Announcing Pegasus Frontend

fluffypillow

Weekly changelog! Had some real life issues this week so there aren't too many changes, however there are fixes in several important areas:

Changed the default working directories
- Currently the working directory when launching a game defaults to the game's directory. Unfortunately several programs have issues when launched outside of their own directory (esp. on Windows), resulting in various files written to the game's folder. To make launching more natural, the default working directory is now the launched program's folder, except when the program is a globally installed command (more common on *nix), in which case it remains as the game's directory.
Added support for variables in the working directory field of the metadata files. The variables are the same you can use in launch commands.
Handled some corner cases of launch commands
Fixed empty line handling in metadata files
Fixed Unicode support not working well in metadata files on certain platforms
Fixed Debian package release
Minor performance improvements for metadata file reading

(By the way I understand these aren't particularly interesting changes for most, but such things have to be worked on as well. Hopefully we'll reach some more exiting features in the future!)

sergioad

@fluffypillow please do not worry, although those are """ minor""" changes those are important, please keep going and fix whatever needs a fix either in the frontend or in your life, I hope the boxart size bug is fixed anytime soon or the hide cursor option is added but better focus yourself in what is important, thanks friend

hooperre

When I changed my source from Skraper to both it and EmulationStation I get a crash.

jerzeeloon

@fluffypillow I just want to say thank you for fixing the issue on Android not returning to frontend when exiting an emulator. The latest automatic build works perfect and finally the front end I want as my daily driver will be.

fluffypillow

@hooperre Could you check it with the latest version? It won't fix the issue but has slightly more logging during the loading. I have an idea where the crash comes from but couldn't reproduce it yet, so this'd be to confirm my suspicion.

Meldrak

@fluffypillow thanks for this update, cemu roms now works with files in app folder
and no more problems with french special characters in UTF

fluffypillow

Weekly update! A bunch of technical stuff this time too, though certain items will make some people happy:

Android: Fixed the crash on returning from games
Android: Added support for multiple storages (ie. external SD cards)
Metadata: Added support for media directories under each directory entry of a collection
Metadata: Fixed the extension field not accepting files with capital-lettered extension
Logging improvements
- Each data source is now also measured separately during loading
- General readability improvements and fixes
Internal code changes, some minor optimizations

Darksavior

@fluffypillow Is it possible to have higher res art someday without Pegasus slowing down a crawl or is that just a pi limitation? I'm using a pi3b+.

msheehan79

@fluffypillow

I'm curious about this line and if I am just misinterpreting the feature or if this is a bug:

Metadata: Added support for media directories under each directory entry of a collection

I like the concept of putting the metadata files in a single spot so I have set up all my metadata files under the <config>\metafiles directory and all is working fine for pulling in metadata and launching games.

The only odd bit I noticed was when I have my setup configured with these global metadata files, the artwork is not found unless I also have the game folders specified in the game_dirs config file.

Should the latest builds now be checking the directory that is specified in the metadata file(s) for the presence of a media directory? Or is it required to still include the rom folders in the game_dir file as well for that to happen?

I tested with today's build from the site, so I believe I am up to date with current changes.

fluffypillow

@Darksavior that depends on the video ram of the device: the larger the images are, the more they take up, and the less space there is the more often the textures have to be loaded ans swapped around in the vram.

@msheehan79 yes, Pegasus now also looks for media directory under the directory entries of a collection. In practice that means a setup like this now works:

where metadata.pegasus.txt has collections with the directory set to 'Spy' and 'Tank' (related: issue #407).

Meldrak

@fluffypillow will you add a option to show favorites on a single tab as system like?
or is it already possible to do it?

fluffypillow

@Meldrak it could be possible for themes to do that, but there's no plan for that in the built-in one at the moment.

msheehan79

@fluffypillow

OK, thanks for clarifying this feature. I've got my artwork assets in the Skraper directory structure under each collection directory, as in -

<collection>/media/box2dfront/
<collection>/media/wheel/

I did confirm if I flipped it to the structure in your screenshot where each game has a folder with images it does detect the artwork, but it doesn't pick up the images when they are grouped by artwork type in the directory structure above.

Is it possible to support both artwork configurations or does that add a ton of overhead to trying to determine what folder structure is being used for media assets?

fluffypillow

@msheehan79 yes, at the moment only the structure above is supported, but Skraper support could be added in the future too. Shouldn't be too difficult, just takes a bit of time.

msheehan79

Talk about an impressive turnaround - just grabbed today's build and I see you have already added this support. Nice!!

AndersHP

@fluffypillow did you ever test this on a 320x240 monitor?
Over at Sudomod, many are building Gameboy builds running RetroPie.

Given the benefits of running Pegasus instead of ES, it would be neat if the frontend could be optimized for small screens also, if possible..? Maybe without video preview and with bigger text, with no description or something similar?

fluffypillow

@AndersHP couldn't try it yet unfortunately, but Pegasus itself should work fine with that too. The main theme is indeed probably a bit much for this size, but a theme for small displays could be also made. At the moment I think the beach theme might look readable and light enough to use.

PlayingKarrde

@AndersHP I plan on making a 240p theme at some point as I'm also running pegasus on my new astro city arcade cab.

spartan

@fluffypillow could tell me the Mac OS X folders root for ES: gamelist, metadata, roms?
I tried different folders but the app still quiting because no games found.

fluffypillow

@spartan Pegasus will check ~/.emulationstation/ for ES' files, eg. ~/.emulationstation/es_systems.cfg and look for games in the paths listed there.