Just wanted to let you know that I’ve written an issue comment on the old kiosk mode discussion over at GitHub. Although some work has already been done to facilitate this, it needs more work and polish to be a complete feature. So, head over to GitHub and join the discussion!
I don’t think the granularity you describe is going to be feasible without switching to a generative menu layout. That is, text files where you can describe whatever layout you want from the palette of features and the menu pulls from those files when you load the program. For example:
<tab> <tab_title>MENU_ENUM_LABEL_VALUE_MAIN_MENU</tab_title> <option>MENU_ENUM_LABEL_VALUE_SAVE_CURRENT_CONFIG</option> </tab> <tab> <tab_title>MENU_ENUM_LABEL_VALUE_SETTINGS</tab_title> <option>MENU_ENUM_LABEL_VALUE_VIDEO_SETTINGS</option> <menu>MENU_ENUM_SUBLABEL_SHADER_OPTIONS</menu> <option>MENU_ENUM_LABEL_VALUE_SHADER_APPLY_CHANGES</option> <menu>MENU_ENUM_LABEL_VALUE_VIDEO_SHADER_PARAMETERS</menu> </tab>
Then you could just comment out or delete the things you don’t want exposed. Translations would still be able to replace those strings based on the MSG_HASH, just like they do now.
I’m beginning to think this is the only way to finally silence the people who complain about our “UX” and “flow”, since they could just design/use their own layout.
However, I’ve put this idea out to Twinaphex and he’s not keen on it and would rather work on the existing code, so unless someone like @kivutar wants to take it on, it’s probably not going to happen. As it is, adding/removing something to/from the menu is pretty excruciating, as you have to do things in like 8 different places just to make something show up, let alone function.
I’m not sure if you know this but, if you save in the standalone Mupen64Plus ( For example ) you can just rename the file to .srm and it would work in RetroArch! I am not sure about savestates but oh well.
I agree that a generative menu layout would be better suited for this. Given RetroArch’s complexity (which is for the most part necessary given the goals of the project), including most settings in the GUI while still pleasing those that want an easy to use/understand or slimmed down experience such as kiosk/kids mode might be impossible.
Since I’m guessing you won’t make such a radical change in a while, my next question is: Would you be willing to accept pull requests, if well implemented? While it would probably take much longer, myself or others could implement this in several steps and make pull requests along the way. For example, I would probably start with making it possible to restore the settings tab visibility directly from XMB.
EDIT: I could probably put together a full proposal with details for each new proposed setting, i.e. retroarch.cfg additions, placement in the UI, UI description, etc.
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Yeah, PRs are always welcome. When it’s convenient, go ahead and write a proposal in the github issue and @/ping some people, like Twinaphex and kivutar and let them know what you have in mind. You can mention that we’ve talked about it here and I’ll discuss it with them in IRC if needed.
Okay, sounds good. I’ll put together something pretty detailed regarding the implementation as well as a plan for the implementation order.
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Okay, I’ve posted a more detailed proposal on GitHub:
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please delete xxxxxxxx
Apple doesn’t even allow us in their ecosystem. Why would we want to support their locked-down, proprietary language?
Anyway, if some outside developer wanted to add and support such a thing, we would likely accept it, but none of the regular contributors have any interest in playing ball with Apple on this.
please delete xxxxxxxx
Please delete xxxxxxxxxx
Please delete xxxxxxxxx
Hi,
Netplay suggestions.
Is possible to add a option to download the host rom or iso? If the host allows it, of course.
If you change the netplay interface, i’m sure the community of fightcade will come to us.
Netplay with more systems would be great.
How about a way to make the space for texts bigger (XMB menu)? Pretty much all “external texts” (ROM names, core names, listings in the updater, …) are cut of somewhere even with a huge amount of space next to the text.
For example: “SNES / Super Famicom (bsnes-mercury Performance)” is just “SNES / Super Famicom (bsnes-merc…” for every core of it.
Yes, the text scrolls when you highlight it but is pretty slow sometimes and you just sit there and wait.
There are a number of values to change, text length but also various spaces/margins in the code.
This is the modification I make in menu\drivers\xmb.c with 1080p and “menu scale factor” = 50 as my target.
It looks like this. (for desktop, 32" screen)
I wonder if someone could figure out a way to link all those together for dynamic scaling wit a parameter.
Or probably 2: one value for thumbnails scaling, one for texts length + margins.
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Hello! I wanted to quickly state that I love what you guys are doing, and thank you for the hard work you’ve put in.
My suggestion centres on the problem that if you have a lot of ROMs, the library can get quite bloated, especially if you have more than one version of the same game, such as from multiple regions, multiple revisions, romhacks, or multiple discs. To resolve this, my idea is that if Retroarch detects multiple instances of the same game for the same system, it creates a sub-menu for it in the library, from which you can choose which version of that game to boot. This instantly removes any copies of that game from the top menu and makes navigating your libraries a lot easier.
To facilitate this, some preferences will have to be added. You’ll need to choose what default region name you want to apply for games in the top menu (eg. in the top menu the game becomes: JP - Hoshi no Kirby: Sanjō! Dorotche Dan, NA - Kirby: Squeak Squad, EU - Kirby: Mouse Attack). You could also choose to automatically boot up whichever is your preference when you select that title, though this would need to be on a per-game basis as this would cause issues for games with multiple discs. An option to manually add romhacks to your library via this sub-menu would also be good, so that they can all be kept in the same place.
Thanks for reading and for your time.
I agree. The main list of games should just contain a list of game names. The sub-menu that provides the current Run, Rename, Remove and Information options should now include Language and Default Rom. The Language option would detect available language codes on the ROM name. Once selecting a language a list of ROM types could be listed such as v1.1, Hack 1, etc. The user can set the default language and ROM but it allows them to change to another if they want. This would free the main list from all the long names and multi-listings.
Suggestion (I also posted in an existing issue on Github):
Add an optional description / blurb entry that a user can put in when hosting a game in the netplay lobby. It would be nice if other users could highlight a game in the lobby and see more optional info the hoster provides like: “Watch me try and speed run Mario Bros!” or “Chat with me on Discord channel XYZ”
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As an addendum to my previous suggestion, can we get sorting methods applied to the favourites list? Alphabetical, system or release date would be good options to start with off the top of my head.
I’ve been hesitant to propose this as it’s well outside the scope of Libretro but given the expansion of front-end features that have been added to Retroarch and its upcoming inclusion in Kodi, I thought I’d throw it out there.
It would be really cool if Retroarch had a “launcher” core to launch applications outside of RA. Users could use this to add pc games and emulators that aren’t yet supported in RA. There’d probably need to be a launch rom through external app and just launch external app version and some per-file launch parameters. Again, I know it’s way beyond the scope of libretro, but it would be a good way to access one’s whole game collection from one spot and a fantastic way to get everything integrated in Kodi.
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