Announcing Pegasus Frontend

fluffypillow

@PlayingKarrde there are a bunch of short term things like fixing the Steam slowness with the default theme, updating the Flixnet one or supporting Ctrl and co. for key bindings. After that, I'm planning to make some important changes in both the theme Api and the metadata text file format.

For themes, I'd like to change the way sorting and filtering works, and allow the data to appear multiple times with possibly different sorting/filters. In pactice, this means the ability to make a "recently played" list.

For the metadata files, I'd like to unify the format of the collections.txt and metadata.txt, so you wouldn't need to have 2 separate files. There are still some open questions like how to deal with multifile games and game launching in that case. Since it's a visible file format update, I'm trying to be careful about the changes, so there'll certainly be a discussion before it goes live.

PlayingKarrde

@fluffypillow sounds awesome! Keep up the great work!

PlayingKarrde

@fluffypillow said in Announcing Pegasus Frontend:

So as a workaround, you could add a Loader that would load a video player item when the delegate gets selected, and unload its content when deselected, for example.

I'm still trying to figure this out. Are you suggesting that I create a Component with a video player at the GridView level then have the loader within the delegate that loads that component? I guess I'm still struggling with where to put the video player so it only gets loaded once.

fluffypillow

@PlayingKarrde something like that, yes. This code for example works for me in your grid item code: https://pastebin.com/fQadMCku (not sure how fast it is on Windows though).

PlayingKarrde

@fluffypillow said in Announcing Pegasus Frontend:

@PlayingKarrde something like that, yes. This code for example works for me in your grid item code: https://pastebin.com/fQadMCku (not sure how fast it is on Windows though).

Awesome thanks a ton for that. I'd gotten close to this but this is definitely better performance wise. I'm still getting some hitches here and there at times but it's a lot better than before and I think I can live with it for now. I'm getting the occasional

DirectShowPlayerService::doSetUrlSource: Unresolved error code 0x80004005 ()

but that's probably easily solvable. Might be the reason for the hitches too (or it might be due to the unloading to the video similar to what you experienced with playlists).

I've also noticed that playing a sound decreases performance (for navigation sounds). I'm not sure why though. All I'm doing is:

SoundEffect {
        id: navSound
        source: "../assets/audio/nav2.wav"
        volume: 0.5
    }

...

navSound.play()

It's pretty frustrating since audio adds so much but I can't accept that performance hit so will have to do without for now.

Thanks again for the help.

fluffypillow

@PlayingKarrde well according to Microsoft 0x80004005 means "error"... um, yeah. I suppose it failed to load the video on the first try.

I've also noticed that playing a sound decreases performance

Hm does this happen if you use Audio instead? According to the docs "SoundEffect uses slightly more resources to archive lower latencies", though I'd be surprised to see such a small difference causing performance hit like this on a modern desktop PC.

PlayingKarrde

@fluffypillow Audio doesn't really help and actually won't play if it's currently playing meaning you'll often won't get the audio if you are cycling quickly.

It's very strange that I'm having these performance issues because I'm running a pretty powerful PC (i7 5870k, 32gb DDR4 ram, 980 ti).

-edit- OK maybe it was nothing. I restarted my pc and SoundEffect doesn't cause a problem anymore. The only hitch I see now is when a video unloads.

PlayingKarrde

Here's my latest update, slowly but surely:

Still a lot to do but I'm happy with the progress.

fluffypillow

@PlayingKarrde nice, can't wait to see it finished :)

Meanwhile I've just finished building an experimental Windows version that uses a different multimedia "engine", but in turn runs on Win10 only. Could you test how this affects the performance issues (or whether it even works correctly)? It's here, if you get DLL errors, you might need to install this too.

PlayingKarrde

@fluffypillow said in Announcing Pegasus Frontend:

@PlayingKarrde nice, can't wait to see it finished :)

Meanwhile I've just finished building an experimental Windows version that uses a different multimedia "engine", but in turn runs on Win10 only. Could you test how this affects the performance issues (or whether it even works correctly)? It's here, if you get DLL errors, you might need to install this too.

Exciting! However I tried it out and performance actually seems a bit worse? I wasn't able to test with my theme as it throws up an error

TypeError: Cannot call method 'isDetails' of undefined

PlayingKarrde

If I wanted to make a theme settings page (ie change grid style, turn off videos etc) is there anyway I can save those settings?

fluffypillow

@PlayingKarrde

performance actually seems a bit worse?

That is certainly possible :)

it throws up an error

That is weird though, as it's not media related at all.

is there anyway I can save those settings?

Not yet, unfortunately, that's still a major missing thing. The plan is to add a way to define theme-specific settings in eg. the theme config file, then they would appear in the main menu in a common place, eg. Theme Settings. I don't want to require theme makers to reimplement a full settings menu every time.

PlayingKarrde

I think there might be an issue with the date conversion in your tool. It doesn't seem to be translating it over. For example:

<gameList>
  <game id="12741" source="ScreenScraper.fr">
    <path>./Lunar - The Silver Star (Sega CD) (U).bin</path>
    <name>Lunar: The Silver Star</name>
    <desc>Welcome to the world of Lunar, where dragons yet live and magic is valued above all else. Join Alex, the young adventurer as he begins a quest with his friends to save their land from the crushing advances of the Magic Emperor. Explore dungeons, fight terrifying monsters, and gather information from the locals as you advance toward the explosive confrontation with the Magic Emperor himself! Exciting, menu-driven combat will keep you challenged until the last. And thanks to the storage power of the CD, Lunar contains awesome animation sequences that'll get you involved in the story -- fast! Get ready for the ride of your life...</desc>
    <rating>0.75</rating>
    <releasedate>19931201T000000</releasedate>
    <developer>Working Designs</developer>
    <publisher>Game Arts</publisher>
    <genre>Role playing games</genre>
    <players>1</players>
    <hash>A0ADE691</hash>
    <image>./media/screenshot/Lunar - The Silver Star (Sega CD) (U).png</image>
    <thumbnail>./media/wheel/Lunar - The Silver Star (Sega CD) (U).png</thumbnail>
    <video>./media/videos/Lunar - The Silver Star (Sega CD) (U).mp4</video>
  </game>
</gameList>

fluffypillow

@PlayingKarrde there was a typo in the code, but it's fixed now. Thanks!

PlayingKarrde

@fluffypillow cool thanks!

PlayingKarrde

Is there a way to specify a relative directory for collections commands rather than absolute? I'm trying to make my build as portable as possible so having

command: G:\Dropbox\Emulation\PegasusLauncher\systems\redream\redream.exe "{file.path}"

Is definitely less desirable than

command: systems\redream\redream.exe "{file.path}"

fluffypillow

@PlayingKarrde I'm surprised I haven't added support for that yet, will be fixed. If it's urgent (and don't mind writing scripts), you can also add the directories of the Exes to the PATH env var, and then Pegasus should find the programs (eg. you can use command: redream "{file.path}").

PlayingKarrde

@fluffypillow said in Announcing Pegasus Frontend:

@PlayingKarrde I'm surprised I haven't added support for that yet, will be fixed. If it's urgent (and don't mind writing scripts), you can also add the directories of the Exes to the PATH env var, and then Pegasus should find the programs (eg. you can use command: redream "{file.path}").

Ah yeah. It's ok, it's not super urgent right now.

PlayingKarrde

BTW should the frontend be using as much GPU resources as it appears to? It seems to use between 90 to 100% usage right now.

fluffypillow

@PlayingKarrde it shouldn't, in theory (it can run on Raspberries or phones after all)., though it is possible that there may be platform-specific issues. For me on Linux + Intel GPU the default theme takes around 15-22% load (depending on video playback). The number of active graphical elements of a theme greatly affects the GPU load, though your theme from last time didn't cause a huge load for me either.