Development of module-script generator for lr-mess, lr-mame and mame standalone

Folly

@george-spiggott said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

It would be a boon to Jaguar gamers to only have to install lr-mame to act as an additional emulator choice and also to use the same core for arcade.

Yes, it would be.
But I think there is a reason that these packages are still splitted.

DTEAM

@folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

I know it can be confusing, but I think it is still :

standalone mame does both arcade/console and regular
arcade/console and regular are splitted into lr-mame and lr-mess

Exactly what It is. MAME standalone is the most « up to date » one.... suppose to be ...

We should keep both. Separately or not in the official Retropie package menu?.. I don’t know. If you do It separately, the user could install only one of those 2 emulators. It could be interesting.

valerino

ok, the menu thing can be implemented using the dialog api (its builtin in the shell, used throughout retropie menu but not with the checkboxes afaik).

dialog --title "title" \
--checklist "choose options" 0 0 4 \
1 option1 off \
2 option2 on \
3 option3 off \
4 option4 off

then after clicking a button you have the result in $INPUT.

i imagine the checklist could be populated with an array from built from mame output.

DTEAM

@valerino

Very nice!

Maybe it could be something like this :

I forgot + systems from my tutorial 😉

Or we could do 3 categories, Handheld, keyboardless (consoles) and computer? With a,b,c, d, ... classification?

Folly

@dteam said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

@folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

I know it can be confusing, but I think it is still :

standalone mame does both arcade/console and regular
arcade/console and regular are splitted into lr-mame and lr-mess

Exactly what It is. MAME standalone is the most « up to date » one.... suppose to be ...

We should keep both. Separately or not in the official Retropie package menu?.. I don’t know. If you do It separately, the user could install only one of those 2 emulators. It could be interesting.

I want to keep them both in, I assume they both will be maintained.
If something isn't maintained anymore in the future, we can just rename or remove easily.
If I split it up, more scripts can be generated, I think, that is not what we want.
Also, you have to go through the menu twice to install mame and lr-mess for 1 system, don't know if that is ideal.

Agree ?

An other solution can be, for example.
Select mame and/or lr-mess first and then select the system we want to install.
Perhaps we can use this idea.

BTW, Nice drawing 👍

Folly

@dteam said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

I forgot + systems from my tutorial 😉

Or we could do 3 categories, Handheld, keyboardless (consoles) and computer? With a,b,c, d, ... classification?

If we want this, we have to extract more information somewhere.
At the moment we have only 1 row(array) to use for the menu.
I suggest we try that first.

Agree ?

Folly

I have updated the first post.
Adding also the menu idea and adding some more points :
👉 open : By @valerino / participants @DTEAM , @folly :
Create a front-end module-script in RetroPie-setup for our scripts.

structure/plan ?
dependencies check
download the repository in /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/ext/RetroPie-Share or try to run the scripts online ?
add a menu in RetroPie-setup using the dialog api 120
try to keep multiple emulator/lr-cores in 1 generated script module 125
try to use 1 existing array for the menu 125
push the generated scripts in /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/ext/RetroPie-Share/scriptmodules/ ?

I have tried to structure the information.
We should decide/discuss if we want to add/change things.

DTEAM

@folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

I want to keep them both in, I assume they both will be maintained.
If something isn't maintained anymore in the future, we can just rename or remove easily.
If I split it up, more scripts can be generated, I think, that is not what we want.
Also, you have to go through the menu twice to install mame and lr-mess for 1 system, don't know if that is ideal.
Agree ?

Good point. I agree with you

@dteam said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

I forgot + systems from my tutorial 😉

Or we could do 3 categories, Handheld, keyboardless (consoles) and computer? With >a,b,c, d, ... classification?

If we want this, we have to extract more information somewhere.
At the moment we have only 1 row(array) to use for the menu.
I suggest we try that first.

Agree ?

I also agree

Folly

@dteam

Thanks for letting me know.

I put it in our plan structure

We can always change the plan if something better comes up.

DTEAM

@folly
Nice what you did with the symbols in your first post . It's easy to follow

Folly

@dteam said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

@folly
Nice what you did with the symbols in your first post . It's easy to follow

Thanks !
I think this will help a lot to see what is done and what we want to do.

I copy and paste from :
https://fsymbols.com/emoticons/
or
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emoticons

I am trying also to get different colored text.
This is done with placeholder :
https://placeholder.com/

Test with diff :

- highlighted red
+ highlighted green

DTEAM

@folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

structure/plan ?

For this point, the user could install lr-mess and MAME like it is right now in Retropie. When the user will come back in the package list for Mame or lr-Mess, it could be the same options, but.

re-install (from binary)
Install from source
Remove
install new systems <------(our new thing)
Package help
Package version information

No mather if you select "install new systems" in MAME or Lr-mess, the systems selected by the user (like coleco, Jaguar, etc.) will be intall for both (lr-mess and MAME).

It could be managed like what we see on my sketch for the other steps.

Are you agree? Other suggestions?

Folly

@dteam

I have to read it a few times to get the aha.
I will get back to you.

I think I understand what you mean.
Your idea is to integrate what we want to do into the mame module-script and in the lr-mess module-script.
Afterwards when you have installed you get the option to install our generated module-scripts.
Did I understand correctly ?

DTEAM

@folly said in Development of module-script generator for lr-mess and mame standalone:

@dteam
I have to read it a few times to get the aha.
I will get back to you.
I think I understand what you mean.
Your idea is to integrate what we want to do into the mame module-script and in the lr-mess module-script.
Afterwards when you have installed you get the option to install our generated module-scripts.
Did I understand correctly ?

Yes it is, It will be on both menu and it will do the same thing no matter where you go after (lr-MESS or MAME). So that way, you will continue to generate your command lines for systems like coleco or others for lr-Mess and MAME in one time.

Folly

@dteam

Could we do it a bit different ?

I would suggest to make it possible to install mame an lr-mess though our menu.
But the menu will use the official mame/lr-mess module-scripts.

Then we keep it separately, our module-script and the mame/lr-mess module-scripts.

What do you think ?

DTEAM

@folly

good idea , sounds good!
At the end, It must be simple for newbies . I think It should be the target

Folly

@dteam

Indeed, we should make/keep it simple.
Ok, tomorrow I have to go with the boat to an island.
Then I have some time to make a summarize.
Then we get back to @valerino if this is doable.

valerino

hi guys, sorry but today i've been very busy @ work !

i think @DTEAM 's idea to integrate with existing mame/mess script is the cleaner .... no ?

also in my fork i extended already present scripts with extra features when i needed, i.e. in some i added the option to install from source the most recent version from github instead of the branch officially supported by retropie, things like that.

imho this is the clearer way ....

v.

Folly

@valerino

Ok, if you think the @DTEAM is the cleaner way, we can do it like that.
I have only one concern.
When a generated module-script is generated, RetroPie-setup will not directly see it.
So normally I have to restart.
Does it have a way of refreshing ?
If there is no such option we could use retropie_packages.sh to install it directly after generation.

Folly

I copied generate-systems-lr-mess_mame-1v8-alpha.sh as generate-systems-lr-mess_mame-2v0-alpha.sh to my repository.

I did this so we can make changes to that script which are possibly necessary to make our idea work.

I already made some changes to the 2v0 script :

It will install the run_mess.sh script if not detected.
create extra platforms.cfg so we can run the script online with curl and also have a nice extra platforms.cfg
removed help / not necessary if used in the menu
date command removed / turn off generate all message shortened
generated files come in RetroPie-Setup/ext
- found that if there are already module-scripts, with the same name in the original directory, then these will be used (you get a warning). So old scripts have to be removed if they were already there.

This is how it will look like in the external repositiory directory :