Box art is a simple thumbnail image for your games, and it is necessary to tell us which game it is just from the picture. So, I will write a quick guide of how to add box art in Anbernic RG35XX, which is quite similar to my guide of adding box art in Miyoo Mini.
Also, make sure to read my ultimate RG35XX starter guide.
What you need
- The latest version of Skraper
- The latest version of ImageMagick
- Template for RG35XX
- List of box arts for retro games (adding manually)
How to add box art in RG35XX?
- Insert the SD card which contains Roms folder of RG35XX
- Extract and run Skraper installation file.
- Select Recalbox. Press “Next”. Select your Roms in SD card as the rom path
- Tick Include non-Recalbox rom folders then press “Next”, then press “Finish”
- Press the ‘+’ button at the bottom left below systems and highlight all the missing systems you would like to scrape for (can select multiple at once). You can also use the ‘-‘ button to remove emulators you don’t want to scrape for
- Add folder for each of the missing systems you just added. Learn how to rename folders in this article
- Select “All systems” on the left side, select the Game List tab, and ensure the name of “Game list full path” is %ROMROOTFOLDER%\gamelist.xml
- Select Media, set “User Provided Mix” for Media type
- Extract mix_garlic.zip
- Click the “page” icon next to media type and select the Garlic-Onion-Mix.xml for box arts with full height, or 3_img_mix_garlic.xml for box arts with 3 images
- Change output folder from %ROMROOTFOLDER%\media\images to %ROMROOTFOLDER%\Imgs and select “Cleanup output folder before generating new medias” checkbox
- Leave “Resize Width to”, “Resize height to” and “Keep image ratio” blank
- Scrape all systems, or whatever system you want to scrape for
- Delete any gamelist.xml files after
- Go to /CFW/skin/ folder and edit settings.json with Notepad. If you install Garlic OS in RG35XX using my guide, you can skip this step. Otherwise, replace these lines
"text-alignment": "center",
"text-margin": 16,with
"text-alignment": "left",
"text-margin": 352,- If you choose 3_img_mix_garlic.xml for box arts, I recommend to set “text-margin” in settings.json to 300
- Continue to bulk resize all images
If you don’t like to download anything, or if you own a small library of games (like me, collecting retro games isn’t easy), you would like to add box art manually. Moreover, it is very newbie-friendly, so anyone who is as lazy as me should go this route.
Here is the step-by-step on how to add box arts manually in Anbernic RG35XX:
- Download box arts manually, either from Archive or libretro
- Insert your SD card, navigate to %ROMROOTFOLDER%\Imgs. If there is no folder with that name, create one
- Depending on where you download box arts from, you must resize to match the RG35XX’s resolution. Continue to bulk resize all images
Bulk resize box arts for RG35XX
- Navigate to Roms folder, press and hold SHIFT + right click. Select “Open PowerShell window here”
- Use this command line
Get-ChildItem -recurse | where {$_.name -eq "Imgs"} | foreach {cd -LiteralPath $_.FullName; magick mogrify -monitor -resize 340x480 -extent 640x480 -gravity West -background none *;}If you want to edit individual Imgs folder, for example whenever you add new system to your RG35XX, just navigate to this specific folder (for example, /Roms/Arcade/), press and hold SHIFT + right click. Select “Open PowerShell window here”. Then use this command line:
magick mogrify -monitor -resize 340x480 -extent 640x480 -gravity West -background none *- Open Finder, navigate to Roms folder and select all the images inside that you want to resize. Right click, select “Open with” and click on “Preview (default)”
- In “Preview”, select all the images you’d like to batch resize from the left side thumbnail drawer. Click on “Edit,” and then “Select All”
- Click on “Tools” and then click on “Adjust Size…”
- Set “Height” to 640 and “Width” to 480. Click OK
- Click on “File,” and then “Save”
That’s it, if you have any other questions, please find it in my RG35XX tutorial.
