Announcing Pegasus Frontend

Magma

Ok new question. I want to play around with what images Pegasus uses. Originally I was using the setting from EmulationStation. I went and converted my gamelist.xml's to Pegasus' metadata.txt using https://pegasus-frontend.org/tools/convert/. I then disabled EmulationStation in the list of data sources.

After relaunching Pegasus 0 games were found. I believe this is because there is no Collection info at the top of the metadata.txt in each rom folder. Here is an example of the top of one metadata.txt https://pastebin.com/LUiMPWX0

I'm not sure how to configure it correctly to work with Retroarch. Currently only have the following systems, SNES, NES, Genesis, and FinalBurnAlpha.

fluffypillow

@Magma Yes, a Collection is required for the games to be found, but fortunately it's also possible to get them from EmulationStation's es_systems.cfg too. Here's a guide I've wrote for a similar case, hope this helps.

jerzeeloon

@fluffypillow said in Announcing Pegasus Frontend:

@jerzeeloon there have been reports of slow USB access, but it seems to be depending on the device. Do you see anything out of order in the log file (<storage>/pegasus-frontend/lastrun.log)?

Sorry it took so long to get back to you but nothing strange in the last run log. Seems dependant on the sheer amount ROMs/assets on initial load. I decreased the amount of ROMs by a few thousand it loaded quicker just doesn't seem like any advantage in speed between a standard USB hdd and my Samsung T5 SSD. That said I can live with the initial load time when taking into consideration that I have boxart, screenshots, fanart, logos and videos in addition to thousands of ROMs it's probably a lot to mull over. What's important is that once in the frontend when I exit an emulator to pick another game the front end pops right back up. So again I appreciate all your work and continued support especially for the Android system, definitely my favorite frontend even in this alpha stage. Also recently got an odroid n2. Would be awesome if I can get it to run on that as well.

Magma

@fluffypillow Thanks that did the trick.

I'm really enjoying Pegasus over ES but there's one last thing I'd like to get working.

Currently I'm using a Retroflag SuperPi case (http://retroflag.com/SUPERPi-CASE-U.html) and the Power and Reset buttons are functional in ES (and RecalBox) due to this script https://github.com/RetroFlag/retroflag-picase

Any ideas on how I can get similar functionality with Pegasus? Would it be as simple as changing the sudo killall emulationstation to pegasus-fe?

fluffypillow

@jerzeeloon That's too bad :( Hope I can improve load times in the future!

Also recently got an odroid n2. Would be awesome if I can get it to run on that as well.

Yeah it would be nice to have Odroid releases eventually. It should be possible to build Pegasus for the N2 already, but might need to do some manual setup to make everything work.

@Magma Yes, simply replacing emulationstation with pegasus-fe should work fine. You could also make it work for both the same time:

os.system("sudo killall emulationstation pegasus-fe; sleep 5s && sudo reboot")

KryPtAlIvIaN

Could you please explain how to launch retroarch and its core. I'm trying to configure the snes metadata.txt to launch the game, but I'm not having any luck. I would think the android example would be different since they're not the same OS.

AndersHP

@fluffypillow
Seems like a lot of work to change the code with scripts that way, and editing all videos will be a ton of work.

Seems like the theme-based volume adjustment would be the best solution. Can a non-coder do this (fairly easy)?

fluffypillow

@KryPtAlIvIaN Sure,

On RetroPie, using Runcommand the format is

/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 _SYS_ <systemname> "{file.path}"

eg. in the case of SNES, the launch command would be

/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 _SYS_ snes "{file.path}"

On desktop Linux/Windows/macOS the format is

"/path/to/retroarch" -L "/path/to/core" "{file.path}"

for example,

"C:\retroarch\retroarch.exe" -L "C:\retroarch\cores\snes9x_libretro.dll" "{file.path}"

(cores are .so files on Linux/macOS)

On Android, it's documented here (just mentioning it in case someone is looking for it).

@AndersHP It could be done I think. First download the main theme as a standalone theme, then at this location add the following line:

volume: 0.5

(the value should be between 0.0 and 1.0). Then select this downloaded and edited theme in Pegasus' settings menu, and the volume should change.

AndersHP

Cool, thanks.
I'm backing up my entire setup, so is it not possible to just edit the PanelRight.qml file directly from the pi?

fluffypillow

@AndersHP Sure, but you still have to download it first. You can

cd ~/.config/pegasus-frontend/themes/
wget https://github.com/mmatyas/pegasus-theme-grid/archive/master.zip
unzip master.zip
nano pegasus-theme-grid-master/layer_gameinfo/PanelRight.qml

and edit the file there.

KryPtAlIvIaN

Quick question. If someone wanted to use an xbox one controller with pegasus, would it have native support or require you to do something like exit and launch emulationstation to program the controller and hotkey?

Thanks!

fluffypillow

@KryPtAlIvIaN While it should work out of the box in Pegasus, the emulators unfortunately won't pick up the gamepad configuration yet. At the moment it is still necessary to configure in EmulationStation too.

KryPtAlIvIaN

@fluffypillow Thanks!

KryPtAlIvIaN

@KryPtAlIvIaN said in Announcing Pegasus Frontend:

@fluffypillow Thanks!

If someone used a wired switch controller, they could get it to work by configuring it with emulation station first, and then pegasus will read the same config file?

Some of these questions I ask, I don't mind making up a Q&A for your site since you already took the time to answer these.

fluffypillow

@KryPtAlIvIaN No, Pegasus doesn't read ES's input config files, it would be necessary to configure it in both programs.

Generally gamepad support is not really perfect at the moment, I'd like to improve it in the future (it's just a bit complicated with so many platforms). Eventually support for sharing the button config with the emulators would be also possible (and maybe with ES too).

I'm fine with a Q&A, just note that Pegasus is still under development so things may change quickly :)

bleuge

New user here, I am trying to build a Pegasus portable+Retroarch in Windows10.
Sorry if this is too long :D

I currently launch Pegasus with --portable, this is my folder structure:

\config
p.bat
pegasus-fe.exe
\ra... retroarch unpacked here, updated, cores downloaded, etc
README.md
\roms
\roms... roms in subfolders
\skraper... skraper.net i am using here
\themes

My game_dirs.txt (works nice this way)

./roms/zxspectrum
./roms/snes
...

The problem I am having is with paths in the launcher I think.
I use this for example for Snes

launch: "..\ ..\ra\retroarch.exe" "-L i:/00noah2/ra/cores/snes9x_libretro.dll" "{file.path}"

Retroarch is launched ok because when Pegasus launch it, it's ran from the rom folder where you have the roms are, (check cwd config option).

But it seems RA can't see the dll once launched.
I thought the default folder could be \ra instead of \roms\snes, but don't work

launch: "..\ ..\ra\retroarch.exe" "-L .\cores\snes9x_libretro.dll" "{file.path}"

And get the same error:

[ERROR] RetroArch is built for dynamic libretro cores, but libretro_path is not set. Cannot continue.
[ERROR] Fatal error received in: "init_libretro_sym()"

Now lets see variations in the launch line, the point here are the "s
This launchs RA ok
launch: "..\ ..\ra\retroarch.exe" "-L .\cores\snes9x_libretro.dll" "{file.path}"
log:

2019-05-13T20:24:17 [i] Executing command: [I:/pegasus/ra/retroarch.exe,-L ..\..\ra\cores\snes9x_libretro.dll,I:\pegasus\roms\snes\3x3 Eyes - Juuma Houkan (Japan)-english.zip]
2019-05-13T20:24:17 [i] Working directory: I:/00noah2/ra

But then RA only exits, cant' see the dll, I've tried ....\ra\cores instead of .\cores (thinking that RA changes default folder once it's ran), but the same problem.

This faults Pegasus (werfault is called in my machine and it exits)
launch: "..\ ..\ra\retroarch.exe -L .\cores\snes9x_libretro.dll" "{file.path}"
log:

2019-05-13T20:35:14 [i] Working directory: I:/pegasus/ra/retroarch.exe -L /cores
2019-05-13T20:35:14 [w] Could not launch I:/pegasus/ra/retroarch.exe -L /cores/snes9x_libretro.dll. Either the program is missing, or you don't have the permission to run it.

It messes completely folders and executable to launch?

Finally, this also exits pegasus
launch: "..\ ..\ra\retroarch.exe -L .\cores\snes9x_libretro.dll {file.path}"
log:

2019-05-13T20:36:57 [i] Working directory: I:/pegasus/ra/retroarch.exe -L /cores/snes9x_libretro.dll I:/pegasus/roms/snes2019-05-13T20:36:57 [w] Could not launchI:/pegasus/ra/retroarch.exe -L /cores/snes9x_libretro.dll I:/pegasus/roms/snes/3x3 Eyes - Juuma Houkan (Japan)-english.zip`. Either the program is missing, or you don't have the permission to run it.

Has anyone build a portable pegasus+ra installation? how did you make RA to work with non fixed paths?

edit: I've also used this in settings file
cwd: ..\ ..\ra
launch: "retroarch ..."
but paths got messed again

@fluffypillow some other things you may consider,

Pegasus it's eating 30% of my i5 4cores, just idling? Nothing I care, but ? Some debug stuff?

portable mode in settings.txt?

general.portable: true

Would be nice.

I got a lot of problems scraping, I finally used Skrape.net program with generic scraping. But for example videos didn't play with gameOS theme. After some digging in source code (providers code), I found how you expected some folder names, and then map them to your stuff. This solved my problem:

SkraperAssetsProvider::SkraperAssetsProvider(QObject* parent)
: Provider(QStringLiteral("Skraper"), PROVIDES_ASSETS, parent)
, m_asset_dirs {
// NOTE: The entries are ordered by priority
{ AssetType::ARCADE_MARQUEE, QStringLiteral("screenmarquee") },
{ AssetType::ARCADE_MARQUEE, QStringLiteral("screenmarqueesmall") },
{ AssetType::BACKGROUND, QStringLiteral("fanart") },
...etc

I think it could be useful for other users to put this in the documentation, as I spent a lot of time googling pegasus scraping and found many people having problems with folders. Also with others providers.

If a launch process lasts 1-2 seconds, obviously something went wrong.
Instead of showing again the list of games, maybe it's useful to report some error, and instead of just logging it to file, show last lines of log in a dialog or something like that. Maybe this is just too user friendly? But I think it could help a lot in complex installations.

fluffypillow

@bleuge Hi, "-marks in commands mean that things between the "s should be treated as a single argument to the launched program. They are often used to avoid issues when a path contains spaces. Now RetroArch's -L is a standalone parameter; instead of

launch: "..\..\ra\retroarch.exe" "-L i:/00noah2/ra/cores/snes9x_libretro.dll" "{file.path}"

it should be

launch: "..\..\ra\retroarch.exe" -L "i:/00noah2/ra/cores/snes9x_libretro.dll" "{file.path}"

Pegasus it's eating 30% of my i5 4cores, just idling? Nothing I care, but ? Some debug stuff?

Haven't experienced that personally, but I'd be interested whether it happens to other Windows users. Also different themes may have different system requirements as well.

portable mode in settings.txt?

Not possible to switch that during runtime due to platform file system differences :( I was thinking about either including a portable-mode .bat file though, or improving the documentation for this.

I got a lot of problems scraping

Pegasus supports these kinds of directory layouts:

Per-game directories: assets for the games are looked at <romdir>/media/<gamename>/<assettype.ext>. You can find an example and list of accepted file names here. A visual example of the asset types is here.
Per-asset-type directories (aka Skraper): assets for the games are stored at <romdir>/skraper (or media)/<assettype>/<gamename.ext>. The directory layout is automatically created by Skraper. Support for this layout can be turned off in the settings menu.

It is also possible to manually define assets in the metadata files. Also if enabled, the assets of other programs like EmulationStation or Steam are picked up automatically.

I think it could be useful for other users to put this in the documentation

I agree the documentation would need some work, hope I'll have some time eventually.

If a launch process lasts 1-2 seconds, obviously something went wrong

Nah some things just take time, especially if networking (eg. Steam) is involved or with a large number of games.

instead of just logging it to file, show last lines of log in a dialog or something like that

Yes, I'd like to do that eventually!

bleuge

@fluffypillow Thanks for all the information!
If I got to put a working portable pegasus+ra I'll put the info here for other users.

Edit: works! thanks for clarification.
These are my folders, you can change names etc...
.\pegasus : put here pegasus files, launch pegasus with --portable, or make a bat file
.\ra : unpack retroarch here, download cores, etc...
.\roms\ : roms in subfolders here, you can use a Retropie rom folders for example

Add roms subfolders this way in \config\gamedirs.txt file
.\roms\nes
.\roms\snes
etc...

Launch line in metadata.pegasus.txt files in each rom subfolder, this is for example from my Snes subfolder

collection: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
description: Super Nintendo Games
extension: zip
launch: "..\..\ra\retroarch.exe" -L ".\cores\snes9x_libretro.dll" "{file.path}"

Of course you'll need to change the core for each rom platform.

I've also scraped with skraper.net app, @fluffypillow has a short guide about this, I only needed to change some folder names after skraper end. I am using gameOS theme working with videos, etc. I can make a short guide about this because required some skrape.net tweaking...

Now you can launch pegasus from a pendrive, an external hd, any folder, etc...
Happy gaming!

fluffypillow

As for the weekly update, no changes in Pegasus due to lack of proper time. However I've started planning and doing some initial work on a graphical metadata file editor, might get released soon.

fluffypillow

Weekly update! I was working on the graphical metadata editor, might get it finished this week. Here's how it looks at the moment:

screenshot