Announcing Pegasus Frontend

fluffypillow

@halfmanhalfcake the directory is not created automatically yet, will fix that :)
@jayceelectro yes the Flixnet theme was designed to work well with images from ConsoleGrid/etc. It'd be nice if someone would write a scraper for these sites...

fluffypillow

No changes this week due to lack of time, however I've started working on making the theming interface more stable, so I might even start writing the guide for it finally.
Oh and I've also updated the Flixnet theme to work with the latest alpha.

halfmanhalfcake

Hey fluffy, hoping you can help me, i've set up ES and got a gamelist.xml all set up, and added images in the xml, which show up in ES but not in pegasus.

I've also tried adding images in the <romspath>/media folder in the format you mentioned earlier in this thread.

my log shows:
qrc:/themes/pegasus-grid/BackgroundImage.qml:24:5: QML Image: Cannot open: file://C/Frontend/Games/media/Super_Mario_Kart.jpg

Any ideas on where I'm going wrong?

fluffypillow

@halfmanhalfcake Do the games themselves show up in Pegasus? I assume there is a Super_Mario_Kart.something in C:/Frontend/Games/ right? Does this happen with only that or with all platforms/all games? If you add your gamelist.xml and log to a new issue (eg. using pastebin) or here, I can check them tomorrow.

halfmanhalfcake

@fluffypillow yes they do, they show up with the metadata, title but no artwork, which is a shame.

I've tried removing the media folder from roms directory, and letting it load the downloaded images from ES, or manually point gameslist.xml to a different path for images but pegasus does not load any artwork.

Gamelist.xml: https://pastebin.com/TENXG8Fh

Thanks for your help

fluffypillow

@halfmanhalfcake Could you post the whole log files for both cases (running with a media directory, then running without it)? Does C:/Users/<username>/.emulationstation/downloaded_images/snes/Super Mario Kart-image.jpg exist? Or are you using some kind of portable EmulationStation?

halfmanhalfcake

@fluffypillow No portable version of ES, and yes there is a Super Mario Kart-image.jpg there.

Both logs: https://pastebin.com/mtk444Yy

fluffypillow

@halfmanhalfcake thanks, I think I've found the bug; could you check if this build fixes the issue?

halfmanhalfcake

@fluffypillow Yep, works perfect now. Thanks :)

Time to start creating a theme, any tips on what to use to create one?

fluffypillow

@halfmanhalfcake great! For the themes, I'm using Qt Creator, but you can use whatever text editor you like. For learning QML you can use this site (~ chapters 4-6), until there's a proper theming guide.

halfmanhalfcake

@fluffypillow I tried to use the flixnet theme, but it failed to load, looked at the log which says:

"file:C:/Users/Me/AppData/Roaming/pegasus-frontend/themes/flixnet/theme.qml:48:5: Details is not a type"

fluffypillow

@halfmanhalfcake I can confirm this is a bug on Windows. The issue is probably similar to the case of game images (ie. paths there need some additional love); I'll take a look on this as soon as I can. Thanks for testing!

halfmanhalfcake

@fluffypillow Thanks, I'll wait for the fix before creating a theme

fluffypillow

@halfmanhalfcake ok, it should be fixed in this build (works for me on Windows). The Flixnet theme seems a bit misaligned though for some reason, I'll check that too.

halfmanhalfcake

@fluffypillow works great now, thanks :)

StephanePare

Just for the grid view I'd give your front end a try once it's out of alpha/beta :)

AndersHP

@stephanepare I can recommend this front end. I was a bit reluctant to try it already, because it's in "Alpha" only, since I'm no coder and just wants something that works and looks good.

I'm experiencing very few bugs and I'm only using Pegasus by now.

After I scraped with Universal XML scraper with box art, video and logos, I think this looks super awesome, I really love the speed it runs with, and the grid view is so neat.

I'm emulating NES, SNES, MAME, NeoGeo and Master System, so cannot tell how it works with other consoles, but my recommendation is that you give it a whirl.

fluffypillow

Yeah, there are still some features I'd like to implement before calling this a beta, but the development is going ok, and it shouldn't be that far now :)

As for the weekly changelog,

Fixed asset loading on Windows
Fixed theme loading on Windows

which might not sound much, however, in the "background" I was also quite busy working on a stable interface for theming, configuration and making tests for them. This should be done by next week. As a side effect, it's very likely that one of the next releases will have custom categories support, instant theme reloading and faster startup. I'll also post a proposal for the configuration files in the next few days. After we have a stable interface and config file format, I'll start writing some proper documentation.

halfmanhalfcake

@fluffypillow look forward to the update next week for custom categories.

Will the proposal for config files include config for games without ES? Would be great to use this frontend independently, without ES, (and with, of course).

Request from me :)
Is it possible to create a 'foundation/beginner' theme as a starter theme for theme creators learning the code? I've played around with flixnet and the default theme, but would love a simple, plain theme, just a title and gridview?

fluffypillow

@halfmanhalfcake Yes and yes :)

The proposal will be about Pegagasus' own config files, exactly for the reason you've mentioned. I'd also like to see if someone finds any issue with the format before I start coding/using it.

I'd like to have at least 2-3 example themes built from scratch in the documentation/guide. The default theme is a bit hack-ish due to the variable column count of the grid and the animations of the top bar, but I could imagine building the Flixnet theme or eg. the PlayStation XMB UI as a tutorial (after the plain title+grid).