Background Music for EmulationStation

A python script to run background music in EmulationStation for Retropie, inspired by the script posted here, but focusing on a script with well-written code, trying to follow good design practices and putting special attention on testability

Installing BGM for EmulationStation

Prerrequisites: python >=3.7 is required to install this application. You can check your version by executing this command on your machine:

python --version

or

python3 --version

Enter the RetroPie console (you can reach it by pressing the F4 key when EmulationStation is running) and run the following commands:

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Rydra/bgm-for-es/main/scripts/install-esbgm.py | python3 -

After installing, reboot the machine:

sudo reboot

Uninstalling BGM for EmulationStation

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Rydra/bgm-for-es/main/scripts/install-esbgm.py > install-esbgm.py
python3 install-esbgm.py --uninstall

Enabling/Disabling the background music

Under the config section of EmulationStation two new commands have been added:

• Enable background music
• Disable background music

Select one or the other to enable or disable the background music

How it works

Place your music in .mp3 or .ogg format in the folder that will be created in /home/pi/RetroPie/music. You can change the folder where you place your music in the config file (see Configuration section). Once you reboot and the script starts, a default config file will be created at /home/pi/.config/esbgm/config.yaml

If you want to manually execute the application you can execute the following command:

esbgm

Configuration

The configuration file that you may find in /home/pi/.config/esbgm/config.yaml (it will appear once you start the esbgm script for the first time) contains the following content:

# Value (in seconds) to delay audio start.  If you have a splash screen with audio and the script is playing music over the top of it, increase this value to delay the script from starting.
startdelay: 0

# The directory where you will place your music in .mp3 or .ogg format
musicdir: ~/RetroPie/music

# Whether the music should restart upon unpausing or resume
# from where it was left out.
restart: true
startsong:

# The main process. Upon starting this process, the music will start playing...
mainprocess: emulationstatio

# unless one of these processes is running, then the music will fade out
# until only the mainprocess is running again
emulator_names:
  - retroarch
  - ags
  - uae4all2
  - uae4arm
  - capricerpi
  - linapple
  - hatari
  - stella
  - atari800
  - xroar
  - vice
  - daphne
  - reicast
  - pifba
  - osmose
  - gpsp
  - jzintv
  - basiliskll
  - mame
  - advmame
  - dgen
  - openmsx
  - mupen64plus
  - gngeo
  - dosbox
  - ppsspp
  - simcoupe
  - scummvm
  - snes9x
  - pisnes
  - frotz
  - fbzx
  - fuse
  - gemrb
  - cgenesis
  - zdoom
  - eduke32
  - lincity
  - love
  - kodi
  - alephone
  - micropolis
  - openbor
  - openttd
  - opentyrian
  - cannonball
  - tyrquake
  - ioquake3
  - residualvm
  - xrick
  - sdlpop
  - uqm
  - stratagus
  - wolf4sdl
  - solarus

Description of the settings:

Option	Default value	Description
startdelay	0	How much time in second you want to wait once EmulationStation starts before playing the first song
musicdir	/home/pi/RetroPie/music	The directory where the music is placed and where it should be played
restart	True	If True, resets the song from the beginning upon resuming
startsong	Empty	The exact name of the song you want to play in first place. Leave empty to let the player decide randomly
mainprocess	emulationstatio	The name of the process which, when running, music will play
emulator_names	list of common emulators	The name of the processes which, when running, music will pause/stop (not necessary anymore since version 1.2.2