[Request] PDF reader for game manuals
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Hi all,
Firstly, thanks for all the hard work. I'm setting up a Retropie and because of all your work, it's a beautiful thing!It is clear though that some games are a complex and require more instructions than can be provided in the scraped game description.
It's usually quite easy to find a pdf of the game manual when one is needed, you just can't access it on emulation station.This is especially relevant to me, the RetroPie I'm building isn't for me (honest 'guv!) it will be a gift for my nephews.
I think it would be very handy if there was an option to launch a PDF / plain text reader from Emulation Station. The launcher needs to be tied to the currently selected game, either buried in the Emulation Station menu, or even by a direct button press.
If the pdf were stored with the same name as the game file (but with a .pdf / .txt extension) launching a reader from ES would be fairly trivial. What may take more effort is producing a pdf reader compatible with a retroarch controller.
Thoughts?
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I had a similar thought and "solved" the problem by running a webserver, where you can download the manual to another device by connecting to the retropie.
I write "solved" because it's very hacky and I've only implemented it for DOS and ScummVM games, as games on therse platforms usually need more "exposition" to enjoy properly (or even at all with some of the copy protections).
I haven't worked on this any further as I'm lacking the skills. But at some point I will probably refine the project, if I find the time.
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@ecto It's a neat idea, but I'm not sure that really works for me. I really want to be able to hand the completed Retropie over as a stand alone solution.
@everyone else...
I've been doing some searching and reading. It appears that this has been suggested several times before. But from what I gather, EmulationStation lacks a window manager that any existing pdf manager will be expecting.
So, if a pdf reader is too difficult, how about a full screen picture viewer?
Sure, storing text instructions & images as an image is going to take up more space than a pdf. But mostly these are going to be scanned images of the instructions that shipped with the game in the first place. -
I Recently put together a solution to this with a secondary touchscreen Pi4 controlled via scripting events. you can find instructions here:
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@koda9901 Very cool idea!
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