When re-running Scraper, the snapshots downloaded as intended, and game menu in Emulation Station now displays the snapshots instead of old posters. Warning, the sudo rm command is dangerous, it will delete whatever you specify. Then I removed the entire arcade folder: sudo rm -r arcade Using the command line, I navigated to the parent folder: cd. emulationstation/downloaded_images/arcade. I needed to delete the old art first!Īccording to the scraper.sh file, the images are stored in $home/.emulationstation/downloaded_images/$system. Turns out the old artwork was still there, and Scraper only looks for art if no art exists. To my surprise, I didn’t see any significant changes to my artwork. I saved the file, closed it, then re-ran Scraper using the steps listed above. I edited it to use my preferred order of priority: snapshots, marquees, then title. It already specified an order of priority for arcade games. Looking further down the file, I noticed the line I wanted was 114. I am telling Scraper to get images for console games in this order of priority: snapshots, box art, 3D box art, logos, and fan art.īut my primary focus is arcade games, not console games arcade games use a different flag for artwork. Line 82 had params+=(-skip_check), so I added my own line directly underneath it: params+=(-skip_check) I right-clicked scraper.sh in my SFTP app of choice and opened it using a text editor. When accessing the folder using an SFTP app, it looks like this: The Scraper script file is located at /opt/retropie/supplementary/scraper I looked at the contents of the scraper.sh file, and it was pretty trivial to add the missing flags directly to the file using a text editor. Turns out this is a known limitation.īut where there is a will, there is a way. But the option to specify a preference for image type is not built into the menu. The only method that worked consistently was launching Scraper as I described above. I tried for quite some time to run Scraper via command line in RetroPie, using the flags specified on the Scraper site, but I often encountered errors about specific flags not being supported. For example, you can specify an order of preference, with the options of snapshots, boxart, fanart, banner, and logo. Turns out if you use Scraper on non-RetroPie systems, you have the option to specify a preference via command line flags.
I just wanted to see snapshots from within the game. It worked pretty well, but there was one thing that bugged me: the artwork Scraper grabbed was usually comprised of old posters or cabinet art, which often looked nothing like the game itself. I changed a few options and then let it “Scrape all systems”. You will be presented with the Scraper menu. You will be presented with a menu of options. This will bring you to the RetroPie setup menu. The line above is equivalent to cd RetroPie-Setup To run the script as an administrator, begin the line with sudo (“ superuser do“). in front of the path to the script tells the system to run the script. In this scenario, RetroPie-Setup is the folder containing the script, and retropie_setup.sh is the name of the script. If you’re unfamiliar with the command line, an. Using the command line, launch the RetroPie setup script: sudo. I used SSH for most of the tasks detailed below it was especially handy to have SFTP enabled for managing files. Note for advanced users: You can also run commands from an external computer if you have enabled SSH in RetroPie. You will be taken to the RetroPie command line (shell). Quit Emulation Station (F4 on your keyboard). Seems silly in retrospect, but this took me quite some time to figure out.
My first obstacle was how to access Scraper after installation.
I rolled up my sleeves and spent a few hours tinkering. I was able to get Scraper installed rather quickly using the official RetroPie instructions for installing Scraper, but they unfortunately don’t give you much guidance beyond installation. I was excited to try the scraper, but ultimately found Emulation Station’s scraper to be very hit-or-miss.ĭozens of online forums and articles laud Steven Selph’s Scraper as being faster and more thorough, so I decided to give it a try. If successful, when you browse your library you will be presented with nice art and game descriptions.
One of Emulation Station’s features is a scraper, which analyzes your library of game ROMs and tries to download the appropriate artwork and game metadata from online databases. It includes Emulation Station, which allows the user to select games using a USB game pad or joystick instead of a keyboard. RetroPie is a fun little arcade system that runs on Raspberry Pi.