EmulationStation Desktop Edition

EmulationStation Desktop Edition is a cross-platform graphical front-end for emulators with controller and keyboard navigation.

This is a fork intended for use on desktop computers rather than devices such as a Raspberry Pi. It's specifically intended to be used with RetroArch, but it's certainly possible to configure the software to be used with other emulators.

It's based on the RetroPie fork with some functionality ported from the Batocera fork. New and hopefully useful functionality has also been added.

As it's intended for RetroArch and for usage on desktop computers, there has been no effort spent on trying to create advanced emulator or system configuration tools in the frontend, it's better to let the emulator itself handle that. Rather the goal is to keep the code as clean and fast as possible and to avoid bloat.

The following changes and improvements have been made as of the fork from retropie-emulationstation v2.9.1:

• GUI-configurable ability to put favorite games on the top of the game lists
• Favorites marked with stars in the game lists
• Full navigation sound support, configurable per theme (seven different sounds can be defined)
• Seamless (almost) launch of games without showing the desktop when starting and returning from RetroArch or other emulators
• A GUI-configurable choice between normal fullscreen and borderless fullscreen mode (the latter disables alt-tab switching but is more seamless)
• GUI options to disable menu entries for system reboot and system power off (normally not required on a desktop computer and accidents do happen!)
• Default theme es-theme-rbsimple-DE based on Recalbox Multi, but greatly simplified and in my opinion improved
• Two other themes, es-theme-carbon-DE and es-theme-fundamental-DE fully updated with the functionality from this Desktop Edition fork
• All required fonts are now bundled with the software so that it's not necessary to install them separately in the operating system
• Preconfigured for use with RetroArch, although you may want to modify the core settings if you prefer alternatives to the emulators configured

Building

EmulationStation uses some C++11 code, which means you'll need to use at least g++-4.7 on Linux, or VS2010 on Windows, to compile.

EmulationStation has a few dependencies. For building, you'll need CMake, SDL2, FreeImage, FreeType, cURL and RapidJSON.

On Debian/Ubuntu: All of this be easily installed with apt-get:

sudo apt-get install libsdl2-dev libfreeimage-dev libfreetype6-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev rapidjson-dev \
  libasound2-dev libgl1-mesa-dev build-essential cmake fonts-droid-fallback libvlc-dev \
  libvlccore-dev vlc-bin

On Fedora: All of this be easily installed with dnf (with rpmfusion activated) :

sudo dnf install SDL2-devel freeimage-devel freetype-devel curl-devel \
  alsa-lib-devel mesa-libGL-devel cmake \
  vlc-devel rapidjson-devel 

Note this Repository uses a git submodule - to checkout the source and all submodules, use

git clone --recursive https://github.com/RetroPie/EmulationStation.git

or

git clone https://github.com/RetroPie/EmulationStation.git
cd EmulationStation
git submodule update --init

Then, generate and build the Makefile with CMake:

cd YourEmulationStationDirectory
cmake .
make

NOTE: to generate a Debug build on Unix/Linux, run the Makefile generation step as:

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug .

On the Raspberry Pi:

Complete Raspberry Pi build instructions at emulationstation.org.

On Windows:

FreeImage

FreeType2 (you'll need to compile)

SDL2

cURL (you'll need to compile or get the pre-compiled DLL version)

RapisJSON (you'll need the include/rapidsjon added to the include path)

(Remember to copy necessary .DLLs into the same folder as the executable: probably FreeImage.dll, freetype6.dll, SDL2.dll, libcurl.dll, and zlib1.dll. Exact list depends on if you built your libraries in "static" mode or not.)

CMake (this is used for generating the Visual Studio project)

(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 (you may need to check "Advanced"), then click Generate.)

Configuring

~/.emulationstation/es_systems.cfg: When first run, an example systems configuration file will be created at ~/.emulationstation/es_systems.cfg. ~ is $HOME on Linux, and %HOMEPATH% on Windows. This example has some comments explaining how to write the configuration file. See the "Writing an es_systems.cfg" section for more information.

Keep in mind you'll have to set up your emulator separately from EmulationStation!

~/.emulationstation/es_input.cfg: When you first start EmulationStation, you will be prompted to configure an input device. The process is thus:

1. Hold a button on the device you want to configure. This includes the keyboard.

2. Press the buttons as they appear in the list. Some inputs can be skipped by holding any button down for a few seconds (e.g. page up/page down).

3. You can review your mappings by pressing up and down, making any changes by pressing A.

4. Choose "SAVE" to save this device and close the input configuration screen.

The new configuration will be added to the ~/.emulationstation/es_input.cfg file.

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 your controller stops working, you can delete the ~/.emulationstation/es_input.cfg file to make the input configuration screen re-appear on next run.

You can use --help or -h to view a list of command-line options. Briefly outlined here:

--resolution [width] [height]   Try and force a particular resolution
--gamelist-only                 Skip automatic game search, only read from gamelist.xml
--ignore-gamelist               Ignore the gamelist (useful for troubleshooting)
--draw-framerate                Display the framerate
--no-exit                       Don't show the exit option in the menu
--no-splash                     Don't show the splash screen
--debug                         More logging, show console on Windows
--scrape                        Scrape using command line interface
--windowed                      Not fullscreen, should be used with --resolution
--fullscreen-normal             Run in normal fullscreen mode
--fullscreen-borderless         Run in borderless fullscreen mode (always on top)
--vsync [1/on or 0/off]         Turn vsync on or off (default is on)
--max-vram [size]               Max VRAM to use in Mb before swapping. 0 for unlimited
--force-kid                     Force the UI mode to be Kid
--force-kiosk                   Force the UI mode to be Kiosk
--force-disable-filters         Force the UI to ignore applied filters in gamelist
--home [path]                   Directory to use as home path
--help, -h                      Summon a sentient, angry tuba

As long as ES hasn't frozen, you can always press F4 to close the application.

Writing an es_systems.cfg

Complete configuration instructions at emulationstation.org.

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, stopping after it finds one that works:

• ~/.emulationstation/es_systems.cfg
• /etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg

The order EmulationStation displays systems reflects the order you define them in.

NOTE: A system must have at least one game present in its "path" directory, or ES will ignore it! If no valid systems are found, ES will report an error and quit!

Here's an example es_systems.cfg:

<!-- This is the EmulationStation Systems configuration file.
All systems must be contained within the <systemList> tag.-->

<systemList>
	<!-- Here's an example system to get you started. -->
	<system>
		<!-- A short name, used internally. -->
		<name>snes</name>

		<!-- A "pretty" name, displayed in the menus and such. This one is optional. -->
		<fullname>Super Nintendo Entertainment System</fullname>

		<!-- The path to start searching for ROMs in. '~' will be expanded to $HOME or %HOMEPATH%, depending on platform.
		All subdirectories (and non-recursive links) will be included. -->
		<path>~/roms/snes</path>

		<!-- A list of extensions to search for, delimited by any of the whitespace characters (", \r\n\t").
		You MUST include the period at the start of the extension! It's also case sensitive. -->
		<extension>.smc .sfc .SMC .SFC</extension>

		<!-- The shell command executed when a game is selected. A few special tags are replaced if found in a command, like %ROM% (see below). -->
		<command>snesemulator %ROM%</command>
		<!-- This example would run the bash command "snesemulator /home/user/roms/snes/Super\ Mario\ World.sfc". -->

		<!-- The platform(s) to use when scraping. You can see the full list of accepted platforms in src/PlatformIds.cpp.
		It's case sensitive, but everything is lowercase. This tag is optional.
		You can use multiple platforms too, delimited with any of the whitespace characters (", \r\n\t"), eg: "genesis, megadrive" -->
		<platform>snes</platform>

		<!-- The theme to load from the current theme set. See THEMES.md for more information.
		This tag is optional; if not set, it will use the value of <name>. -->
		<theme>snes</theme>
	</system>
</systemList>

The following "tags" are replaced by ES in launch commands:

%ROM% - Replaced with absolute path to the selected ROM, with most Bash special characters escaped with a backslash.

%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.

See SYSTEMS.md for some live examples in EmulationStation.

gamelist.xml

The gamelist.xml file for a system defines metadata for games, such as a name, image (like a screenshot or box art), description, release date, and rating.

If at least one game in a system has an image specified, ES will use the detailed view for that system (which displays metadata alongside the game list).

You can use ES's 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."

A command-line version of the scraper is also provided - just run emulationstation with --scrape (currently broken).

The switch --ignore-gamelist can be used to ignore the gamelist and force ES to use the non-detailed view.

If you're writing a tool to generate or parse gamelist.xml files, you should check out GAMELISTS.md for more detailed documentation.

Themes

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!

I've put some themes up for download on my EmulationStation webpage: http://aloshi.com/emulationstation#themes

If you're using RetroPie, you should already have a nice set of themes automatically installed!

-Alec "Aloshi" Lofquist http://www.aloshi.com http://www.emulationstation.org