Please Test: Creating Custom Collections

cyperghost

@pjft I thought it was solved by the Unicode name. But now it came up again.

EDIT:
Sorry I can't track it again!
Seems to be a random thing!

Seems to happen after fresh reboot. I downloaded from your source 0.3 a few days ago ... Don't know if it's the latest version now. Can you maybe add a version number/text in the Main Menu note?

lvl2: 	EmulationStation - v2.4.1rp, built Jul 27 2017 - 10:32:23

My game collections in folder /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/collections/ with my two files is:

custom-Beat 'em up.cfg
custom-testsystems.cfg

As you see in es_settings.cfg the unicode character is gone. My es_settings.cfg is:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<bool name="BackgroundJoystickInput" value="false" />
<bool name="CaptionsCompatibility" value="true" />
<bool name="DrawFramerate" value="false" />
<bool name="EnableSounds" value="true" />
<bool name="MoveCarousel" value="true" />
<bool name="ParseGamelistOnly" value="false" />
<bool name="QuickSystemSelect" value="false" />
<bool name="SaveGamelistsOnExit" value="true" />
<bool name="ScrapeRatings" value="true" />
<bool name="ScreenSaverControls" value="true" />
<bool name="ScreenSaverOmxPlayer" value="true" />
<bool name="ShowHelpPrompts" value="true" />
<bool name="SortAllSystems" value="true" />
<bool name="StretchVideoOnScreenSaver" value="false" />
<bool name="UseCustomCollectionsSystem" value="true" />
<bool name="VideoAudio" value="true" />
<bool name="VideoOmxPlayer" value="false" />
<int name="MaxVRAM" value="100" />
<int name="ScraperResizeHeight" value="0" />
<int name="ScraperResizeWidth" value="400" />
<int name="ScreenSaverTime" value="60000" />
<string name="AudioDevice" value="PCM" />
<string name="CollectionSystemsAuto" value="all,favorites,recent" />
<string name="CollectionSystemsCustom" value="Beat 'em up,testsystem" />
<string name="GamelistViewStyle" value="automatic" />
<string name="OMXAudioDev" value="both" />
<string name="PowerSaverMode" value="default" />
<string name="Scraper" value="TheGamesDB" />
<string name="ScreenSaverBehavior" value="dim" />
<string name="ScreenSaverGameInfo" value="never" />
<string name="ThemeSet" value="io" />
<string name="TransitionStyle" value="instant" />

pjft

@cyperghost yeah, it's very hit and miss. I Sakai have ran into it but can't fully replicate. I might end up getting rid of it, as it seems to be quite annoying. Can you send me the file and folder list for the theme you're using - just ls -l at the theme root folder?

Also, I wonder: how is your collection named with a ' there? I thought I was filtering those characters out these days. Can you create a new one - say, shoot'em up - to test what the file name is, the text in ES, and in the settings?

Thanks. Have a good week.

cyperghost

root of theme

drwxr-xr-x 87 root root 4096 Jul 20 16:04 carbon
drwxr-xr-x 59 root root 4096 Aug 20  2016 eudora
drwxr-xr-x 89 root root 4096 Jul 25 18:17 io
drwxr-xr-x 84 root root 4096 Jul 30 12:45 magazinemadness
drwxr-xr-x 48 root root 4096 Jul 21 11:52 RecalBox
drwxr-xr-x 67 root root 4096 Jul 21 06:14 Retrorama
drwxr-xr-x 75 root root 4096 Jul 20 16:04 simple
drwxr-xr-x 87 root root 4096 Jul  1 09:18 steampunk

inside io
see ghostbin...

Other system I can create later. I created the name "Beat 'em up" through SSH

touch "/opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/collections/custom-Shoot 'em up.cfg"

Inside /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/collections/ are

-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi 194 Jul 30 14:01 custom-Beat 'em up.cfg
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi   0 Jul 31 05:04 custom-Shoot 'em up.cfg
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi  70 Jul 28 20:56 custom-testsystem.cfg

I added one game and made a restart to save to config.file

I have entries

<string name="CollectionSystemsCustom" value="Beat 'em up,Shoot 'em up,testsystem" />

and it seems to work.
I can not catch the bug again.

pjft

@cyperghost said in Please Test: Creating Custom Collections:

I created the name "Beat 'em up" through SSH

Got it.

So, first thing: I am not supporting systems people create via SSH, or manual modifications to the settings file. The reason is that you have added characters that you wouldn't have been able to use if creating the system via ES - in this case, the ' character would not have been created via ES - I was just trying it out and the code was explicitly removing it, so I was puzzled.

In this case, the sorting order of the systems in the config string is also a factor, so manually changing it can cause things like that.

It might be that at some point you made a change via ES and it saved a proper expected config file.

I'll look through the code again and see if there's anything amiss, but other than that for the sake of testing and normal usage, I'd rather stick to testing the use cases from inside ES - creating, naming, saving, etc.

Thanks!

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft I finally got around to installing the your latest build and have spent some time playing with it. The following are some things i have noticed. Not all necessarily issues, but just things i have found and my thoughts.

I had to change my VRAM from 100 to 80 as you and others have suggested when using the ComicBook theme. This is not an issue of just adding a few more systems though. My old ES build prior to favorites i had 18 systems running at vram 100 no issues. On your newest custom systems build even at 8 systems, i need to change to 80. Once i do that it is fine. I think there is something within the new build that is triggering this. Not an issue since it is solvable, and lower is probably a good thing anyways as it shouldn't affect any other functions.
When exiting any rom from any system with vram and 100 and at 80 the video comes back at a different speed than the rest of the screen. This is a bit annoying. here is a video.
My PS4 controllers with usb dongle (not bluetooth) have weird behaviors at times. This is not present in my main build, just started with my update. I will only have 1 controller on and it will operate great, play for a while, exit a game and then all of sudden the button presses are choppy and lagging in the ES menus. Then i enter another game and all of a sudden the 2nd controller which is plugged in but not turned on becomes the first player. I had this happen a few times, i can't put my finger on a cause. To be fair, I am a few updates behind on my main build, so it could be something else.
All of the sym links i created using @meleu's script still work great, no issues there.
I am unable to use my es-system selection script. My script worked great prior to updating to this/the favorites build. Now the script will run and it will work, it change the es_systems.cfg file that is in my .emulationstation folder, however ES will not read it until i manually go and replace it with the exact same es_systems.cfg file with the systems in the exact same order as they were prior to running the script. This happens with both the favorites turned on, and turned off. This will effect only a very few people that have been using my script, so not a big deal for most people, but I am wondering what in your code is making ES fail if it does not find the exact system list it used the last time?
when creating custom systems, pressing select while in the new custom systems gamelist view to finish editing seems odd. I think it would make more sense to be in the main start menu with the other collections options. Just my opinion though.
After adding a few collections and playing a few games I went to check a setting in the start menu from the system selection menu and i received a warning that "Your theme does not support game collections......" It asked it i still wanted to enter game collections, i said yes, and selected a new collection to create and everything worked, not sure why the error message appeared.
I know i have asked this before, but would it be possible to allow custom sorting of the created collections? Right now we can group and sort them, but it would be cool if we could manually edit their location. One solution that would make me happy would be to add a setting that retropie would always be the last system. Right now i have my systems set by "brand" so NES, SNES, N64, then Sega, Sega32x, Dreamcast, then psx, psp, pspminis. I have arcade as my first folder and retropie as my last. That way when i start up, i have arcade ready to go and one move to the left is my retropie menu. If i sort them, they change to alphabetical and retropie menu is in the middle of my list. I turn sorting off and all the favorites and customs are the first things to the left. If i could turn sorting off and still have Retropie as my first menu to the left, i would be extremely happy.
If you are at the start menu and you let the system sit and go to screensaver, the screen turns black, when you wake it up, i get the error that the theme is not set up for custom systems. I chose to enter anyways and everything works fine.

With all this information said, this is a really fun addition and it works really well, i can't imagine the time you have put into this! I love the small features like the message boxes that pop up when editing the custom systems. As an update to the ps4 controller issue above, i have made it an hour now without any issues, it is pretty random and weird......Thanks again for everything you do.

pjft

@tmntturtlguy Hi, and thank you for the detailed and thorough reply!

Thanks for testing this with so much attention. Replies inline:

@tmntturtlguy said in Please Test: Creating Custom Collections:

@pjft I finally got around to installing the your latest build and have spent some time playing with it. The following are some things i have noticed. Not all necessarily issues, but just things i have found and my thoughts.

I had to change my VRAM from 100 to 80 as you and others have suggested when using the ComicBook theme. This is not an issue of just adding a few more systems though. My old ES build prior to favorites i had 18 systems running at vram 100 no issues. On your newest custom systems build even at 8 systems, i need to change to 80. Once i do that it is fine. I think there is something within the new build that is triggering this. Not an issue since it is solvable, and lower is probably a good thing anyways as it shouldn't affect any other functions.

Hm. Yeah, I am not really sure of what exactly causes this or why. Out of curiosity, what exactly caused you to have to move from 100 to 80 - what symptoms were you experiencing?

When exiting any rom from any system with vram and 100 and at 80 the video comes back at a different speed than the rest of the screen. This is a bit annoying. here is a video.

Doesn't this also occur in your normal build? Could you get a video of that? Are you referring to the fact that zooming out, the video is there but the screen is zooming out around it?

I noticed that a sad side-effect of properly implementing the zoom in/out transition was that the video zoom out with OMX Player enabled does look off precisely because the video now takes center stage, but unfortunately there's no way to zoom OMX Player in and out. Could your previous build be zooming out from the middle (i.e. before the fix was put in place)?

Anyway, a video of your other build would help if you do have the chance :)

My PS4 controllers with usb dongle (not bluetooth) have weird behaviors at times. This is not present in my main build, just started with my update. I will only have 1 controller on and it will operate great, play for a while, exit a game and then all of sudden the button presses are choppy and lagging in the ES menus. Then i enter another game and all of a sudden the 2nd controller which is plugged in but not turned on becomes the first player. I had this happen a few times, i can't put my finger on a cause. To be fair, I am a few updates behind on my main build, so it could be something else.

I can't really relate this to ES, to the best of my ability, though I'd be curious as to why that'd be happening. Out of curiosity, did you per chance perform and update to any other component, or are you in the exact same setup but just running one binary or the other? The reason I ask is that in the past two weeks I believe I've read a few instances of people complaining about similar issues:

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/11904

and others linked from it. Just a thought.

All of the sym links i created using @meleu's script still work great, no issues there.

Great!

I am unable to use my es-system selection script. My script worked great prior to updating to this/the favorites build. Now the script will run and it will work, it change the es_systems.cfg file that is in my .emulationstation folder, however ES will not read it until i manually go and replace it with the exact same es_systems.cfg file with the systems in the exact same order as they were prior to running the script. This happens with both the favorites turned on, and turned off. This will effect only a very few people that have been using my script, so not a big deal for most people, but I am wondering what in your code is making ES fail if it does not find the exact system list it used the last time?

Well, nothing should have really changed that, which is weird. Regardless of whether it affects only a few people or not, if we could avoid it we should - and truth be told, there's no reason why that would be different.

Tell me: how do you know that it is not reading the right es_systems.cfg file? What behavior are you experiencing? Is it the sorting order? The system's names? What?

The only two things I can think of are:

If it's a sorting order issue, check if the "SortAllSystems" option is on, and disable it. Then restart ES.
If it's something else, let me know, but if that's the case, then I'd check if the es_systems.cfg file actually contains the content you expect. There are only two locations where it'll read it from, so for some reason maybe there is/was a problem with it on that particular test? It needs to read a es_systems.cfg file from somewhere otherwise it won't work at all.

when creating custom systems, pressing select while in the new custom systems gamelist view to finish editing seems odd. I think it would make more sense to be in the main start menu with the other collections options. Just my opinion though.

Good feedback, thanks. Others have mentioned it, so I'll add it as well to the start menu.

After adding a few collections and playing a few games I went to check a setting in the start menu from the system selection menu and i received a warning that "Your theme does not support game collections......" It asked it i still wanted to enter game collections, i said yes, and selected a new collection to create and everything worked, not sure why the error message appeared.

The logic there is hit or miss. I'm actually considering removing that warning altogether, as it seems to be error prone and a lot scarier than it should. I'll try to investigate a bit more, but yeah...

Thanks!

I know i have asked this before, but would it be possible to allow custom sorting of the created collections? Right now we can group and sort them, but it would be cool if we could manually edit their location. One solution that would make me happy would be to add a setting that retropie would always be the last system. Right now i have my systems set by "brand" so NES, SNES, N64, then Sega, Sega32x, Dreamcast, then psx, psp, pspminis. I have arcade as my first folder and retropie as my last. That way when i start up, i have arcade ready to go and one move to the left is my retropie menu. If i sort them, they change to alphabetical and retropie menu is in the middle of my list. I turn sorting off and all the favorites and customs are the first things to the left. If i could turn sorting off and still have Retropie as my first menu to the left, i would be extremely happy.

I can certainly make RetroPie be one of the last systems. Sorting all might be a bit more tricky, as we don't really have the UX patterns for that.

I personally like having the 3 last systems being the new auto systems, but it is a preference rather than anything particularly "dogmatic". I could however create an option to hide the RetroPie system...? I'll think about that, or maybe ask for more opinions on that.

EDIT: It might be more complicated than I'd like it to be, though, so don't hold your hopes up, but consider it.

If you are at the start menu and you let the system sit and go to screensaver, the screen turns black, when you wake it up, i get the error that the theme is not set up for custom systems. I chose to enter anyways and everything works fine.

The video screensaver not working when you're on a menu is a long-standing bug for me (note taken). However, which menu are you in when you get that error? Could it have been that you were in the collections menu and woke it up by pressing "B" to exit it?

With all this information said, this is a really fun addition and it works really well, i can't imagine the time you have put into this! I love the small features like the message boxes that pop up when editing the custom systems. As an update to the ps4 controller issue above, i have made it an hour now without any issues, it is pretty random and weird......Thanks again for everything you do.

Not at all, thank you for testing and for providing all this feedback!

cyperghost

@pjft Sorry I misunderstood. I thought the custom-xxxx.cfg files will be filtered. But this makes no sense in manner. So if you create files as you should do... via keyboard input on ES that string will be filtered - makes sense :)

Thank you :)

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft - Thanks for your detailed response, My answers are in-line and in bold below, i tried to clean up the string a bit to reduce its length!

I had to change my VRAM from 100 to 80 as you and others have suggested when using the ComicBook theme. This is not an issue of just adding a few more systems though. My old ES build prior to favorites i had 18 systems running at vram 100 no issues. On your newest custom systems build even at 8 systems, i need to change to 80. Once i do that it is fine. I think there is something within the new build that is triggering this. Not an issue since it is solvable, and lower is probably a good thing anyways as it shouldn't affect any other functions.

Hm. Yeah, I am not really sure of what exactly causes this or why. Out of curiosity, what exactly caused you to have to move from 100 to 80 - what symptoms were you experiencing?

I get a ton of white screens and glget errors at vram 100, change vram to 80 and everything is smooth as butter. In my main working build ES V2.3.2RP i can run 20+ systems at vram 100 with no issues.

When exiting any rom from any system with vram and 100 and at 80 the video comes back at a different speed than the rest of the screen. This is a bit annoying. removed link here see post above for linked video

Doesn't this also occur in your normal build? Could you get a video of that? Are you referring to the fact that zooming out, the video is there but the screen is zooming out around it?

This does not occur in my main build. All my settings are the same between old build and your current test build see link to video of my working build. You are correct that the zoom in feature is broken and zooms in centered, but zoom out was fine, now zoom out in new build is broken

I noticed that a sad side-effect of properly implementing the zoom in/out transition was that the video zoom out with OMX Player enabled does look off precisely because the video now takes center stage, but unfortunately there's no way to zoom OMX Player in and out. Could your previous build be zooming out from the middle (i.e. before the fix was put in place)?
Anyway, a video of your other build would help if you do have the chance :)

see video posted just above

My PS4 controllers with usb dongle (not bluetooth) have weird behaviors at times. This is not present in my main build, just started with my update. I will only have 1 controller on and it will operate great, play for a while, exit a game and then all of sudden the button presses are choppy and lagging in the ES menus. Then i enter another game and all of a sudden the 2nd controller which is plugged in but not turned on becomes the first player. I had this happen a few times, i can't put my finger on a cause. To be fair, I am a few updates behind on my main build, so it could be something else.

I can't really relate this to ES, to the best of my ability, though I'd be curious as to why that'd be happening. Out of curiosity, did you per chance perform and update to any other component, or are you in the exact same setup but just running one binary or the other? The reason I ask is that in the past two weeks I believe I've read a few instances of people complaining about similar issues:

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/11904

and others linked from it. Just a thought.

I have not performed any other updates, my build is exactly the same as it was prior, i just updated your ES testing branch. It is worth noting that my main branch is several updated behind your test branch, so something could have been tweaked in a different update in between.

I am unable to use my es-system selection script. My script worked great prior to updating to this/the favorites build. Now the script will run and it will work, it change the es_systems.cfg file that is in my .emulationstation folder, however ES will not read it until i manually go and replace it with the exact same es_systems.cfg file with the systems in the exact same order as they were prior to running the script. This happens with both the favorites turned on, and turned off. This will effect only a very few people that have been using my script, so not a big deal for most people, but I am wondering what in your code is making ES fail if it does not find the exact system list it used the last time?

Well, nothing should have really changed that, which is weird. Regardless of whether it affects only a few people or not, if we could avoid it we should - and truth be told, there's no reason why that would be different.

You are right, i am wrong! This was a permissions issue caused by rpi-clone since my script was located on my usb stick, so when i mapped the media drive after using the clone tool i just had to delete the script and reinstall it on the USB stick and now it works perfectly. I have removed the rest of your questions below as i have fixed the user created issue. SORRY

I know i have asked this before, but would it be possible to allow custom sorting of the created collections? Right now we can group and sort them, but it would be cool if we could manually edit their location. One solution that would make me happy would be to add a setting that retropie would always be the last system. Right now i have my systems set by "brand" so NES, SNES, N64, then Sega, Sega32x, Dreamcast, then psx, psp, pspminis. I have arcade as my first folder and retropie as my last. That way when i start up, i have arcade ready to go and one move to the left is my retropie menu. If i sort them, they change to alphabetical and retropie menu is in the middle of my list. I turn sorting off and all the favorites and customs are the first things to the left. If i could turn sorting off and still have Retropie as my first menu to the left, i would be extremely happy.

I can certainly make RetroPie be one of the last systems. Sorting all might be a bit more tricky, as we don't really have the UX patterns for that.

I personally like having the 3 last systems being the new auto systems, but it is a preference rather than anything particularly "dogmatic". I could however create an option to hide the RetroPie system...? I'll think about that, or maybe ask for more opinions on that.

I agree that i like the last 3 as the 3 auto systems, i don't like that the custom systems get added in just to the left of them. If you could keep the last 3 the auto systems and then make the new customs add in before retropie that would be ok as well. I just don't like my retropie menu in the middle of the systems. Also changing the retropie menu to be accessible by start button instead of a system would be even better!

EDIT: It might be more complicated than I'd like it to be, though, so don't hold your hopes up, but consider it.

No worries if you can't make it work

If you are at the start menu and you let the system sit and go to screensaver, the screen turns black, when you wake it up, i get the error that the theme is not set up for custom systems. I chose to enter anyways and everything works fine.

The video screensaver not working when you're on a menu is a long-standing bug for me (note taken). However, which menu are you in when you get that error? Could it have been that you were in the collections menu and woke it up by pressing "B" to exit it?

I am not talking about the black screen, that has happened since day one, and a non issue. I am refering to the error message I get that is the same as the random message that says my theme is not compatible. It happened twice yesterday, I can't recreate it right now. It seems to be random. I think if you get rid of the warning it will remove the problem

pjft

@tmntturtlguy Thanks.

Yeah, quite a few things were added between 2.3.2 and 2.4.x, so it's normal that something might have affected memory consumption. Thanks for clarifying - will try to keep an eye out for that.

The video seems to be unavailable, but yes, I'm not sure it's as much that Zooming out is broken as much as Zooming out now resumes from where it had left off - which previously was the center of the screen, and now is the marquee area. What do you mean "is broken", though? I'm willing to suggest that if it was zooming out from the center it'd work as it did previously - but that would not really be what the zoom out was meant to do, as it's meant to zoom out from where it zoomed in to.

Would it help if the video only starts playing after the zoom out is complete?

RetroPie system: it won't be moved to a start menu, as it's controlled from a gamelist file.

In regards to the system order, would you be fine with, if sorted, [All sorted systems including "Custom Collections"], then "RetroPie", then [Auto Collections - All, Favorites, Last Played] at the end?

I'll likely remove the error message.

Thank you good sir!

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft The video was set to private, sorry about that, it should be fixed now, link below. It might help if the video was delayed. Take a look at the video just attached, that is how it worked before.

The memory deal isn't that big of an issue as it is correctable, it will just be hard for all new users who haven't read through the forum posts to know how to correct the issue. You and I spent a ton of time figuring out how to optimize the ComicBook theme to run at VRAM 100 and it did for quit some time, but now with more updates to ES that has changed.

I figured as much with retorpie system. The problem is that it was always controlled by the config file and it was always the last system by default, now it moves around with little user control.

In regards to the system order, would you be fine with, if sorted, [All sorted systems including "Custom Collections"], then "RetroPie", then [Auto Collections - All, Favorites, Last Played] at the end?

Yes that would be fine, but could it also be the case if not sorted? I want to turn sorting off so that I can group my systems by brand - as stated before I like all my Nintendo systems together, all my sega systems, Neo Geo, etc. If it is sorted it goes to alphabetical, so i turn sorting off. I would be more than happy with what you stated above if it worked that way in both sorted and non sorted. Again, i am a single user and these are just my opinions, so by no means is it the correct way.

Thanks again for everything - you do great work.

edge3000

@tmntturtlguy

First of all I just want to thank everyone on the forum who contributes time and effort into improving RetroPie, you are all doing amazing work and it is appreciated! Love the ComicBook theme TMNTturtleguy!

I just wanted to mention that I have experienced white screen issues with the Comic Book theme even in EmulationStation v2.4.0RP and currently at v2.5.0 using the 100MB setting. I have always had to run it at 80MB to avoid that white screen issue where some systems don't load images - it looks like EmulationStation runs out of memory/can't cache any more images so it just leaves them out.

This happened for me on an old partially updated image when I tried the ComicBook theme, as well as currently on my fresh install fully updated image. In both cases, 80mb setting works great.

I haven't installed this test build yet - so it seems like the white screen issue isn't caused specifically by it. Could it be a longstanding EmulationStation bug that doesn't appear in all situations?

TMNTturtlguy

@edge3000 It is very possible you do have issues with ES 2.4 and forward. I am running 2.3.2 at 100 with no issues. There was a period of time when @pjft did amazing work to improve ES performance and also chane the background color from white to black. From the ES where the background color changed to black through 2.3.2 I could run at 100 with no issues. When @pjft first merged the favorites into the main ES beach, not sure what number that is, I could run well at 100 without white screen issues, but did notice reload problems with the rating stars when exiting games. I never updated my main builds to this update. Now with the custom systems build I get white screen glget errors at vram100. So here was a sweet spot in there where verything worked at 100.

This is getting us sidetracked from the main post though, so let's get back to custom systems!

HurricaneFan

@pjft What do you think the timeline will be for getting this into the master branch of EmulationStation?

cyperghost

@pjft Now I'm breaking a dogma :)

Why not using custom-favorites.cfg for "quick favourite" or "default favourite" and break with using the gamelist.xml files for tagging <favorites>?
You can free the tag for achievments instead :)

Are there any advantages in the "first" fav-system (auto-favorits)?
I think with this you can save some code. Please don't get me wrong - it's just a small thinking towards code economizing :)
We still can use the themes of auto-favorites, of course :)

jdrassa

@cyperghost I've been thinking about the exact opposite. Why not use tags (something like <collection>mario</collection>) in the gamelist vs. a separate file.

HurricaneFan

@jdrassa If a game was in multiple collections, would it just be comma delimited?

pjft

@jdrassa @cyperghost both are good ideas. Let me answer in more detail tomorrow on my laptop rather than over the phone.

jdrassa

@pjft I am fine with whatever you choose, it was just something I had been thinking about.

@cyperghost specifically speaking about favorites, one argument for keeping it in the gamelist is that there have been discussions of being able to mark the favorites within the normal system gamelist views.

pjft

Sorry. Lots of work, little time here :( Sorry for the silence and lack of responses.

@jdrassa @cyperghost Summary in a shorter answer than usual, pardon my attempt at brevity.

Rationale for my decision - which doesn't mean it's the best :)

Favorites as Metadata: I see it as attributes properties of the game. These can even be themable (the heart for favorites, in ES-Kids, for instance, or potentially a trophy for achievements). So, turning "Favorites" into a separate file is not something I'd feel strongly about and would need some convincing. Also, this keeps it compatible with people who used ES-Kids.
Systems as metadata: one could see it as tags, in that implementation. It could work. Currently, though, the architecture is more that games belong to a system, and not the other way around. We don't have the current system as a metadata element for the game (though we could, I suppose!). I just did it to follow the same structure as "Load Systems" and then "Populate with Games". If the tags were metadata, I'd need to "Populate Database" and then "Organize in Systems". Not impossible, and not that hard, but different to what we've been doing so far, so that's why I kind of defaulted to that approach without really doing a lot of effort in thinking about many options. I suppose, if in the future we move this to SQL or something, we'd have a Systems table with all the systems/collections, and then a SystemGames table with { SystemId, GameId }, and then a Games table. We wouldn't have a Games table with a { Collections } repeated field... I think. :)

@HurricaneFan I need to clean up the code and then submit it. And incorporate some of the most recent feedback which I'm sure I've lost track of in the thread by now. I expect the more people test it, the easier/faster it'll be to be approved, but the code isn't really to my liking at the moment. I'm just pre-empting feedback that would certainly come from others reviewing the code and commenting on it - effectively trying to spare them some time as this will be a big change already.

I haven't had a lot of time, alas, but maybe I can submit it next week, fingers crossed?

We'll see.

Thanks for the support and interest. Is it working well for you and for those testing? That's really all that matters.

HurricaneFan

@pjft I've been testing it more and more as themes are adding the collection themes. I love the create collection based on theme folder. I've added about 4 of those to my system so far and no issues to report.