What would you like to see in future Retropie releases

Hex

@Aphex Its on the todo list.

Aphex

@hex Sweet! Sorry about the repost, then. Shall i delete my post?

Cjax08

Does anyone think that custom screen savers will ever be added in a more easily integrated way? Such as placing all custom screen savers you want to loop in a new screensaver folder the same way we do with splash screens. I know there is a hacky way to do it right now, but I try to stay away from methods such as that just so I don't screw anything up lol

jdrassa

@cjax08 It has been discussed and it will likely be added at some point.

pjft

@cjax08 I'm sure that'll happen before end of year.

Cjax08

@pjft well that's awesome. I wonder if that along with current kiosk mode plans will be included in 4.3 or if they will still be in development by then.

DD-Indeed

Been thinking about the OSD messages recently. Would be neat to have some more features with that, such as CPU/GPU/RAM usage, temperature, emulation speed, etc, etc.

paffley

The ability to have marquee's added in detail view. (for people who would like the option of displaying screenshots with the marquee tag instead of video).

Detail view = boxart & marquee tags
Video = Boxart, marquee & video tags

Thanks.

Used2BeRX

I think it would be pretty awesome for somebody to port over the versions of FBA and Mame that are used in Final Burn Legends and CoinOPS for the XBox.

I've created a full list of working and tested games for both systems with a complete checklist and spreadsheet and working sets for all of the roms with all of the duplicates, clones, porn and other crap removed. Nothing but legit titles. US versions first, then EU, then other countries as always in my collections.

I know the Pi 3 is capable of keeping up with the new offerings of both of these emulators and that there is support for newer games with the newer versions that aren't on the old versions used for the XBox, but as anybody who works with mame romsets knows... the zipfiles for an old version of Mame or FBA are completely different with 10 or so years difference in emulator versions.

I'd be happy to supply the community with datfiles I could create with these collections if somebody were to port the versions over to the RetroPie. If anybody who is capable is interested in doing this, let me know and I can figure out which versions of Mame/FBA/FBL would need to be ported. :)

dankcushions

@used2berx said in What would you like to see in future Retropie releases:

I know the Pi 3 is capable of keeping up with the new offerings of both of these emulators and that there is support for newer games with the newer versions that aren't on the old versions used for the XBox, but as anybody who works with mame romsets knows... the zipfiles for an old version of Mame or FBA are completely different with 10 or so years difference in emulator versions.

IMO downloading a different romset is less effort than porting the emulator ;) they are very easy to find.

i just don't see any benefit in porting these to retropie. you're basically porting a port of an old version of mame/fba.

Used2BeRX

@dankcushions Downloading a new romset isn't a problem.

Filtering out the thousands of clones and crap and re-testing every game is. Also, making all of the US versions parents instead of the world versions is a huge pain as well.

No offense, but I know what I'm talking about here. It took me 2 months of 8-10 hour days to make that set.

EDIT: Check the spreadsheet. (Link Removed)

dankcushions

@used2berx you can do that sort of filtering and picking of country versions in 5 minutes in romlister.

FBA and mame already tell you what games will/won't work in current versions via the dat file/game list. performance testing is another thing, but that could be simply automated if i/someone got around to making a script for it.

sorry, but at least i wouldn't be interested in porting those. they have no real value or future in the raspberry pi ecosystem, as good as they are for xbox.

Used2BeRX

@dankcushions Thanks for the input. We'll have to agree to disagree. Hopefully somebody else feels that this is worthwhile.

PetroRie

RetroPie is very cool but it would be very very cool if they added good multiplayer support, something like Steam. The options to add friends, chat with them, play with them, see what they're playing etc. Joining servers and playing with random people. That would be awesome.

IMHO this would take RetroPie to the next level.

Used2BeRX

@dankcushions I should probably add, you mentioned "if you/somebody else got around to making a script for it".

That's kinda the thing. Everybody likes to tell you how easy something is, but nobody actually does it. I did. All I'm saying is that I have a damn near perfect, working romset with everything documented.

It might not be current romsets of 2017, but the games play great or they wouldn't be in the collection. Those with problems are marked as such, and on a Pi 3 could probably be launched with a newer version already in RetroPie in most cases without any issue.

Maybe it would be "easy" to do all that stuff you're talking about in theory, but my point is if it's so easy to do then why hasn't anybody ever done it and provided up to date romlists with all the clones and crap removed?

I think it's because it's not nearly as easy as you imagine that it would be. :)

dankcushions

@used2berx said in What would you like to see in future Retropie releases:

@dankcushions I should probably add, you mentioned "if you/somebody else got around to making a script for it".

That's kinda the thing. Everybody likes to tell you how easy something is, but nobody actually does it.

hasn't @meleu spent ages writing a script for your personal NES project? these things are possible if you get someone who knows how to do these things interested in your project.

Maybe it would be "easy" to do all that stuff you're talking about in theory, but my point is if it's so easy to do then why hasn't anybody ever done it and provided up to date romlists with all the clones and crap removed?

i actually did this! look at https://retropie.org.uk/docs/MAME/ - all the 'no clones', or 'no neogeo', etc dats were created by me and one other person to do exactly this sort of thing. it's really not difficult. it's literally what romlister is for.

I think it's because it's not nearly as easy as you imagine that it would be. :)

i can see you're trying to start an argument. i can explain how i would write an automated testing script if you're interested, but i'm not going to argue.

meleu

Used2BeRX

@dankcushions said in What would you like to see in future Retropie releases:

@used2berx said in What would you like to see in future Retropie releases:

@dankcushions I should probably add, you mentioned "if you/somebody else got around to making a script for it".

That's kinda the thing. Everybody likes to tell you how easy something is, but nobody actually does it.

hasn't @meleu spent ages writing a script for your personal NES project? these things are possible if you get someone who knows how to do these things interested in your project.

Maybe it would be "easy" to do all that stuff you're talking about in theory, but my point is if it's so easy to do then why hasn't anybody ever done it and provided up to date romlists with all the clones and crap removed?

i actually did this! look at https://retropie.org.uk/docs/MAME/ - all the 'no clones', or 'no neogeo', etc dats were created by me and one other person to do exactly this sort of thing. it's really not difficult. it's literally what romlister is for.

I think it's because it's not nearly as easy as you imagine that it would be. :)

i can see you're trying to start an argument. i can explain how i would write an automated testing script if you're interested, but i'm not going to argue.

Nah. I just don't like when people seem to brush off all of my work as a waste of time is all. If that's not what you meant, we're cool.

You didn't say that there were datfiles already made that removed the clones. You definitely didn't say that you yourself had done them.

I still don't understand how a script is going to test that the games are working. How does that work? For my list on the XBox, I verified every game individually. That's both making sure it plays in the first place and that the controls work as well. I'm not wrapping my head around how a script could do that or how you could trust that it did it right. Were these games ever verified as working by a person at some point?

I intend at some point to test all MAME games again on the Pi at some point, but I didn't want to have to start from scratch because the XBox versions of the emulators weren't on the Pi. If you're confident that the games you have in the dat are the US version whenever possible and that they all work right then that would be a great starting point if nobody ports over the XBox versions.

I know the guy in charge of FBA and getting that source wouldn't be a problem. Now that I think about it, I seriously doubt the CoinOPS guy would ever part with his code. So I'm happy to see that it's possible that a large portion of this work might have already been done by you guys for the RetroPie. A lot of tricks needed to be pulled off over the years to get some games to run at an acceptable speed on XBox that I'm sure weren't necessary with a Pi 3 and new versions of the emulators.

jell

I haven't read all of the posts, so apologies if this was already mentioned.

I'd like an easier way to add/remove games. For example, add a game, and it is automatically scraped and added to the list. Delete a game, and all metadata and supporting files (images, videos, high score files, +/-config files, +/- save states) are removed. Basically, functionality similar to Plex, except for games!

dankcushions

@used2berx said in What would you like to see in future Retropie releases:

I still don't understand how a script is going to test that the games are working. How does that work? For my list on the XBox, I verified every game individually. That's both making sure it plays in the first place and that the controls work as well. I'm not wrapping my head around how a script could do that or how you could trust that it did it right. Were these games ever verified as working by a person at some point?

well, we have compatibility lists that collate the results of user testing, so we cover that approach also. what i'm really interested in is automated testing. my script idea is something like this:

iterate through next .zip in mame/fba directory
run game via command line with verbose logging
quit game after X seconds
parse FPS from console output (retroarch fortunately outputs the average framerate of the game that was just ruN)
update spreadsheet with results (eg if FPS=60: OK, if FPS<60... performance problems. can also parse crashes from this)
repeat

i could also easily pool all the original framerates of the games (i've already done this from another project) via the source code, rather than test everything against 60 (not all games run at 60)

something like this could run without any user interaction and test entire romsets in a matter of hours. it also could make a nice 'attract mode' screensaver!

I know the guy in charge of FBA and getting that source wouldn't be a problem. Now that I think about it, I seriously doubt the CoinOPS guy would ever part with his code. So I'm happy to see that it's possible that a large portion of this work might have already been done by you guys for the RetroPie. A lot of tricks needed to be pulled off over the years to get some games to run at an acceptable speed on XBox that I'm sure weren't necessary with a Pi 3 and new versions of the emulators.

a related discussion to this:

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/2889/mame-development-lr-mame2003-updates/107
and
http://www.emuxtras.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=183&t=5732&p=77623#p77623