RetroArch not displaying most bezels anymore :(

[VodkaParalyzer]

20 minutes ago, dragon57 said:

I hate to assume, so all I can do at this point is get some history and maybe some screenshots of your Launchbox emulation setup for the systems you are having problems with.

How did the config_nes, config_n64 directories, for example, come from? Are you familiar with the Bezel Project Windows app and if so, have you used it to install bezels for certain systems? If not, I would have to assume you used the now built in bezel installation feature of LaunchBox itself? If so, what version of LaunchBox?

In LaunchBox, if you use the Tools/Manage/Emulators action, then select Retroarch and click on the Edit button, you should get an Edit Emulator panel. Click on the Associated Platforms in the left column. You should then get a list of the platforms defined in Retroarch along with there command line parameters. Show us a pic of that.

 I had stuff setup from nearly a year ago on my current system, but noticed yesterday that a bunch of games were missing their bezels, so I tried selecting all games in LaunchBox and downloading bezels. This didn't solve things.

I then remembered using the Bezel Project windows app when I first got back in to emulation on my previous system, so I downloaded the latest version, installed it on my new system, ran it, and selected one by one, the various systems that I was seeing missing bezels. The BP app did its thing. But when I went back to LB to run games, even more were missing their bezels than before.

So I started trying to trace things through to see what might be going on and ended up posting here.

I'm using 13.25 of LaunchBox

Here's RetroArch, as set up in LB

And within RetroArch, the Associated Platforms.

I added the command line for NES to see if that fixed things.

Other than NES, every associated Platform just has -f for its command line.

I havn't tried every platform to see how many are no longer showing bezels, but there are a number.

The other problem I have here is, the names of my game files don't match what the BP app was looking for.

Which is weird, as I didn't have this issue prior to this mess with the same game files.

[skizzosjt]

17 minutes ago, dragon57 said:

Correct in all your statements.

Overall, a couple items should be noted. 1. The Bezel Project integration written into the LaunchBox application still uses the old, default behavior for Retroarch installation, so you have to pick which way you want your Retroarch structure to be. 2. This isn't to say you can't mix the behaviors. I have a test virtual machine that uses the older default behavior of Retroarch for cores that only support one system which uses the default config directory and the new way of separate, custom cfg files that point to newly created files and directories for those cores that support multiple systems with known overlay issues.

It is funny that this way of using custom cfg files that point to system-specific config directories and overlays causes many Windows users of Retroarch some issues of just unfamiliarity. Retropi and many other front ends on Linux have always used this structure, so those users never saw overlay conflicts when using cores that support many consoles/systems.

all makes sense now! i'm only using Windows for emulation and had no idea a different OS version of Retroarch structured directories different. not knowing this prior, seeing "_nes" appended on the end looked like a redflag to me

[dragon57]

I suspect the problem of the missing bezels is twofold.

1. The most common issue of a missing bezel is a mismatch in naming of the roms vs the bezel names. The Bezel Project uses the following naming types from their respective databases; No-Intro for consoles, Redump for systems that use optical media, TOSEC for mainly computer type systems, and finally Hyperspin xml data files for systems that may not exist anywhere else. The way to get your naming in sync can be problematic, however we recommand using the Fatmatch utility to rename your roms to match the standard naming used by the various dat files from the naming type mentioned above.

2. The other reason for missing bezels is not specifying which cfg file to use that would have the settings for various bezel related paths/value. Here is an example of a default retroarch installation.

[VodkaParalyzer]

I appreciate all the help and advice given! And I think we;re nearly there 🤓

I did grab that FatMatch tool and tried running it against a copy of my files. Unless I'm mistaken, this only cleans up the names of the game files themselves. No changes are done to either the config files or their contents. That being said, they should now be in sync with the config files, as they both should be using the same naming conventions, which is good. And then if I were to add the required command lines in LaunchBox when kicking off the different cores, then that would resolve that piece. Which then leaves the challenge of how the games already exist in LaunchBox, as the paths will no longer line up, as the filenames will be different.

If I delete my old game files and then copy in the new game files, how will LaunchBox react to this? Will it detect that files have changed and remove anything that no longer has a file, while updating any existing game entries to the new file name?

Or would it be better if I just deleted all of my NES games and start fresh with No-Intro formatted game files?

I know when I first started collecting various system's game files, that I was confused as to what naming convention was best to use. I'd Google for answers, but it always seemed to vary, depending on who was talking about it. Maybe this was more depending on what system's files they were talking about. And because LaunchBox seemed OK with figuring out any of the naming conventions, I probably ended up with a mixture in the end.

But you're recomending the following, based on what Bezel Project supports?

• No-Intro for consoles
• Redump for systems that use optical media
• TOSEC for computer systems
• Hyperspin xml data files for anything not covered by the above 3

Curious, are there plans for LaunchBox to eventually support the new RetroArch config folder structure? Or even a tool to migrate from the old structure to the new structure?

Was there a way in the Bezel Project tool to make it use the old RetroArch folder structure? I'm not at my gaming PC, so can't go back and check till later.

[dragon57]

I can only tell you what I ended up doing way back when I first started working with The Bezel Project team. I had a huge mixture like you have/had. I just deleted the roms I had and downloaded fresh sets that lined up with the databases the Bezel Project as well as other systems recommended. The ones listed have pretty much become the database standards for the categories listed (1-4). Do not delete any of the artwork files you already have in launchbox. As you import the newly downloaded roms into LaunchBox, it should find the existing artwork and match it up. Launchbox is good about using its own artwork naming as well as No-Intro naming for artwork, for example.

I coordinated with the Launchbox team before changing my Windows app to the new method and while no official word was given, I got the impression no change would be made to address the bezel issues that would arise by using cores that supported more than one system. Having said that, I can't speak for the Launchbox coders. Like often mentioned here in the forums, creating a support request is the best way of interacting with any issues you have as a user.

As to your last question, and as I have told many other users, if you want to install bezels using the older, default structure, just download the previous version of the app from Github and install it into a different directory than the latest one. I run both here all the time as I need to test against both ways of doing things before I do my releases.

Let me know if you have any more questions or concerns.

[VodkaParalyzer]

Yeah, I figured I would just take the hit now and get a clean set of No-Intro games, rather than fighting with a mish-mosh.

I'm sure I'm missing a bunch anways, having spliced and diced stuff together as I have.

Question, when LaunchBox pulls down bezels, I assume it must also be generating the right config files, just in the older folder structure.

But will the end results be the same, either way? As in, would I get the same bezel files configured against the same games, regardless if I use LB or the BP app.

The reason I ask is, what started all of this was that I didn't have bezels for some major games like Donkey Kong on the ColecoVision.

After I ran the BP app, I had the artwork, but RA just wasn't able to see that, due to the above mentioned naming/folder challenges.

[dragon57]

While Launchbox creates cfg files under the config directory in a slightly different format than the BP app, the end result should be the same as with the BP app.

[VodkaParalyzer]

I've slowly been going through each Platform, replacing my games with proper No Intro files.

But I have run into a few challenges along the way.

First, if I previously had a game that didn't use No Intro naming, say Asteroids.zip, and I then deleted this and replaced it with Asteroids (USA).zip, when I then launched the game, the bezel would not display, if I didn't delete the associated media when I deleted the old game. It seemed like it was finding the old, Asteroids.cfg file, but then not finding the the mapped Asteroids.png file. But as soon as I deleted the old config file, it would pick up the correct Asteroids (USA).cfg, which mapped to Asteroids (USA).png, and the bezel would displayed.  So, deleting them first, seemed to alleviate these issues.

Second, at least within LaunchBox, when I kicked off the process to download media, including Bezels, it didn't always create the appropriate cfg files. But if I went into the folder that the Bezel Project app populates the configs to, copy them to the folder that LaunchBox defaults to, then bezels would display. Not sure why this is happening.

[dragon57]

Yep, existing cfg files will override default settings, so deleting those old ones was the correct procedure.

The cfg files not being created might be a bug in the version of LaunchBox you are using, or perhaps a slow server response. Hard to tell, but it sounds like you have a work-around.