RGL: Retro Game Launcher

Retro Game Laucnher (RGL) is a front-end for managing & launching games from arcade emulators (such as MAME) and game ports (such as DOOM). RGL works on MS-Windows, Linux and Raspberry Pi. For MS-Windows and Linux you are own your own when it comes to installing and configuring game emulators. For Raspberry Pi I recommend RetroPie.

Screenshots

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History

1.1
- Updates to support NES emulator
- Added python scripts (console & GUI) to create gameinfo.dat and history.dat for a given emulator by scraping thegamesdb.net (see scripts/infocreator)
- Fix broken raspberry pi build due to missing CMake scripts for sdl-gpu
- Fixed memory leak and improved stability when scrolling through game menus

1.0
Initial version

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Features

Any game emulator	Supports any command line game emulator or game port. In particular, it supports all systems included by RetroPie. You do need to configure this in RGL
Joystick friendly UI	RGL is designed to be run in Arcade machines and supports both navigation by keyboard and arcade joystick. In RGL's System Menu you can easily configure your arcade joystick. Note that you should still configure your arcade joystick for individual game emulators
Per-game Artwork	The usual snapshots, video snaps, marquees etc are support. You can configure up to 10 images per game to be displayed on screen when a game is highlighted. The artwork needs to be stored in different directories and have the same name as the game
Extensive game list configuration	Automatic game lists: Games are listed in gamelists per category. For each emulator or game port you may provide a gameinfo.dat file describing the metadata for each game, including its category. A gameinfo.dat is provided for MAME and GBA. There is also a python script that creates one for any emulator by scraping all games from TheGamesDB.net. This was done for the GBA configuration. "My favorites" games list: Whilst browsing the game lists in RGL you may use a keyboard or arcade joystick hotkey to add the game to the "My favorites" game list. You can use the hotkey in the favorites menu to remove the game from that list. In the System Menu you can enable or disable showing the "My favoritess" list. "Recent games" games list: Each time you successfully launch a game from RGL, the game gets added to the "Recent games" games list. In the System Menu you can enable or disable showing the "Recent games" list. Remappable game categries: Per game emulator you can remap the category names. RGL will then remap a game's category name as descbribed in the gameinfo.dat file according to according name in the emulators catmap.ini file. Configurable categories: In RGL's System Menu you can select which game categories should be visible Configurable emulator: In RGL's System Menu you can select which game emualtor should be visible
Configurable audio events	Supports audio files to be played for the following events: startup, horizontal scroll, vertical scroll, top or bottom of list reached event, OK, cancel.
Game info	Supports MAME's history.dat file format to show game info. For MAME RGL includes a recent copy of history.dat from Arcade history. For GBA, there is a script to create a history.dat by scraping TheGamesDB.net.
Theme support	Supports multiple themes and on-the-fly theme switching. Adding your own themes is straight forward, see the section on creating your own theme
Arcade hotkey buttons	You can configure your arcade buttons to the following actions: select, cancel, page up, page down, add to favorites menu, delete (from recent and favorites menu), show game info, home and shutown.

Keyboard and joystick buttons

The following table decribes how RGL can be used with a keyboard. RGL works fine without a keyboard; all actions, apart from quit, can be configured in the Joystick system menu.

Action	Keyboard	Joystick configurable
Navigation	Left, right, up, down	Yes
Page up/down	Page up, page down	Yes
Select	Enter	Yes
Cancel	Escape	Yes
Delete	Delete	Yes
Add to favorites	f	Yes
Sow game info	i	Yes
Shutdown (Linux/PI only)	s	Yes
Go home	h	Yes
Quit RGL	q	No

Downloads

Windows (binaries)	Version 1.1
Windows (source)	Version 1.1
Linux/raspberry pi (source)	Version 1.1

Building and installation instructions are included in the above packages and can also be found here.