RetroArch Community Playlists

What is this?

Every RetroArch setup is highly customize able, which makes it difficult to predict. Things such as file paths and names will most likely be different from user to user. Therefore sharing custom playlists is almost impossible without adapting them to their environment.

This repository is an attempt in streamlining this process a little bit. I envision a place where community members can post or suggest their personal playlist creations. The file paths in these collections are then reduced to its minimum and changed to be consistent. This should make editing those files for your own setup a bit easier.

License

Everything shared on this place is given to the public domain with The Unlicense; it's just a playlist after all.

How to import

Download

First visit RetroArch Community Playlists and click the button [ <> Code . ], which opens up a drop down menu. Click [Download ZIP] . It should download all playlists now. Or alternatively, if you want, just clone it with Git command:

git clone https://github.com/thingsiplay/retroarch-community-playlists

Now find the .lpl files in there, which are the playlists for RetroArch.

First edit and adapt

The playlists are not usable in this form, because they contain placeholder you have to replace. This is best done in bulk operation with specialized software. Your editor most likely has some search and replace functionality.

The "core_path": "DETECT" in each game entry can stay as it is. This is interpreted by RetroArch itself to use a default entry that is found on top of the playlist file "default_core_path": "..." . Just leave the DETECT entries and change the one default_core_path entry at the top. Same deal for "core_name" .

You will encounter $cores and $roms . These represent placeholder, like variables. This makes them easy to find and identify for automated replacement.

You also have to be careful with operating system specific things, which adds extra spice to the already hot meal. File paths in Linux and similar systems are noted with a slash / and on Windows its double backslash \\ for each directory segment (such as gb/Super Mario Land.gb vs gb\\Super Mario Land.gb . And that's not all. File extension for cores in Linux is .so, while .dll it is on Windows. It's true.

Example before

Let's say we have these entries here:

{
  "version": "1.5",
  "default_core_path": "$cores/fbneo_libretro.so",
  "default_core_name": "Arcade (FinalBurn Neo)",
  "label_display_mode": 0,
  "right_thumbnail_mode": 2,
  "left_thumbnail_mode": 0,
  "thumbnail_match_mode": 0,
  "sort_mode": 0,
  "items": [
    {
      "path": "$roms/fbneo/flagrall.zip",
      "label": "'96 Flag Rally",
      "core_path": "DETECT",
      "core_name": "DETECT",
      "crc32": "69F5767F|crc",
      "db_name": "FBNeo - Arcade Games.lpl"
    }
  ]
}

Steps to consider:

Change $cores to the location where the RetroArch cores are stored on your system. On my system it is /home/tuncay/.config/retroarch/cores .
Check the file ending of that core. For my system it is .so on Linux, for Windows it is .dll . So I leave it as it is.
Change $roms/fbneo to the location where your Genesis / Mega Drive Roms are located. For my system it is /home/tuncay/Emulation/Roms/arcade/arcade_fbneo .
Also make sure all these paths use the path separator of your operating system. For my Linux system it is just the slash / , like a website address. On Windows it is double backslash instead \\ .
Important: Some playlists will have multiple different kind of Roms folders or systems they refer to. In example the same playlist could have $roms/gb and $roms/gbc , which are used by the same emulator. So replacing only one part would not be enough. Read the playlists README.md file in order to not miss that. For our example here we don't need to do that, as only one Roms directory source and only one core is used.

Example after (Linux)

This is how it would look like on my machine:

{
  "version": "1.5",
  "default_core_path": "/home/tuncay/.config/retroarch/cores/fbneo_libretro.so",
  "default_core_name": "Arcade (FinalBurn Neo)",
  "label_display_mode": 0,
  "right_thumbnail_mode": 2,
  "left_thumbnail_mode": 0,
  "thumbnail_match_mode": 0,
  "sort_mode": 0,
  "items": [
    {
      "path": "/home/tuncay/Emulation/Roms/arcade/arcade_fbneo/fbneo/flagrall.zip",
      "label": "'96 Flag Rally",
      "core_path": "DETECT",
      "core_name": "DETECT",
      "crc32": "69F5767F|crc",
      "db_name": "FBNeo - Arcade Games.lpl"
    }
  ]
}

Example after (Windows)

This is how it could look like on your Windows machine:

{
  "version": "1.5",
  "default_core_path": "E:\\PATH\\TO\\RETROARCH\\cores\\fbneo_libretro.dll",
  "default_core_name": "Arcade (FinalBurn Neo)",
  "label_display_mode": 0,
  "right_thumbnail_mode": 2,
  "left_thumbnail_mode": 0,
  "thumbnail_match_mode": 0,
  "sort_mode": 0,
  "items": [
    {
      "path": "E:\\PATH\\TO\\FBNEO\\ROMSET\\flagrall.zip",
      "label": "'96 Flag Rally",
      "core_path": "DETECT",
      "core_name": "DETECT",
      "crc32": "69F5767F|crc",
      "db_name": "FBNeo - Arcade Games.lpl"
    }
  ]
}

Lastly install it

Now this is the easy part. If the playlist is done, just name it whatever you want and put it in the playlist directory of your RetroArch folder. Done.

Automate the import

This is where we are at, at the moment. My recommendation is to create small scripts or any other way for automation of this process. I wrote a Python script to help me with that at retroarch-import-playlist. But it has an initial setup phase too, and an understanding of how commandline tools work. So its not for everyone. Plus I am not 100% sure if it works on Windows.