Announcing Pegasus Frontend

fluffypillow

All right, the file format conversion page is done, next I'll update the docs and Pegasus itself.

fluffypillow

Just to let you know, the reason this got delayed so much is because I keep tweaking the file formats, like, fixing stuff that got annoying after lots of use or looked good before but ugly with real data. It's kind of an iterative process, but every time I do that, I update the implementation, the automatic tests, the converter site, the documentations, the default theme... but! I think it'll be finally done this week.

lilbud

@fluffypillow Yep, I think this happens with all projects.

Creating: 2 weeks
Making changes: Not sure how to write an infinity symbol

fluffypillow

All right, took some time but finally it's done; the metadata and collection config files are now implemented and working, and as such Pegasus no longer depends on ES2.

The config file format was changed 25973 times and received a large overhaul. It's documented here, with all the supported fields and such.
A site for converting between different frontend formats (where possible) is now available here (currently supporting Pegasus and ES2).

ES2 is still supported and will continue to work, so you aren't forced to use the new files if you don't wish. Steam will also continue to 'just work'.

There were also a few changes in the theme API:

Collection names are now the unique identifiers for a collection
The Collection tag field got renamed to shortName and is now optional (ie. might be empty)
The tag field itself is now deprecated: you'll get a warning when it's used in a theme, and eventually it will be removed in future releases

The documentations, tutorials and the API reference have been updated to reflect these changes.

This patch should also fix themes appearing multiple times on Windows, and detecting scripts in [program dir]/scripts (turns out this didn't work before).

hooperre

@fluffypillow Been following this since it's inception installed once and just gave it a shot. It's amazing! Great work!

I apologize if I missed some conversation, and I already know you've fielded a lot of feature requests, but I'm curious about some things as a long time ES user. Should be fairly easy and quick to answer!

How do I erase a button config in Pegasus? My trigger and shoulder buttons are the same and I can't seem to clear them.
Hidden files in ES appear in Pegasus. Is this a current feature I'm not seeing and, if not, will this be added in the future?
Also, I'm sure this has been answered, but status on custom collections? ducks

Anyway, I'll be migrating over as your work is wonderful!

halfmanhalfcake

@fluffypillow Great work, thanks for doing this.

This might be a stupid question, but I don't see the tags/info for the images, boxart, fanart, etc. in the new config files?

fluffypillow

@hooperre Thanks! Yeah gamepad support would need some more love, currently you can reset the settings by deleting pegasus_frontend.ini from the config directory (~/.config/pegasus-frontend/).

Hidden files in ES appear in Pegasus

Hm, is there a flag in ES2 that hides games? I can't seem to find it documented in the official repo.

@halfmanhalfcake The assets are still loaded from the media dir currently. I haven't added them (yet) since that can be usually guessed from the file. (I 'm pretty sure someone mentioned this before, but I can't seem to find that comment, sorry)

hooperre

@fluffypillow said in Announcing Pegasus Frontend:

@hooperre Thanks! Yeah gamepad support would need some more love, currently you can reset the settings by deleting pegasus_frontend.ini from the config directory (~/.config/pegasus-frontend/).

Hidden files in ES appear in Pegasus

Hm, is there a flag in ES2 that hides games? I can't seem to find it documented in the official repo.

Well, the gamepad support is an awesome feature, honestly. My 2 cents: a simple "Start button binds configs. Green means selected. Blue means actively binding," or however you wanted to word it over the hold B to exit would have answered my questions regarding it. That being said, it was pretty simple to figure out intuitively.

I'm not sure if it's an official thing. It was a feature added when people started discussing the Kids version? Either way, there is a <hidden> tag in my XML file. I use it to hide works in progress in final builds for my brother and cousin. For example, I was working on Intellivision and now that the lr-freeintv core has been added, I've changed <hidden> from true to false on Intellivision games. It's a neat feature. My Windows 95 in dosbox experiment for example is still true haha. So they don't see it in their builds, but I don't necessarily need to delete them either.

Anyways, great job!

Darksavior

@fluffypillow I got the new pi3 b+ and using the retropie stretch image, and I noticed that if I exit the reicast emulator, my pi crashes to the commandline with the error EGL Error : Could not create the egl surface: error = 0x300b. I can't use my keyboard but the cursor is blinking which I think that part is just a bug with the kb not working like in runcommand? Reicast exits normally in ES. I haven't tried testing on my old pi3 or the jessie image.

fluffypillow

@hooperre I've checked the code of ES, so the <hidden> tag can be set in gamelist.xml for individual games (but not for systems), right?

@Darksavior couldn't try this on a Pi 3 yet, sorry. If you have one lying around, with a working setup, perhaps you could try reproducing the error there? The error itself means something like Pegasus couldn't recreate its graphical window - whether that's because the new hardware or due to Reicast, I can't tell.

tjost

it looks very nice. very good work.

slide issue here. by fast scrolling through the games or collections it crashes.
and not all my pictures where shown.
a better turorial on how to set up on your homepage would be Nice.
Also no mention of the "esc" key in the input page on your homepage.

but please keep up the good work.

And where to find the Netflix theme?

hooperre

@fluffypillow Correct, and if <hidden> is set to true for all roms in the gamelist.xml it doesn't show the system in Kiosk mode of the ES fork RetroPie uses.

As an example why this is helpful: I clone my SD for my brother and my cousin and can have WIPs like Intellivision. Had a gamelist already set up, images generated, everything ready on the SD. Once lr-freeintv became available and I tested it, boom, it was included that day.

Hope it wouldn't be too much work for what amounts to a minor cosmetic feature. Makes my life easier though!

fluffypillow

@tjost thanks! Yes, it's still work in progress so there isn't a proper setup guide yet (it'd get outdated way too often in this stage of the development). The Esc key does seem to be mentioned here, unless you see something different? (may happen)

The Flixnet theme can be downloaded here (click [Clone or download] -> Download as ZIP), then extract it into one of the theme directories. There might be some kind of theme browser in the future to make this easier.

As for the issues, on which platform/device do you have these problems?

@hooperre ok, will see if I can add this by the next update!

tjost

@fluffypillow I run retropie lastest Version on Raspberry Pi 3

Darksavior

@fluffypillow I tried the same microsd on my pi2 and it also happens. Then I tried a fresh retropie stretch image without updates and it doesn't crash on my pi3b+. So now I have to update and try and recreate the bug. Fun stuff.

halfmanhalfcake

@fluffypillow Need your help here on the new collections textfiles:

If I am adding a .exe windows game, how would I set up the path to it?
Say my game is in D:/Games/Firewatch/Firewatch.exe

I've tried a few different types but Pegasus can't find any games

fluffypillow

@Darksavior interesting, thanks for testing!

@halfmanhalfcake in this case I'd create a D:/Games/collections.txt looking like this:

collection: Windows games
file: Firewatch/Firewatch.exe
launch: {file.path}

and add D:/Games to [config directory]/game_dirs.txt. File paths like above are relative to the collection file; I'll add a note about this in the documentation.

halfmanhalfcake

@fluffypillow Thanks, but no luck.

Here's what I have as a test:

game_dirs.txt in my '[config]/pegasus-frontend' - (which was found in the 'lastrun.log' as I checked).

"Found C:/Users/Me/AppData/Local/pegasus-frontend/game_dirs.txt"
ES2: system config file not found
Steam: no installation found
Data files loaded in 3ms
0 games found

Which inside 'game_dirs.txt' contains:

"D:/Games"

I have collections.txt and metadata.txt in D:/Games.

In collections.txt:

collection: Indie Games
file: Firewatch/Firewatch.exe
launch: {file.path}

and still says no games found :(

fluffypillow

@halfmanhalfcake hm you should also get a Found D:/Games/collections.txt on the log... perhaps something goes wrong with the Windows path handling, I'll see if I can reproduce this the weekend.

Darksavior

@fluffypillow I'm now stumped, heh. Updated clean retropie stretch image = ok. Same clean image but copied my /configs/ folder over = crash to commandline with no working kb and EGL error. Oh well, I don't use reicast often.