EasyRPG

• Accepted ROM formats: .easyrpg, .squashfs, .zip
• Folder: /userdata/roms/easyrpg

No EasyRPG emulator in Batocera needs a BIOS file to run.

Place your EasyRPG game files in /userdata/roms/easyrpg.

The EasyRPG engine supports RPG Maker 2000 and 2003 games, you have to put the game's entire folder inside, and add .easyrpg to its name the game folder is the one containing the RPG_RT.ldb file.

The games must be put inside /userdata/roms/easyrpg and respect some rules:

• The folder of the game's name must end with .easyrpg
• The folder of the game has to be an RPG Maker 2000, 2003, or EasyRPG game folder correctly structured¹⁾.
  • The structure of RPG Maker 2000/2003 or EasyRPG games is mostly the same: a main folder, which will be called game.easyrpg, and inside it several sub-folders (including Title, Music, System, …), as well as a few Map000x.lmu files, an RPG_RT.ldb and RPG_RT.lmt (other files can also be there, typically an RPG_RT.ini and a RPG_RT.exe (This .exe file can be used to gather some data by EasyRPG, however it won't be executed)).

New to Batocera v33: ZIP file support!

When opening a game folder, we see a similar structure from one game to another :

• Several folders
  • Backdrop : containing the background images used during standard battles
  • Battle : containing battle animations
  • CharSet : containing overworld animations
  • ChipSet : containing the tilemaps used in the overworld
  • FaceSet : containing the images of the characters' faces
  • GameOver : containing the picture used as the Game Over screen
  • Music : containing the music files, in .mid (midi) format
  • Panorama : containing the background images used in the overworld
  • Picture : containing several pictures used by the game
  • Sound : containing the sound effects, in .wav format
  • System : containing the assets used to display the various menus and dialog boxes
  • Title : containing the image used at the title screen
• Several map files (Map000x.lmu)
• An executable RPG_RT,exe
• An RPG_RT.ini text file
• An RPG_RT.ldb file with an RPG_RT.lmt file
• Occasionally, Save files (Save01.lsd et Save15.lsd) can also be found here (by default on other systems, easyRPG will save the game in the game folder).

This structure can be slightly different from one game to another, however the RPG_RT.ldb and RPG_RT.lmt must be directly inside the .easyrpg folder.

Some games are distributed in a slightly different way (for exemple, VGPerson's translations will often have a folder containing two executables StartFullscreen.exe and StartWindowed.exe, as well as several folders including a Data one, this Data folder contains the structure we talked about before, which means it is the actual game folder).

Sometimes, games will have strange extensions to their filenames, while their format isn't directly exploitable, they can technically be converted to more common formats.

• .lmu, .lmt, .ldb and .lsd: can be converted to .xml files
• .xyz: can be converted to .png

Source: the Tools page of EasyRPG

Standardized features available to all cores of this emulator: easyrpg.videomode

RetroArch (formerly SSNES), is a ubiquitous frontend that can run multiple “cores”, which are essentially the emulators themselves. The most common cores use the libretro API, so that's why cores run in RetroArch in Batocera are referred to as “libretro: (core name)”. RetroArch aims to unify the feature set of all libretro cores and offer a universal, familiar interface independent of platform.

RetroArch offers a Quick Menu accessed by pressing [HOTKEY] + which can be used to alter various things like RetroArch and core options, and controller mapping. Most RetroArch related settings can be altered from Batocera's EmulationStation.

Standardized features available to all libretro cores: easyrpg.videomode, easyrpg.ratio, easyrpg.smooth, easyrpg.shaders, easyrpg.pixel_perfect, easyrpg.decoration, easyrpg.game_translation

One of the advanced game settings in EasyRPG is the Test-play mode, it basically lets the player access the debug features present in RPG Maker 2000 and 2003, originally meant to test the game more easily, those include a Walk through walls key that also disable random encounters when held down, a way to access a save menu anywhere, and a debug menu that is quite powerful, those can be used for example to cheat.

The Save option opens the save menu, while the Load options opens the load menu, they cannot be accessed during a standard battle.

The Switches options let's you modify the state of various booleans used in the game, while the Variables menu is used to alter the values of number variables.

The entry between Variables and Items is used to set the amount of money you have, its name depends on how the game calls it internally.

The Items option lets you adjust your inventory fully.

The Battle menu can trigger a battle, assuming the game uses the basic battle system, otherwise you might encounter some issues trying to use it²⁾.

Map is used to teleport anywhere in the game, assuming you know how the game refers to the maps internally³⁾.

Full Heal will heal the entire party.

Call Event can be used to trigger various events occurring in game.

EasyRPG only uses a few controls, they are as follow :

• A : Accept/Talk (may be referred as Enter in the games)
• B : Go back/Open Menu (may be referred as Escape in the games)
• L : Shift (may be referred as Shift in the games, some games use it for various purposes at times; in Test-play it is also used to skip the text “typewriting” effect)
• D-Pad/Left stick : Move
• R : Walk through walls + Disable random encounters (Only used in Test-play mode)

The following hotkey combos work as well in the standalone version :

• Hotkey+Start : Quit the game
• Hotkey+A : Restart the game (must be held down 2 seconds)
• Hotkey+L : Take a screenshot
• Hotkey+Dpad right : Fast-Forward
• Hotkey+B : Open debug menu (Only used in Test-play mode⁴⁾)
• Hotkey+Y : Open save menu (Only used in Test-play mode)

Here are the default EasyRPG's controls shown on a Batocera Retropad:

Some games may have special characters in their filenames, or use special characters in-game, when this happens, it may be unable to find said files or display said characters if you didn't adjust the advanced game setting Encoding

Sometimes unzipping the game wrongly can also result in special characters in filenames being incorrect as explained here, when it happens, the asset won't be loaded properly and a warning message will be displayed on top of EasyRPG, The best way is to unzip the game correctly (by using a program able to do so, like unar) and precise the required encoding afterwards.

The page about EasyRPG's special features lists the encoding settings and their purposes:

You can alternatively edit the RPG_RT.ini file to put the encoding as an EasyRPG parameter, so for exemple, in that file:

[RPG_RT]
GameTitle=Ib
MapEditMode=2
MapEditZoom=0
KnownVersion=281479271809025
 
[EasyRPG]
Encoding=1252

The [EasyRPG] part and all that is below has been manually added to let EasyRPG know how to launch the game.

Will force the 1252 encoding for the game if the option is not set in Batocera, which corresponds to Western European:

• Western European : 1252
• Windows-1251 : 1251
• Windows-1250 : 1250
• Shift-JIS : 932
• Big5 : 950

There are a few known compatibility issues with EasyRPG at the time.

• Videos files cannot be played inside EasyRPG, multiple games are reliant on this (Ib for example)

For further troubleshooting, refer to the generic support pages.