Please Test: Creating Custom Collections

[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.

[EctoOne]

@tmntturtlguy Don't worry. Sooner or later I will probably have to update ES and see what happens. But TBH, I hate updates when there's nothing important to me and I have a working system that I like. That's why I have to bother with Android Studio now, I had to update my Tablet from Kitkat to Marshmallow because the support of certain Apps was dropped. :(

[pjft]

@cyperghost said in Please Test: Creating Custom Collections:

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

Yeah, don't try to manually rename files for the custom systems. That's not really expected, even though it didn't break you might find weird behaviors when navigating :)

Can you elaborate what the small small bug is? What do you mean that the system does not support the auto systems and custom collections? :)

@cyperghost and @HurricaneFan - tell me: would the bug effectively only manifest itself when exiting the gamelist view back to the system view? Meaning you'd be in a collection and then when exiting back to the system carousel it would explicitly navigate to a different system, is that it? Give me more information so I can tackle it for good :)

Thanks!

[pjft]

Ok, so a new update.

Here's the binary.

What changed:

• Generates custom metadata for folders under "My Collections" (thanks for commenting on how miserable the experience looked, @HurricaneFan, as that kind of forced me to think about it a bit more!)
• Fix system view navigation (I think - please check, @cyperghost and @HurricaneFan . I had narrowed down a misbehavior when using the "My Collections" system and exiting the gameview, but maybe I fixed a different thing to what you were experiencing).
• Filters in "My Collections" work
• Few other tweaks and fixes

Thanks all!

[HurricaneFan]

@pjft I'll get this tested today. Thanks for all the hard work you've put into this and other improvements for ES.

EDIT:
I copied the new binary over but I'm not seeing the custom metadata and the snes bug is still there.

Was your link pointing to the latest and greatest binary?

[HurricaneFan]

@pjft ES is showing version V2.4.1RP, is that the latest build?

[pjft]

@hurricanefan The version will be the same, but actually I did not update the instructions I gave you in case you were following them :)

mkdir /home/pi/tmp-es
cd /home/pi/tmp-es
rm emulationstation
wget https://github.com/pjft/EmulationStation/releases/download/0.3/emulationstation
chmod +x emulationstation
cd /opt/retropie/supplementary/emulationstation
sudo cp /home/pi/tmp-es/emulationstation /opt/retropie/supplementary/emulationstation

The file should have 5554720 bytes.

[HurricaneFan]

@pjft Thanks, I definitely had a different sized binary. Super weird. It's updated now and I'll test when I get time later today.

[cyperghost]

@pjft No bug still is there!
But it's even worse!

No I see one entry for custom collections I named it testsystem
If I enter custom-collections via carousel then I can activate testsystems and see my added roms there >> normal work

The Super NES bug is ... I see also testsystem but if I press a then I start the first game from Super NES Rom (2020 Super Baseball here) --- really weird.

How to produce
Got to Game Collection Settings:
Automatic Game Collections 3 selected
Custom Game Collections 1 selected testsystems
Group unthemed custom collections ON
Sort custom system and collections ON

Restart ES.
Now the last system in list (Super NES in my case) followed by auto-allgames auto-favoritesand auto-lastplayed can be acessed as custom-collections and but will launch ROM of system!

Sort custom system and collections OFF
No problem! Everything works!

[pjft]

@cyperghost can you send me a video from a phone or something?