Please Test: Creating Custom Collections

HurricaneFan

@cyperghost I had your bug today too. I thought it was a weird thing with me switching themes but wasn't sure.

cyperghost

@hurricanefan You can enable/disable the bug by "sort custom systems and collections" on/off, can you confirm?
Then you need to open your last regular system ... mine is Super Nintendo

pjft

@cyperghost @HurricaneFan hmm. Thanks for the report.

I can confirm that that's certainly not the case all the time, so I need a bit more information there.

Any steps to replicate it from the start of EmulationStation, and what collection options (sort? Group? How many auto, and custom ones - both themed and unthemed) and theme you're using?

I have a few ideas where that may be happening, but pointers would certainly help.

Thanks!

pjft

@cyperghost so, with sorting on it has the bug? I'm happy to remove that option :p

Joking aside: and if you restart ES with the option in the same state, does the problem still occur on loading or is it just if you toggle the option in the session?

HurricaneFan

@pjft
I see the same thing with the Comic Book theme.

Would I be able to scrape data for this section? So it doesn't list empty fields on the right of whatever theme I'm using?

pjft

@hurricanefan no scraping. But I'll follow one of the approaches I mentioned in my previous post and come up with something based on the content of the collection as a compromise. Would that work?

cyperghost

@pjft You have luck, I can replicate!
if you restart ES fresh!
I have enabled all 3 auto-system
I have already 2 collection system (manually) added
I have already 0 custom collections from theme

Group unthemed custom collection is ON
Sort custom system and collections is ON
Last system >> Super Nintendo in my setup = custom collection

Sort custom system and collections is OFF!
Last system >> Super Nintendo in my setup = Super Nintendo

pjft

@cyperghost do you mean one of them to be off instead? :)

cyperghost

@pjft copy 'n' paste error corrected
My custom system are MEGADRIVE(1) and TESTSYSTEM

~~I think it could happen because T for testsystem is latest and not S in SNES.~~
rubbish!

pjft

@cyperghost and if you start ES with sorting off, does that happen?

cyperghost

@pjft No just with sorting enabled! Can you confirm?

pjft

@cyperghost thanks. That's all I needed to know. I'll fix that tomorrow.

By the way, your system is called megadrive (1) because you likely already have a megadrive system either in RetroPie or at least in es_systems.cfg.

This will not let you name collections with names that are already in use.

You can rename it by renaming the file in the collections folder. You may need to enable it again in ES, or edit the settings file, whichever you prefer.

cyperghost

Yes it was a stress test to your binary. What happens if there a two equal system? So you catched it up by an array. Nice one!

pjft

@cyperghost what do you mean "if there are two equal systems"?

If you're asking if you can create them, the idea is that no. Creating will always verify and rename if needed (same for special characters like commas and slashes). If you create a collection and later there's a new system installed in es_systems, that will take precedence. The collection shouldn't be loaded - I need to check, but that was the intention.

If you manually hack the files to have two equal systems, it'll be the same as creating two equal systems in es_systems. I don't know what will happen - it'll likely break - but that is not meant to be supported anyway. :)

cyperghost

@pjft I just wanted to test what is happening if I enter a systemname that is already used :) If you rename custom system to custom-megadrive then two Megadrive symbols are displayes. One contains the original MD-system with all MD roms, and the other contains MD with collections. So it won't break

Small small bug
There is already the note! Your system does not support the auto-systems and the custom collections!

HurricaneFan

@pjft That works if its not too complicated for you to implement.

EctoOne

Question: Does this work when I have collections created with one of the scripts that @meleu created beforehand? Or do I have to start over and revert all changes I made on my setup? I'm still on the version before collections were introduced and now I'm kinda scared that updating would break things.

pjft

@ectoone I don't expect it would affect that in any way, but it's easy to try. Worst case you don't use these collections though, as I mentioned, it shouldn't affect it much. Can you describe the high level trickery happening there?

Is it es_systems and run command hackery?

Should be good, but while you're at it if you want to add some of those to a collection and try them out, let me know how it goes.

EctoOne

@pjft It's this script I used https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/10849/create-a-custom-es-system-able-to-launch-games-for-many-systems/

And right now I'm not in the mood of testing things. I'm trying to setup Android Studio on my laptop to get into Android themeing, but getting the Software to work seems to be harder than the actual themeing...

TMNTturtlguy

@ectoone @pjft I also have this script on my builds. Unfortunately as my summer story continues, I am traveling this week, but i hope to have a few hours this weekend to test this out, i know that is a long ways off, but that is the only chance I will have to help. If things are not resolved by then, i will post my results.