Parent Page

es_settings.xml

Created in ROOT/ES-DE/settings/es_settings.xml. There are some options in here we will need to change.

LegacyGamelistFileLocation

As of ES-DE 2.0.0 any gamelist.xml files stored in the game system directories (e.g. under ~/ROMs/) will not get loaded, they are instead required to be placed in the ~/ES-DE/gamelists/ directory tree. By setting this option to true it's however possible to retain the old behavior of first looking for gamelist.xml files in the system directories on startup. Note that even if this setting is enabled ES-DE will still always create new gamelist.xml files under ~/ES-DE/gamelists/ which was the case also for the 1.x.x releases.

Why

I really do not understand why you would move gameslist.xml and media some where else? RetroPie and Retrobat keeps gameslist.xml in the root of the rom system dir. This keeps my meta data and media tied to each other and portable. Why would I ever want to split these? I really do NOT get this. OK I found a link. This kind of gives a reason why this might have an advantage. Every now and then I have used a custom emulator for a specific rom and that gets set in the gameslist.xml. I guess this emulator could be system specific ie, Android, VS Windows, etc. Honestly I have only ever done this with a Retroarch Core. So even this should works across ssystems. I will always have to change this to true.
<bool name="LegacyGamelistFileLocation" value="false" />
This gets the metadata to show up, but not the media!

~/ES-DE/downloaded_media
atari2600\3dboxes\00 MyGames\Dodge 'Em (1980) (Atari) [fixed].png atari2600\backcovers\00 MyGames\Dodge 'Em (1980) (Atari) [fixed].png atari2600\covers\00 MyGames\Dodge 'Em (1980) (Atari) [fixed].png atari2600\fanart\00 MyGames\Dodge 'Em (1980) (Atari) [fixed].jpg atari2600\manuals\00 MyGames\Dodge 'Em (1980) (Atari) [fixed].pdf atari2600\marquees\00 MyGames\Dodge 'Em (1980) (Atari) [fixed].png atari2600\miximages\00 MyGames\Dodge 'Em (1980) (Atari) [fixed].png atari2600\physicalmedia\00 MyGames\Dodge 'Em (1980) (Atari) [fixed].png atari2600\screenshots\00 MyGames\Dodge 'Em (1980) (Atari) [fixed].png atari2600\titlescreens\00 MyGames\Dodge 'Em (1980) (Atari) [fixed].png atari2600\videos\00 MyGames\Dodge 'Em (1980) (Atari) [fixed].mp4

ES-DE works differently compared to EmulationStation when it comes to handling of game media. There are no links in the gamelist.xml files, instead media files are matched against the ROM/game file names which makes for a much simpler, faster and completely portable setup. Migrating game media from EmulationStation (and potentially from other frontends as well) can be accomplished quite easily. Make sure to also read the Migrating from EmulationStation section of the User guide to avoid data loss if running ES-DE with existing data from EmulationStation. The way that downloaded media is handled is very different too as ES-DE does not use tags inside the gamelist.xml files to find game media but instead matches the media to the names of the game/ROM files.

Changed my Mind

This thing is so different. It also messes with gameslist.xml. There is NO point in enabling LegacyGamelistFileLocation. Instead now I think we need to write a powershell script. It needs to move the gameslist.xml file from source dir to a target. Also all media files need to be renamed to match rom-name. and moved into the specific folders above. Pretty sure all our existing media is game title based, NOT file name based. Many of our file names are crap. IMO game title was better, and easier to maintain.

Sub Folders

AI says -> No Sub-Paths for ROMs: Even if your ROM is organized into a subfolder (e.g., ps2/RPG/Final Fantasy X.iso), the media file should still just be placed directly in the main videos or covers folder for that system (e.g., downloaded_media/ps2/covers/Final Fantasy X.png). This makes things easier as I have confirmed all of my media matches by File Title NOT Game name. But why did it make subfolders when I scraped into ~/ES-DE/downloaded_media? Guess I will have to test it.