Hints, Tips, and Tricks - My Project Eris installation notes and FAQ for the mini Playstation Classic

Recently I installed Project Eris on a mini Playstation Classic I'd bought from Best Buy for $25 when they cleared them out a long time ago.  I'm not a PS1 guy, save for the gun games, and so it basically just collected dust for years as I messed with hacks on other systems I won't mention because I don't want people coming here because of the search engines.  

Then, a few weeks ago, my buddy is like, "Man, I miss Chrono Trigger."  And I said... I can hook you up.

I was able to used guides and searches to get it done pretty well, but there were a few things I discovered that I'm not sure everyone else in the world might know.  So, I'm going to put them here now.

WHAT USB DRIVE WORKS?

I don't have Amazon sponsored links set up.  (Click through one of my ads here to support me maybe?)  But, basically, I used the Amazon version of the 128 GB drive sold by Microcenter for $9 (2 pack for $18.)  That drive WILL DIE in the front from not enough current, so you do need to use a separate, smaller drive to do the install.  I used a standard low end 32GB PNY drive to do that.  I buy those by the 5 pack (about $3.50 apiece in bulk) to put my SN-S Mini build on that has 14,000 games.

WHAT OTG CABLE WORKS?

I used one of the generic Chinese crap ones that looks like this...  You can find them for about $4.50 to $7 depending on what site.  I got one off eBay that took 5 weeks to get here.

NOTE: JUST LEAVE IT ON THE CHARGE SETTING AND IT WORKS FINE.  Seems to actually run faster on charge than on OTG.  Not sure it matters.

 

WHERE DO I FIND RETROARCH content when I want to "load content" (i.e. Roms and ISO's)?

Say you're not feeling like using Emulation Station, and you just want to run a rom.  You open up retroarch, and load a core, and then go to load your content... And there's a mess of options, and none seem to work.  Turns out the root of SONY where "roms" and "games" live is mapped to "/Media/".  Easy Peasy.

 

WHERE DO I FIND RETROARCH and EMULATION STATION on the USB drive if I'm wanting to tweak settings on my PC?

SONY\project_eris\opt\ has it all!

 

IMAGES IN EMULATIONSTATION

First of all, Skraper is a new tool that I discovered everyone talking about on the boards since the last time I had Skraped anything, and let me tell you.  It is awesome.  Well done, fast, and most importantly, it really found everything in my folders.  Well, ok, out of 9000 roms, it didn't find like 3 weird roms that aren't really games.  Skraper uses https://www.screenscraper.fr/.  (One hint... signing up for ScreenScraper was simple, and takes you from 10,000 items to 20,000 items per day.  Mortals really only need 10,000 items.  So, my advice is don't sign up until it runs out of requests.  Then, sign up, and get another 20,000 that day.)  Honestly, I was impressed.  There are some quirks to it that I did learn...

Before you do anything, "recalbox" is what you want to pretend to be on Skraper.  It uses emulation station, so everything it configures is what you want.

First, as noted in a number of videos, you want to generate a gamelist.xml!  It's important.  It's fine if these stay in the folder with the roms.  But, if you use "generic", it's not created.  On some of the other options, you _can_ make sure you've selected it.  And, honestly, it works great.

Second, when you are downloading your media, you may think you are having fun and downloading all sorts of media, and it's great.  Don't.  Pick 1 image.  EmulationStation themes really only use one image.  So, why download a ton of extra stuff?  The "mix" images are great, and really show off the system.

Third, videos won't work.  End stop.  This is because the Project Eris folks haven't built any drivers in.  Same with the "kodi" system that some EmulationStation files have notes on.  It just uses ffmpeg.  But, as far as I can tell, it's not installed.  When I was trying to find reasons the ffmpeg core wouldn't work, I came across this great breakout of all of the dependencies.  To get video themes to work, that team might just be able to add the missing files to the build?  I'm not sure.  I'm unfortunately not very good at Linux.  https://github.com/libretro/libretro-meta/issues/113

Fourth, when you are downloading your 1 image, there is a quirk to the Skraper interface about naming the folders.  In general, what you are really needing is for the EmulationStation themes to point properly to the folder.  This is easier than it sounds.  But can be a huge frustration at first.  Turns out, the gamelist.xml you make will point to the folder.  HOWEVER!  Themes really only look for the image folder that the gamelist.xml defines.  And, if you download a ton of different images (see 2nd point above), each one goes into its own folder.  

What folder are they going to?  Well, at the bottom of the media screen, you want these settings.  You want the 1 image you picked, to save to media\images in your rom folder.  And you want your Gamelist Link to be "Link from node '<image>'.  That is the entire magic.  Your Gamelist.xml defines where <image> is, which in Skraper is your output folder, and your theme looks to the gamelist.xml for an <image>.  (Your theme might be crazy and look for other graphics too, and in that case, the node <whatthemeislookingfor> needs to be defined.) 

Skraper kind of knows this somehow, and what I found is that it has some sort of internal logic where it desperately tries to output your image type that you choose to a proper folder.  <marquee> comes up sometimes.  <video> too if you are desperately trying to get those.  But again, since ES Themes really only use one image, you don't need the rest for Project Eris.  And man, the 5 mix looks GREAT at 400 pixels wide in the Retrowave theme!

 

THEMES

I mentioned EmulationStation themes above.  As far as I can tell, themes for all versions of EmulationStation all work fine in Project Eris.  This includes R-tro P-e themes.  (Again, not putting that here so the search engines don't confuse things.)  You find them by googling "es-themes github" and downloading from the regular repositories.  Download the ENTIRE folder of the theme.  Which will be some xml files plus folders for every single romset/core you might use.  Preferably just download the zip of the whole thing as "code".  Don't worry about what's inside.  There's no uncompiling.  Then unzip and name the entire folder whatever you want the theme to be named in the menu option in Emulation Station.

If you've set up the gameslist.xml properly from scraper, nearly every theme has a basic view and a detailed view.  Some have grid views.  And every one I found uses <image>.  So, you should be all set.

 

WHAT IS THE BEST THEME?

Retrowave.  I think it's preinstalled.  It's themed the same on the PS Classic side and in Emulation Station.  If it's not on the EmulationStation side, here's a link to it.  https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comments/bq5g6s/retrowave_80s_synthwave_inspired_theme_for/

 https://imgur.com/gallery/IrDJTS8

 

WHERE DO I PUT EMULATIONSTATION THEMES?

\SONY\project_eris\opt\emulationstation\.emulationstation\themes

 

HOW DO I GET OUT OF REGULAR PLAYSTATION GAMES?

Select-Triangle gets you a cool little menu.  It has an exit option, as well as disc changing and all sorts of other settings for the PSX emulator.

 

HOW DO I GET OUT OF EMULATIONSTATION GAMES?

Select-Start gets you to Retroarch, then you hit back once, and go to Quit Retroarch.

But wait, some will say, why aren't you teaching people to assign a hotkey.  I did that, and man.  ARGH!  I started getting all kinds of weird quit behavior from random button presses.  IDK if it was just my system or what.  But, I took off the "Quit" hotkey in retroarch, and the problem went away.

 

MAME GAMES LET ME FIRE BUT DON'T LET ME MOVE.  EVERY OTHER CORE IN RETROARCH WORKS FINE?

Ok, so, IDK why it does this, but it turns out that the trick to fixing this is to switch the default controller type from digital to analog.  My hint as to why the default USB controller that ships with the Playstation Classic mini will show Axis +/- as how it is mapping the up down left right.  That is usually an analog stick indicator.  I tried all kinds of mapping, and it turns out that setting it in retroarch under the general control configs fixed it for both controllers in MAME.  

 

I INSTALLED Arc the Lad AND Final Fantasy AND ALL THE DISC IMAGES ARE STORED UNDER ONE TITLE AND ONLY THE FIRST ONE LAUNCHES.  WHAT DO I DO?

Ok, this took me forever to figure out.  Arc the Lad I, II, and III plus Arc Arena all install under a single "Arc the Lad Collection" disc.  Same thing with multipacs of Final Fantasy Origins, Final Fantasy Anthology, Final Fantasy Chronicles with Final Fantasy IV and ChronoTrigger, and Final Fantasy I and II Premium Package.  Then you "Select - Triangle", you can see that the "transfer" folder put the discs in the folder, but these games shipped as separate discs that each boot on their own.  They are "Disc 1, 2, 3, 4" sets.  They are Disc 1 and Disc 1, shipped in a multi disc package.

So, here is the workaround I found that was easiest to install them separately.  Basically, the "transfer" folder sees them as collections, and any combination of renaming file names is not going to work if you transfer them all at the same time.  Transfer will still find the hash, still know it's part of the collection, and group whatever you give it into the same folder.  Likewise, you can't put them in your own 1, 2, 3, 4 folder as created in the "games" folder, because it doesn't write to the official game list.  They just sit there orphaned.

So....  the trick?  Transfer 1 game at a time from the collection.

Put 1 game's disc images in the transfer folder.  Plug in your USB drive.  Start it up.  Let it process.  Shut it down.  Put the 2nd game's disc image in the transfer folder.  And, the next time, it creates _another_ new folder.  It will call it the same collection again.  But, the only disc in the 2 folders will be the single game.  And, the 2nd game now is set to boot properly.  Then, go into Game Manager, and you can rename them.  (I also assume you could go on your PC, and change the game art, but I felt just changing the name in the game interface was enough.)

 

Atari 2600 DOESN'T WORK!  Argh!

Turns out the wrong core was named in \SONY\project_eris\opt\emulationstation\.emulationstation\es_systems.cfg. 
  <system>
    <name>atari2600</name>
    <fullname>Atari 2600</fullname>
    <path>/media/roms/a2600</path>
    <extension>.bin .a26 .rom .zip .7z .gz</extension>
    <command>es_launch_ra stella2014_libretro.so %ROM%</command>
    <platform>atari2600</platform>
    <theme>atari2600</theme>
  </system>
Turns out, the core I had was 2014, not plain Stella.  So, I added the "2014" in the name.

 

Super Turbo Grafx DOESN'T WORK!  Argh!

I had put all of my TurboGrafx 16 and Super Turbo Grafx roms inside of the PCEngine folder.  The Super Turbo Grafx didn't work.  And when I tried the general core for 16 and Super, the framerates sucked.  But but, .pce is on all of them?  Doesn't matter.

Turns out, these was what I needed...  I put the 5 roms in a proper supergrafx folder and use the dedicated SuperGrafx core on them.  Now they work great.
  <system>
    <name>supergrafx</name>
    <fullname>Supergrafx</fullname>
    <path>/media/roms/supergrafx</path>
    <extension>.pce .zip .7z</extension>
    <command>es_launch_ra mednafen_supergrafx_libretro.so %ROM%</command>
    <platform>supergrafx</platform>
    <theme>supergrafx</theme>
  </system>
\SONY\project_eris\opt\emulationstation\.emulationstation\es_systems.cfg 

 

DON'T USE THE HIGHLIGHTED ONE!  DEDICATE Turbo Grafx to the "fast" PC Engine, and DEDICATE Super Grafx to the PC Engine SuperGrafx.

AGAIN, DON'T USE BEETLE PCE!

 

WHERE CAN YOU FIND EXTRA CORES FOR PROJECT ERIS? 

Same place as anywhere else... Libretro.  I think at least.  Might need to be a different Linux flavor.  But, give it a shot!  https://buildbot.libretro.com/nightly/linux/x86_64/latest/

 

And, finally my greatest trick!  HOW CAN I PUT PLAYSTATION BUTTONS AS THE ICONS IN EMULATIONSTATION?

 

I found a number of links to people saying it was somehow built into Project Eris at a compile level, and that you couldn't switch them around.  There were other people who thought it might be a setting.  I just did a hack.  I copied the triangle, square, circle, and cross icons into the names of a, b, x, y and north, south, east, and west location.

Basically, all of the start, select, a, b, x, y icons are stored here:

\SONY\project_eris\opt\emulationstation\.emulationstation\resources\help\

They are in .svg format, and don't look like anything because they are transparent.  But, they are hard coded in somewhere in ProjectEris or EmulationStation.  And, they are what is used in the interface.  (I had assumed they were stored in the themes, and spent forever reading all the .xml files for clues.  Then I realized that those icons don't change in any theme.)

So, anyway, what you do is, First, back up the whole set of help icons.  I put them in a folder called "OriginalHelpButtons".  

Next, delete or rename the a, b, x, y and north, south, east, and west buttons.  

Then, copy the triangle, circle, square, and cross icons and paste them twice.

Finally, rename them properly to a, b, x, y, and north, south, east, and west.

In the interface, the a, b, x, y buttons seem to be xbox mapped in EmulationStation.  But, in the "Map controller" interface, the north, south, east, west assignments seem to be Nintendo mapped to the a, b, x, y locations.  ARGH!

As an old guy, this makes my brain hurt.  :(

I am going off memory, but I believe this is what you want...
Button Name > Button Content
button_b.svg > button_circle.svg
button_east.svg > button_cross.svg
button_a.svg > button_cross.svg
button_south.svg > button_circle.svg
button_y.svg > button_triangle.svg
button_north.svg > button_square.svg
button_x.svg > button_square.svg
button_west.svg> button_triangle.svg

Tada!

 

Basically, if this remapping doesn't work, try swapping them.