Announcing Pegasus Frontend

sikboy

@fluffypillow Hey great work on your frontend, it brings a lot of great features. Im starting to set it up on my Windows PC and have a couple of questions.

Can it be set to be portable? I think that this is a feature that people will love. I myself have my current setup on a 64GB USB drive and keep my games on the go.
Setting up scripts or command lines prior to launching of after ending an emulator or game. This to setup controller profiles before launching a game and close it after so it doesn't mess with anything else, also command lines or scripts with instructions for software like AHK.
Other languages. As i see that this project is running pretty fast under your hand it will give you a lot of exposure and users. I can help with Spanish. I'm not a programmer but if you provide a file with the strings to translate i can help with this.

I'm aware that this is in early stages. But just wanted to share my thoughts and possible pointers for future releases.

fluffypillow

@sikboy thanks! The portable mode is a bit incomplete at the moment, as Pegasus can read themes/scripts/config from its directory, but it'll write the log and settings to the system. I'll see this fixed in the future. As for the translations, you can find the language files here, and a guide here. There's even a fancy translation tool you can use if you wish.

sikboy

Hey @fluffypillow sorry to bother, is there a simple guide to load games into Pegasus? I have read the thread and find very confusing and contradicting info. I just want to get in. I'm almost done generating the Spanish translation and want to compare the presentation and sentences used in context for each screen. I'm on Windows. Thanks in advance.

halfmanhalfcake

@sikboy Assuming you mean the new config file format, then the way I did on windows for .exe files:

Let's assume you have 3 .exe Windows games installed (Firewatch, The Witcher 3 and Sonic Mania just to use as an example)

You need to place a game_dirs.txt file in your config area, mine was in location C:\Users\Me\AppData\Local\pegasus-frontend
So in this text file. you need to specify a location where you want Pegasus to look for games. So for example I install all my windows/GOG files into my D drive, into D:/Games/ so my game_dirs.txt file simply contains D:/Games/
Now for each location you have specified int he game_dirs.txtfile, you need to place 2 files, the collections.txt and the metadata.txt. You also need to add a new folder called 'media' which is where I store my artwork. So the folder should now look like:

D:/Games/
- collections.txt
- metadata.txt
> media/
> Firewatch/
> Sonic Mania/
> The Witcher 3/

I then manually entered the config of each.exe file that I have installed in my D:/Games folder, into my collections.txt. So for example mine contains:

collection: Windows Games
files: Firewatch/Firewatch.exe
files: The Witcher 3/The Witcher 3.exe
files: Sonic Mania/Sonic.exe
launch: {file.path}

So I've called this collection 'Windows Games', you can call collections whatever you want I think.
The files: needs to point directly to the Folder and .exe file. You can have as many files as you want. In this case I have 3 as I have those 3 games installed in that location.
Lastly the launch: parameter is simply saying launch that filepath we specified above in the files: parameter.

Now Pegasus should find those files, but there will be no artwork or metadata as we haven't specified those yet. This is where metadata.txt comes in handy. Simply enter the parameters listed here for each file

So mine for example for Firewatch:

file: Firewatch\Firewatch.exe
title: Firewatch
developer: Campo Santo
genre: Adventure
players: 1
summary: Firewatch is a mystery set in the Wyoming wilderness, where your only emotional lifeline is the person on the other end of a handheld radio. The year is 1989. You are a man named Henry who has retreated from your messy life to work as a fire lookout in the Wyoming wilderness. 

file: Sonic Mania\Sonic.exe
title: Sonic Mania
developer: Sega
players: 2
summary: Play as Sonic, Tails, & Knuckles as you race through all new Zones and fully re-imagined classics, each filled with exciting surprises and powerful bosses.

..... (and the same for more games )

The last step is to add the artwork for each game in the /media folder. So my media folder layout looks like (Firewatch example):

D:/Games/media/Firewatch/
>Firewatch.jpg
>Firewatch-logo.jpg
>Firewatch-background.jpg

Hope that helps.

fluffypillow

@sikboy yeah there's no easy guide yet as some features are still missing and the game management took an update recently too. You can add the games like @halfmanhalfcake described (thank you!). As for the translation, I've took some screenshots where you can see the context here.

sikboy

@fluffypillow and @halfmanhalfcake thank you for replying to my questions. I must be dumber than i thought, I cant make it work in any form. I followed the guide and nothing Pegasus just cant find my games. Anyhow ill keep on trying. Thanks to the screenshots i managed to finish the Spanish translation. Im not well versed in github, i uploaded a zip file with the docs inside. Hope thats alright. Let me know.

fluffypillow

@sikboy Thanks! Could you also upload the TS file? I can then generate the QM one during the build.
As for the games, do you see anything in the log? It should be under C:\Users\Me\AppData\Local\pegasus-frontend or C:\Users\Me\AppData\Roaming\pegasus-frontend, called lastrun.log. You should see something like "path\to\collections.txt found" if the directory you've listed in the game_dirs.txt is found and there's that file in it (and similarly for the metadata). If Pegasus makes you feel dumb, that's a bug; I'll see this improved in the future.

sikboy

@fluffypillow I uploaded the TS files as you requested. Ill try to keep the translation updated as you add or update the text strings.

Heres my lastrun.log:

Found locale 'American English' (en)
Found locale 'magyar' (hu-Hung)
Found locale 'magyar' (hu)
Locale set to 'American English' (en)
Found theme 'Pegasus Grid [built-in]' (:/themes/pegasus-grid/)
Theme set to 'Pegasus Grid [built-in]' (:/themes/pegasus-grid/)
Found C:/Users/sikboy/Desktop/pegasus-frontend/game_dirs.txt
Found C:/Users/sikboy/AppData/Local/pegasus-frontend/game_dirs.txt
ES2: system config file not found
Steam: found data directory: c:/program files (x86)/steam/
Found C:/Users/sikboy/Desktop/pegasus-frontend/Games/collections.txt
No games found for collection My Games, ignored
No games found for collection Steam, ignored
Data files loaded in 2147ms
0 games found
Closing Pegasus, goodbye!

I'm trying to keep everything confined to the Pegasus folder on my desktop.

fluffypillow

@sikboy I've just added the translation, thanks!

From the log, it seems you collection file has been found correctly, so perhaps you have issues with the files: entries? At the moment, they have to be relative paths to the files, and located in the directory (or the subdirectories) of where the collection file is located.

fluffypillow

I have a very fresh experimental Windows build that's smaller and doesn't need all those DLLs to run. Anyone willing to try it? It's here, I'd be interested in knowing on which Windows versions does it run fine, and whether this solves video playback issues and general slowness.

AndersHP

Finally got around to remapping my buttons to test the new Pageup/down functionality - THANKS, it's really nice!

fluffypillow

So this week's changes:

Added Spanish localization (thanks @sikboy)
Games that have no video now show the screenshot instead (requested by someone ages ago)
Fixed asset searching for games in subdirectories
Fixed spamming the log with warnings when Pegasus runs in window and it's X-ed out
Updated the error messages that still said ES2-specific things
Updated all previous localizations
Fixed the name of the Old Hungarian localization in the settings menu
Fixed languages sometimes sorted randomly

I've been also experimenting with improving the support for other platforms, optimizing the Windows build and preparing for Android support.

AndersHP

@fluffypillow said in Announcing Pegasus Frontend:

So this week's changes:

Added Spanish localization (thanks @sikboy)

@fluffypillow How to contribute? I'd like to do the danish version! Should I just download e.g. the pegasus_es.ts and change the spanish words to danish and somehow upload it or mail it to you?

And for my monthly question: How far away is the favorites button? :)

Clyde

@andershp A quick way to (de-)activate the favorites filter would be great, indeed. Is there already a feature request?

Darksavior

@fluffypillow I was the one that asked for the screenshot, thanks. Not sure, but the screenshot may be slowing pegasus down. It's not as fluid and smooth as before. The screenshot also doesn't look that great at that size. Maybe downsize it a bit/have the option to not have it at all to test speeds.

fluffypillow

@andershp Yeah, petty much :) There's a translation guide here and and the other translation files here. There are also screenshots here.

How far away is the favorites button?

In all seriousness though, storing favorites, stats and such will be likely the next larger part being worked on.

@Clyde you mean a hotkey for toggling the Favorites checkbox on-off in the filter panel? I think that's quite quick already. I could probably make the panel remember which row it was focused on instead.

fluffypillow

@darksavior Hm that's interesting, I'll see if this happens to me too. But yeah theme options would be another nice thing to work on.

halfmanhalfcake

@fluffypillow Would you mind if we were to mod the default pegasus theme? Keep the functionality but change the look/colours, into something like, for example the Nintendo Switch UI or XBOX one elements?

fluffypillow

@halfmanhalfcake wouldn't that be a completely different theme then? :)

halfmanhalfcake

@fluffypillow I guess it would be :)