Figured out why I was getting Retroarch black screens

[knight-knight]

I've been trying to figure out why I kept getting black screens / crashes from games launched in Retroarch for some months now.  I was about to give up but as a last gasp effort I started digging into the filenames of my imported ROMs and I figured out what was happening.  Hopefully this helps some of you looking for answers and perhaps a fix should be considered by the LB team.

In summary:

I had hidden files in the ROM folder matching the ROM names but with a '._' start to the filename.  For example: 'game.zip' and [hidden] '._game.zip' co-existed in the same folder.

I never saw the hidden files in the Android file explorer but LB was picking them up in the import process

The import process defaults to 'Combine ROMs with Matching Titles into a Single Game'

During the import all ROMs were combined and renamed to '._game.zip' (not hidden) in LB database

This filetype (not sure what type of file it is, a cache file?) was not recognised by Retroarch 

The result being that although the import process went smoothly and LB recognised the ROMs, they were renamed in the LB database during import which caused Retroarch to crash when opened.

 

The remedy

Use an Android file explorer that can show hidden files.  Delete all hidden files in the ROMs folder.

Remove any LB imports with '._' named ROMs

Re-do the import process  

Success

 

Long term fix

As a suggestion, perhaps the LB import process could ignore hidden or system files in the ROMs folder.

 

Edited Monday at 08:42 AM by knight-knight
grammar