Announcing Pegasus Frontend

[lilbud]

@fluffypillow And someone reading how to build Pegasus

[fluffypillow]

Actually, if you're building from source, by default the build system will try to build all Qt modules if possible. The output of the configure step shows it in detail what will Qt try to build. Make sure everything under QML and Qt Quick is selected ("yes"), except DirectX 12. You'll also need EGLFS under QPA backends, and at least one of the EGLFS details, that matches your device (eg. EGLFS Rasberry Pi). You'll probably want the X11 options off too.

Yeah, building Qt is not really trivial.

[shantigilbert]

@fluffypillow could it be that I am compiling qtbase? (in my defense, it was the only thing I could find instructions for)

[fluffypillow]

Ok, I've wrote a Qt cross compilation guide, and you can also find all the config options I used here: https://github.com/mmatyas/pegasus-frontend/wiki/Qt-cross-compilation

PS: The first note is for the future users

[shantigilbert]

@fluffypillow Thank you! this will be of great help! I will let you know how it goes after I try it.

[fluffypillow]

And I guess this will do as a build guide for now: https://github.com/mmatyas/pegasus-frontend/wiki/Building.

[Twitch0815]

@fluffypillow Have compiled, and have it up and running.
So far I can Launch it and exit trying to open the settings menu and or the controls menu via enter or left click on mouse is not responding it does exit and open no problem via enter and or mouse input. Any beginner documentation. Also I would like to add some content to the wiki, possible to allow write privilege to twitch0815 my git account?

[fluffypillow]

@Twitch0815 yes, Settings and Controls don't do anything right now, as they are not yet done -- it's still in alpha after all. There'll be more documentation as more and more features are complete; I can't write a guide for the settings menu, for example, when there's no settings menu :)

As for the wiki, I've set it up as a separate Git repository, which will auto sync with the actual wiki, see https://github.com/mmatyas/pegasus-frontend/wiki#want-to-contribute-to-this-wiki.

[Allanbuzzy]

It'd be awesome to take the Pegasus GUI and turn it into a PS3 XMB style menu. That'd be very awesome.

[meleu]

@Allanbuzzy Do you know lakka.tv? :-)

[Allanbuzzy]

@meleu Yes but it doesn't have RetroPie's Ports, video splash screens, etc.

[fluffypillow]

Actually, creating an XMB theme is not really difficult (compared to the current grid style), it might even work well as a theming tutorial. Here's a quick demo I just made: https://webmshare.com/qN5Yr

You could even replicate the PS3 wave animation:

, though that's a somewhat more complicated topic.

[lilbud]

@fluffypillow How long did it take you to make that?

[fluffypillow]

Mm, dunno, I had a dinner break between. Less than a hour I guess.

And an additional 30min trying to decide whether I should set the height of one of the elements to 200 or 210 px...

[lilbud]

@fluffypillow So is that what can be done with themes?

[fluffypillow]

However, Qt/QML does have some initial learning curve, so this isn't really a "fair" comparison.

[fluffypillow]

You can do whatever you want with a theme. Literally. All you need is to call about 3 Pegasus-specific functions to be able to start games. The rest is completely up to you. You can even write a whole game, whatever.

Here's another Qt demo if you're interested:

[AlexMurphy]

@fluffypillow I hate to be a dissenter but what does this add apart from a lot of flash and eye-candy? Does your new front end add any actual functionality?

[PokeEngineer]

@fluffypillow

Looks really good! I will look into trying this out after I'm done making a secret (for now...) creation of mine.

[meleu]

@fluffypillow Does this, let's say, framework have some kind of interface to shell scripts. I mean, provide some GUI widgets like kdialog. IMHO this would be a real game changer.