Announcing Pegasus Frontend

fluffypillow

@halfmanhalfcake hopefully before Christmas :) The plan is that now I start working on the config file format, as it'll be used by the themes, then I start writing the theming guide.

@AndersHP as far as I know, they both should have the same possible reachable speed on a Pi. But unless you have a very fast SD card (UHS class), USBs in general might be faster.

AndersHP

With about 5000 games read from USB and assets off SD, Pegasus loads in 21 secs in Alpha 5 but 24 secs in the newest release. Maybe I should try moving artwork to USB also... Should this just lie in the roms/media folders?

fluffypillow

@andershp hmm this difference is really interesting... I'll see if I can figure out what causes this slowdown. As for game assets, they are searched in [game's directory]/media, see this comment.

AndersHP

@fluffypillow My USB drive with the games are probably not very fast, and I have video, logo and boxart per game, ran from the microSD (class 10).

Assembling all these on the USB thumbdrive, maybe a faster one, could bring the loading time down I guess? But still, it's quite a lot more time than your setup? Maybe a fresh Retropie install is needed?

Darksavior

@fluffypillow With the new build my ~2000 games from USB load in around 5 seconds, nice. @AndersHP I got better speeds from microsd, so I keep my artwork there. Videos crash or glitch out on pegasus the last time I tried so I don't use them.

AndersHP

@darksavior Hmm. What USB drive do you use? Something fancy? There's a long way up to my 24 secs.
I think video previews are so nice, which glitches have you encountered?

Darksavior

@andershp I'm using a 128gb SanDisk USB 2.0 stick. I don't remember if it's formatted to 32k or 64k clusters.

Maybe it's changed lately, but the last time I tried videos, like 6 months+ ago, some videos would give me a garbled image and if I started to scroll down, Pegasus would crash. No real loss...I still have a ton of artwork to scrape.

AndersHP

I'm considering a fresh install with less games also. Really, this has been a big test for my build, but the "paralyzation of choice" is kicking in with so many games. It's unnecessary.

I have only experienced that Pegasus occasionally quits to terminal when scrolling through many games, but I still hope @fluffypillow introduces a Page Down/Up function at some point, and this might help, since Pegasus then doesn't have to load so many videos redundantly when scrolling.

fluffypillow

@andershp yup, still on my todo list :)

Darksavior

@fluffypillow I just noticed the new pegasus build no longer sees my sub folders. Snes msu1 games are required to be in subfolders because they're multiple files. ES still sees the folders. They are located under /media/usb0/snes/msu1/if it matters.

Also, in the future will you be adding some fast scrolling on pad? The type ES has where you hold down DOWN, then it starts to scroll at a normal rate, then a few seconds later it speeds up.

Oh, and yes, I mean columns, not rows.

fluffypillow

@darksavior Should be fixed now, thanks!

Also, in the future will you be adding some fast scrolling on pad?

Personally I prefer the way it works right now (I tend to trigger the fast scroll accidentally), but that can be changed in the themes.
A letter indicator/scrollbar would be nice though.

Darksavior

@fluffypillow No worries, thanks.

danielmewhouse

Hi guys, what's up? I've installed Pegasus-FE recently on my Pi, but I don't know how to launch it. Someone could help me? I've installed from experimental packages on RetroPie Setup menu.

AndersHP

@danielmewhouse said in Announcing Pegasus Frontend:

Hi guys, what's up? I've installed Pegasus-FE recently on my Pi, but I don't know how to launch it. Someone could help me?

Yes, I asked this question too.. Right here :)

AndersHP

I'm about to start scraping all over, but in case I need to do this another time, it would be nice to have both art and games on USB instead of microSD.

@fluffypillow You say that generally USB and MicroSD should be equally fast, maybe USB could be faster.
@Darksavior you say that USB is slower.

Do you guys think, if I get a USB 3.1 drive (they should be way faster even though I know the Pi only supports USB2.0), this could be a good solution with both art and roms on USB?

What about Emulationstation, will this still work and show art if it's placed in romsfolder/media?

fluffypillow

@andershp (sorry for the late reply)
Really depends on the drives you use. Many 2.0 drives don't reach the maximum possible speed the Pi supports, while with a 3.x drive it's more likely. A good SD card may also reach the full speed, but to me they seem to be slower.

Some benchmarks:

What about Emulationstation, will this still work and show art if it's placed in romsfolder/media?

Should work fine, as long as the paths to the rom directories are valid. Actually if you're just moving your games/assets to USB, you could just correct the paths in the ES2 systems config file, no need for a full scraping.

fluffypillow

It got a bit delayed with the holidays, but the theme guide is in progress now.

halfmanhalfcake

@fluffypillow Great stuff, look forward to it :)

fluffypillow

Happy New Year! And also an update:

implemented the new config file format, but currently only for the theme config file so I could start writing the documentation
changed the config format a bit
- : is also accepted as the separator between an option's name and value (previously only = was accepted)
- [] is no longer needed at the end of an option's name to indicate it to be a list: it's handled automatically when an option occurs more than once
the loading screen will likely be themeable in the future -- I've added some light animations to show activity, which seems to work fine on Pi 3 but might be demanding on other platforms (due to the loading in the background); this needs some more testing
fixed a bug that caused Pegasus to miss assets in symlinked directories in some cases
fixed a bug when reading the <rating> field from ES2 files
changed some variables around in the theme system while I was writing the documentation -- updated the Flixnet theme for this
better support for games with multiple developers, publishers or genres

Documentation is in progress; I think I can finish/polish them by this week (or the next), and I'll upload them all then. Current status:

set up a pretty website for the documentation and moved the wiki articles there
fixed some typos
updated the Qt installation guide with images and notes (for C++ devs)
added theme creation overview (QML, theme structure, stuff Pegasus provides)
added a page with links to QML tutorials
added detailed API documentation
added a step-by-step guide for making the Flixnet theme (60% done)
will add at least one more simpler tutorial too (eg. something like a stripped-down PS3 menu, or a remake of ES2 or HyperSpin's default)

AndersHP

@fluffypillow Your work is awesome. Do you have an ETA on these features:

Favorite add/remove by buttonclick
Page up/down function

Not at all to stress you, just a friendly query. These two functions would get Pegasus up on the side of EmulationStation, when it comes to functionality (in my humble point of view).