If you are a Debian/Ubuntu user or other distributions such as Raspberry Pi, I would not recommend following what is explained in this guide because there is RetroPie and I think it's all much better and more direct. For Arch Linux there is ArchyPie-setup, which is a script to install Ubuntu RetroPie on Arch Linux, but being a volunteer-created AUR package it's not guaranteed to work. It does guarantee to do everything manually from the base, and the base of RetroPie are emulators (PPSSPP, RetroArch...) and EmulationStation.
EmulationStation is a graphic interface for emulators. In other words, a frontend or a kind of library from which we can launch our classic console games. If we install it loose, by itself it doesn't even work when launched for the first time. What it does is create a configuration folder for us in our personal directory, and there is a file there that we will have to edit so that it finds the games and can do "scrapping", which is what is necessary for the covers to appear.
Configuring EmulationStation
EmulationStation is software that does not require many modifications, and on its official page it says that it has not been updated since 2015. By configuring EmulationStation we can also access it from other frontends such as Pegasus, which for my taste is simpler and better, but that's another story.
As we have explained, and they also tell us in their official documentation, to be able to see anything other than the message that there is nothing available we have to perform a manual configuration, that although it is true that it seems tedious at first, it is also worth it. The reason why the configuration file is empty is because EmulationStation doesn't know where we have the ROMs or which emulator we prefer to open each of them.
What we have to do is the following:
- If we haven't opened EmulationStation yet, we have to open it. Otherwise the configuration folder will not exist in our home directory.
- We go to our personal folder and we show the hidden files.
- Let's go to .emulationstation.
- With a text editor, we open the file es_systems.cfg. It puts the instructions there and they can throw us back, but let's continue.
- We have to do exactly what it says: between the tags go the "system", which are nothing more than the instructions for the ROMs to appear and what we are going to execute them with. We can modify the first one, and then copy and paste the same thing several times, modifying the necessary information in each case. For example, this is my system for launching PSP games:
psp playstation portable /home/pablinux/Games/roms/psp .iso .ISO .cso .CSO PPSSPPQt %ROM% psp . --> PSP
Excuse me if I have left a label that does not appear as it should, but I had to replace the opening or it would not appear in the final view.
Yes, it makes your hair stand on end to see all that, but it's not that bad. You have to change what is inside the tags like this:
- name: you have to put a name that is used internally, and it is usually in lower case. In the case of PSP, well "psp" without the quotes.
- fullmane: The full name that will appear in the menus.
- path: the path where the ROMs are stored, in my case in a folder named psp which is inside Games which in turn is inside my personal folder.
- extension: what type of files to search for. If you have any doubts, I recommend visiting the RetroPie documentation, here the PSP link. As you can see, PSP games can be ISO, CSO and PBP files. The extensions must be included with the point and separated with a space. It can be complicated life, but I have seen cases where they add the extension twice, once in lowercase and once in uppercase. Each one to do what they see fit, but I would change, for example, an .ISO extension to .iso in the original file.
- command: This is the command that will launch the ROM with the emulator that we want. In the case of PPSSPP, I have the Qt and SDL versions, and I choose Qt. What it does is launch the selected ROM in EmulationStation with PPSSPPQt. In this case, to know exactly how to write the executable, I went to usr/share/applications/ppsspp-qt , opened the file with a text editor, and looked at what was in “Exec=”.
- platform: this is for scrapping, that is, to search and find the covers. If nothing is entered, it will search for all matches and more results will appear. For example, in the Sonic ROM will appear those of Master System, Mega Drive, Genesis...
- theme: is for the theme, but EmulationStation doesn't add any by default and remains as in the header screenshot.
Choosing RetroArch
I prefer to use the original PPSSPP and not the one that RetroArch uses, and RetroPie does that too. But if you prefer to use RetroArch, the "command" for the Genesis emulator would be "retroarch -f -L /usr/lib/libretro/genesis_plus_gx_libretro.so %ROM%" (-f: fullscreen; -L: load kernel). In usr/lib/libretro there are all the RetroArch cores, and once again I refer you to the RetroPie documentation to find out which emulator can work best in each case.
Once we have added the systems correctly, the games will appear in EmulationStation, although the first time it asks us to configure a controller, something that is simply configuring the buttons. If we want the covers, we have to start the scrapper. And if we don't like EmulationStation, Pegasus it uses its same configuration file to display the games.
I like it more. It is simpler and does not ask for any command when starting.
And this would be the way to configure EmulationStation to work, at least the most basic. Let's have fun.