RetroPie Setup - Auto-installer/updater for RetroArch gaming

[Pendor]

Hi Pendor! congrats for the scrapper, is really really usefull.

From yesterday i cheked every gamelist.xml, i find the problem diferent that ago a month (a update between?), sorry but i didn't saved any xml with garbadge at the finish, i prefered to fix them and enjoy the few artwork saved in the list.

But if example, now i only find a incomplete last line, something like this: (i cut at the half to don't make it too much longer to show...)

Obviously, the problem (i think) is that some rom name character make es-scrapper exit, yes, it exits, don't follow with the next system listed on es_system.cfg. I never downloaded all the system in a row, my better results is one by one. The ironic is that i have most of the needed homework (excepting mame, i will ask something later).

That's weird, I've never seen anything like that.

The scraper saves the XML file after all possible games for that console have been found.

But yeah, such characters in a filename, that's never a good practice. I'll look into that.

---Near Full artbox of that systems:
-Game Boy Advance (Full)
-Master System 2 (Full)
-Nes (Full 95% accuracy of the full romser, awesome!)
-Snes (Matching names in 70%, the rest change names and artbox, I have U.N. Squadron 20 times listed)

---Systems with few available/found artbox:
-Atari 2600 (4/100)
-Game Boy(40/200)
-Game Boy Color(0/~200, but all the artwork is downloaded and mostly match)
-Game Gear(3/40)
-Pc-Engine (don't find anything)
-Mame: very few but awesome artwork (20/~200), many jewels to the sight, but i prefer to see the snapshots in mame, in my mame arcade cabinet i have all the snaps, i wish to use them on retroarch, i think that this not have to be too many dificult, and less if the mame roms and the snaps always match on names.

I've had little success with Atari 2600 but haven't renamed the files yet so it might be that. Assuming all of your files have proper names, remember that thegamesdb might be missing stuff.

Then again, when I test the scraper I use a small number of games. Which brings me to my next point..

Scraping full collections or romsets is gonna take a long time, its just easier to distribute a complete list and check what's missing. I've been thinking for a while about adapting no-intro dat files to ES and merging it with boxarts packs (when available). That would require:

a) ES identifying stuff via checksums
or
b) Using some audit tool to rename your collection (if needed) so it matches the filenames on the list.

---Learned things watching es-scrapper running:
-It works in order of stored files or folders on the sd card or medium, not alphabetically. (This is why i don't know what kind of roms or names make the problem, i never know what would follows.)
-The first option of es-scrapper (in retropie setup) is supossed that skip the forced search and storing into the list of older roms, but not always work, and anothers makes a check and don't find nothing when a folder is full off roms and pictures, it answers with "no new games added".
-The second the same that the first but force a deep search and rewrite of the gamelist (and download all again).
-The third (for what i know) is a CRC based search from another database, this is form me the worst option, overwrite the existing .xml in some lines and changes many names and pics, with a very low accuracy, is the less used option for me.
-Es-scrapper hates the "#" character, and more i think.

I dunno about that, I don't really use the script and I don't know what parameters is it using.

-f forces the script to re-scrape (and overwrite) everything, regular scraping will check for files that are not on the list and add them (if identified) to the existing file.
CRC uses another source (http://archive.vg/) and compares the checksum to the one on the database. And yeah, it's kinda slower and accuracy depends on how "clean" the files are.

I found where is the es-scrapper.py (or something like this), but, how to run it in command mode? "sh" don't do nothing and i never executed something with python.

Code: Select all

python scraper.py

Use -h to see a list of possible arguments.

[cuppsy]

So I am rocking Raspbian, and ran the installer script per the directions on GitHub. Everything ran dandy, and I was playing Mega Man 2 and all was right in the world.

Then I got cheeky, and re-ran the setup to configure starting RetroPie on boot and to use my Xbox 360 controller. When I rebooted, it launched a configuration screen saying "It looks like you have a joystick plugged in", and asking for input to set the controls.

Problem is, at this point... nothing is responsive. Keyboard does nothing. Joystick does nothing. And no combination of plugging both or neither of them in before/after booting seems to make a difference. And I can't Ctrl-Alt-F2 to another terminal and kill it.

Any suggestions? This seems like such an awesome project, and I feel like I somehow borked it.

[gzz]

Can you ssh in and rerun the script to remove the autostartup (or edit /etc/profile I believe it is)?

Or take the sd card to a linux machine and edit /etc/profile

There is also http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... &start=225 which states how to set up emulationstation with a joystick but no keyboard.

My guess would be get it all working the way you want (including running retroach-joyconfig) before letting it start on bootup.

[Jako]

I said:
If in my retroarch.cfg "audio_enable = false" works, why video_enforce_aspect = false" not?

Sorrry sorry sorry! The option for fullscreen video is:

video_force_aspect = false

Now it works again, my fault, i need to rest a bit more. Sorry

But i have the same problem with the sound, retroarch can't launch nothing with sound. The alsa driver works ok.

Thanks pendor for the info, before sleep i will give a try and see what happends tomorrow, i think that a few hours will take all the process.

[teeth_03]

I have this installed trying to get some SNES games up and running,some issues:

1. No audio over HDMI, even though its enabled in the config

2. It seems to be ignoring my keyboard keys as binds as soon as the game gets going. For example,I can use the menu of the Mario All Stars rom to get into a game of mario,but once im in the level,I cant get any input, aside from the Function keys. I rebinded the keys using sudo nano /etc/retroarch.cfg

[teeth_03]

I got audio working, it wasn't working system wide, but im still working on my control issues

[Aloshi]

I got audio working, it wasn't working system wide, but im still working on my control issues

Are you sure you're running with X closed? Sometimes that makes RetroArch take keyboard input weird.

[teeth_03]

I have a little boot menu setup that opens up emulation station before starting X. Im also using a powered hub. I am however, using a wireless keyboard, never had a chance last night to use a wired one.

[DeepCrow]

First off, great work on getting so many different pieces to play nice together.
I'm really anxious to hear whether the GBA and Genesis emulators can be made performant or if you change them out (especially for one that accepts zipped roms?).

Mostly though, I've been spending a lot of time getting roms where they need to go and I have some observations that might be helpful.

1. Like Jako, I'm also seeing many roms get misidentified by thegamesdb.net, which then leads to a wrong image download and wrong xml entry. This has less to do with the python script and more to do with file naming. Probably everyone's roms look like mine with (U) [!] and other such things after it. Removing those improves the script accuracy quite a bit! Here's a quick bash script I used to clean up my genesis roms.

Code: Select all

for bin in *.bin ; do new_name=$(echo $bin | sed 's/([0-9A-Z]*)//gi' | sed 's/\[[^]]*\]//gi' | sed 's/[ \t]*.bin$/.bin/gi' | sed 's/, The.bin/.bin/gi'); mv "$bin" "$new_name"; done

I've only got a few hours of *nix experience under my belt so I'm betting someone smarter could just add this into the python script or make it work for all rom types or something.

2. The python script stopped working for me for the whole day yesterday because thegamesdb.net went down. Maybe we unintentionally DDOSed it? And sometimes it will work for a few dozen roms but then timeout on a web request, which leaves images but no gamelist xml. Next time you run the script, it looks like the images are just overwritten which is fine but a simple check could allow you to skip a bunch of downloads.
For people who think the rescrape isn't working, you really have to run the script by itself with the -v flag to make sure it isn't an internet problem.

3. I haven't gotten to the part where I plug in a real controller yet, but I'm curious. How is everyone exiting the emulator back out to the emulationstation? Can you bind RLSelectStart to Quit or something? Putting a keyboard in my living room or resetting the Pi seems lame.

Again, good work on all this! If I can get everything working finally I'm saving this RPi image and making copies for Christmas!

[gzz]

input_exit_emulator_btn is the variable you can set in retroarch.cfg to define which gamepad button exits the emulator.

I tried a little scraping, i just find that emulationstation takes too long to display the jpeg and info, so meh, I'll just stick with the filenames.. nothing fancy for me.

[Pendor]

I tried a little scraping, i just find that emulationstation takes too long to display the jpeg and info, so meh, I'll just stick with the filenames.. nothing fancy for me.

You're probably not resizing the boxarts, that's why it's slow.

[DeepCrow]

input_exit_emulator_btn is the variable you can set in retroarch.cfg to define which gamepad button exits the emulator.

I tried a little scraping, i just find that emulationstation takes too long to display the jpeg and info, so meh, I'll just stick with the filenames.. nothing fancy for me.

Thanks that was just what I was looking for. Where did you find that info? My Google-Fu is failing me. Also a followup question: Is there any way to bind input_exit_emulator_btn to a combination of inputs? Like maybe R+L+Select+Start? This is the last thing I need to clear up before I commit to buying xbox controllers or snes controllers.

Also, Pendor is hella right about sizes of boxart. It's night and day difference after they've been resized.

[petrockblog]

3. I haven't gotten to the part where I plug in a real controller yet, but I'm curious. How is everyone exiting the emulator back out to the emulationstation? Can you bind RLSelectStart to Quit or something? Putting a keyboard in my living room or resetting the Pi seems lame.

I totally agree with you that the keyboard should be discarded as soon as possible! I have re-designed the SNES adapter PDB that I >>presented some time ago<< and came up with a (S)NES-adapter PCB specifically for the Raspberry Pi. I have not yet written about it in my blog, but the PCBs are ordered and being produced these days and as soon as I have assembled and tested the first board I will write about it! The special thing about this new design is that it also has a momentary push button. This button will serve as a reset and menu button and makes the keyboard redundant when running Emulation Station. Compared to the first version of the SNES-adapter PCB I ordered some more PCBs this time. However, as I said, it will still take one or two weeks until I can present this new board.

[petrockblog]

I have a little boot menu setup that opens up emulation station before starting X. Im also using a powered hub. I am however, using a wireless keyboard, never had a chance last night to use a wired one.

Actually, I have read in other threads that some wireless input devices sometimes lead to problems, because of a not-so-well-working interrupt handling/configuration of the kernel. However, I cannot remember the link right now. Nevertheless, using a wired keyboard or another wireless keyboard might solve these problems.

[petrockblog]

So I am rocking Raspbian, and ran the installer script per the directions on GitHub. Everything ran dandy, and I was playing Mega Man 2 and all was right in the world.

Then I got cheeky, and re-ran the setup to configure starting RetroPie on boot and to use my Xbox 360 controller. When I rebooted, it launched a configuration screen saying "It looks like you have a joystick plugged in", and asking for input to set the controls.

Problem is, at this point... nothing is responsive. Keyboard does nothing. Joystick does nothing. And no combination of plugging both or neither of them in before/after booting seems to make a difference. And I can't Ctrl-Alt-F2 to another terminal and kill it.

Any suggestions? This seems like such an awesome project, and I feel like I somehow borked it.

Did you already use your joystick with EmulationStation before enabling the autostart option? It seems as if es_input.cfg might be missing. Thank you for your report here! I will adapt the RetroPie script to check for the es_input.cfg before enabling the autostart option!
To solve your problem: You could use ssh from another Linux/Mac machine or, e.g., putty from a Windows machine to ssh into your pi. Then run the RetroPie script and disable the autostart function with it.

[gzz]

input_exit_emulator_btn is the variable you can set in retroarch.cfg to define which gamepad button exits the emulator.

I tried a little scraping, i just find that emulationstation takes too long to display the jpeg and info, so meh, I'll just stick with the filenames.. nothing fancy for me.

Thanks that was just what I was looking for. Where did you find that info? My Google-Fu is failing me. Also a followup question: Is there any way to bind input_exit_emulator_btn to a combination of inputs? Like maybe R+L+Select+Start? This is the last thing I need to clear up before I commit to buying xbox controllers or snes controllers.

Also, Pendor is hella right about sizes of boxart. It's night and day difference after they've been resized.

I believe the answer is one of the wikis on github somewhere, I think.. if not, who knows, all I know is I added it to my retroarch.cfg at some point. lol

Dont think you can assign multiple buttons to do what you want. there is www.libretro.org and they have a forum, maybe make a request?

Guess Im kind of keep it simple stupid kind of guy, dont care for the fancy interfaces or what not.. just show me the files names is good enough for me. Hell, I still run most of the stuff now from the command line.

[USiT]

Finally i got it working, thank you PetRock for the amazing autoinstaller.

But i have a tiny issue. I can only run ES once. When running it the second time i have to removethe es_input.cfg file becouse when running without moving it i only get shutdown/restart menu on start up. With the file bye bye i see my roms. In a strange way it thinks my keyboard is a gamepad....

After some hour of error tracking i did do a rmmod joydev before running ES and now it works and i don't have to remove the file before start up.

[USiT]

Another thing...

When running the sudo ./retropie_setup.sh what selection should i use if i only need NES to work?

[petrockblog]

When running the sudo ./retropie_setup.sh what selection should i use if i only need NES to work?

To install just the NES core select the "Source-Based (custom)" installation. In the following menu, de-select all cores except the NES core. Also, you probably do not need the BCM library and SNESDev and can also de-select these. Start the installation by pressing ENTER.

[petrockblog]

After some hour of error tracking i did do a rmmod joydev before running ES and now it works and i don't have to remove the file before start up.

Do other people have the same issue and does the removing of the joydev module help? Should I disable the automatic installation of the joydev module?

[knowbody]

Noob here.

Got RetroPie installed w/ all of the emulators and necessary stuff. However, when I run "emulationstation", I get a white screen w/ "Doom" at the top and "prboom" below it. When I hit enter on prboom, it goes back to the command line, does a bunch of stuff ending in:

Code: Select all

Segementation fault
===================
...launch failed!

This happens quickly then it brings up the white screen again. Also, I'm not able to exit out of it: hitting F4 or Esc doesn't do anything. I tried reinstalling EmulationStation, but I got the same thing.

Any ideas?

[Aloshi]

Huh, it would seem that RetroArch is crashing badly when it launches prboom.

Do any other emulators work? If you launch RetroArch manually, without ES, does the same thing happen (something like "retroarch -L path/to/core.so path/to/game.wad" for Doom, not totally sure)?

[petrockblog]

However, when I run "emulationstation", I get a white screen w/ "Doom" at the top and "prboom" below it. When I hit enter on prboom, it goes back to the command line, does a bunch of stuff ending in:

Code: Select all

Segementation fault
===================
...launch failed!

This happens quickly then it brings up the white screen again. Also, I'm not able to exit out of it: hitting F4 or Esc doesn't do anything. I tried reinstalling EmulationStation, but I got the same thing.

Any ideas?

prboom(.wad) is not supposed to be started. The file is needed by RetroArch and has to be located in the same directory as the other .wad files. Thus, you have to copy your Doom.wad files into the RetroPie/roms/doom directory first!
@Aloshi: What would you suggest to hide this "supplementary" prboom.wad file?

[teeth_03]

So here is a weird one for ya.

I have a weird SNES rom that has mario all stars + mario world included, and it specifically does not work with the controls, either using a keyboard or a wireless 360 controller.

I can use it to browse the manu and start a game of mario, but once the level loads, no controls. All my other roms work fine too. This rom also worked fine in other emulators as well.

Im going to look for another rom, but that is kinda weird...

[Aloshi]

@Aloshi: What would you suggest to hide this "supplementary" prboom.wad file?

Hmm...would it be possible to put it in another directory? I could modify the search to skip hidden files that start with ".", and you could rename it to ".prboom.wad". Would that work?