1.78 - Some playlists not working

As if RA can’t load the items from them. Affected playlists work perfectly on 1.77. What could it be?

(by the way the new features, particularly speech and AI show so much promise, can’t wait to try them!)

Can you post a log of it trying and failing to load?

Hello hunter! It’s not that it doesn’t load the items from the playlists, it doesn’t seem to be able to read the playlists themselves!

It happens with several others. I know the format changed some time ago, but up until now my “legacy” lists worked like a charm. I made a lot of custom playlists back in the day (made assets for them too) and I would really like to keep using them.

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The old playlist format has to be:

01 C:\retroarch\downloads\alienar.zip"
02 Alien Arena
03 /tmp/cores/mame2003_plus_libretro.so
04 DETECT
05 01ACE2AB|crc
06 MAME 2003-Plus.lpl
01 path to rom
02 name
03 path to core
04 core name
05 crc
06 playlist name
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@ImnoTapLumber - yes, I know that. But the format that I use works well too. I hardly ever use the crc line in my custom playlists, but a blank line. Thank you anyway!

I found the problem! I noticed the lists that didn’t work had a blank space at the end. Deleting it fixed my issue :slight_smile:

playlist name has to be on the 6th place :wink: crc is 5th

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Yes, you are right, but I am as well haha. They work with this format of mine, which I find cleaner when I don’t want the crcs in there. Every entry needs 6 lines, that’s the critical requirement. I’ve been using them like this forever! The problem was the blank space at the end of some of my custom lists

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I’m glad you got it going. You might want to let the system upgrade your playlists to the JASON format at some point, as the old playlist format may go away at any time.

Will there be a solution for arcade playlists after then?
Atm i am using Playlist Buddy for this, but the generated playlist is in old format.
Since retroarchs scraper doesn’t work well on arcade games this could be a problem.

@hunterk - thanks mate. Yeah I had to edit a few more things (178 seems to be more finicky about lists), but it’s all good now.

And yeah as @ImnoTapLumber says, dropping support for the old format might be a problem regarding customs playlists. Is there a way to convert old into JASON? I think I know how to do it manually, and I guess I could make a notepad++ macro, but it’s a bit of a chore.

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Well, if you enable the new format in the playlist settings and start a game, retroarch converts the playlist automatically. But will this be as well when the old format gets dropped?

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The old format drops right into the new format, just wrapped in JASON formatting, so if absolutely necessary we can always make a standalone conversion thing. However, perhaps @markwkidd could update Playlist Buddy (I think he wrote it?) to support the new format.

Conversely, have you guys tried the desktop menu’s playlist editing?

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It is a nice addition, but i have noticed a few inconsistencies:

  • crc info is missing / can’t be edited
  • mame variants (2003, 2003-plus etc.) not showing thumbnails due to changes made for the thumbnail folders to save space (retroarch is pointing for all mame* cores to the MAME thumbnail folder. Desktop menu not)
  • missing possibility to scan single files (only directory)
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Trying it now, I think that will do! : )

You could try this playlist tool, when you save there is an option to use the JSON format, although it saves in JSON version 1.0, not the newer 1.2 but might still help:

https://www.marcrobledo.com/retroarch-playlist-editor/

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