History Playlist & Thumbnails

RetroArch Windows devices
#1

I have downloaded thumbnails/covers for all the systems/playlists I use and they display fine.

After launching a game it gets added to the content_history.lpl playlist and sure enough the thumbnails display there too no problem… for most systems. However for some systems they no longer work. For example all my NES games are fine, all GBA games display no thumbnails if browsing the history playlist.

By enable logging I see that retroarch seems to search in the “Nintendo - Game Boy” subdirectory which is wrong, it should be in the “Nintendo - Game Boy Advance” subdirectory. Similarly SNES games are fine but for the Megadrive/Genesis retroarch wants to look into the “Sega - Game Gear” dir and that doesn’t work.

If I open up the content_history.lpl file I can see that “db_name” is blank for many entries and maybe that’s confusing retroarch? (Although it’s blank for my NES games too, and the thumbnails do display as expected).

Any ideas?

#2

How did you add those games? Using “manual scan”? If so, you need to select the correct system name when adding them.

#3

It is correct in my playlists AFAIK.

For example a random entry:

  "path": "..\\..\\ROMS\\Nintendo\\Game Boy Advance\\ROMS-GBA\\Sabre Wulf (USA).zip#Sabre Wulf (USA).gba",
  "label": "Sabre Wulf (2004, Rare, GBA)",
  "core_path": "cores\\vbam_libretro.dll",
  "core_name": "Nintendo - Game Boy Advance (VBA-M)",
  "crc32": "73787A16|crc",
  "db_name": "Nintendo - Game Boy Advance.lpl"

But when I run it retroarch adds this entry in the history playlist:

  "path": "D:\\Games\\Emulators\\ROMS\\Nintendo\\Game Boy Advance\\ROMS-GBA\\Sabre Wulf (USA).zip#Sabre Wulf (USA).gba",
  "label": "Sabre Wulf (2004, Rare, GBA)",
  "core_path": "D:\\Games\\Emulators\\RetroArch\\RetroArch-v1.19.1\\cores\\vbam_libretro.dll",
  "core_name": "Nintendo - Game Boy Advance (VBA-M)",
  "crc32": "",
  "db_name": ""

Note the empty db_name field. If I go and manually add “Nintendo - Game Boy Advance” it will then find the thumbnails! However this is a dynamically created playlist I have no control over, retroarch just doesn’t add the correct value it seems. (Although like I said it’s the same for NES games but in that case it finds the thumbnails, so it’s weird).

#4

Maybe deleting the history playlist could help. So a new one would be created. Try that.

#5

A new file doesn’t make a difference.

I have a slight suspicion that if the db_name is absent retroarch tries to get its info from the core info file. For VBA-M that i’m using this is the line from its .info file:

database = “Nintendo - Game Boy|Nintendo - Game Boy Color|Nintendo - Game Boy Advance”

Retroarch goes for the 1st one which is wrong. For other cores it’s the correct one by accident, or because the core is associated with one database only. This would also explain why it’s looking in the “Nintendo - Game Boy” directory specifically. I suppose the correct db_name should be carried over from our playlists to the history file but that’s not currently happening.

#6

Then I’m out of ideas. I use the mgba core, which emulates both the regular Game Boy and the Game Boy Advance, and thumbnails are working fine in favorites and history playlists.

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#7

Interesting, then one final question is the db_name empty in your case in your content_history.lpl file and what’s your retroarch version?

#8

Not empty. Mine has values like "db_name": "Nintendo - Game Boy Color.lpl", for example. I’m using RetroArch v1.20.

#9

Yeah, that’s why it works then, needs the correct db_name.

Tried with v1.20 earlier but no luck here. All my plists have the correct db_name and if I add individual games to “Favorites” it carries over as expected, just not in History for whatever reason.

Thanks for trying to help!

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#10

You could try to mess with the “Playlist” options in the settings and see if something is amiss there. Or, as a last resort, even deleting the retroarch.cfg file, to make sure there’s no conflicting leftovers after updates.