Announcing Pegasus Frontend

PlayingKarrde

So I'm trying to get my collections going and I'm using a third party scraper since I don't want to install emulationstation without portable mode (having to organise my roms where ES2 wants me to is never going to happen) but either the scraper I'm using is adding media to an unusual folder structure or Pegasus is using a strange format. I'm using Skraper.net since it seems the best for people not necessarily using RetroPie (which in this instance I'm not).

Your suggested structure is:

NES/
├─ collections.txt
├─ metadata.txt
├─ Contra (U).zip
└─ media/
   └─ Contra (U)/
      ├─ boxFront.jpg
      ├─ logo.jpg
      └─ video.mp4

But Skraper is doing this:

NES/
├─ collections.txt
├─ metadata.txt
├─Contra (U).zip
└─ media/
   └─ box2front/
        └─ Contra (U).png

Since the scraper doesn't add the links to metadata.txt file this isn't really a solution. I've searched through Skraper to see if I can rearrange things but I can't see to be able to make a configuration similar to the one you are suggesting.

Do you perhaps have a different scraper that you suggest that does indeed scrape media in file structure that Pegasus is looking for?

fluffypillow

@PlayingKarrde unfortunately I'm not aware of any scraper that supports Pegasus out of the box. Hopefully this will change in the future. For now, the files have to be arranged manually (or with some scripting).

Purg.Derren

@fluffypillow said in Announcing Pegasus Frontend:

Weekly update!

I've also experimented with allowing Pegasus to be set as the main launcher, but personally I've found it a bit too easy to set that accidentally, so I've stick to being a regular app for now

but, but - that would be GREAT!
Maybe you could offer two versions, regular and a "launcher"-version so people can decide wich to use - for me, if i ever finish my rom-collection - the launcher thing would be the optimal result!

An other question: the "basic-theme" in the theme tutorial thread... is there a way to use this one w/o to compile or smth? i tried to simple copy the whole sourcecode and make a "theme.qml" and put it (in a subfolder) to the other themes, but it is not recognized by pegasus..

PlayingKarrde

@fluffypillow

@PlayingKarrde unfortunately I'm not aware of any scraper that supports Pegasus out of the box. Hopefully this will change in the future. For now, the files have to be arranged manually (or with some scripting).

Ah ok. I think what I might do then is just write an autohotkey script to convert the format I posted to Pegasus format then. Shouldn't be too hard. I'll post it here when it's done.

-edit- actually I'm just curious why you chose to organise your files this way? If scrapers are scraping them a certain way would it not make more sense to conform to these standards than have scrapers add your launcher to their system? Just my 2c.

Purg.Derren

@PlayingKarrde yes, some automation would be nice i think.
i also use the Skraper, and for now i generate three folders "videos", "wheel" and "box3d" ... and after that i create the new directories and move/rename the files with command promt (windows)

for %i in (.png) do (md "%~ni" && move "%i" "%~ni")
for /r %i in (.png) do ren "%i" boxFront.png (and/or logo.png)

and same for the videos

for %i in (.mp4) do (md "%~ni" && move "%i" "%~ni")
for /r %i in (.mp4) do ren "%i" video.mp4

then i cut/paste (and merge that way) all the directories into the "media" folder.

fluffypillow

@Purg-Derren oh well, if it's such a requested feature, might as well re-add it :) I'll just make sure there's some documentation about how to undo it in case of accidents.

@PlayingKarrde the current organization was actually introduced only a few weeks ago (see the discussion starting here). The main points for the decision were the performance (raw speed) of deciding which game does an asset file belong to, avoiding corner cases in asset file naming and easiness of moving all assets of a game together.

As for the current scrapers, they all seem to have their own arrangement and generate ES2 files, which are actually supported. On the long term though, I'd prefer not being limited by the currently available tools of a different frontend, so I don't mind breaking the convention now and then.

fluffypillow

In other news, Patreon deleted my whole account because apparently I look suspicious (do I?). While I'm resolving the issue, the regular donation link is still available, in case someone is itching to buy me a coffee.

herb_fargus

@fluffypillow said in Announcing Pegasus Frontend:

In other news, Patreon deleted my whole account because apparently I look suspicious (do I?)

It's that Hungarian IP address. All those European hackers... Or ol ninty sawr their IP in a screenshot

PlayingKarrde

@Purg-Derren Ah cool thanks for that. Unfortunately I saw it after finishing my AHK script haha... oh well.

In any case, if anyone wants to use my script instead, just run your skraper on your roms, then place this in each folder containing your roms and run it:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/k4ztd1ewi0x07iu/OrganizeSkraperFiles_PLACE_IN_SAME_FOLDER_AS_ROM_FILES.exe?dl=0

Ideally it would just recursively read each platform folder but I don't really want to spend more time on it right now. Here's the script if anyone else wants to modify it/clean it up:

#NoEnv  ; Recommended for performance and compatibility with future AutoHotkey releases.
; #Warn  ; Enable warnings to assist with detecting common errors.
SendMode Input  ; Recommended for new scripts due to its superior speed and reliability.
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir%  ; Ensures a consistent starting directory.

;FileSelectFolder, WhichFolder 
Loop, Files, %A_ScriptDir%\media\*, R
{
	MediaFileNameArr := StrSplit(A_LoopFileName, "."A_LoopFileExt)
	MediaName := MediaFileNameArr[1]

	PathArr := StrSplit(A_LoopFileDir, "media\")
	Path := PathArr[2]

	if (Path == "fanart")
	{
		renameTo := "background"
	} 
	else if  (Path == "screenshot")
	{
		renameTo := "screenshot"
	} 
	else if  (Path == "box2dfront")
	{
		renameTo := "boxFront"
	} 
	else if  (Path == "wheel")
	{
		renameTo := "logo"
	} 
	else if  (Path == "steamgrid")
	{
		renameTo := "steamgrid"
	}
	else if  (Path == "videos")
	{
		renameTo := "video"
	}
	else
	{
		renameTo := "skip"
	}

	if (renameTo != "skip")
	{
		FileCreateDir, %A_ScriptDir%\media\%MediaName%
		FileMove, %A_LoopFileLongPath%, %A_ScriptDir%\media\%MediaName%\%renameTo%.%A_LoopFileExt%, 0
	}
}

MsgBox, 0, Complete

I'd recommend making a backup of your folder just in case. Run at your own risk haha (it works fine for me...)

Darksavior

Any theme maker wanting ideas, this would be awesome to have in Pegasus. It's the official nes frontend for the Switch:

PlayingKarrde

@Darksavior If you're talking about the sidebar that's actually how I plan on implementing my collection menu.

SephirothX2004

Is there a way to display only the android apps you want and also how would i add media for them?

fluffypillow

@SephirothX2004 there's no support for these yet. But might come in the future.

PlayingKarrde

I'm getting a lot of performance issues on my theme when trying to implement video also. I've updated my codecs etc and not getting any playback errors in the log so I'm not sure what the issue is other than it just hitching due to trying to load the video into memory each time. Have you had any luck? Do you get hitching on your machine?

fluffypillow

@PlayingKarrde yes, I've done some measurements on Windows, and with the default theme, the hitching seems to actually happen on the video unloading, ie. when clearing the Video's playlist. I'll need to do some more testing, but so far that's what I see on this PC. However, increasing the delay before starting the video on game select seems to have fixed the issue (I've increased it to 1.5 seconds for testing but I think a few hundred ms should be more than enough).

PlayingKarrde

@fluffypillow I'm using 300ms for mine but even 1500 doesn't really change anything. I have a video on each delegate tho and I wonder if this has anything to do with it. When loading collections it is very unresponsive until everything has loaded and also there's a lot more hitching when navigating to new rows. Also, I'm not using playlists so I'm not sure that's what it is (at least in my case).

If you want to see what I mean here's my current WIP theme: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3frz1b7ievfqut6/gameOS.zip?dl=0

Also, unrelated but I'm getting tons of this log spam:

libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile

Can't seem to get rid of it. Doesn't affect anything, I just hate log spam haha

fluffypillow

@PlayingKarrde yes, the delay is caused by the creation of new Video objects for each delegate; creating one takes about 50-85ms, so ~15 of them appearing at once will end up with a visible impact (even without a set source). However, since only one of them will be actually playing content, it's not necessary to create all of them up front, or even create more than one. So as a workaround, you could add a Loader that would load a video player item when the delegate gets selected, and unload its content when deselected, for example.

Also, unrelated but I'm getting tons of this log spam:

Yeah that seem to be frequent among Steam images, but it shouldn't cause actual problems. Blame Valve :)

sunwind

I'd like to get into modding retropie and frontends etc myself, there's just so much to choose from, and I can't figure out how to get that frontend manager working on my existing installation, I went to install experimental packages and it's not there, tried yesterday anyway. am I gonna have to wipe my install and start over with pegasus frontend first, then install things on top of it? what's the 'best' install order etc?

PlayingKarrde

@fluffypillow said in Announcing Pegasus Frontend:

@PlayingKarrde yes, the delay is caused by the creation of new Video objects for each delegate; creating one takes about 50-85ms, so ~15 of them appearing at once will end up with a visible impact (even without a set source). However, since only one of them will be actually playing content, it's not necessary to create all of them up front, or even create more than one. So as a workaround, you could add a Loader that would load a video player item when the delegate gets selected, and unload its content when deselected, for example.

Yeah I was thinking of something along those lines (and for sure I knew having one mediaplayer per video was a terrible idea haha). I'll look into using a loader as that definitely sounds right. Thanks.

fluffypillow

@sunwind you can just unzip the release for your system somewhere to the SD card then launch it from the terminal. The frontend chooser is not in the RetroPie menu, only the individual frontends, you can get it here instead. The frontend chooser is simply a graphical tool for installing frontends and setting them to run on boot. They are just like any other program, you can install or remove any of them whenever you want.