Last Played Collection - Possible to limit?

Alturis

Was curious if there was a setting somewhere in es_settings or another cfg where you could limit the length of the last played collection list. Just seems silly that it ends up being a list of every game on your setup if you keep scrolling down.

Alturis

Guess that's a no. I poked around a bit looking for such a setting. Nothing in the docs, and nothing I could find. I guess this is just a hardwired thing within the ES code without any limit.

ChuckyP

I would be interested in this as well, if it ever happens. where are the entries saved? The last played list?...

Alturis

@chuckyp said in Last Played Collection - Possible to limit?:

I would be interested in this as well, if it ever happens. where are the entries saved? The last played list?...

I expect that it doesnt save it anywhere. It probably just keys off of the gameslist.xml data which contains the last played timestamps just like the favorite bool.

Clyde

@alturis So, someone™ could write a bash script that scans the gamelist.xml and deletes all <lastplayed> entries but the newest x ones. The script could be run at startup or shutdown time, or at a timed interval.

hiulit

@clyde @Alturis I've got something in the works :D

pjft

You're all correct on all accounts.

@hiulit if you're going through that work yourself, and from recalling the code, you probably don't really need to delete the <lastplayed> entry, but set the playcount to 0.

Test that and see how it goes. It might be that that's sufficient, or that you need to delete both.

Best.

hiulit

@pjft Right now I don't have my Pi with me. I'm testing it in a VM with Pixel and RetroPie installed on it.
I think I have managed to create a little script that gets all <lastplayed> tags, sorts them in a descending order and removes all the tags starting at nth (so it only leaves tags from 1 to nth, the most recent).
Do you think it would be better to just reset <playcount> to 0?

pjft

@hiulit I am not fully sure, as that was put together over 6 months ago.

I am very much under the impression that the playcount plays a role in determining whether it shows or not. I'm not sure whether it is the only factor, though, but I think that that would really be the key factor.

hiulit

@pjft I'll try and play with both <lastplayed> and <playcount> and see how it goes :)

hiulit

@pjft Do you know which file does EmulationStation uses to create the Last played collection? Because I can't find a gamelist.xml in /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/collections/.
I've seen that there's a gamelist.xml in /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/gamelists/ but there's also the one in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/<SYSTEM>/ so I don't know which one to use :P

mediamogul

I'm no coder, but in all the digital arts, the best practice is to always to work as non-destructively as possible. Wouldn't it make more sense to implement something like this directly into ES, to where the user could set a numbered limit to the list and everything beyond that would be ignored, rather than having the MD itself deleted, or reset? Again, I don't know if that would even be possible, it's just a thought. I have to admit, the more I think about it, that never-ending and always growing 'Last Played' list does seem like a strange and unwieldy concept.

Alturis

@hiulit said in Last Played Collection - Possible to limit?:

@pjft Do you know which file does EmulationStation uses to create the Last played collection? Because I can't find a gamelist.xml in /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/collections/.
I've seen that there's a gamelist.xml in /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/gamelists/ but there's also the one in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/<SYSTEM>/ so I don't know which one to use :P

Think it depends. In a vanilla install of RetroPie they are stored in .../emulationstation/gamelists but if you installed Steven Selph's scraper it has an option to store them in the roms folders. Not sure where exactly that setting is that Steven Selph's scraper is modifying though.

hiulit

@mediamogul I'm with you. It would be better that this feature would be implemented directly into EmulationStation. But in the meantime, I'm having fun coding this little script. Also, I'm not capable of code for EmulationStation, so we'll have to pressure the developers if we want this feature added :P

hiulit

@alturis Hmmm.. I think you are right. As I always scrape the system with Steven Selph's scraper and always set the option to create the gamelist.xml per system that's what I'm using. I should have this into consideration.

hiulit

Here: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/15892/where-are-favorites-last-played-collections-stored/2

@mitu said exactly what we were talking about.

The automatic collections don't have a dedicated folder or configuration file, they're created based on the existing game information/metadata, stored in the gamelist.xml file for each system.

Alturis

Yeah honestly the OCD part of me would rather just wait until its an option built into EmulationStation rather then wipe out the play counts or last played dates on the data itself.

hiulit

@alturis If it's any relief, my script will create a backup of the gamelist.xml :P

pjft

@mediamogul I agree. I personally don't want to add another option to the menu to determine what's the right cutoff point, so I could pick one on my own (100, perhaps) and leave it at that.

That being said, I'm not sure I have the time to make that happen in the near future - my limited time in the coming weeks will be devoted to improving lr-fuse controls - and I genuinely doubt it's a quick change but I'll take a look if I have the time during March.

Alturis

Is there a github for EmulationStation?