EmulationStation FCAMOD

This is a fork of EmulationStation containing many additions. This has been primary developped for Windows platform, but can be compiled for Linux & Raspberry Pi.

Changes in my branch

System list :

• Support for Multiple Emulators/Cores in es_systems.cfg, and setting Emulator/Core per game.

     <command>%HOME%\RetroArch\retroarch.exe -L %HOME%\RetroArch\cores\%CORE%_libretro.dll %ROM%</command>
     <emulators>
         <emulator name="mame">
   	<cores>
   	  <core>mame2003_plus</core>
   	  <core>mame2003</core>
   	</cores>
         </emulator>
         <emulator name="fbalpha">
   	<cores>
   	  <core>fbalpha2012</core>
   	</cores>
         </emulator>
       </emulators>

Grid view :

• Animations when size changes and during scrolling.

• Supports having a label.

   <text name="gridtile">
       <color>969A9E</color>
       <size>1 0.18</size>
   </text>
   <text name="gridtile_selected">
       <color>F6FAFF</color>
   </text>

• Layout can be defined by number of columns and rows ( you had to calculate manually the size of tiles in previous versions ). Zooming the selected item can also be defined simply.

   <imagegrid name="gamegrid">
         <autoLayout>4 3</autoLayout>	
         <autoLayoutSelectedZoom>1.04</autoLayoutSelectedZoom>

• Supports extended padding (top, left, bottom, right) :

   <imagegrid name="gamegrid">
         <padding>0.03 0.13 0.03 0.08</padding>

• Supports video in the selected item (delay can be defined in the theme)

   <imagegrid name="gamegrid">
         <showVideoAtDelay>700</showVideoAtDelay>      

• Theme can define which image to use (image, thumbnail or marquee).

   <imagegrid name="gamegrid">
         <imageSource>marquee</imageSource>

• Theme can define the image sizing mode (minSize, maxSize or size). Gridtile items can define a padding.

   <gridtile name="default">
       <padding>24 24</padding>
       <imageSizeMode>minSize</imageSizeMode>

• Supports md_image, md_video, md_name items... just like detailed view.

• Ability to override grid size by system.

Detailed view :

• Supports md_video, md_marquee items like video view did : Video view is no longer useful.

Custom views & Theming:

• Allow creation of custom views, which inherits from one of the basic theme items ( basic, detailed, grid ).

   <customView name="Video grid" inherits="grid">
       <imagegrid name="gamegrid">

• Ability to select the view (or customview) to use globally or by system.
• The theme can force the default view to use ( attribute defaultView )
• Fully supports Retropie & Recalbox Themes.
• Carousel supports element "logoPos" : this allows the logo not to be inevitably centered.
• Image loading : the image bytes where duplicated 3 times in memory.
• In previous versions, if a xml element was unknown in the theme, nothing was loaded.
• Support for glows around text
• Reflection for images ( table reflection effect )
• Gradients for selected menu and list items.

Optimizations & Fixes:

• Faster loading time, using multithreading.
• Optimized memory usage for files and gamelists.
• The loading sequence displays a progress bar.
• Reviewed SVG loading and size calculation mecanism. Previous versions unloaded/reloaded SVGs each time a new container needed to display it because of a size calculation problem.
• Ability to disable "Preload UI" mecanism. This mecanism is used to preload the UI of gamelists of every system. Disable it adds a small lags when opening
• Don't keep in memory the cache of image filenames when launching games -> It takes a lot of memory for nothing.
• Skip parsing 'downloaded_images' and 'media' folders ( better loading time )
• Added option "Optimize images Vram Use" : Don't load an image in it source resolution if it needs to be displayed smaller -> Resize images in memory to save VRAM. Introduce longer image loading time, but less VRAM use.
• Fixed video starting : Videos started fading even if the video was not available yet ( but not really fading : there was no blending ).
• Software clipping : Avoid rendering clipped items -> They were previously clipped by OpenGl scissors.
• Carousel animation was corrupted if the carousel has to display only one item with 1
• Font : Optimization when calculating text extend.
• If XML writer fails, the gamelist.xml file become empty and set to 0Kb -> Added a mecanism to secure that. Also, previous gamelist.xml version is saved as gamelist.xml.old.

Menus :

• Cleaned menus + changed menu item order (by interest).
• Full support for menu Theming.
• Separated "Transition style" and "Game launch transition"
• Added option "Boot on gamelist"
• Added option "Hide system view"
• Added option "Display favorites first in gamelist"

General :

• Localisation (French actually supported)
• OSK : On-screen Keyboard.
• Video elements can be added as extras.
• Fixed : Don't show Games what are marked Hidden in gamelist.
• Added a star icon before the name of the game when it is a favorite.
• Corrected favorites ( and custom lists ) management.
• Don't show Directories that contains only one Game : just Show the game.
• Case insensitive file extensions.
• Stop using "sortname" in gamelists. It is useful.

Windows specific :

• Natively portable. If file ".emulationstation/es_systems.cfg" relative to the exe folder.
• Simplified "Quit" menu item ( no more popup asking to restart or turn off Windows )
• Windows is now "Windowed No border" by default. On Windows, Exclusive fullscreen can be annoying...
• Stop using _wsystem for launching games. Run games with ShellExecuteEx instead ( avoids command window )
• Add an option to leave ES open with a black screen "Loading..." when launching games ( avoids showing windows desktop )
• Don't load all fields in Medadata Editor ( too tricky to use on windows, better use an external tool ).
• With some Nvidia GPUs when VSYNC is active, SDL_GL_SwapWindow takes a lot of CPU : Introduce a smart calculation based on display frequency to reduce the time SDL_GL_SwapWindow has to wait. This saves a lot of CPU load.

Je crois que c'est à peu près tout...

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. You also should probably install the fonts-droid package which contains fallback fonts for Chinese/Japanese/Korean characters, but ES will still work fine without it (this package is only used at run-time).

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

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, may be used with --resolution
--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
--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