Request: Controller Order menu in Emulationstation

meleu

@m0h https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/1167/here-is-a-way-to-select-joystick-for-players-1-4-global-or-emu-specific

Sano

I totally agree that Joystick-Selection does the job, and I don't want to minimize all the work done (not at all).

But i understand the request too. When you're under ES, launching an old fashioned ncurses script (with different key mappings for now) and navigating on this interface is neither visually attractive nor logical for most of people, and even could be frightening.

I personnaly stay with retropie, cause it works, it's standard, it's tunable and I know and love Linux.
But this lack of integration of some "basic" functionnalities to the front-end could sure be an issue for end users.

I totally understand the reasons why it's that way, though.
And I totally know that everybody here is aware of this, and I'm just talking nonsense.
My 2 cents :)

meleu

@Sano

But i understand the request too.

I not only understand but I also fully agree. Actually I made this request about a year ago, and the conversation back then made me believe that it would be faster to create a solution myself. And then the joystick-selection tool was born.

But now the scenario is different. We have several ES hackers here. I would love to see this feature integrated in ES too.

Sano

@meleu
Very instructive thread, thanks for pointing it. Just had my retropie setup for 6 months, so did'nt see this one :)

m0h

@meleu Thanks, it's a temporary solution and i believe it will work. I'll try it asap.
Nonetheless i believe a more integrate solution would be stylish and in line with perfectionists' tastes.

If hacking something like this it's too difficult, i wonder if there's a chance to use Recalbox's Emulationstation fork into Retropie.
I know that some minor changes has been made in the fork to accommodate with Recalbox's needs , but i wonder if these changes are not so troubling when comes to other OSes integration.

@Sano i'm sticking with Retropie too because i find it almost perfect.
The only thing that lacks is more control on the frontend, because when we tailor our systems to our needs, after work is DONE and we can chill and play, we need something that hides all the technical stuff just to focus on playing.

Also, some of us are accustomed to play Beat'em ups with a pad , while other are proficient with arcade sticks.

I would even like the possibility to SCRIPT EmulationStation configs, something like

IF pad1 is present { pad1 = player1pad , joy0 = player2pad ............. <-- very pseudocode, just to prove the point.
and so on...

this would allow a more automated way to deal with added pads and emulators automatically.

meleu

@m0h you can have something like what you want with that temporary solution, and there's no need to script anything.

m0h

@meleu Yes, i can imagine it.
Still, temporary is temporary ... I love ES and i hate to see it so... incomplete :)
After all a frontend is something that covers the ugly graphics, isn't it? :)

I wonder if we can hook into some of the ES code and render your Joystick-Selection in a similar way than ES , something like a sub-module with the same graphics... or something :)

meleu

@m0h said in Request: Controller Order menu in Emulationstation:

I wonder if we can hook into some of the ES code and render your Joystick-Selection in a similar way than ES

Yes, we can. It's all open source. But it requires C++ knowledge, which I don't have.

BuZz

I'm afraid I don't want to integrate ES into RetroPie in the same way as recalbox, eg having ES control retroarch configurations etc. I prefer to keep it separate from the frontend(s). It can be controlled from the configuration editor, or for more control via meleu's script.

m0h

What about having ES handle dialogs scripted from a .sh file? ( e.g. dialogs programmed in bash ? )
This way bash files would handle commands , while ES just handles the graphic part as usual.

e.g. ES loads the menu from an external file ( softscripted ) that we can edit, and then we can hook bash commands to it and let it handle the gui?

That way we can code our menus by ourselves... :)

herb_fargus

@m0h most joypad extractions are handled through retropad with retroarch, I know they had some plans at some point to make the retropad more visual but I don't now where they are at with it.