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

ohmycommodore

As a user and not a coder, this is all very exciting. Many thanks to those sweating the details on something that will likely become very usable and functional.

Is there a current, brief list of the elements that are now being worked on for this update?

pjft

@ohmycommodore Thank you - looking forward to having more and more people enjoying them!

At the moment, if you update from binary - it should be version 2.4.0 - you'll have all these features so far: the option to turn on the systems for "All Games", "Favorites" and "Last Played".

In the future (say, give or take end of month or beginning of August) we'll hopefully be able to define custom collections of our own inside ES. But that work has still not started, and from the look of my coming weeks at work, I'm not sure how much free time I'll effectively have outside of work to make progress on these.

But we'll get there, I'm sure.

ohmycommodore

@pjft Great thanks, where is the toggle to turn this on, following the binary update?

ohmycommodore

This post is deleted!

pjft

@ohmycommodore in the start menu, there should be a game collections menu now.

Do make sure to use an updated theme that supports them, though. You'll see a separate thread on that, that's listing all currently updated themes. I'm on my phone so can't easily link to it, sorry. .

Let us know how it goes. I'm curious as well as somewhat seeking more feedback given reports from earlier today, despite all the tests that this went through. Hope it works well for you!

Edit: it's here:

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/11477/es-themes-ready-for-favorite-all-games-recently-played-and-custom-collections

red2blue

@pjft So the crashing when i favorited something was when i was using a 'unsupported' theme, which was carbon. after changing to comic book theme it fixed. When I changed to the Comic Book theme, thats when all my errors i wrote above was happening. After I manually restarted my pi (turning off power receiver then switching back on) all the problems stopped.

I dont think i can replicate the same exact problems, it just happened after the carbon theme switch to comic book.

As of now, I haven't had any errors or bugs after restarting console.

NOTE: The carbon theme had the favorite crashing error before carbon was updated for recent build.

TMNTturtlguy

@red2blue Just as a clarification - please confirm when using the ComicBook Theme everything works correctly. Thank you

pjft

@red2blue thanks!

I'll check if anything stands out when using an unsupported theme - I do have to say I only tested that briefly. I wouldn't expect that to have any effect, but it is certainly a good pointer.

Glad all is going well otherwise then.

red2blue

@TMNTturtlguy everything is working perfectly however when i was recieing the bugs mentioned earlier, runcommand not working, command line only showing, etc etc it was when i was using your theme. but everything is good now

@pjft no problem brotha

pjft

@red2blue Not a bother.

Couldn't replicate any crash on my end, but will keep an eye out for it.

Best.

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?