Announcing Pegasus Frontend

DTEAM

@fluffypillow
Quick question :
For Frontend chooser tool, which version is good for Pi4 ?
https://github.com/mmatyas/retropie-frontendchooser/blob/master/README.md

valsou

Hi,
I created a python script (+ 1 .conf file) to generate metadata.txt, for those who might be interested.

I play on a Shield TV ( Android), all games on my USB thumb drive.
Fluffypillow (mmatyas) offers a converter (gamelist.xml > metadata.txt) here. Very useful in the beginning but as my library is still in development i needed to generate very often metadata.txt and keep my settings.
Also the script can backup in folders unused media assets so i can delete them later.
And generate a "master" metadata.txt at the root that merges all others metadata.txt files. Very useful if you have a large number of collections. Juste one metadata.txt to load in Pegasus.
The configuration file allows to override launch commands/shortname/collection name and maybe more later, for each collection.

The thing is the script relies heavily on the gamelist.xml files, so you have to scrape your games, output a gamelist.xml (i can develop a parser for other kind of data files if necessary), then generate metadata.txt. Generate whenever you want as the gamelist.xml are still there.

I am sure in the future, as Pegasus will grow, scrapers will offer a direct conversion to metadata.txt. I saw that the creator of Skyscraper is doing something like that.

Anyway, sorry for the "advertisement". At least i can give big kudos to Pegasus-frontend and his creator, and the same for all themes creators/pull requesters that keep alive this project. :D

fluffypillow

@Brunnis Sure, that sounds like a good idea, I can add support for that!

@DTEAM Actually I might've forgot to create a Pi 4 version; there are some differences there, will see if I can build a release there too.

@Darksavior Hm I see lots of gamepad support issues, I think I'll also add an option to disable gamepad guessing too.

Brunnis

@fluffypillow Thanks, looking forward to it!

Darksavior

@fluffypillow The 5.4 kernel was officially released. Enabling the kms driver with dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d gives me a black screen with Pegasus. ES is fine. I've tried it on my 4k tv and 1440p monitor with the same results. I don't know how to manually change Pegasus's resolution to rule out a resolution problem.

fluffypillow

@Darksavior Thanks for the note, I'll see if I can try out the kernel on my Pi. (I hope they don't plan to change in every release how TVs are detected though.)

In theory you can override the resolution detection using a JSON config file (which if I remember correctly we've tried with an earlier kernel update), or by setting the env vars QT_QPA_EGLFS_WIDTH and QT_QPA_EGLFS_HEIGHT (in pixels). Perhaps this page might help as well: https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/embedded-linux.html#eglfs

tekn0

Has anyone else got a "ZLIB_1.2.9' not found" after the update? I am on an older pi3b

fluffypillow

@tekn0 Yes, the latest Pi releases are for Debian Buster (ie. RetroPie 4.6). You can also use the older, stable release from the website, which should still work with previous Debians.

tekn0

@fluffypillow Thank you. I will try those. :)

why44

Beautiful frontend. Building up a new low end gaming rig & wondered whether Pegasus supports platform categories in the main menu opposed to having all systems.

eg.
[MainMenu]
Arcade (containing Capcom I, Capcom II etc)
Consoles (containing Snes, Mega Drive etc)
Computers (containing Amiga, MSDos II etc)
Handhelds (containing Game Boy, Game Gear etc)

Have only seen this in AttractMode & Launchbox.

muldjord

Hi guys, I've added metadata preservation to Skyscraper's Pegasus frontend module. Read more about it here: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/11826/versatile-c-game-scraper-skyscraper/1498

ScarAce1989

Thanks for this Frontend. I really like it. I just started to setup. The main theme is okay, but I added my PS2 roms and I see it's not included in the main theme.

I see there are about four other themes for Pegasus. Are there other themes for Pegasus? Are these easy to edit for someone who never code?

Also is this project still ongoing, as I don't see any updates for a while on github?

fluffypillow

@why Hi, you mean collections that contain other collections? That's not yet supported out of the box, but it would be possible to make a theme like that.

@muldjord Nice!

@ScarAce1989

I added my PS2 roms and I see it's not included in the main theme.

Yes, there's no PS2 logo yet in the default theme, but I'd like to add one in the near future.

I see there are about four other themes for Pegasus. Are there other themes for Pegasus? Are these easy to edit for someone who never code?

Indeed a common site to browse them would be nice eventually. There aren't that many themes yet, but other than the ones I made, gameOS and gpiOS seem to be popular choices., and there's also an EmulationStation theme converter in the works. Unlike ES however, you can write (JavaScript) code to do some logic; see and example repo here.

Also is this project still ongoing, as I don't see any updates for a while on github?

Yup! Sometimes real life slows things down, but development is still going on.

ScarAce1989

Pegasus Metadata Editor.png

The default launch command should be okay right? It's not working.

fluffypillow

@ScarAce1989 You might want to put the path of pcsx2.exe in quotes too.

fluffypillow

"Weekly" update!

Development slowed down a bit due to real life and lack of time, so I'm trying to catch up now. There have been some smaller command line improvements:

Added support for disabling the Settings menu in the main menu with --disable-menu-settings . Might be useful for Kiosk setups, and --kiosk also turn this option on too.
Added support for disabling gamepad layout autodetection with --disable-gamepad-autoconfig. This is mainly for troubleshooting issues with custom controller hardware and such, especially on Raspberries. If you're having gamepad input detection issues, try running Pegasus with this flag and set up the layout manually.

I've been also experimenting with updating to Qt 5.15 to fix an issue on certain Linux distros, but there have been some incompatible changes on their side so this might take some time.

fluffypillow

Weekly update!

I'm still experimenting with Qt 5.15 (an update that might fix various long-time issues), and looks like next week there might be a release ready for testing. Other than that, another old issue was the lack of logos in the main theme, so I added a few more:

Added logos for Nintendo DS, 3DS, GameCube, Switch, Wii, Wii U, PlayStation 2, 3, Xbox, Xbox 360, DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows and Linux to the main theme. They are used when a collection's short name is set to nds, 3ds, ngc, switch, wii, wiiu, ps2, ps3, xbox, x360, dos, win31, windows and linux, respectively
Fixed some incorrect logo colors in the main theme

Darksavior

@fluffypillow Btw, retropie has preliminary 64bit support now, if you want to update pegasus for that.

fluffypillow

Nice! I wonder how it affects performance in general.

fluffypillow

Weekly update!

Fixed a crash when loading Lutris games
Fixed networking errors with Steam and GOG videos
Fixed a very rare possibility of game play times not saving accurate information
Improved the program icon on Windows to support large icon size views
Updated to Qt 5.15 on all platforms except macOS, which should fix the networking errors on Windows with WiFi connections, and bring general staility and performance improvements. It also may (or may not) fix the TV-related issues on the Pi 4, but I couldn't confirm that yet. Feedback is welcome!

System requirements changes

Due to the Qt update, the minimal required Android release is now 5.0 (Lollipop, released in 2015).