Retropie wishlist

paffley

Hey guys,
I've been going through some of my thoughts for updates and improvements for Retropie/ES and the following are my personal thoughts on UI/Behaviour/Theming.

SYSTEM VIEW

Video snaps.
Editable help text & icons (SVG).
Editable ‘XXX Games Available’ text.
Show/Hide System toggle (available in Main Menu, similar to collections UI).
md_count tag (System count amount, Displayed as example 1/28)
Animated gif support for image tag.
BG Music enabled/disabled (available in Main Menu under Sound settings).
System scroll sound.

GAMELIST VIEW (Detailed, Video)

Game list Art Carousel (Same as System view carousel, horizontal/vertical/wheel).
md_title tag.
md_count tag (Game count amount, Displayed as example 1/200).
md_art tag (Choose art directory to display boxart/marquee/cartart/fanart etc).
Animated gif support for image tag.

Please feel free to add or comment. @lilbud I believe some of the above you have mentioned in a past post.

Please note that I'm not a developer/programmer, just a designer and crazy retropie fan :)

EctoOne

I just had another Idea. While looking through some of the themes to get some inspiration, I noticed that some of them have a description text for systems. But there is no easy/comfortable way to implement these.
So why not have an <description> tag in the es_systems.cfg that then can be read by a system variable like $system.description

chicuelo

A system indicator would be great to, so you know hoy many systems you have to navigate through to star over the wheel

paffley

@ectoone said in Retropie wishlist:

I just had another Idea. While looking through some of the themes to get some inspiration, I noticed that some of them have a description text for systems. But there is no easy/comfortable way to implement these.
So why not have an <description> tag in the es_systems.cfg that then can be read by a system variable like $system.description

Brilliant idea! +1 from me.

paffley

@chicuelo said in Retropie wishlist:

A system indicator would be great to, so you know hoy many systems you have to navigate through to star over the wheel

Good call! maybe a svg icon.

chicuelo

@paffley said in Retropie wishlist:

@chicuelo said in Retropie wishlist:

A system indicator would be great to, so you know hoy many systems you have to navigate through to star over the wheel

Good call! maybe a svg icon.

I made a theme with a fake indicator, it works for my build but it would be great to have an indicator system you could customize

BobHarris

The only wish I have is about game manuals.
It would be great if you could scrape game manuals & have an easy way of viewing them. There are two websites that host a lot of manuals, but also a lot of manuals are still missing.
I have many manuals in pdf format on my pc, but I'd really like the option to view them on the Pi. I've read it's possible (I think converting them into jpegs) but it's not really straightforward. I've read this can be done for you on the Pi, but everytime you'd want to view a manual you need a keyboard to do so.

Right now we only have part of the package on the Pi; game manuals are an integral part of old games. They used to describe story elements (not mentioned in the game) and explained game mechanics, you'd sometimes have a hard time figuring out without the manual.

Update: I've looked into it again and I figured out pdf's can be viewed through a pdf viewer add on in Kodi (The add on isn't listed in Kodi so I had to resort to installing it from a zip file, downloaded on my pc: https://kodi-addons.club/addon/plugin.image.pdfreader/1.0.2) Doesn't work perfectly though: It won't open all my pdf's successfully. (Apparantely it's because of an unsupported format of the images in the pdf: If I turn the pdf into jpegs and the jpegs into a pdf, then the pdf does work in the viewer in Kodi.) Actually I'm surprised it even works at all as the addon hasn't been updated anymore since 2015.

Impman66

On the subject of game manuals, how about an additional graphic on the themes showing a mapping of how the individual has configured their gamepad/joystick/arcade buttons to show what does what. I am pretty sure this can be done by reading the Retroarch.cfg file for that particular game, although I know nothing about programming so maybe not.
Or how about the option to add a "Theme Creator" program, that allows people to create their own themes for Emulation station.
Lots of ideas starting to buzz around the old noggin, will put some more up later.

EctoOne

@impman66 said in Retropie wishlist:

Or how about the option to add a "Theme Creator" program, that allows people to create their own themes for Emulation station.

Almost every text editor is a Theme Creator program. It might be not as comfortable but ES Themes aren't that complicated either.

Impman66

@ectoone Really?? Thanks for that, so you mean I could use something like power point or word to create a theme? But then how would I convert it for use on ES?
Can you post a link please so I can get instruction...Many thanks.

EctoOne

@impman66 Well, first I suggest using Notepad++ and not something that is made for business stuff or presentations.
Then there is the Tutorial in the Docs.
The easiest way to test the Theme is the ES Toolkit combined with the latest build for windows (move the updated files from the latest version into the correct folder of the ES Toolkit to have the latest theming features available).

Impman66

@ectoone Thank you so much will give it a go.

paffley

I would really like to see 'Video snaps' on the system view at some point in the future, I think it would give so much more to theme makers with some creative ideas.

My question is - would it have the option of OXM Player? or would it be OXM only?

AndrewH

A volume control for the video previews / screensaver would be useful. I currently have them muted because they're so much louder than the in-game sounds.

Also, scanline shaders for the screensaver so it better matches the in-game experience. I suggested this a while back, but never got anywhere with it.

AndrewH

I thought of another one - wraparound on all of the EmulationStation menus (i.e. if you're at the top and press 'up', it will bring you to the bottom of the menu)

feutegraf

video snaps are supported, I've seen builds using this (without Attract Mode)

XVO

What if you only put one rom in the rom folder and that it boots that rom automatically.
Can be handy if you want to build a dedicated pacman cabinet without selecting the game every time.

PokeEngineer

@paffley

I might be able to put background music in ES based on Recalbox's version, when I have time... I have school stuff to do.

lilbud

@pokeengineer said in Retropie wishlist:

when I have time... I have school stuff to do.

Story of my life

paffley

@andrewh said in Retropie wishlist:

I thought of another one - wraparound on all of the EmulationStation menus (i.e. if you're at the top and press 'up', it will bring you to the bottom of the menu)

I agree, good call!