Better OSDs for State Slot Change

Bounty Discussion
#1

I did make an ‘issue’ on github about this, but I thought I’d go into more detail about why this is important to me.

I use RocketLauncher as a launcher for both HyperSpin, and LaunchBox. It works fantastic, and I’ve been very happy with it, and RetroArch for most of my emulation needs for a long time.

The thing is, RocketLauncher has this very nice ‘Pause’ menu built in that you can access by pressing a key or button (or combo) of your choice. Here is a pic of what that looks like:

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Now, the way the Save and Load states feature works is, it uses Auto Hotkey, with keystrokes that are specified in an ini file. So for RetroArch, what we do is, if we wanted 5 save state slots for example, is to start the AHK sequence by sending the key for ‘State Slot down’ 5 times, to reset it to 0 (if it isn’t already at 0), then ‘State Slot up’ one time. That would be the key sequence for ‘Save State slot 1’ in RocketLauncher’s Pause menu.

The problem with the new style of OSD is two fold.

  1. They take up too much space
  2. They take too long to appear and disappear.

Here’s a screenshot of me trying to save to slot 10 while playing the PPSSPP core.

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As you can see, the OSDs are actually obstructing my view, and it takes upwards of 10 seconds for all of the OSDs to disappear.

Contrary to this, the old style of OSD looked like this:

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It didn’t take up hardly any space, and there was very little, if any delay.

I realize that most people won’t even care about this issue, but there is a community of us over at the RocketLauncher forums, and we all love RetroArch. The new style of OSD makes RocketLauncher’s Pause/Save State feature not even worth using, and that’s a shame, because it’s really nice.

So, I’m starting a topic here, with the hopes that a developer will show some interest in providing some sort of a workaround for RocketLauncher users, or perhaps a more elegant way of handling the ‘State Slot’ OSDs in the first place. Or, even the option to revert it to the old style.

Of course, I do have other thoughts on this. Perhaps if it were possible to provide a ‘State Slot Hotkey’ (e.g. holding the CTRL key while pressing 1-9), it would be perfect, and wouldn’t interfere with the current way that OSDs are handled.

I’m willing to create a bounty for this if I can get some feedback. I just don’t want to drop some cash on something that is sort of a unique issue, and have it sit in limbo for an eternity.

I’d be very happy if a dev could help me out with a solution to this. Thanks for your consideration.

#2

You can revert to the old style just by disabling menu widgets in settings > user interface.

1 Like
#3

Thanks for the reply, hunterk.

The thing is, I actually do like the new look quite a bit, especially the way the achievements look when you unlock them. The thumbnails look awesome.

Your solution works for my original problem of course, but it also reverts everything else, too - including the Achievements. I wish there was a way to revert only the state slot notifications. Everything else is perfect.