Announcing Pegasus Frontend

[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.

[lilbud]

@PokeEngineer Is what you're working on the why you haven't been on in 2 months?

[PokeEngineer]

@lilbud

Nah. I was just taking a break.

[shantigilbert]

@fluffypillow Well after a few days of trying to get QT5 to compile in Libreelec I officialy give up :( I wanted to try the frontend on my s905 "mashup" that I use (LibreElec/Lakka/EmulationStation) but I guess I have to wait until someone with more knowledge is able to figure it out, if ever! meanwhile I will use it on my Rpi3 :)

and that demo looks awesome :)

Thanks!

[fluffypillow]

@AlexMurphy Technically, none of the frontends provide anything you couldn't do with a set of shell scripts and manually edited config files :) The difference is the user experience, I guess. Would you like to see any particular feature? I'm open to ideas. It's just simply that I was not 100% pleased with the currently available frontends, so started working on a new one to make it to my liking.

@meleu Actually, I do was playing with the idea of making a dialog alternative; that'd allow to even theme the whole menu system. Qt doesn't ship with such a program out-of-the-box, but provides all the UI elements to build one.

@shantigilbert Ah I see it's a 64-bit ARM system; it might need some manual compiler flag definition or tweaks. Depending on you device, you'll likely have to create some config files, based on eg. the one for RPi 3 in qtbase/mkspec/devices.

Also Qt 5.9 comes out next week (official releases come twice a year), you might want to try that too.

[shantigilbert]

@fluffypillow it is a 64bit, but I am using an arm 32bit arch to compile it.

I will wait for 5.9 and see if there is better luck :D thanks!

[fluffypillow]

So other than the wiki/documentation, I was also working on the gamepad config screen this week:

[herb_fargus]

@fluffypillow technically the shoulder is the closest one and the trigger is the one toward the back so on the diagram they should be switched but otherwise looks good