ES developers UNITE!

fluffypillow

Some months ago I started working on ES, and also collecting features from the different forks and unlanded PRs, but then I got distracted by other projects. At the moment I'm not working on it actively, but you can find my repo here, and a detailed changelog compared to the original ES here. The individual changes are mostly self-contained, so they could be applied on RetroPie/other fork as well.

Zigurana

@Nismo: Thats ok, i've removed you from the list. Feedback for specific forks / features/ items is better given in their original thread, no need to repeat it here.

robertybob

Just my two cents:

I'm desperate to see more features being implemented for Emulationstation, as it's such a great front end.

In an ideal world I'd love to see ES development the take a much higher priority and, while I'd never think of jumping ship to Recalbox, I do have a lot of respect for their fork of ES in terms of added features. Mehstation and RetroFE seem to have stalled so really there's only ES and Attract Mode having any kind of development.

Personally I think one person should take the reins and pull all the changes by users here into one fork for everyone to test via the RetroPie Setup script :)

Hex

Hex's Builds :

https://github.com/hex007/EmulationStation

Features :

Optimized for Pi 1 and Zero/W (Low processing on idle)
Integrated Audio Player (Starts shuffled with ES + Backend)
Easier access to shutdown/quit/reboot

Todo :

Incorporate features from RecalBox-ES and various forks of ES

Zigurana

@Hex. Hey that's very cool!
You are focusing on ES performance, for use with the Pi zero, right? Did you do any profiling to see what the real bottlenecks alare with stock ES?

Also, would you consider creating a PR for the
Retropie branch with the audioplayer functionality? Pretty please?

herb_fargus

Background music eh? Seems that's been a perpetual request ever since retropie has been a thing.

Hex

@Zigurana @herb_fargus Would you be interested in testing it?

The bottleneck is basically constant render of views. It is small enough on modern PCs but a hefty 60% constant processing doing nothing on Pi 1/Zero. The downside of this is video previews dont work nicely

AlexMurphy

@herb_fargus bgm works with the mpg123 setup. It works really well.

AlexMurphy

@herb_fargus The python script seems like a bit more work. This works flawlessly for me. Ah.. I can't find it... When are you going to get lr-bluemsx to work for Coleco???

Hex

@AlexMurphy bgm mpg123 combo doesnt pause on emulator start. There is no control over the playback. I was interested in a light weight yet controllable media player integrated with ES and hence my efforts.

AlexMurphy

@Hex It pauses on every emu I launch. It picks it up at the same point when I exit. It has NEVER played over an emulator or when I have left to the command line. I don't get it.

Hex

@AlexMurphy Aparently I am running an outdated version :|

AlexMurphy

@Hex It would seem so. It works brilliantly for me!

*and I am totally "up-to-date"

Hex

@AlexMurphy I apologise if I sounded rude.

AlexMurphy

@Hex No worries.

Hex

@AlexMurphy Offer still stands. Would you like to test my mediaplayer?

AlexMurphy

@Hex I would, thank you. I tried installing deadbeef from zerojays repo but could not get that to run any music. I need to pick up and extra SD card to test it on. I probably have one lying about here somewhere... but yes I am definitely interested in testing / helping.

Hex

@Zigurana @herb_fargus @AlexMurphy

My forked repo is here : https://github.com/hex007/EmulationStation
Instructions in the Readme

The "audio-server" is a stripped down version of "RiPlayServer" in another repo. It has more features like Android client(done), Web client (in works)

phulshof

@robertybob said in ES developers UNITE!:

In an ideal world I'd love to see ES development the take a much higher priority and, while I'd never think of jumping ship to Recalbox, I do have a lot of respect for their fork of ES in terms of added features. Mehstation and RetroFE seem to have stalled so really there's only ES and Attract Mode having any kind of development.

Actually, RetroFE was moved to www.retrofe.nl when I took over development. I only just received a pi3 though, so I'm still in the process of ironing out some kinks to allow RetroFE to be used on retropie. I'm working on it though. :)

pjft

@phulshof Well, welcome to the group!