A cool guy named petrockblog made a script which automatically installs many emulators and ES. It also includes options for configuring your RPi and setting it up to boot directly into ES. You can find it here: https://github.com/petrockblog/RetroPie-Setup
- First, try to check the [issue list](https://github.com/Aloshi/EmulationStation/issues?state=open) for some entries that might match your problem. Make sure to check closed issues too!
- If you're running EmulationStation on a on Raspberry Pi and have problems with config file changes not taking effect, content missing after editing, etc., check if your SD card is corrupted (see issues [#78](https://github.com/Aloshi/EmulationStation/issues/78) and [#107](https://github.com/Aloshi/EmulationStation/issues/107)). You can do this with free tools like [h2testw](http://www.heise.de/download/h2testw.html) or [F3](http://oss.digirati.com.br/f3/).
- Try to update to the latest version of EmulationStation using git (you might need to delete your `es_input.cfg` and `es_settings.cfg` after that to reset them to default values):
- If your problem still isn't gone, the best way to report a bug is to post an issue on GitHub. Try to post the simplest steps possible to reproduce the bug. Include files you think might be related (except for ROMs, of course). If you haven't re-run ES since the crash, the log file `~/.emulationstation/es_log.txt` is also helpful.
EmulationStation uses some C++11 code, which means you'll need to install at least g++-4.7 on Linux, or VS2010 on Windows.
For installing and switching to g++-4.7 see [here](http://lektiondestages.blogspot.de/2013/05/installing-and-switching-gccg-versions.html). You can also just use `export CXX=g++-4.7` to explicitly specify the compiler for CMake (make sure you delete your CMake cache files if it's not working).
On the Raspberry Pi, there are also a few special libraries, located in /opt/vc/: the Broadcom libraries, libEGL, and GLES. You shouldn't need to install them; they are used by the Raspberry Pi port of SDL 2.
(If you don't know how to use CMake, here are some hints: run cmake-gui and point it at your EmulationStation folder. Point the "build" directory somewhere - I use EmulationStation/build. Click configure, choose "Visual Studio [year] Project", fill in red fields as they appear and keep clicking Configure, then click Generate.)
When first run, an example systems configuration file will be created at $HOME/.emulationstation/es_systems.cfg. This example has some comments explaining how to write the configuration file, and an example RetroArch launch command. See the "Writing an es_systems.cfg" section for more information.
**Both new and old devices can be (re)configured at any time by pressing the Start button and choosing "CONFIGURE INPUT".** From here, you may unplug the device you used to open the menu and plug in a new one, if necessary. New devices will be appended to the existing input configuration file, so your old devices will remain configured.
**If things stop working, you can delete the `~/.emulationstation/es_input.cfg` file to make the input configuration screen reappear on next run.**
The `es_systems.cfg` file contains the system configuration data for EmulationStation, written in XML. This tells EmulationStation what systems you have, what platform they correspond to (for scraping), and where the games are located.
ES will check two places for an es_systems.cfg file, in the following order:
`%BASENAME%` - Replaced with the "base" name of the path to the selected ROM. For example, a path of "/foo/bar.rom", this tag would be "bar". This tag is useful for setting up AdvanceMAME.
`%ROM_RAW%` - Replaced with the unescaped absolute path to the selected ROM. If your emulator is picky about paths, you might want to use this instead of %ROM%, but enclosed in quotes.
The gamelist.xml for a system defines metadata for a system's games, such as a name, image (like a screenshot or box art), description, release date, and rating.
This file allows you to define images, descriptions, and different names for files. Note that only standard ASCII characters are supported for text (if you see a weird [X] symbol, you're probably using Unicode!).
The path element should be either the absolute path of the ROM, or a path relative to the system games folder that starts with "./". For example:
`<path>/home/pi/ROMs/nes/mm2.nes</path>`
or
`<path>./mm2.nes</path>`
ES will attempt to encode paths as relative to the system's `path` setting whenever it writes a gamelist.xml. Special characters SHOULD NOT be escaped. The image element is the path to an image to display above the description (like a screenshot or boxart). Most popular image formats can be used (png, jpg, gif, etc.). Not all elements need to be used.
The switch `--ignore-gamelist` can be used to ignore the gamelist and force ES to use the non-detailed view.
*You can use ES's [scraping](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping) tools to avoid creating a gamelist.xml by hand.* There are two ways to run the scraper:
* **If you want to scrape multiple games:** press start to open the menu and choose the "SCRAPER" option. Adjust your settings and press "SCRAPE NOW".
* **If you just want to scrape one game:** find the game on the game list in ES and press select. Choose "EDIT THIS GAME'S METADATA" and then press the "SCRAPE" button at the bottom of the metadata editor.
You can also edit metadata within ES by using the metadata editor - just find the game you wish to edit on the gamelist, press select, and choose "EDIT THIS GAME'S METADATA."
If you're writing a tool to generate gamelist.xml files, you can see the complete list of possible elements at the top of `src/MetaData.cpp`.
By default, EmulationStation looks pretty ugly. You can fix that. If you want to know more about making your own themes (or editing existing ones), read THEMES.md!
