This document is intended as a quick start guide and as a reference for the application settings and general functionality. For details on how to build ES-DE from source code and to perform more advanced configuration, please refer to [INSTALL.md](INSTALL.md).
**Note:** If using a Mac with an ARM CPU (e.g. M1) you need to install the x86 version of RetroArch and any other emulators, or you won't be able to launch any games. This will be fixed whenever a native macOS ARM build of ES-DE is released.
The installation procedure is just covered briefly here and may differ a bit for your specific operating system, so in case of problems refer to your system documentation.
The .deb package is intended for Linux distributions based on Debian, such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint etc. Your distribution should include a graphical package installer, but if you prefer to use the command line, run the following which will install ES-DE and resolve any dependencies:
There's not really much to say about these operating systems, just install ES-DE as you would any other application. On maCOS it's via the .dmg drag-and-drop installer, and on Windows via the normal application installer.
On Unix this means /home/\<username\>/.emulationstation/, on macOS /Users/\<username\>/.emulationstation/ and on Windows C:\Users\\<username\>\\.emulationstation\
**Note:** As of ES-DE v1.1 there is no internationalization support, which means that the application will always require the physical rather than the localized path to your home directory. For instance on macOS configured for the Swedish language /Users/myusername will be the physical path but /Användare/myusername is the localized path that is actually shown in the user interface. The same is true on Windows where the directories would be C:\Users\myusername and C:\Användare\myusername respectively. If attempting to enter the localized path for any directory-related setting, ES-DE will not be able to find it. But it's always possible to use the tilde `~` symbol when referring to your home directory, which ES-DE will expand to the physical location regardless of what language you have configured for your operating system. If you're using an English-localized system, this whole point is irrelevant as the physical and localized paths are then identical.
It's also possible to override the home directory path using the --home command line option, but this is normally required only for very special situations so we can safely ignore that option for now.
Also on first startup the configuration file `es_settings.xml` will be generated in the ES-DE home directory, containing all the application settings at their default values. Following this, a file named `es_systems.xml` will be loaded from the resources directory (which is part of the ES-DE installation). This file contains the game system definitions including which emulator to use per platform. The systems configuration file can be customized, as described in the next section.
There's an application log file created in the ES-DE home directory named `es_log.txt`, please refer to this in case of any issues as it should hopefully provide information on what went wrong. Starting ES-DE with the --debug flag provides even more detailed information.
After ES-DE finds at least one game file, it will populate that game system and the application will start. If there are no game files, a dialog will be shown explaining that you need to install your game files into your ROMs directory. You will also be given a choice to change that ROMs directory path if you don't want to use the default one. As well you have the option to generate the complete game systems directory structure based on information in es_systems.xml.
When generating the directory structure, a file named systeminfo.txt will be created in each game system folder which will provide you with some information about the system. Here's an example for the _gc_ system as seen on macOS:
The primary use of this file is to see which RetroArch core the system needs, which you will have to install manually from inside the RetroArch user interface. Also the supported file extensions can be quite useful to know.
In addition to this, a file named systems.txt will be created in the root of the ROMs directory which shows the mapping between the directory names and the full system names.
Note that neither the systeminfo.txt files or the systems.txt file are needed to run ES-DE, they're only generated as a convenience to help with the setup.
There will be a lot of directories created if using the es_systems.xml file bundled with the installation, so it may be a good idea to remove the ones you don't need. It's recommended to move them to another location to be able to use them later if more systems should be added. For example a directory named _DISABLED could be created inside the ROMs folder (i.e. ~/ROMs/_DISABLED) and all game system directories you don't need could be moved there. Doing this reduces the application startup time as ES-DE would otherwise need to scan for game files for all these systems.
_This is the dialog shown if no game files were found. It lets you configure the ROM directory if you don't want to use the default one, and you can also generate the game systems directory structure. Note that the directory is the physical path, and that your operating system may present this as a localized path if you are using a language other than English._
The `es_systems.xml` file is located in the ES-DE resources directory which is part of the application installation. As such this file is not intended to be modified directly. If a customized file is needed, this should instead be placed in the `custom_systems` folder in the ES-DE home directory, i.e. `~/.emulationstation/custom_systems/es_systems.xml`. You can find information on the file structure and how to adapt the configuration in the [INSTALL.md](INSTALL.md#es_systemsxml) document.
ES-DE is designed to be backward compatible to a certain degree, that is, it should be able to read data from other/previous EmulationStation versions such as the RetroPie fork. But the opposite is not true and it's a one-way ticket for your gamelist.xml files and your custom collection files when migrating to ES-DE as they will be modified in ways that previous ES versions will see as data loss. For instance ES-DE does not use image tags inside the gamelist.xml files to find game media but instead matches the media to the names of the game/ROM files. So it will not save any such tags back to the gamelist files during updates, effectively removing the display of the game media if the files are opened in another ES fork.
ES-DE fully supports high resolution displays such as 4K, 6K, 1440p, ultrawide monitors etc. But some emulators such as RetroArch will also run using the same resolution which may cause performance problems on slower machines or when using resource intensive shaders. Although some emulator cores will have options to set their internal resolution, they still need to be scaled up to the screen resolution. On Unix it's possible to start ES-DE with the `--resolution` option to set a lower screen resolution (this will also affect the emulators) but this is not really recommended as it's highly dependent on well-written graphics drivers for proper behavior.
A better approach is to use the custom event scripts functionality to set a temporary resolution upon launching a game that will be reverted when returning to ES-DE. Such a setup is detailed in [INSTALL.md](INSTALL.md#custom-event-scripts) for Unix, but should hopefully be possible to implement similarly on macOS and Windows.
ES-DE automatically configures the keyboard and any connected controllers using default button mappings, and normally no additional setup is required. But if you would like to apply custom button mappings for your devices, you can run the `Configure keyboard and controllers` tool from the `Input device settings` entry on the main menu.
The actual procedure to map the inputs should be self-explanatory, just follow the on-screen instructions. But note that custom button mappings will not change the help prompts.
Any custom configuration is applied per unique device ID (GUID). So if two identical controllers are used with ES-DE, both will have the same configuration applied. If connecting controllers of the same type but of different revisions, the GUID may differ and therefore the custom configuration would need to be applied to each device individually.
If you have issues with your input configuration, as a last resort you can reset all the mappings by deleting or renaming the file ~/.emulationstation/es_input.xml.
If you experience double button presses with your DualShock 4 controller on macOS, please read about the workaround for this issue in the [Known issues](CHANGELOG.md#known-issues) section of the changelog.
When starting ES-DE with the default settings, you will see the System view first. From here you can navigate your game systems and enter their respective gamelists.
Depending on the theme, the system navigation carousel can be either horizontal or vertical. The default theme rbsimple-DE provides horizontal navigation, i.e. you browse your systems by scrolling left or right.
Upon startup with the default settings, ES-DE is set to the gamelist view style **Automatic**. In this mode the application will look for any game media files (videos and images) and set the view style accordingly. If at least one image is found for any game, the view style **Detailed** will be shown, and if at least one video file is found, the view style **Video** will be selected (superceding the Detailed style). If no game media files are found for a system, the simple **Basic** view style will be selected. This automatic selection is applied per game system.
Note that the Video view style requires that the theme supports it. If not, the Detailed style will be selected instead. The default theme rbsimple-DE supports both of these view styles.
It's possible to manually set a specific gamelist view style in the UI settings entry of the main menu, but this is applied globally regardless of what media files are available per game system. The manual setting also overrides the theme-supported view styles which has the potential of making ES-DE very ugly indeed if the theme does not support the selected view style.
In addition to the styles just described, there is a **Grid** view style as well, but as of ES-DE version 1.1 this is highly experimental and its use is not recommended. Future versions may update this style to a more useful state or it may be removed entirely.
If the theme supports it, there's a gamelist information field displayed in the gamelist view, showing the number of games for the system (total and favorites) as well as a folder icon if a folder has been entered. When applying any filters to the gamelist, the game counter is replaced with the amount of games filtered, as in 'filtered / total games', e.g. '19 / 77'. If there are game entries in the filter result that are marked not to be counted as games, the number of such files will be indicated as 'filtered + filtered non-games / total games', for example '23 + 4 / 77' indicating 23 normal games, 4 non-games out of a total of 77. Due to this approach it's theoretically possible that the combined filtered game amount exceeds the number of counted games in the collection, for instance '69 + 11 / 77'. This is not considered a bug and is so by design. This gamelist information field functionality is specific to EmulationStation Desktop Edition so older themes will not support this.
_Here's an example of what the Basic view style looks like. Needless to say, ES-DE is not intended to be used like this. After scraping some game media for the system, the view style will automatically change to Detailed or Video (assuming the Automatic view style option has been selected)._
* Kiosk - The main menu will be severely restricted, only displaying the entry to change the audio volume. The game options menu will be restricted as well, removing the metadata editor and the ability to modify custom game collections. And finally the ability to flag or unflag games as favorites will be removed. Apart from this all games will be playable.
* Kid - Only games marked as being suitable for children will be displayed (this flag is set manually per game using the metadata editor). Additionally, the game options menu is disabled, as well as the screensaver controls and the ability to flag and unflag games as favorites. There is also a separate option available to enable or disable the main menu when in Kid mode, see **Enable menu in kid mode** for additional information.
There is an unlock code available to revert to the Full mode from the Kiosk or Kid mode, as is described when changing this setting from the main menu. By default the button sequence is **Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A** (or equivalent buttons if an Xbox controller is not used). Either the keyboard or a controller can be used to input the passkey sequence, but it can't be entered when a menu is open.
The application can also be forced into any of the three modes via the command line options `--force-full`, `--force-kiosk` and `--force-kid`. This is only temporary until the restart of the application, unless the settings menu is entered and the setting is saved to the configuration file (this assumes that the main menu is available in the selected UI mode of course).
There is a help system available throughout the application that provides an overview of the possible actions and buttons that can be used. But some general actions are never shown, such as the ability to quick jump in gamelists, menus and text input fields using the shoulder and trigger buttons. It's also possible to disable the help system using a menu option for a somewhat cleaner look.
The built-in help system will provide a contextual summary of the available navigation options, but here's still a general overview. These are the buttons mappings automatically applied by ES-DE, but they can be customized using the input configurator as described earlier in this document. It's not an exhaustive list, but it covers most situations. The button names are based on the Xbox 360 controller as that is the naming convention used by the SDL library which handles the controller input in ES-DE.
Navigate between gamelists (if the _Quick system select_ option has been enabled), between systems in the system view (if the theme has a horizontal carousel) and between media files in the media viewer. If the _Enable screensaver controls_ option has been enabled, either button also randomly selects a new game when using the Video or Slideshow screensavers.
Opens and closes the game options menu in the gamelist view, or toggles the screensaver in the system view (if the _Enable screensaver controls_ setting is enabled).
Jumps to a random game or system depending on whether pressed when in the system view or gamelist view. Only available if the _Enable random system or game button_ option has been enabled.
Starts the game media viewer (which is accessible from the gamelist views). Used by some other minor functions as explained by the help system and/or this guide.
Marks games as favorites in the gamelist view (if the _Enable toggle favorites button_ option has been enabled). Used by some other minor functions as explained by the help system and/or this guide.
For most systems this is straightforward, just put your game files into the folder corresponding to the platform name (these names can be found at the [end](USERGUIDE.md#supported-game-systems) of this guide.)
Let's start with the simple scenario of a single ROM file per game, which is the case for the majority of platforms. In this example we're setting up ES-DE to play Nintendo Entertainment System games.
The supported file extensions are listed in [unix/es_systems.xml](resources/systems/unix/es_systems.xml), [macos/es_systems.xml](resources/systems/macos/es_systems.xml) and [windows/es_systems.xml](resources/systems/windows/es_systems.xml) but if you generated the game system directories on first application startup, there will be a file named systeminfo.txt in each game system directory that includes the list of supported file extensions.
It's highly recommended to use filenames that are corresponding to the full name of the game, otherwise you will need to manually feed the scraper the game name when scraping which is very tedious.
**Note:** Symlinks are supported for both ROM directories and individual game files, but make sure to not symlink between files within the same system directory or there may be undefined application behavior when scraping, launching games etc.
The default game directory folder is ~/ROMs. On Unix this defaults to /home/\<username\>/ROMs, on macOS /Users/\<username\>/ROMs and on Windows C:\Users\\<username\>\ROMs\. Ifthe--homecommandlineoptionwasusedtostartES-DE,thetilde`~`symbolwillresolvetowhateverdirectorywaspassedasanargumenttothisoption.
Assuming the default ROM directory is used, we need to create a directory corresponding to the \<path\> tag in es_systems.xml, in this example it's `nes`.
That's it, start ES-DE and the NES game system should be populated. You can now scrape information and media for the games, and assuming you've setup RetroArch correctly with the Nestopia UE core, you can launch the games.
For some systems, there are sometimes (or always) multiple gamefiles per game. Such an example would be the Commodore 64 when multidisk games are being played. For such instances, simply group the files inside folders.
It's of course also possible to skip this type of directory structure and put all the games in the root folder, but then there will be multiple entries for the same game which is not so tidy. Another approach would be to put all the files in the root folder and then hide the game files, showing only the .m3u playlist files. ES-DE is flexible so do whatever makes most sense for the situation.
When setting up games in this fashion, it's recommended to scrape the directory in addition to the .m3u file as it looks nicer to see the metadata for the games also when browsing the folders. ES fully supports scraping folders, although some metadata is not included for folders for logical reasons. If you only scrape the folders and not the actual game files, it may look somehow ok when browsing, but when a game is part of a collection, the metadata will be missing there. This includes the **Last played** and **All games** collections for instance. Also note that while it's possible to mark a folder as a favorite, it will never be part of a collection, such as **Favorites**.
It's also recommended to use the metadata editor to set the flags **Exclude from game counter** and **Exclude from automatic scraper** for the actual game files so that they are not counted for the game statistics display and not scraped when running the multi-scraper. If you don't want to hide the individual game files but still want a cleaner look, it's also possible to set the flag **Hide metadata fields** for the game files.
Not all systems are as simple as described above, or there may be multiple ways to do the configuration. Specifics for such systems will be covered here. Consider this a work in progress as there are many platforms supported by ES-DE.
For all the supported MAME variants as well as Final Burn Alpha/FinalBurn Neo and Neo Geo, single file archives should be used. But these should retain the MAME names as filenames since ES-DE ships with MAME lookup tables, meaning the MAME names are expanded to the full game names.
This is required by the TheGamesDB scraper where the expanded file names are used for game searches. (Screenscraper natively supports searches using the MAME names). It's also quite nice to have the gamelist populated with the expanded game names even before any scraping has taken place.
#### Nintendo Switch
The emulator for Nintendo Switch is Yuzu, which is distributed as a Snap package, Flatpak package or AppImage on Linux and as a regular installer on Windows. At the moment there is unfortunately no macOS release of this emulator and it's unclear if it can run on BSD Unix.
If installed as a Snap or Flatpak package or if built from source code, ES-DE should be able to easily locate the emulator binary.
But if using the AppImage it's a bit more complicated as there is no real standardized directory for storing these images.
What ES-DE will do is to look for _yuzu.AppImage_ in the system PATH as well as in the following locations:
```
~/Applications/yuzu.AppImage
~/.local/bin/yuzu.AppImage
~/bin/yuzu.AppImage
```
When downloading the AppImage from [https://yuzu-emu.org](https://yuzu-emu.org) it will be named something like `yuzu-20210621-45d9504ea.AppImage`, just rename this to yuzu.AppImage and everything should work correctly.
Note that the name is case sensitive, so _yuzu.appimage_ will not be found by ES-DE.
For Windows, ES-DE will look for _yuzu.exe_ in the system Path as well as in the default installation directory `~\AppData\Local\yuzu\yuzu-windows-msvc\`
Apart from the potential difficulty in locating the emulator binary, there are some special configuration steps required for the emulator, refer to the Yuzu website for more information about this.
Advanced topics such as the need for the Amiga Kickstart ROMs to run Amiga games is beyond the scope of this guide, but the following page is recommended for reading more about how this setup can be achieved:
The DOS (and PC) platform uses the DOSBox emulator and the recommended approach here is to keep the directory structure intact, just as if running the game on a real DOS computer. So this means one folder per game in ES-DE. It's also recommended to set the metadata field **Count as game** to off for all files but the actual file used to launch the game, i.e. the binary or the .bat batch file. This is done so that the game counter correctly reflects the number of games you have installed. It's also possible to mark files and subdirectories as hidden to avoid seeing them in ES-DE. Both of these fields can be set using the metadata editor.
Apart from this, DOS games should work the same as any other system. The game folders can be scraped so that it looks nice when browsing the list of games, but make sure to also scrape the files used to launch the games or otherwise the entries in the collections **Last played**, **Favorites** and **All games** as well as any custom collections will miss the game metadata and game media. If you don't have these collections activated, then this can of course be skipped.
Ports are not really executed using emulators, but are rather applications running natively on the operating system. The easiest way to handle these is to add a simple shell script or batch file where you can customize the exact launch parameters for the game.
It's of course possible to add these as single files to the root folder, but normally it's recommended to setup a separate folder per game as there may be more than a single file available per game. You very often want to have easy access to the game setup utility for instance.
These games are executed via the Lutris binary (well it's actually a Python script) and you simply create a shell script per game inside the lutris system directory.
Add the game information to each shell script using the syntax `lutris lutris:rungame/<game name>`
As an alternative, you can add the Lutris games to the Ports game system, if you prefer to not separate them. The instructions above are identical in this case except that the shell scripts should be located inside the `ports` directory rather than inside the `lutris` directory.
**Note:** Launching Steam games currently has some limitations such as missing error messages when a game fails to start as well as missing game output logging. ES-DE also needs to keep running in the background when launching Steam games, which has some minor side effects.
As for the setup, it's recommended to place shell scripts/batch files directly in the steam system directory, with the filenames of these scripts corresponding to the game names.
The game ID can be found by going to [https://store.steampowered.com](https://store.steampowered.com) and searching for a game. The Broforce example would have an URL such as this:
ES-DE is a game browsing frontend and does not provide any emulation by itself. It does however come preconfigured for use with emulators as setup in the `es_systems.xml` file. By default it's primarily setup for use with [RetroArch](https://www.retroarch.com) but this can be modified if needed. If you're interested in customizing your es_systems.xml file, please refer to the [INSTALL.md](INSTALL.md#es_systemsxml) document which goes into details on the structure of this file and more advanced configuration topics in general.
Installation and configuration of RetroArch and other emulators is beyond the scope of this guide, but many good resources can be found online on how to do this.
A general recommendation regarding installation on Linux is to try to avoid the RetroArch releases included in the OS repositories as they're usually quite limited with regards to the number of available cores, and they're usually older versions. Instead go for either the Snap, Flatpak or AppImage distributions or build from source.
The default es_systems.xml file is paired with a file named es_find_rules.xml which tries to find the emulators and cores using some predefined rules. For Windows this should normally just work, and for macOS too as long as RetroArch is installed at the default location /Applications/RetroArch.app. For Unix/Linux there is one exception that is problematic which is AppImages as there is no real standardized directory for storing these images. ES-DE will look for the RetroArch AppImage in the following locations in addition to searching the PATH variable:
In any instance, ES-DE will display an error notification if attempting to launch a game where the emulator binary is not found. Likewise it will notify if the defined emulator core is not installed. The es_log.txt file will also provide additional details.
ES-DE supports the two scrapers [ScreenScraper.fr](https://www.screenscraper.fr) and [TheGamesDB.net](https://thegamesdb.net). In general TheGamesDB supports less formats and less systems, but in some areas such PC gaming, the quality is better and sometimes ScreenScraper is missing some specific information such as release dates where TheGamesDB may be able to fill in the gaps.
_Here's an example of the multi-scraper running in interactive mode, asking the user to make a selection from the multiple matching games returned by the scraper service._
The single-game scraper is launched from the metadata editor. You navigate to a game, open the game options menu, choose **Edit this game's metadata** and then select the **Scrape** button.
The process of scraping games is basically identical between the single-game scraper and the multi-scraper. You're presented with the returned scraper results, and you're able to refine the search if the scraper could not find your game. Sometimes small changes like adding or removing a colon or a minus sign can yield better results. Note that the searching is handled entirely by the scraper service, ES-DE just presents the results returned from the service.
By default, ES-DE will search using the metadata name of the game. If no name has been defined via scraping or manually using the metadata editor, this name will correspond to the physical file name minus all text inside either normal brackets `()` or square brackets `[]`. So for example the physical filename `Mygame (U) [v2].zip` will be stripped to simply `Mygame` when performing the scraping.
By disabling the option **Search using metadata name**, the physical file name will be used even if there is a scraped or manually entered name for the game.
There is however an exception to this for arcade games (MAME and Neo Geo) when using the TheGamesDB scraper. As this service does not support searches using the short MAME names, these will be expanded to the full game names via a lookup in the MAME name database supplied with the ES-DE installation. But if using ScreenScraper the _Search using metadata name_ option is always respected as this service fully support scraping based on the short MAME names.
The miximages are generated by ES-DE. Normally that takes place automatically when scraping, but in this example of manually copying existing media files, the miximage offline generator should be used instead. This tool can generate the miximages for the complete game collection in one go. How that works is explained elsewhere in this guide.
Remember that on Unix filenames are case sensitive, and as well the file extensions must be in lower case, such as .png instead of .PNG or .Png or the file won't be found.
This menu can be accessed from both the system view and gamelist view. It contains the scraper, application settings and various tools such as the input configurator and the miximage generator. Settings are saved when navigating back from any menu screen, assuming at least one setting was changed. Pressing the application exit key (F4) will also save any pending changes.
Whether to use the account that has been configured. If this is disabled, the username and password setup on this screen will be ignored during scraping. This can be useful if you have scraping issues and want to check whether it's related to your account or if it's a general problem. Note that screenscraper.fr does not seem to return a proper error message regarding incorrect username and password, but starting ES-DE with the --debug flag will indicate in the log file whether the username was included in the server response.
The password as registered on screenscraper.fr. This is masked using asterisks on the screen, and the password input field will be blank when attempting to update an existing password. This is by design and not a bug. Be aware that the es_settings.xml file contains the password in clear text.
Whether to scrape the names of the games. This does not affect the actual files on the filesystem and the game name is primarily used for appearance and sorting purposes. The downloaded media files are matched against the physical game files on the filesystem, and not against this metadata. See the comments under _Overwrite files and data_ below to understand some additional implications regarding game names.
These are primarily used for generating miximages.
#### Miximage settings
These are the settings for the miximage generator, which can either be run from the scraper (single-game scraper or multi-scraper) or from the offline generator. The miximage combines the screenshot, marquee and box images to make a composite picture that is displayed in the gamelist view. There are various settings for the generator.
**Miximage resolution**
It's possible to select betweeen the 1280x960, 1920x1440 and 640x480 resolutions for the generated miximages. It's normally recommended to use the default option 1280x960 which gives good image quality without slowing down ES-DE too much. But for very weak machines, 640x480 may be a better option. The 1920x1440 resolution is normally not recommended as it brings little quality improvements over 1280x960 and slows down the gamelist browsing.
**Screenshot scaling method**
The _sharp_ scaling method uses nearest-neighbor interpolation which retains sharp pixels and looks better for most low-resolution retro games. The _smooth_ scaling method uses the Lanczos algorithm and produces smoother pixels. This may look better on some more modern games at higher resolutions. If unsure, use the _sharp_ method.
**Generate miximages when scraping**
Enables or disables the miximage generator when scraping. Applies to both the single-game scraper and the multi-scraper.
Controls whether miximages should be overwritten or not. Note that the scraper setting _Overwrite files and data_ does not affect the miximages.
**Remove letterboxes from screenshots**
With this option enabled, any horizontal pure black areas at the top and bottom of the screenshots are automatically cropped.
**Remove pillarboxes from screenshots**
With this option enabled, any vertical pure black areas at the left and right sides of the screenshots are automatically cropped.
**Incude marquee image**
Whether to include the marquee (wheel) image in the composite miximage.
**Incude box image**
Whether to include the box image in the composite miximage. If a 3D box exists for the game, this will be used.
**Use cover image if 3D box is missing**
Whether to use the 2D box cover as fallback if the 3D box image is missing for the game.
**Offline generator**
This is not a setting, but instead a GUI to generate miximages offline without going via the scraper. This tool uses the same game system selections as the scraper, so you need to select at least one system on the scraper menu before attempting to run it. All the miximage settings are applied in the same way as when generating images via the scraper. The prerequisite is that at least a screenshot exists for each game. If there is no screenshot, or if the screenshot is unreadable for some reason, the generation for that specific game will fail. There is statistics shown in the tool displaying the number of generated, overwritten, skipped and failed images. Any error message is also shown on screen as well as being saved to the es_log.txt file.
Multiple languages are supported by ScreenScraper, and this affects translations of game genres and game descriptions. As the option name implies this is the preferred language only as not all games have had their metadata translated. Unfortunately some less used languages have quite few games translated, but hopefully this will improve over time as there's an ongoing community effort to make more translations. If the preferred language is not available for a game, ES-DE will fall back to using the English metadata.
Affects both overwriting of metadata as well as actual game media files on the filesystem. Even with this option disabled, metadata entries which are set to their default values will of course be populated by the scraper. In other words, this option only affects overwriting of previously scraped data. Game names are considered as set to their default values if either corresponding to the physical game file on disk minus the extension (e.g. the entry _Commando_ if the file is named _Commando.zip_), or for arcade games if corresponding to the MAME names as defined in the bundled mamenames.xml. Note that this setting does not affect generated miximages, that is instead controlled by the setting _Overwrite miximages (scraper/offline generator)_ found in the miximage settings menu.
With this setting enabled, if any media files returned by the scraper seem to be invalid, the scraping is halted and an error message is presented where it's possible to retry or cancel the scraping of the specific game. In the case of multi-scraping it's also possible to skip the game and proceed to the next one in the queue. With this setting disabled, all media files will always be accepted and saved to disk. As of ES-DE v1.1 the file verification is quite basic and future versions will improve on this by using file checksums and other file integrity checks.
By default ES-DE will perform scraper searches based on the game name that has been manually set in the metadata editor, or that has been previously scraped. If you prefer to search using the physical file name regardless of such data being available, then disable this option. Note that when using TheGamesDB as scraper service for arcade games (MAME and Neo Geo), the short MAME name will always be expanded to the full game name as this scraper service does not support searches using short MAME names.
It's possible to set a flag per game file or folder using the metadata editor to indicate that it should be excluded from the multi-scraper. This setting makes it possible to override that restriction and scrape all entries anyway.
If this setting is enabled and a folder has its flag set to be excluded from the scraper, then the entire folder contents are skipped when running the multi-scraper.
**Auto-retry on peer verification errors** _(ScreenScraper only)_
ScreenScraper sometimes has issues with its TLS certificates which causes searches to randomly fail. It's normally resolved within a few days, but in the meanwhile activating this setting will have the scraper automatically make up to eight additional attempts when this error occurs. That is normally enough to complete the search, but if not, just press 'Retry' in the error dialog and ES-DE will try eight more times. This setting applies to both the single-game scraper and the multi-scraper. The following error notification dialog and corresponding es_log.txt entry is displayed when this error occurs: "Error downloading thumbnail: SSL peer certificate or SSH remote key was not OK".
Sets the view style to _Automatic, Basic, Detailed, Video_ or _Grid_. See the description [above](USERGUIDE.md#gamelist-view) in this document for more information regarding view styles.
Sets the user interface mode for the application to _Full, Kiosk_ or _Kid_. See the description [above](USERGUIDE.md#ui-modes) in this document for additional information.
The order in which to sort your gamelists. This can be overriden per game system using the game options menu, but that override will only be persistent during the application session. The _System_ sorting can not be selected here as it's only applicable to collection systems.
Animation to play when opening the main menu or the game options menu. Also sets the animation for the game launch screen. Can be set to _Scale-up_ or _None_.
This configures for how long to display the game launch screen when starting a game. The options are _Normal_, _Brief_, _Long_ and _Disabled_. If set to _Disabled_, a simple notification popup will be displayed instead.
**Blur background when menu is open** _(OpenGL renderer only)_
This option will blur the background behind the menu slightly. Normally this can be left enabled, but if you have a really slow GPU, disabling this option may make the application feel a bit more responsive.
With this option enabled, there are black pillarboxes (and to a lesser extent letterboxes) displayed around videos with non-standard aspect ratios. This will probably be most commonly used for vertical arcade shooters, or for game systems that has a screen in portrait orientation. For wider than normal videos, letterboxes are added, but this is quite rare compared to videos in portrait orientation. This option looks good with some theme sets such as rbsimple-DE, but on others it may be more visually pleasing to disable it. On less wide displays such as those in 4:3 aspect ratio this option should probably be disabled as it may otherwise add quite excessive letterboxing.
Whether to use a shader to render scanlines for videos in the gamelist view. The effect is usually pretty subtle as the video is normally renderered in a limited size in the GUI and the scanlines are sized relative to the video window size.
Whether to place all folders on top of the gamelists. If enabled the folders will not be part of the quick selector index, meaning they can no longer be quick-jumped to. That is, unless there are only folders in the gamelist in which case the folders will be handled like files.
With this setting enabled, there is a star symbol added at the beginning of the game name in the gamelist views. It's strongly recommended to keep this setting enabled if the option to sort favorite games above non-favorites has been enabled. If not, favorite games would be sorted on top of the gamelist with no visual indication that they are favorites, which would be quite confusing.
**Use plain ASCII for special gamelist characters**
There are some special characters in ES-DE such as the favorites star, the folder icon and the tickmark (seen when editing custom collections) that are displayed using symbols from the bundled Font Awesome. This normally looks perfectly fine, but on some specific theme sets with very pixelated fonts such as [es-themes-snes-mini](https://github.com/ruckage/es-theme-snes-mini) and [es-themes-workbench](https://github.com/ehettervik/es-theme-workbench) these symbols look terrible. For such themes, this option is available, which will use plain ASCII characters instead of the Font Awesome symbols. For the favorites an asterisk `*` will be used, for folders a hash sign `#` will be used and for the tickmark an exclamation mark `!` will be used. This only applies to the gamelist view, in all other places in the application the Font Awesome symbols are retained. Make sure to disable this option if not using such a pixelated theme as it looks equally terrible to enable this option on themes where it's not supposed to be used.
With this option enabled, there will be an overlay displayed when scrolling the gamelists quickly, i.e. when holding down the _Up_, _Down_, _Left shoulder_ or _Right shoulder_ buttons for some time. The overlay will darken the background slightly and display the first two characters of the game names. If the game is a favorite and the setting to sort favorites above non-favorites has been enabled, a star will be shown instead.
**Enable toggle favorites button**
This setting enables the _Y_ button for quickly toggling a game as favorite. Although this may be convenient at times, it's also quite easy to accidentally remove a favorite tagging of a game when using the application more casually. As such it could sometimes make sense to disable this functionality. It's of course still possible to mark a game as favorite using the metadata editor when this setting is disabled. The option does not affect the use of the _Y_ button to add or remove games when editing custom collections.
This enables or disables the ability to jump to a random system or game. It's mapped to the thumbstick click button, either the left or right thumbstick will work. The help prompts will also visually indicate whether this option is enabled or not.
Some themes (including rbsimple-DE) display the game images briefly before playing the game videos. This setting forces the videos to be played immediately, regardless of the configuration in the theme. Note though that if there is a video available for a game, but no images, the video will always start to play immediately no matter the theme configuration or whether this settings has been enabled or not.
Settings for the media viewer that is accessible from the gamelist views.
**Keep videos running when viewing images**
With this option enabled, the video will continue to run when viewing the images for the game. If disabling this setting, the video will stop immediately when browsing to the first image, and it will restart when navigating back to the video.
**Stretch videos to screen resolution**
This will fill the entire screen surface but will probably break the aspect ratio of the video.
**Render scanlines for videos** _(OpenGL renderer only)_
Whether to use a shader to render scanlines for the videos. Be aware that this is quite demanding for the GPU.
**Render blur for videos** _(OpenGL renderer only)_
Whether to use a shader to render a slight horizontal blur which somewhat simulates a well-used CRT monitor. Be aware that this is quite demanding for the GPU.
**Render scanlines for screenshots** _(OpenGL renderer only)_
Whether to use a shader to render scanlines for the screenshot images.
After how many minutes to start the screensaver. If set to 0 minutes, the timer will be deactivated and the screensaver will never start automatically. It's however still possible to start the screensaver manually in this case, assuming the _Enable screensaver controls_ setting is enabled. While any menu is open, the screensaver will not start regardless of how this timer setting is configured.
This enables the ability to start the screensaver manually using the _Back_ button from the system view, but also while the screensaver is running to jump to a new random game using the _Left_ and _Right_ buttons, to launch the game currently shown using the _A_ button and to jump to the game in its gamelist using the _Y_ button. If this setting is disabled, any key or button press will stop the screensaver.
For how long to display images before changing to the next game. Allowed range is between 2 and 120 seconds in 2-second increments. The default value is 10 seconds.
This will display an overlay in the upper left corner, showing the game name and the game system name. A star following the game name indicates that it's flagged as a favorite.
Using this option, it's possible to use custom images instead of random images from the game library. As is the case with the rest of ES-DE, the supported file formats are JPG and PNG.
The directory for the custom images. The tilde `~` symbol can be used which will expand to the user home directory. It's also possible to use the %ESPATH% and %ROMPATH% variables which will set the directory relative to the ES-DE binary directory or the ROMs directory.
For how long to play videos before changing to the next game. Allowed range is between 0 and 120 seconds in 2-second increments. If set to 0 (which is the default value), the next game will be selected after the entire video has finished playing.
This will display an overlay in the upper left corner, showing the game name and the game system name. A star following the game name indicates that it's flagged as a favorite.
Whether to use a shader to render a slight horizontal blur which somewhat simulates a well-used CRT monitor. Be aware that this is quite demanding for the GPU.
As the name implies, this sets the overall system volume and not the volume specifically for ES-DE. The volume change is applied when leaving the sound settings menu and not immediately when moving the slider.
Enable or disable navigation sounds throughout the application. Sounds are played when browsing systems and lists, starting games, adding and removing games as favorites etc. The sounds can be customized per theme, but if the theme does not support navigation sounds, ES-DE will fall back to its built-in sounds.
Settings related to the input devices, i.e. the keyboard and controllers.
**Controller type**
This setting gives the ability to choose between the controller types _Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5_ and _SNES_ (Super Nintendo). Doing so alters the help icons and help text as well as the icons and text for the input device configurator. The setting is only cosmetic and does not change the controller behavior or the controller button mappings.
**Only accept input from first controller**
If enabling this option, only the first controller detected during startup will send its input to ES-DE. This is a good way to limit potential chaos with mutliple users fighting over which games to start. Disconnecting and reconnecting controllers while ES-DE is running may change what is considered the first controller. This setting does not affect the emulators in any way, it's only applied to ES-DE.
**Configure keyboard and controllers**
This tool provides configuration of button mappings for the keyboard and controllers, as explained [here](USERGUIDE.md#input-device-configuration). Normally this is not required as ES-DE automatically configures all input devices, but button customizations may be useful in some special situations. Be aware that custom button mappings will not change the help icons or help text.
Handles collections, which are assembled using games present in the game systems. See the [collections](USERGUIDE.md#game-collections) section below in this document for more information.
If the theme set in use provides themes for custom collections, then this entry can be selected. For example, there could be themes for _"Fighting games"_ or _"Driving games"_ etc. The default rbsimple-DE theme set does not provide such themes for custom collections and in general it's not recommended to use this approach, as is explained [later](USERGUIDE.md#custom-collections) in this guide.
This permanently deletes a custom collection, including its configuration file on the file system. A list of available collections is shown, and a confirmation dialog is displayed before performing the actual deletion. Only one collection at a time can be deleted.
Whether to sort your favorite games above your other games. This is disabled by default, as for collections you probably want to be able to mix all games regardless of whether they are favorites or not.
With this option enabled, there is a star marking added to each favorite game name. It works identically to the setting _Add star markings to favorite games_ under the _UI settings_ menu but is applied specifically to custom collections. It's disabled by default.
With this enabled, if you have created custom collections and there is no theme support for the names you've selected, the collections will be grouped in a general collection system which is correctly themed. It's strongly recommended to keep this option enabled as otherwise your collections would be completely unthemed which doesn't make much sense. This option is provided mostly for testing and theme development purposes.
Enables the system name to be shown in square brackets after the game name, for example _CONTRA [NES]_ or _DOOM [DOS]_. This is applied to both automatic and custom collections. It's recommended to keep this option enabled.
The amount of video RAM to use for the application. Defaults to 256 MiB (80 MiB on the Raspberry Pi) which works fine most of the time when running at 1080p resolution and with a moderate amount of game systems. If running at 4K resolution or similar and with lots of game systems enabled, it's recommended to increase this number to 512 MiB or possibly more to avoid stuttering transition animations caused by unloading and loading of textures from the cache. Enabling the GPU statistics overlay gives some indications regarding the amount of texture memory currently used by ES-DE, which is helpful to determine a reasonable value for this option. The allowed range for the settings is 80 to 1024 MiB. If you try to set it lower or higher than this by passing such values as command line parameters or by editing the es_settings.xml file manually, ES-DE will log a warning and automatically adjust the value within the allowable range.
This option sets the display to use for ES-DE for multi-monitor setups. The possible values are the monitor index numbers 1, 2, 3 or 4. If a value is set here for a display that does not actually exist, then ES-DE will set it to 1 upon startup. Index 1 is the primary display for the computer. It's also possible to override the setting by passing the --display command line argument. Doing so will also overwrite the display index setting in es_settings.xml. The Display/monitor index option only changes the display used by ES-DE; the emulators need to be configured separately (which can easily be done globally if using RetroArch).
This gives you a choice between _Normal_ and _Borderless_ modes. With the borderless being more seamless as the ES-DE window will always stay on top of other windows so the taskbar will not be visible when launching and returning from games. It will however break the alt-tab application switching of your window manager. For normal fullscreen mode, if a lower resolution than the screen resolution has been set via the --resolution command line argument, ES-DE will render in full screen at the lower resolution. If a higher resolution than the screen resolution has been set, ES-DE will run in a window. For the borderless mode, any changes to the resolution will make ES-DE run in a window.
**Video player** _(Only on some builds and operating systems)_
This gives the choice between FFmpeg and VLC, which is applied to the gamelist videos, the media viewer and the video screensaver. The VLC video player is not included on some builds. If this option is not available in the menu, it means that the FFmpeg video player is in use.
The metadata for a game is updated by scraping or by manual editing using the metadata editor, but also when launching it as this updates the _Times played_ counter and the _Last played_ timestamp. This setting enables you to define when to write such metadata changes to the gamelist.xml files. Setting the option to _Never_ will disable writing to these files altogether, except for some special conditions such as when a game is manually deleted using the metadata editor, or when scraping using the multi-scraper (the multi-scraper will always save any updates immediately to the gamelist.xml files). In theory _On exit_ will give some performance gains, but it's normally recommended to leave the setting at its default value which is _Always_. Note that with the settings set to _Never_, any updates such as the _Last played_ date will still be shown on screen, but during the next application startup, any values previously saved to the gamelist.xml files will be read in again. As well, when changing this setting to _Always_ from either of the two other options, any pending changes will be immediately written to the gamelist.xml files.
With this setting enabled, the taskbar will be hidden when launching ES-DE, and it will be restored when the application exits. This can make for a more seamless experience as the taskbar could otherwise flash by briefly when launching and when returning from games. But it can potentially cause issues on some Windows installations so it's disabled by default.
Enabling this option makes ES-DE continue to run while a game is launched. This is normally not recommended as it leads to a slightly strange application behavior and also removes the ability to capture return codes and log output from the emulators. But with some graphics drivers on Windows this may be a suitable workaround if there are problems launching games (also see the next option below). Note that launching Steam games on all supported operating systems always makes ES-DE continue to run in the background for technical reasons.
**AMD and Intel GPU game launch workaround** _(Windows only)_
There is an issue with launching games on some Windows computers, seemingly on those with AMD and Intel GPUs. The emulator will start and work correctly, but the screen will be blank. Enabling this option is a workaround for that problem, with the drawback that the screen will become white instead of black when the emulator is loading. This option is enabled by default, so experiment with disabling it for a slightly better experience. If you're using an Nvidia GPU, chances are high that it will then work fine. An alternative workaround is to enable the _Run in background (while game is launched)_ option described above, so test which gives the best result. The two options can however not be enabled at the same time. Hopefully this whole game launching issue can be resolved completely in a future ES-DE release.
Enabling this option offloads video decoding to the GPU. Whether this actually increases performance is another matter. As desktop-class CPUs are very capable of decoding the video streams directly, the performance may actually get worse as hardware decoding requires data to be passed back and forth between the CPU and GPU. This potential degradation is especially true for integrated GPUs, and even more so if the GPU is heavily utilized. In addition to this, most GPUs can only decode a subset of video codecs and profiles, meaning ES-DE will anyway have to fallback to software decoding when the GPU is unable to process the stream. With that said, there are still situations where hardware decoding can help, so experiment with the setting to see if it's useful for your configuration. Unfortunately hardware decoding for the FFmpeg video player is not supported on the Raspberry Pi and it will probably stay this way unless FFmpeg starts to support the MMAL decoder internally. For this device the VLC-based video player can be used instead, which supports hardware decoding.
**Upscale video frame rate to 60 FPS (FFmpeg)**
With this option enabled, videos with lower frame rates than 60 FPS, such as 24 and 30 will get upscaled to 60 FPS. This results in slightly smoother playback for some videos. There is a small performance hit from this option, so on weaker machines it may be necessary to disable it for fluent video playback. This setting has no effect when using the VLC video player. If the VLC video player is not included in the ES-DE build, the "(FFmpeg)" text is omitted from the setting name.
If enabled, you can override the launch command defined in es_systems.xml on a per-game basis using the metadata editor. It's only recommended to disable this option for testing purposes, such as when a game won't start and you're unsure if it's your custom launch command that causes the problem.
If this option is disabled, hidden files and folders within the ROMs directory tree are excluded from ES-DE. On Unix this means those starting with a dot, and on Windows it's those set as hidden by using an NTFS attribute. This setting is only intended for special situations and is not to be confused with the next option which hides files based on metadata configuration within ES-DE.
It's possible to trigger custom scripts for a number of actions in ES-DE, as is discussed [below](USERGUIDE.md#custom-event-scripts), and this setting decides whether this functionality is enabled. It's recommended to leave it at its default off value unless you need it as it otherwise generates unnecessary debug logging.
If enabled, only ROMs that have metadata saved to the gamelist.xml files will be shown in ES-DE. This option is intended primarily for testing and debugging purposes so it should normally not be enabled.
The window manager desktop composition can adversely affect the framerate of ES-DE, especially on weaker graphic cards and when running at higher resolution. As such the desktop compositor is disabled by default, although the window manager has to be configured to allow applications to do this for the option to have any effect. Note that this setting can cause problems with some graphic drivers (notably the Nvidia proprietary drivers) so if you see strange flickering and similar after quitting ES-DE, then disable the setting. In case of such issues, make sure that the emulator is also not blocking the composition (e.g. RetroArch has a corresponding option).
Displays the framerate and VRAM statistics as an overlay. You normally never need to use this unless you're debugging a performance problem or similar. **Note:** As of ES-DE v1.1 the VRAM usage statistics is not accurate. This will be addressed in a future version.
Enabling or disabling the menu when the UI mode is set to Kid. Mostly intended for testing purposes as it's not recommended to enable the menu in this restricted mode.
With this setting enabled, there is a Quit menu shown as the last entry on the main menu which provides options to quit ES-DE, to reboot the computer or to power off the computer. With this setting disabled, there will simply be an entry to quit the application instead of the complete quit menu.
If the option _When to save game metadata_ has been set to _On exit_, the gamelist.xml files will be updated at this point. This of course also applies if the Quit menu is disabled and replaced by the _Quit EmulationStation_ entry.
This menu is opened from the gamelist view, and can't be accessed from the system view. The menu changes slightly depending on the context, for example if a game file or a folder is selected, or whether the current system is a collection or a normal game platform.
You open the menu using the **Back** button, and by pressing **B** or selecting the **Apply** button any settings such as letter jumping using the quick selector or sorting changes are applied. If you instead press the Back button again or select the **Cancel** button, the menu is closed without applying any changes.
_The game options menu as laid out when opening it from within a custom collection, which adds the menu entry to add or remove games from the collection._
This provides a quick selector for jumping to a certain letter. If the setting to sort favorite games above non-favorites has been enabled, then it's also possible to jump to the favorites games by choosing the star symbol. Similarly if there is a mix of folders and game files in the system and folders are configured to be sorted on top, then it's possible to jump to the folders using the folder icon. If there are only folders or only favorite games for the system, these games and folders will be indexed by their first letters and the star and folder symbols will be disabled in the quick selector.
This is the sort order for the gamelist. The default sorting shown here is taken from the setting **Default sort order** under **UI settings** in the main menu. Any sorting that is applied via the game options menu will be persistent throughout the program session, and it can be set individually per game system and per collection.
Sorting can be applied using the following metadata, in either ascending or descending order:
Choosing this entry opens a separate screen where it's possible to apply a filter to the gamelist. The filter is persistent throughout the program session, or until it's manually reset. The option to reset all filters is shown on the same screen.
With the exception of the text filter, all available filter values are assembled from metadata from the actual gamelist, so if there for instance are no games marked as completed, the Completed filter will only have the selectable option False, i.e. True will be missing.
Be aware that although folders can have most of the metadata values set, the filters are only applied to files (this is also true for the text/game name filter). So if you for example set a filter to only display your favorite games, any folder that contains a favorite game will be displayed, and other folders which are themselves marked as favorites but that do not contain any favorite games will be hidden.
This entry is only shown if the system is a custom collection. The way this works is described in more detail [below](USERGUIDE.md#custom-collections).
In the metadata editor, you can modify the metadata, scrape for game info and media files, clear the entry which will delete all metadata and game media files, or delete the entire game which also removes its file on the filesystem. When manually modifying a value, it will change color from gray to blue, and if the scraper has changed a value, it will change to red. When leaving the metadata editor you will be asked whether you want to save any settings done manually or by the scraper.
This entry makes it possible to change the sorting of a game without having to change its name. For instance it can be used to sort _Mille Miglia_ as _1000 Miglia_ or _The Punisher_ as _Punisher, The_. Note that the _Jump to..._ quick selector on the game options menu will base its index on the first character of the sortname if it exists for a game, which could be slightly confusing in some instances when quick jumping in the gamelist.
Rating in half-star increments. This can be set as such manually or it can be scraped, assuming the scraper service provides ratings (currently only ScreenScraper does). If an external scraper application such as [Skyscraper](https://github.com/muldjord/skyscraper) has been used that may set the ratings in fractional values such as three-quarter stars, then ES-DE will round them to the nearest half-star. When this happens, the rating stars will be colored green to notify that a rounding has taken place and a question will be asked whether to save the changes even if no other manual changes were performed.
A flag to indicate whether this is a favorite game. This flag can also be set directly from the gamelist view by using the _Y_ button (assuming the _Enable toggle favorites buttom_ option is enabled).
Here you can override the launch command for the game, for example to use a different emulator than the default one defined for the game system. Very useful for MAME/arcade games.
A statistics counter that tracks how many times you have played the game. You normally don't need to touch this, but if you want to, the possibility is there.
For game files, there will be five buttons displayed on the bottom of the metadata editor window, and for folders there will be four. These are their functions:
This will remove any media files for the file or folder and also remove its entry from the gamelist.xml file, effectively deleting all metadata. The actual game file or folder will however _not_ be deleted. A prompt will be shown asking for confirmation.
This will remove the actual game file, its gamelist.xml entry, its entry in any custom collections and its media files. A prompt will be shown asking for confirmation. The deletion of folders is not supported as that would potentially be a bit dangerous, instead use the appropriate operating system tools to handle deletion of folders.
The game media viewer displays videos and images in fullscreen mode and is launched from the gamelist view by pressing the _X_ button.
If a game video is available, this will be played automatically when launching the viewer. The _left_ and _right_ buttons are used to navigate betweeen the game media files. By default the video will continue to play when browsing the images, but this can be changed with a setting as described earlier in this document.
The other settings for the media viewer are similar to what is available for the screensavers; the audio can be enabled or disabled, the video can be stretched to fill the entire screen and scanlines and blur can be rendered on top of it. For screenshots, scanlines can be rendered. All these options are configurable via the _UI Settings_ menu.
Pressing any other button than _left_ or _right_ closes the media viewer.
The Dim screensaver simply dims and desaturates the current view and Black will show a black screen. The Slideshow and Video screensavers are more interesting as they can display images and videos from your game collection. In addition to this, the Slideshow screensaver can be configured to only show images from a specified directory.
If the option **Enable screensaver controls** has been activated, you can manually toggle the screensaver from the system view by pressing the **Back** button. In addition to this, for the Slideshow and Video screensavers, the controls will allow you to jump to a new random image or video by using the **Left** and **Right** buttons on your keyboard or controller. It's also possible to launch the game currently displayed using the **A** button, and the **Y** button will jump to the game in its gamelist without starting it.
For the video and slideshow screensavers, an overlay can be enabled via the screensaver options that displays the game name and the game system as well as a star if the game is marked as a favorite.
If the Video screensaver has been selected and there are no videos available, a fallback to the Dim screensaver will take place. The same is true for the Slideshow screensaver if no game images are available.
ES-DE provides two types of collections, **Automatic collections** and **Custom collections**, the latter being defined by the user. Collections are as the name implies only collections of games already present in your actual game systems, so they're basically grouping of games into convenient views. As such the use of collections is entirely optional, but especially the custom collection support is a very nice feature which is worth some effort to setup.
The automatic collections are named **All games**, **Favorites** and **Last played**. The _All games_ collection simply groups all your game systems into one big list, _Favorites_ combines all your games marked as favorites from all your game systems, and _Last played_ is a list of the 50 last games you have launched.
These automatic collections can be individually enabled or disabled by going to the main menu, selecting **Game collection settings** and then **Automatic game collections**.
Note that you should only enable these collections if you really need them as they slow down the application quite a bit. By default these collections are therefore disabled.
These are collections that you create yourself. Examples could be grouping in genres like `Shoot em up`, `Fighting games` etc. or perhaps a time period like `1980s`, `1990s` and so on.
If the theme set supports it, you can create a custom collection directly from a theme. However, rbsimple-DE does not provide such themes as it's believed that grouping them together in a dedicated Collections system is a more elegant solution. Especially since the theme set would need to ship with an almost endless amount of collection themes for whatever categories the users would like to use for their game collections.
So if you have enabled the option **Group unthemed custom collections** (it's enabled by default), any collections you add will show up in the special Collections system. Here you can access them just as you would access folders inside a regular gamelist. The amount of games per collection is shown in the description, and a random game is displayed each time you browse through the list (you can also quick jump to this random game by pressing the **Y** button).
The collection will now be created and the collection edit mode will be entered. You can now add games to the collection by navigating to any gamelist and pressing the **Y** button. Any number of games from any of your game systems can be added. A game can also be part of multiple collections, there is no real limit for this in ES-DE.
Removing games works the same way, just press **Y** to remove it if it's already present in your collection. You can do this either from the gamelist where the game was added, or from the collection itself.
When you are done adding games, you can either open the main menu and go to **Game collection settings** and select the **Finish editing 'Platform' collection** or you can open the game options menu and select the same option there. The latter works from within any game system, so you don't need to first navigate back to the collection that you're editing.
You can later add additional games to the collection by navigating to it, bringing up the game options menu and choosing **Add/remove games to this game collection**.
The way that custom collections are implemented is very simple. There is a single configuration file per collection inside the folder `~/.emulationstation/collections`
Any changes to custom collections (for example adding or removing a game) will be immediately written to the corresponding collection configuration file.
If you copy or migrate a collection from a previous version of EmulationStation or if you're setting up ES-DE on a new computer, the collection will not be enabled by just copying its configuration file to the `~/.emulationstation/collections` directory. You always need to explicitly enable each collection via the menu.
If you're migrating from a previous version of EmulationStation that has absolute paths in the collection files, these will be rewritten with the %ROMPATH% variable the first time you make a change to the collection.
ES-DE is fully themeable, and although the application ships with the comprehensive rbsimple-DE theme set, you can replace it with a number of themes available from various locations on the Internet.
Somewhat confusingly the terms _theme_ and _theme set_ are used to refer to the same thing. The technically correct term for what you apply to the application to achieve a different look is actually _theme set_ as it's a collection of a number of themes for a number of game systems. The bundled rbsimple-DE is an example of such a theme set. But in this guide and in other EmulationStation resources on the Internet, the term theme is often used to refer to the same thing as a theme set.
Note that the Desktop Edition fork has added additional features to the themes and more still will be added in future versions. This means that you may not get the full benefits of the application if you're using a different theme set which has not been updated specifically for ES-DE. But effort is spent trying to make ES-DE backward compatible with the available themes used by other EmulationStation versions. The exception to this are some themes made for the Recalbox and Batocera forks as they have added a lot of additional theme functionality that ES-DE does not support.
Themes are most easily installed to your ES-DE home directory, i.e. `~/.emulationstation/themes`. By just adding the theme sets there, one folder each, they will be found during startup and you can then choose between them via the UI Settings menu on the main menu.
Although you can put additional themes in your ES-DE home directory, the default rbsimple-DE theme is located in your installation folder. For example this could be `/usr/share/emulationstation/themes` or `/usr/local/share/emulationstation/themes` on Unix, `/Applications/EmulationStation Desktop Edition.app/Contents/Resources/themes` on macOS or `C:\Program Files\EmulationStation-DE\themes` on Windows.
If you would like to customize the rbsimple-DE theme, simply make a copy of the complete rbsimple-DE directory to ~/.emulationstation/themes and then that copy of the theme will take precedence over the one in the application installation directory.
In this example, we've downloaded the [Carbon](https://github.com/RetroPie/es-theme-carbon) and [Fundamental](https://github.com/G-rila/es-theme-fundamental) themes and uncompressed them to the ES-DE home directory:
There are numerous locations throughout ES-DE where custom scripts will be executed if the option to do so has been enabled in the settings. By default it's deactivated so be sure to enable it to use this feature.
On Windows, ES-DE can be installed to and run from a removable media device such as a USB memory stick. Together with games and emulators this makes for a fully portable retro gaming solution. The setup is somewhat technical, refer to [INSTALL.md](INSTALL.md#portable-installation-on-windows) to see how it's done.
**Note:** The following list is what the default es_systems.xml files and the rbsimple-DE theme supports. This theme set is very comprehensive, so if you're using another theme, it may be that some or many of these systems are not supported. ES-DE will still work but the game system will unthemed which looks very ugly.
Note as well that the list and corresponding es_systems.xml templates may not reflect what is readily available for all supported operating system. This is especially true on Unix/Linux if installing RetroArch via the OS repository instead of using the Snap or Flatpak distributions (or compiling from source code) as the repository versions are normally quite crippled.
Regional differences are handled by simply using the game system name corresponding to your region. For example for Sega Mega Drive, _megadrive_ would be used by most people in the world, although persons from North America would use _genesis_ instead. The same is true for _pcengine_ vs _tg16_ etc. This only affects the theme selection and the corresponding theme graphics, the same emulator and scraper settings are still used for the regional variants although that can of course be modified in the es_systems.xml file if you wish.
Sometimes the name of the console is (more or less) the same for multiple regions, and in those cases the region has been added as a suffix to the game system name. For instance `na` for North America has been added to `snes` (Super Nintendo) giving the system name `snesna`. The same goes for Japan, as in `megacd` and `megacdjp`. Again, this only affects the theme and theme graphics.
The **Default emulator** column shows the emulator configured in es_systems.xml, and for emulators that support multiple cores, the configured core is shown inside brackets. Any system marked with an asterisk (*) in this column requires additional system/BIOS ROMs to run, as should be explained in the emulator documentation.
For additional details regarding which game file extensions are supported per system, refer to the es_systems.xml files [unix/es_systems.xml](resources/systems/unix/es_systems.xml), [macos/es_systems.xml](resources/systems/macos/es_systems.xml) and [windows/es_systems.xml](resources/systems/windows/es_systems.xml). Normally the extensions setup in these files should cover everything that the emulators support.
If you generated the ROMs directory structure when first starting ES-DE, the systeminfo.txt files located in each game system directory will also contain the information about the emulator core and supported file extensions.
MAME emulation is a bit special as the choice of emulator or core depends on which ROM set you're using. It's recommended to go for the latest available set, as MAME is constantly improved with more complete and accurate emulation. Therefore the default `arcade` system is preconfigured to use the RetroArch core _MAME - Current_ which as the name implies will be the latest available MAME version. For really slow computers though, the 0.78 ROM set is a popular choice. To use this you either need to make a customized es_systems.xml file, or you can use the `mame` system which comes preconfigured for the RetroArch core _MAME 2003-Plus_ that is compatible with the 0.78 ROM set. There are other alternatives as well such as _MAME 2010_ that uses the 0.139 ROM set but this is generally not recommended.
There are other MAME versions and derivates available as well such as MAME4ALL, AdvanceMAME, FinalBurn Alpha and FinalBurn Neo but it's beyond the scope of this document to describe those in detail. For more information, refer to the [RetroPie arcade documentation](https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Arcade) which has a good overview of the various MAME alternatives.
| amiga | Commodore Amiga | RetroArch (P-UAE)* | WHDLoad hard disk image in .hdf or .hdz format in root folder, or diskette image in .adf format in root folder if single-disk, or in separate folder with .m3u playlist if multi-disc |
| amiga600 | Commodore Amiga 600 | RetroArch (P-UAE)* | WHDLoad hard disk image in .hdf or .hdz format in root folder, or diskette image in .adf format in root folder if single-disk, or in separate folder with .m3u playlist if multi-disc |
| amiga1200 | Commodore Amiga 1200 | RetroArch (P-UAE)* | WHDLoad hard disk image in .hdf or .hdz format in root folder, or diskette image in .adf format in root folder if single-disk, or in separate folder with .m3u playlist if multi-disc |
