EmulationStation mod

Arcuza

@herb_fargus I know a bit XML, XSLT (XPath), C and SQL, but I've only done it on Windows.

I would like to have a filter based rom browsing so that you can game lists that are "all racing games for NES or SNES" or "all RPG games done by Square" or "all PSX games supporting 4 players" or "all games older than 1990"

Is it possible to add that to ES? Where do I start?

Thank you for your support

Pyjamarama

taking Xmls to a database will be the greater breakthrough for Es. As it is now, Es is superb.
But having all the data into one database will give speed,flexibility and unlock possibilities like eg favorites without hassle and expensive XML parsings.

jacobfk20

@herb_fargus I forked retropie's ES and made a gridview branch. https://github.com/jacobfk20/EmulationStation/tree/Gridview
it contains only what is needed to do my grid view which includes adding some things to SystemData.

herb_fargus

@jacobfk20 ah brilliant! Will test now.

herb_fargus

@jacobfk20 works great, the one issue I've been having is it wont refresh the gamelists once I add more roms to the romfolder so all I see is just ports and the retropie menu even though I have snes roms in the snes folder, I'm testing it on my pc so it may be something I've done with my setup, can anyone else confirm?

jacobfk20

@herb_fargus Are you saying that Super Nintendo isn't even showing up on System View?

herb_fargus

@jacobfk20 actually nvm, for some reason it was creating an es_systems.cfg file in the .emulationstation folder rather than /etc/emulationstation I just had to delete the one in .emulationstation and it now shows up as it should. might be the way the module is coded perhaps, I'll have to look further into that.

jacobfk20

It does create an es_systems in .emulationstation. It writes which view mode, size of grid tiles, and if the system should show up on system view.

herb_fargus

@jacobfk20 I see. well that may cause some confusion as it will take the .emulationstation folder over the /etc/emulationstation where the retropie scripts will generate the es_systems.cfg in the /etc location anytime you add a new system so I'm not sure what the best way is to address that

I presume this is a result of the save and apply button rather than just having a save button that caches it on restart

jacobfk20

That is pretty bad. I could have these settings saved in another file and keep es_systems alone.

herb_fargus

@jacobfk20 I think that may be wise (albeit likely more work for you). Anyways this forum post is getting pretty long I prefer to keep development discussion on github where its closer to the code. I'll log an issue for this on your RPI repo and carry it on there.

jacobfk20

@herb_fargus I'm working mostly from https://github.com/jacobfk20/EmulationStation and not the RPiE fork.

herb_fargus

@jacobfk20 If you'd like to enable the issue tracker on your emulationstation fork I'd be happy to log the issues there instead

jacobfk20

I didn't know it was disabled. It's enabled now.

robertybob

I hope this makes it into RetroPie 4 in some form, the grid view will keep me happy until Attract-Mode is finally, officially, included as a choice alongside ES!

ben_thatmustbeme

@robertybob given that RC images are out, I don't think that's likely, but I don't know the release procedure. I think it's more likely to get a script to change ES versions

meleu

Just for curiosity:
Could changing from xml to another database avoid/minimize this problem?
(exit emulationstation take ages when "save metadata on exit" is on)

jacobfk20

@meleu Probably. Wouldn't have to dump metadata to a file on exit anymore. A db would keep everything up to date as it is modified.

meleu

@jacobfk20
Then you guys have here one more vote to go ahead with this changing... :-)

jacobfk20

@meleu It would be interesting to test that out.