Unable to load thumbnails

RetroArch Windows devices
#1

After doing a lot of searching and re-reading the documentation I’m still not able to get my thumbnails to download.

Currently, I’m only interested in using arcade ROMs with the FB-Neo core. So I’ve used clrmame and rebuild / checked my romset with a recent FB-Neo set.

So when the online thumbnails downloader produced no results I tried the following things:

  • moved my old installation and installed the latest nightly
  • used the online updater to: download FB-Neo core, update databases, update assets

Next I downloaded the latest FB Neo dat file (arcade only) and created a playlist using the following settings:

Content folder:points to the roms folder containing the zip files Default core: Arcade (FB Neo) Arcade DAT file: FinalBurn Neo (ClrMame Pro XML, Arcade only) Arcade DAT Filter ON

Start scan

Now I have a playlist where the entries have their full names (not the zip file names).

However, there are no thumbnails showing although on demand download is set to ON.

As I was running PROCMON I looked up what was happening when browsing the playlist and I could see that RetroArch is looking into the thumbnails folder. It’s looking for a sub folder named as the playlist and the sub folders Named_Boxarts, Named_Snaps and Named titles. Just as the documentation says. These lookups fail because the folders don’t exist. I also noticed retroarch making a network connection as I browse the ROMS but there isn’t much traffic.

When I manually run the thumbnail updater, the same happens for each entry. I’ve also inspected the logfiles (set to debug) but during scanning it only produces entries like this:

[ERROR] [Thumbnail]: Download “D:\Games\RetroArch\thumbnails\FB-Neo-uitzoeken\Named_Titles\Hidden Catch 2000.png” failed: File not found.

I also tried installing the complete boxarts archive (from Github) into the Named_Boxarts folder and then the boxarts show. However, this wastes a lot of space and I would really like to get the downloader to work.

At the moment, I can only assume that maybe my ROMS are somehow failing to match the database but AFAIK there’s no way to verify this.

Any help to resolve this is much appreciated, thanks!

1 Like
#2

I am also having great difficulty in getting any Thumbnails to install. There used to be a manual feature via the Desktop version, but it seems to have been nerfed. It would be REALLY useful if the devs just implemented a way for us to load them locally.

#3

Open the file manager of your operating system, go to the RetroArch main directory, lookup the folder thumbnails and go into the subfolder of your system. There are three different folders “Named_Boxarts”, “Named_Snaps” and “Named_Titles”. You can manually download or create any image you want and put them in these directories. Any ROM matching the name of the file will be displayed in RetroArch. All RetroArch does is download those images and put them in these directories.

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#4

Thanks for your reply. I did try this without success. I have only one ROM that shows me Thumbs, so I know where the files go at least. The problem is that when I put a custom one in there, it doesn’t show. The names match too.

#5

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#6

The folder in your “thumbnails” directory need to match too. Usually the the folder names match the playlist or system name. But for systems that are not known you have to rename it to match the folder where your Roms are. In example I have a playlist for DOS games called “PC - DOS.lpl”, to play Dosbox-pure games. But the thumbnails folder need to match its Roms name folder, where the games in .zip file format are, in my case its “pc_windows98_games”. So I have to rename “thumbnails/PC - DOS” to “thumbnails/pc_windows98_games”, then the files are found.

#7

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1 Like
#8

Thank you all for your assistance. I will try this out!