + rom set will use the default emulator. What it does sounds like what you want to me.

hansolo77

Except it doesn't save it. I can have the default per emulator set, then load a ROM I want on a different emulator, chose that "Select emuator for ROM ()" and change it and play, then the next time I play it, it's back to the default. It sounds like I'm doing the right thing only it doesn't save my customization.

edmaul69

@hansolo77 im not sure where your roms are but if the individual configs are saved in the same place as the roms you might need to give that folder better permissions for them to save.

herb_fargus

there were a lot of changes recently (mostly to make the configs human readable) https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/pull/1742 might affect things a bit

BuZz

Knowing what version of RetroPie-Setup you are on would help including the commit hash in brackets. Also what system. See link in my Signature

hansolo77

I just updated my RetroPie-Setup scripts. It reads 4.1.1 (latest git 13 hours ago (75b3253).
The system specifically I am working with is NES. As as I reported in the OP, the default emulator is set to FCEUmm and the ROM I'm trying to change is Metroid to make it run on QuickNES every time.

BuZz

Please give me the full name of the metroid rom. Also please post the output of the following typed from terminal via ssh (use https://paste.ubuntu.com/ or format in a code block on the forum)

ls -la /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg
cat /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg

backstander

@hansolo77
Does this behavior only happen with NES emulators or do you have this problem with just about every emulator?

If it's just NES, you might do what @BuZz said and add the NES version as well:

ls -la /opt/retropie/configs/nes/emulators.cfg
cat /opt/retropie/configs/nes/emulators.cfg

BuZz

@backstander said in Set Default Emulator on a Per ROM Basis?:

@hansolo77
Does this behavior only happen with NES emulators or do you have this problem with just about every emulator?

If it's just NES, you might do what @BuZz said and add the NES version as well:

I don't need to check those files as they don't contain the per ROM settings.

hansolo77

I haven't really had the need to specify a specific emulator for a ROM on other systems. And I'm only interested in doing it at the time for games like Final Fantasy and Metroid where the RetroAchievements weren't working with the default FCEUmm core.

The ROM is "Metroid (USA).zip" with a CRC32 hash of B02BA1B2, an MD5 hash of 6034C3A9010B70730C53DF4C38FABB83 and an SHA-1 hash of 55EC4F5BD144D3CE3858E96F7CFE55025E08FD11. I can provide you with the exact ROM through email if you wish.

Here is my putty screen log:

pi@retropie:~ $ ls -la /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi 0 Nov 13 21:58 /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg
pi@retropie:~ $ cat /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg
pi@retropie:~ $

The "cat" command didn't do anything.. strange.

hansolo77

After rebuilding a new kernel to help solve my "northwest drift" problem with my Raphnet adapter, I've noticed this seems to be fixed. Maybe a fix was pushed out that I got when I updated prior to patching the kernel? In either case, I tested this with a couple of games, and it now seems to be working like it should.