Announcing Pegasus Frontend

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:
alt text

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

A Former User

I am so used to SNES controllers lately, seeing ABXY in that format threw me off initially.

fluffypillow

@LiveFastCyYoung I'm thinking about adding an AB <-> BA switch option, and also a PS-style layout too.

AndersHP

Pegasus looks awesome!
Brilliant work..

And now for the most annoying question, that you KNEW was coming: what's the ETA on non-developers installing and using this on our RetroPies? :-)

fluffypillow

Hm I guess it'd be about time to release an alpha2. I'll finish the gamepad config screen, rebuild everything with Qt 5.9, write a basic user manual, create release packages, so... maybe the weekend/next week? (unless something comes up or takes more time than expected)

It won't be complete yet though; for the beta release, I want to add user theme support, a custom metadata format (to not depend on ES), script support, a nice icon/logo, some help texts (eg. "you don't have any games"), retropie install script, maybe steam support, and also write a theming tutorial.