02Emulationstation

EmulationStation is popular emulator front-end. IMHO It's not as simple to configure as Attract Mode, but is simple to use.

Compile it yourself

Install compilation dependencies.

apt-get install libsdl2-dev libboost-system-dev libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-date-time-dev libboost-locale-dev libfreeimage-dev libfreetype6-dev libeigen3-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libasound2-dev libgl1-mesa-dev cmake libvlc-dev rapidjson-dev

Clone their github repo.

git clone https://github.com/Aloshi/EmulationStation

Change dir, compile and install.

cd EmulationStation
cmake .
make
make install

After compiling, It's possible to create a deb file using checkinstall. That's how I created mine.

Install my deb package

Alternatively you can download and install this package. I've compiled it from Retropie's emulationstation fork, because it adds a cli option to launch the frontend in vertical mode. I've also added this patch from GvMariani, to keep resource files inside /usr/share.

wget "https://www.dropbox.com/s/r2e3p6ng09fuhbx/emulationstation_20221112-1_amd64.deb?dl=1" -O emulationstation64.deb
dpkg -i emulationstation64.deb

But you'll need to manually install it's dependencies.

apt-get install libfreeimage3 libboost-locale1.74.0 libboost-filesystem1.74.0 libsdl2-2.0-0 libcurl4 libvlc5

Create a configuration file

EmulationStation needs a minimal configuration file in ~/.emulationstation/es_systems.cfg This is a simple config file for groovymame:

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

<systemList>
	<system>
		<name>mame</name>
		<fullname>Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator</fullname>
		<path>~/mame/roms</path>
		<extension>.zip</extension>
		<command>/usr/local/bin/groovymame %BASENAME% -rompath ~/mame/roms</command>
		<platform>mame</platform>
		<theme>mame</theme>
	</system>
</systemList>

Keep in mind that Emulationstation won't start if there isn't any rom inside ~/mame/roms folder.