Announcing Pegasus Frontend

fluffypillow

@clyde this custom filter thing actually sound really nice, it'd extend the current implementation nicely and isn't that hard to add. Will take a look on it.

Clyde

@fluffypillow That would be great! Here are some examples from AM's author:

https://github.com/mickelson/attract/wiki/Example-filters

fluffypillow

So this week I wanted to improve and experiment with the Android, Windows and Mac releases a bit, but due to the horribly long build times and bugs in third party code this ended up taking the whole week. But in the end, I've managed to create a faster, single-exe release for Windows, and set up automatic Android builds too. Will set up releasing them in the next days.

Also I've fixed the the screenshots, they were indeed causing some slowness (@Darksavior).

hooperre

@fluffypillow said in Announcing Pegasus Frontend:

I've managed to create a faster, single-exe release for Windows

Is theme building pretty seamless between the linux versions and Windows version? If I built my theme on my Windows desktop, are the file pathways about the only thing that would need to be changed moving between the two?

I've been looking for an opening to really sink my teeth in without changing my whole build/re-imaging my SD often if I goof something up.

fluffypillow

@hooperre Yes, themes should work and look the same on all platform. You can also store them under [directory of Pegasus]/themes/, which is checked on all platforms too.

Darksavior

@fluffypillow Builds have been unavailable since I tried to update yesterday via retropie-setup. Maybe @BuZz can add two builds to the pegasus section so we can fall back on: The latest alpha build and the bleeding edge "continuous build".

Error msg:
Available releases: https://github.com/mmatyas/pegasus-frontend/releases/download/continuous/pegasus-fe_alpha7-13-g082b64d-debug.apk https://github.com/mmatyas/pegasus-frontend/releases/download/continuous/pegasus-fe_alpha7-13-g082b64d_win-mingw-static.zip Package platform: rpi2 Looks like the latest Pegasus release is not yet available for this platform. This happens when the build is so fresh it's being uploaded right now, or when there's a technical problem on the download server. Either way, this is a temporary problem, so please try again in 1-2 minutes. If the problem persists, consider reporting it on the forum!

fluffypillow

@darksavior Ah, looks like last night's build failed to upload. Should be fixed now, thanks.
Yeah, I should really set up a fallback build (or stable/latest channels eventually). The alpha release might be a bit too far back, I'll see if I can make a "last successful build" kind of thing.

Yabuato

@fluffypillow I just registered to tell you I'm so excited about the Android port,please keep this great work up!

fluffypillow

@yabuato Thanks! :)

cosmo0

Hi !

I took a look at this project a while ago, and it has grown so much since then, it doesn't even look like the same project. It's very promising, and I hope it will soon enter a state advanced enough to replace EmulationStation with all its problems.

How can I help ? Test, code, whatever ?

fluffypillow

@cosmo0 Thanks :) Yeah, testing would be good, especially on multiple platforms (eg. Windows 8/10, Mac, Android) or trying different devices (gamepads often seem to have troubles). If you speak in a few languages, you could help with adding new translations. You could also try creating new themes - it's a bit complex and involves some programming, so having more examples and tutorials wouldn't hurt.

fluffypillow

As for this week's progress,

Continuing from last week, better Windows builds (named win-mingw-static) and experimental Android builds are now available
- the Android version doesn't support finger gestures yet, but in theory it may work using a connected USB mouse or gamepad
- fixed the Android version having incorrect icon, name and permissions
Portable mode
- there's a new--portable option; if you launch Pegasus with that, it will use [program dir]/config as a config directory and will not read or write any config files (general settings, themes, scripts) from/to the system (eg. from under ~/.config/)
- this only affects config files, game detection is unchanged
- note that cache files may still appear on the system
- a known issue is that the gamepad mapping config may still be stored on the system; this will get fixed later
Fixed Steam metadata download failing due to some recent changes on Steam's side

cosmo0

@fluffypillow said in Announcing Pegasus Frontend:

@cosmo0 Thanks :) Yeah, testing would be good, especially on multiple platforms (eg. Windows 8/10, Mac, Android) or trying different devices (gamepads often seem to have troubles). If you speak in a few languages, you could help with adding new translations. You could also try creating new themes - it's a bit complex and involves some programming, so having more examples and tutorials wouldn't hurt.

Ok, I'll note these somewhere. I will try to build the frontend on my Mac. I'm French, so I can translate in that language. And I can try to port the ES themes I use.

Not in the next days, maybe a bit later :)

cosmo0

Hey @fluffypillow !

I tried to launch the app on my Mac tonight. I did the qmake make dance (not make install), and I got an app that tells me I have no game.
So I opened the docs (great docs by the way, you must have put a LOT of work into it), and in "game collections and metadata files" it tells me to put collection files in the config directory... which is... ?
The directory is no specified in the log, and I don't know enough C++ to find out where it searches.
Can you help me ? :)

I'm not sure whether you prefer that I open an issue on Github or ask my questions here, as long as it's not really a bug or something?

honorio96

What are the video formats supported by Pegasus? Because the videos in mp4 do not work, there is only one black screen. I'm using the default theme and the latest build for windows.

fluffypillow

@cosmo0 Yeah, that part is temporary until there's a way to set it in the GUI; on Mac, it's supposed to be ~/Library/Preferences/pegasus-frontend or ~/Library/Application Support/pegasus-frontend. I've just added a list for the other platforms too.

Issues make it easier for me to keep track of individual topics, but generally both are fine. I usually create an issue too when someone mentions a problem/idea here.

@honorio96 on Windows you have to install video codecs (yes, I know, it's horrible). If you can play the file with Windows Media Player, it should work in Pegasus too. To see what codec a file uses, you can use eg. VLC, like this. I guess you could also just use some codec packs to play everything.

Also in case someone has troubles with Steam videos, installing this and this made it work for me (the first one for video playback, the second for audio).

cosmo0

Thanks, I'll try these folders.

Just a question: why haven't you stuck with the gamelist.xml files generated by all the scrapers?
Edit : ok so it uses the gamelist.xml, but not for the list of collections...

honorio96

@honorio96 on Windows you have to install video codecs (yes, I know, it's horrible). If you can play the file with Windows Media Player, it should work in Pegasus too. To see what codec a file uses, you can use eg. VLC, like this. I guess you could also just use some codec packs to play everything.

Also in case someone has troubles with Steam videos, installing this and this made it work for me (the first one for video playback, the second for audio).

I installed some codec and it worked perfectly.

Thank's!

fluffypillow

@cosmo0 it's just that I personally don't like XML for user-editable files, so I added an alternative. But that's completely optional, and ES files are still supported. The two implementations are separate though, so game_dirs.txt defines only in which directories Pegasus should look for collections/metadata.txt, similarly to how es_systems.cfg contains the path to the ROM dirs and possibly gamelist.xmls.

fluffypillow

This week's progress:

French translation by @cosmo0
Minor fixes and optimizations

(not too much due to other issues). I've also started working on the favorites support.