EmulationStation

A graphical front-end for emulators with controller navigation. Developed both on and for the Raspbery Pi. Intended for use with RetroArch, but it can easily be used with other emulators.

RetroArch for the Raspberry Pi can be found here: https://github.com/ToadKing/RetroArch-Rpi I'm not associated with RetroArch in any way!

A cool guy named petrockblog made a script which automatically installs RetroArch, its cores, 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

Building

On the Raspberry Pi:

EmulationStation has a few dependencies. For building, you'll need SDL 1.2, SDL_mixer, FreeImage, FreeType, and Boost.Filesystem, which can easily be obtained with apt-get:

sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2-dev libboost-filesystem-dev libfreeimage-dev libfreetype6-dev libsdl-mixer1.2-dev

There are also a few libraries already on the RPi (located in /opt/vc/, like the Broadcom libraries, EGL, and GLES). You can build EmulationStation by simply running make.

On something else:

EmulationStation can also be built on a "normal" Linux system. You'll need the same libraries listed above:

sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2-dev libboost-filesystem-dev libfreeimage-dev libfreetype6-dev libsdl-mixer1.2-dev

You'll also need OpenGL. I don't know the proper package name, but you'll need /usr/include/GL/gl.h and libGL. You probably already have it. You can build with make -f Makefile.x86 (badly named Makefile, I know).

Configuring

~/.emulationstation/es_systems.cfg: 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. Keep in mind you can define more than one system! Just use all the variables again. Also, you can use multiple extensions - just separate them with a space, e.g.: ".nes .NES .bin".

If an SDL Joystick is detected at startup, and $HOME/.emulationstation/es_input.cfg is nonexistant, an Input Configuration screen will appear instead of the game list. This should be pretty self-explanatory. If you want to reconfigure, just delete $HOME/.emulationstation/es_input.cfg.

Mappings will always be applied to the SDL joystick at index 0. An Xbox 360 controller with the xboxdrv driver was tested. POV hats are automatically mapped to directions (so if you're not using an analog stick, you'll need to skip mapping Up/Down/Left/Right by pressing a keyboard key).

Keep in mind you'll have to set up your emulator separately from EmulationStation. If you're using RetroArch, a handy input config generation tool can be found in the tools/ subdirectory - you can use it with retroarch-joyconfig -o ~/.retroarch.cfg or something similar. You may need to tell RetroArch to load this config file with -c ~/.retroarch.cfg in your RetroArch launch commands.

EmulationStation will return once your system's command terminates (i.e. your emulator closes). To close EmulationStation itself, you can press the F4 key on the keyboard. You can also press F1 to open a menu allowing you to shutdown or restart the system.

gamelist.xml

If a file named gamelist.xml is found in the root of a system's search directory, it will be parsed and the detailed GuiGameList will be used. This means you can define images, descriptions, and different names for files. Note that only standard ASCII characters are supported (if you see a weird [X] symbol, you're probably using unicode!). Images will be automatically resized to fit within the left column of the screen. Smaller images will load faster, so try to keep your resolution low. An example gamelist.xml:

<gameList>
	<game>
		<path>/home/pi/ROMs/nes/mm2.nes</path>
		<name>Mega Man 2</name>
		<desc>Mega Man 2 is a classic NES game which follows Mega Man as he murders eight robot masters.</desc>
		<image>/home/pi/Screenshots/megaman2.png</image>
	</game>
</gameList>

The path element should be the absolute path of the ROM. Special characters SHOULD NOT be escaped. The image element is the absolute path to an image to display above the description (like a screenshot or boxart). Most formats can be used (including png, jpg, gif, etc.). Not all elements need to be used.

The switch --gamelist-only can be used to skip automatic searching, and only display games defined in the system's gamelist.xml.

Making a gamelist.xml by hand sucks, so a cool guy named Pendor made a python script which automatically generates a gamelist.xml for you, with boxart automatically downloaded. I highly recommend it. It can be found here: https://github.com/elpendor/ES-scraper

Themes

By default, EmulationStation looks pretty ugly. You can fix that. If you want to know more, read THEMES.md!

-Aloshi http://www.aloshi.com