Retroarch - Game Specific Configs - Filename Length Limit

RetroArch General
#1

Hello, I’m new here so greetings! I made this post in a different thread first before I found how I could make a new topic.

I’ve recently been configuring individual game configs in order to use game specific overlays from The Bezel Project. It had gone well so far, as long as the config file has exactly the same filename as the rom. But I have realized something incredibly annoying:

  1. The config files for each game have to be below a certain amount of characters in length. After testing for SNES I realized 84 characters was the limit. The problem is a lot of the configs are installed with the no-intro rom set file names in mind, where some of them are longer than this 84 character limit. The game starts fine, but there is no overlay shown. Is there a way to increase this character limit, or remove it entirely?

  2. It seems like it depends on the core used as well. Beetle PCE Fast for example can’t handle more than around 40 characters long config files, which of course covers quite a few more of the installed configs. I find it weird that such an undertaking as the Bezel Project with a lot of long file names didn’t realize this, but perhaps again there is a way to remove this limitation that I’m just not aware of.

Looking forward to any replies! Thanks for you help! :slight_smile:

PS: Just tried with Mupen64 core and there the character limit is even longer, so it’s definitely core specific.

#2

You should try shortening your paths by putting your retroarch folder at the root of a disk, your issue is most likely about the full path including all folders.

Cores couldn’t care less about the filename length of those config files, they never access them directly.

#3

Ok…I thought retroarch only had relative paths, which should make the location irrelevant. I do have the folder in e:\launchbox\emulators\retroarch. Can I move the whole folder to the root without issues? Is it fully portable?

#4

Default retroarch.cfg shouldn’t contain any absolute path and would be fully portable. I can’t tell for sure about yours since you probably changed settings already.

#5

I have a similar issue with some thumbnails showing fine in the desktop view (in the playlists), but won’t show in the normal GUI. I have things named right (using no-intro etc.). The few I’m having a problem with are the longest named roms. Did you figure out any way around this limit or if the paths add to it?