"Favorites" menu

batman

I can see how quickly that can become a common theme in the "ideas/suggestions" forum of both Retropie and Recalbox. Totally understandable though given they are similar.

Can I ask, Is there any connection between the two other the obvious (appearance and functionality)?

herb_fargus

@batman RetroPie and recalbox run the same software essentially as they are both built on retroarch and emulationstation. Difference is recalbox has focused their development heavily on user interface and uses a buildroot environment and RetroPie has focused development primarily on emulation, configuration, and portability and can be installed on many different platforms and Linux distributions also because RetroPie is more modular it is really easy to add new ports and systems which is why we have obscure things like the sam coupe etc. . Simplest way to look at it is recalbox=Apple RetroPie=Android

batman

@herb_fargus

Thanks for explaining Herb. I'm an android user so it would makes sense that I chose Retropie!

The configuration aspect of it has been a little intimidating (and at times frustrating) for somebody like me whose only starting out and trying to understand what Retropie can and can't do. But, I would prefer that over lack of customisation and emulator options.

I spent a bit of time looking at both prior to deciding what to install and I think it was the userbase and ample information/discussion on the wiki's, reddit and here on the forums. That's not to say that I'm curious to try Recalbox at some point and it's good to see that both are able to co-exist in harmony.

Floob

@TwoGuidosGaming
You could try this for Favourites
https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Child-friendly-EmulationStation

megasweet

Just wanted to bump to +1 this feature. The standard emulation station setup is tedious to use with large libraries. If there's any way to file a ticket or vote on issues to go into the next release, I would love to add my voice to this one. I know there are a number of side branches on github that implement this feature, but it's unfortunately a bit beyond my ability to compile and implement my own version.

ebtalk

@Floob
This looks pretty good. I was looking through it but may have missed it. Can you edit the Favorites field from within Emulation Station or do you have to exit out of there?

mattrixk

@ebtalk I have the Child-Friendly version running on my system.

Basically it adds a "Favourite" option to the metadata. You can set games as favourites, then you can decide to only display the favourites. If you are using the special Carbon theme listed on the Wiki page, you can even set up X or Y as a hotkey to add a game as a favourite, or just edit the game's metadata using the menu.

It also has 2 other new metadata options: Child-Friendly and Hidden.

enderandrew

@mattrixk said in "Favorites" menu:

@ebtalk I have the Child-Friendly version running on my system.

Basically it adds a "Favourite" option to the metadata. You can set games as favourites, then you can decide to only display the favourites. If you are using the special Carbon theme listed on the Wiki page, you can even set up X or Y as a hotkey to add a game as a favourite, or just edit the game's metadata using the menu.

It also has 2 other new metadata options: Child-Friendly and Hidden.

Tagging favorites should really be a separate feature from a child-friendly mode. Ideally a child-friendly mode should have a list of child-appropriate games, hide the rest and hide the settings menu so they can't change anything or screw anything up. I wonder if the community could help provide a list of child-friendly games for each system that you get with the rest of your scraping.

mattrixk

@enderandrew: The main feature of the Child Friendly ES is the ability to change UI Modes between Full, Kiosk and Kids.

Full is the total RetroPie setup.
Kiosk hides things like the RetroPie Settings option and some of the other Menu options. It also hides all ROMs with the "Hidden" metadata tag set.
Kids hides just about all settings and menu options, and only shows ROMs that have the "Child Friendly" metadata tag set.

I think the favourites is just a happy extra that Zigurana decided to add in.

I like your idea of a list of kid friendly games.

ebtalk

@mattrixk is there a way to just use the favorites feature and not use the children's menu?

mattrixk

@ebtalk: It's all part of the same package, but you can simply not use either the Kiosk or Kids UI Modes.

I just use the favourites feature, and when I don't feel like scrolling through everything, I just turn on the "show favourites only" option, and it hides everything else.

I also mark some games as Kid friendly, just so I can tell at a glance as I'm scrolling through, but it's not a major feature for me (yet. My son isn't quite old enough, but I can see it being handy in a few years).

Some themes will show an icon if a ROM has any of the "fav", "kid" or "hidden" metadata tags set. There is a link to an altered Carbon theme on the mod wiki page, and my MetaPixel theme also uses them. I was certain I had fixed up Io and Spare to use them too, but according to Git I haven't.

ebtalk

@mattrixk I gave it a test install. On the surface it looked nice. The features are really helpful. When I changed one game like Little League Baseball (NES) as a favorite. It appeared in favorites. As a test, I removed it from favorites and it kicked me out of EmulationStation and to the command line screen and my keyboard suddenly wouldn't work.

I had to restart my Pi. Tried it again and it all locked up again.

ebtalk

I uninstalled the experimental package and now I get an emulationstation command not found when I start my Pi. Uh oh.

ANy thoughts?

Zigurana

@ebtalk this is a known bug.
It's because you had one game set as a favorite, turned on the favorite-only view, and then removed the one and only favorite.
You can fix this for now by remotely editing: ./.emulationstation/es_settings.xml and setting favorites_only = false.

mattrixk

I'm very glad you showed up to answer this @Zigurana, as I would not have been able to.

ebtalk

@Zigurana @mattrixk any idea if uninstalling it would have removed emulationstation?

Zigurana

@ebtalk how did you uninstall?
What happens when you run emulationstation from it's original location?

ebtalk

@Zigurana I went to the manage experimental tools page and chose to uninstall it. I now get a emulation station cannot be found. Please go to emulationstation.org

ebtalk

Here's what it says now:
"We can't find any systems!
Check that your paths are correct in the systems configuration file, and your game directory has at least one game with the correct extension.

Visit emultationstation.org for more information."

====================

To confirm, I do have games set up in the directories.

BuZz

@ebtalk update all packages.