Announcing Pegasus Frontend

[NeoBi]

Hi fluffy ! I wanted to know if is it possible to use ahk scripts to launch games on their emulators ?

[fluffypillow]

@NeoBi I think it should be possible, yes; according to its docs you might be able to run the script directly, or as a parameter to AutoHotkey.exe, or by converting the script to a standalone exe too.

[NeoBi]

@fluffypillow Yes it works with standalone exe ! Thank you for your fast awswer. And I love your work, keep it up !

[spartan]

@fluffypillow is there a way to configure/map controls inside pegasus-frontend (Android) and tell retroarch to use that configuration from pegasus-frontend?

[fluffypillow]

@spartan This cannot be done automatically on Android because apps are not allowed to change other apps' settings. It may be possible with a custom script however, if RA is set up to load the settings from eg. the SD card then that can be modified with a script, and Pegasus can be set up to call this script on config change.

At least, in theory; haven't tried it yet but I plan to make a similar script for RetroPie in the future, which might also work on Android too.

[lilbud]

I ran into some trouble with Pegasus.

So I'm trying to import a game, Popful Mail, it has multiple wav files. An ISO and a cue sheet.

I keep all of the Popful Mail files in their own folder for organization purposes. And when I try and edit the metadata file to read the other directory, it won't show any metadata (the media folder is in the root of the rom folder.) It will all show if I move the metadata file and media folder to the popful mail folder, but that wouldn't work if I want to add more games.

Sega CD -> ROMs -> Popful Mail folder, metadata.txt, media folder.

(Sidenote: I wrote this at 1am, and am tired. So if anything needs clarification, lemmie know)

[Darksavior]

@lilbud Not the answer you're looking for, but why not convert them to .chd? It'll be a single file and be smaller in size. You don't mention what pi you're using, but chd only works with genesis plus gx.

[lilbud]

@Darksavior I'm actually on PC, and Genesis plus Gx didn't play audio the last time I tried.

It will either play static or no sound at all

Update: My save doesn't work with a CHD file and Genesis Plus GX

[lilbud]

Figured it out, I have to have a metadata txt file and a media folder in every subfolder for every sega cd game I want to add.

There probably is a better way, but this works for now

[PlayingKarrde]

@lilbud Have you tried referencing the rom file (in this case the .cue) including the subfolder name in the path? The metadata.txt does support folder paths.

So instead of

file: Popful Mail.cue

it would be:

file: ./<folder name>/Popful Mail.cue

I can't remember if it's forward slash or backslash so try both.

[lilbud]

@PlayingKarrde I've tried that, but that causes the art and metadata to disappear. The only way to show the art and metadata is the move the both into the "Popful Mail" subfolder. Then add each folder as a rom path within pegasus.

[fluffypillow]

@lilbud so you have the following structure, right?

roms
+-- metadata.pegasus.txt
+-- popful
    +-- game.cue
    +-- game.iso
    +-- track01.wav
    +-- track02.wav
    ...

In this case, the metadata file would look something like this:

collection: Sega CD
files:
  popful/game.cue
  ...

game: Popful Mail
file: popful/game.cue
description: Some details here

And, because popful/game.cue is under the sudirectory popful, the media files would be looked under media/popful/Popful Mail/, eg. like this:

roms
+-- metadata.pegasus.txt
+-- media
|   +-- popful
|       +-- Popful Mail
|           +-- box_front.png
|           +-- logo.png
|           +-- video.mp4
+-- popful
    +-- game.cue
    +-- game.iso
    +-- track01.wav
    +-- track02.wav

This setup should work fine, but feel free to report it if you run into any troubles.

[lilbud]

I may have brought it up before (can't really remember), but would it be possible to add support for the how long to beat website as a metadata tag? The site shows how long each game takes to beat, normally and completing everything.

I found this searching around, it is an api wrapper for the site, not sure if it'd be of any help though.

https://github.com/ckatzorke/howlongtobeat

The Python one is a little more up to date: https://github.com/ScrappyCocco/HowLongToBeat-PythonAPI

[fluffypillow]

@lilbud that's a good idea, I could imagine seeing that at the game details. However getting the metadata for a particular game would have to be handled by a scraper, as that can't be done in Pegasus without guesswork (as games can be present in multiple collections, can have multiple files, etc.). [I wonder if there's someone who'd like to write a modular scraper?]

[Darksavior]

@fluffypillow Have you tried the latest dev image? https://files.retropie.org.uk/images/weekly/retropie-buster-4.5.8-rpi4.img.gz

It now supports hdmi modes/groups where it previously didn't. So the boot process, emulators, and ES now use the resolution that's set in config.txt.
Well, pegasus doesn't :). It ignores those settings and will still display at 4k30hz.
I've been using hdmi_ignore_edid=0xa5000080 for a few months now to force it all to 1080p.

[fluffypillow]

@Darksavior hm what exactly happens? Pegasus shouldn't change the current resolution, just use whatever currently is active. Does it happen on Pi 4 and non-4 too? Will see if I can try it the afternoon.

[Darksavior]

@fluffypillow So if I set the resolution on my pi4 to 1080p in the config.txt, boot and emulators are 1080p, Pegasus will change to 4k on my 4k TV.

I haven't tried it on a pi3.

[mitu]

@Darksavior Does tvservice -s still lists the 4k video modes ?
Try adding to config.txt:

hdmi_max_pixel_freq:0=200000000
hdmi_max_pixel_freq:1=200000000

This should exclude the 4k video modes from being included
(from https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=255970&p=1579140&hilit=4k+disable#p1579140)

[Darksavior]

@mitu I'll try that, but the point that I'm trying to make is, ES will change what res is in config.txt. Pegasus does not. I bet if I try it on my 1440p monitor that Pegasus will change to that res as well. It's ignoring it.

[mitu]

My guess is that QT picks the first video mode (as detected by KMSDRM, which gets it via EDID from the display) instead of using the current video mode - while SDL2 (which EmulationStation uses underneath) will keep the current video mode.

Try running with QT_QPA_EGLFS_DEBUG=1 from the command line and see if you get some information on how QT picks the current video mode.