Please Test: Adding support for "All", "Favorites" and "Last Played" systems

Capeman

I found a conflict with FAVORITES and the retropie powerblock driver (and likely all 3rd party pi power circuits).

When a favorite is marked via the controller button shortcut or the metadata updater, the gamelist is updated in memory. Gamelists aren't saved to disk until ES is exited (not news to anybody).

Powerblock drivers appear to simply stop the ES process when the powerblock is switched off, not allowing gamelist.xml files to write back (similar to crashing ES), losing any new Favorites marked during that session as a result.

Given most 3rd party power control circuits and the 1 button gpio shutdown circuit use a similar hard stop function to shutdown the pi, a fix to ES to write the favorite tag to the gamelist.xml on disk at the time a favorite is marked might clean this up for people who use software controlled power switches.

jdrassa

@capeman This is likely an issue with editing metadata as well. The gamelists are only saved on exit because it can be a slow process. A workaround for now, is that you can restart EmulationStation from its menu to ensure any metadata changes are saved, before shutting down.

Capeman

@jdrassa that's what I've been doing, quit ES out to a command line then flip the power switch. It works well enough but it's easy to forget to do.

pjft

@capeman thanks. Yeah, either that or adjusting the shutdown script to make that happen - or even the driver. Probably that will be the best.

Read up on this entire thread, with a proposed solution:

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/post/95214

As well as the problems of saving metadata immediately. It's not that we can't add an option for that, but there's specific reasons why that isn't happening, mostly performance related.

Capeman

Makes sense to me, lots of users are doing whole romsets with full discriptions. That would likely take time to save every time. All of my gamelists are ultra simplified so they weigh in at a whopping 20 to 40k a piece, so i guess im spoiled in that regard.

Adjusting the script for the powerblock might be best, i might need to read up on that post to see if i can do that.

alphatoanant

Hi @pjft I have a possibly odd use-case to run by you for the new "All", "Favorites" and "Last Played" system themes

Figured it might be easier to explain in video form:

I have a fallback approach in place now using a more general layout which I think could work fine but wanted to see if there was a different approach I was missing.

Knowing this use-case kind of came up because of the layouts I am shooting for (e.g. I am doing it to myself) please consider this mainly a question of "what if" :)

Thank you for your time

pjft

@alphatoanant Thanks for the detailed explanation :)

I answered it in your theme's topic.

Keep up the great work!

cyperghost

@capeman You can use the extended shutdown script from here currently v1.5 is working best!

saddys

Hi! I have a problem.. All is ok, i can add/remove favorites.. But when i restart the system, the list is empty!

mediamogul

@saddys

Do you have "Save game list on exit" selected in Emulation Station?

saddys

I don't have this options in the menù, i have only Save metadata.

Anyway, i try to shutdown system by the menu and now save the gamelist. If i perform a shutdown by pressing a button that is connected in gpio and with a scripts make the shutdown, the list is not saved, like @Capeman.

mediamogul

@saddys

i have only Save metadata.

That's it. It's been a while since I last looked at it.

If i perform a shutdown by pressing a button that is connected in gpio and with a scripts make the shutdown, the list is not saved!

Sounds like the script is killing Emulation Station rather than shutting it down and giving it the opportunity to save the metadata. You may be able to alter the script, but I don't know if Emulation Station allows an outside command to initiate it's shutdown.

saddys

@mediamogul thanks, i will try the solution of @cyperghost.. thanks a lot.

cyperghost

@mediamogul ES can be initated to do a shutdown/restart by outside call :)
Read here
and here

cyperghost

@mediamogul @saddys
The magic to force ES to shutdown/restart is

create a file es-restart or es-shutdown in /tmp folder (we use touch command) take care of user. The file must belong to user:group pi:pi
kill the ES binary process only! (we use pkill or pgrep "/opt/retropie/supplementary/.*/emulationstation([^.]|$)") call to kill or optain ES binaries PID ONLY!!! Never use killall command!

voila ES will shutdown or restart

EDIT:
The modified part is the code block between the both
#End Emulationstation if condition of running binary is true (v1.5) lines

mediamogul

@cyperghost

Very nice! I have a script of my own that would benefit from this. Thanks.

TMNTturtlguy

@cyperghost this looks familiar! :)

cyperghost

@tmntturtlguy Not at all
Since we have tons of mausberry users here they loose favourites and last played list of they push the button. So indeed I exchanged the es-restart file simply with es-shutdown and it works like a charm (That was version 1.2)

But now we ( @meleu and me) want to 100% kill all emulators if you are within a game and press the shutdown button. So we kill the emulators, wait a few seconds so that ES can save XML-files and then shutdown ES with familiar method :)

But we know it was YOU that asked for a "simple" method to restart ES via bash :D

btw. @meleu is working on a new version (1.7) on this script that will asure that really all emulators will be catched up. In 1.5 there might be emulators (ScummVM for ex.) that can't be properly closed.

saddys

@cyperghost Thanks but it seems too much complicated for me, i'm new in this world :) i will use systems quit and amen

cyperghost

@saddys Also a solution but @meleu is a talented code writer and I think he is willing to help you - if you ask.