libretro-thumbnails

Thumbnails for RetroArch, split into individual repositories to ease maintenance.

Install

Check out the repository, with all submodules, into RetroArch's thumbnails directory:

cd ~/.config/retroarch
git clone --recursive --depth=1 http://github.com/libretro-thumbnails/libretro-thumbnails.git thumbnails

Update

To bring in the latest thumbnails across all systems, use:

git pull
git submodule update --recursive --remote --init --force

If you have make available, you can run the above by simply running:

make

Alternatively, the script below will maintain shallow clones (depth=1) and checkout master:

sh update_modules.sh

Usage

• Thumbnails are installed into RetroArch config's thumbnails directory
• There are three types of thumbnails:
  • Named_Snaps are in game snapshots
  • Named_Titles are title screen snapshots
  • Named_Boxarts are the boxes or covers for games
• Thumbnails follow the following naming convention:

  thumbnails/Playlist Name/Named Type/Game Name.png
  

• The following characters in playlist titles must be replaced with _ in the corresponding thumbnail filename:

  &*/:`<>?\|"
  

• Images must be .png format
• Image resolution guidelines:
  • Images with native width larger than 512px should be scaled down to 512px wide
  • Images with native width of 512px or less should be added as-is
• Substitute promotional material is acceptable when no official boxart is available
• Use libretro-thumbnails-check to check for missing thumbnails

Testing

To check for files with invalid file names, use the following command....

find . -name '*[&\*:`<>?\\|"*]*'

Thumbnail Server

The libretro-thumbnail server updates the thumbnails about once every two days on a cronjob. If you don't see updated files, append ?nocaches=CURRENTDATE to have CloudFlare serve new content.

.index Files

The .index files allow RetroArch to list the files available in the given directory. To build the .index files, run...

make index
make

Credits

The art provided has many different sources. Thank you to many of the contributors and sites who have made this possible...

• Screenshot(s) via MobyGames
• Fandom