User Interface ideas/suggestions

RetroArch Windows devices
#1

Well first of all, I just want to thank the developers for all of their hard work. I didn’t realize when I first downloaded RetroArch to play a few SNES games that it’d quickly become an addiction. I’ve dreamed of an emulation setup like this for years. Me on my couch with a wireless controller, being able to bring up a menu with all my games from the controller, save states… this stuff is just too good. And the forum is awesome - the people are very helpful. I can plainly see that things are substantially improving, just from switching to the latest nightly, from the stable version I’ve been using since I first started.

Having said all that, I have a few ideas for how to improve the user interface. Obviously this is just my personal opinion and it’s subjective. Give me your thoughts!

  1. The ability to manually add files to any playlist.

I understand the advantages of having standards for ROMs. But every now and then, I’ll notice that a ROM in my sets get skipped (even after switching to No Intro for everything). For example, Happily Ever After on NES. It’s not a big deal to just manually load a core and pick out the file, but it would be nice to be able to pick and choose games that normally would not match the databases and have them ready to go. Like translations, hacks, etc.

  1. The ability to create custom playlists with existing icons.

I can’t get any of my Turbo Graphics CD games to pass the checks, so it would be nice to be able to create a playlist called “Turbo Graphics - Super CD-ROM,” add all my games, and give it that nifty little TG16 controller as the icon. I’d also make an ‘NES Hacks’ Playlist with the NES controller icon. You could specify these playlists simply by pointing the UI to a specific folder where the user has already organized their favorite games, and the games could automatically be loaded without doing the check.

  1. Playlist Folders

This goes along with number 2. If I have 3 different NES playlists, for example, “NES,” “Famicom,” and “Translations,” all 3 of them appear after pressing A while the NES icon is highlighted. For people who prefer just one big playlist, a toggle for ‘playlist folders on/off’ could exist. Again, I understand that I can manually load cores and files. But the playlists are more convenient, because I don’t have to switch cores constantly, it’s preconfigured. The other advantage to this is, you could group playlists together in ways that makes sense to the individual. I would personally group all Nintendo stuff together, and all Sega stuff together. The way it is now, once you begin to get several systems emulated, it actually isn’t very fast to switch between one or the other, you’re scrolling left and right, and it’s inefficient. You could also create new icons for ‘parents’ of each system (e.g. a “Nintendo” icon, a “Sega,” “NEC,” etc.)

  1. Fast scrolling through playlists

The way it works now, I can scroll at normal speed, press L and R to fast scroll to the next/previous beginning letter, but it would be nice if I could press “L2” and “R2” to fast scroll without switching an entire letter. Particularly for SNES games, where there’s like a billion games that begin with “Super.”

  1. Voice Search

Maybe this is wishful thinking on my part, but I’ve become accustomed to voice searches on my PC, and “OK Google” on my phone. It would by nice if I could configure the “search” option to toggle between typing it out and voice. Then you could hit the X button on your controller, and for example, I say “Mega Man” and it pops up with every single playlist ROM that matches. I have no idea how much work something like this would entail, or if it’s even practical, but man that would be the coolest.

So, what do you all think? Feel free to add to my list, I’m very interested to see what you all have to say.

#2

voice recognition isn’t going to happen :stuck_out_tongue:

Most of your suggestions/requests can be achieved by using any of the external playlist creation/manipulation utilities floating around on the forum.

For icons, if you look in [assets dir]/xmb/[theme]/png, there are a bunch of png images named things like “SNK - Neo Geo Pocket Color.png”. If you make a playlist with the same name as the icon (or, conversely, create and paste in an image that matches the name of your playlist), it’ll show that in the horizontal-scrolling top-level menu and one followed by -content (e.g., “SNK - Neo Geo Pocket Color-content.png”) will show next to the games (like the cart/disc icons).

#3

Thanks for the tip. I should be able to manage the custom playlists/adding files/icons now.

What do you think of #3? It seems like it would be useful in cleaning things up. Imagine all the “Atari” stuff under one folder, all the Sega stuff under one folder, and all the Nintendo stuff under one folder. Then, you just press A and the folder opens up a new tree where you then choose your playlist. You could get around faster that way.

#4

While RetroArch is mostly associated with emulation and most of the cores are based on emulators, some of our interface decisions are focused on keeping it generalized because we hope to one day be a platform for non-emulation games (indie, etc.). To that end, we make sure that RetroArch never has a concept of ‘systems,’ only ‘cores’, for example.

Besides, that would require making playlists of playlists and I don’t think anyone wants to add in another layer of complexity like that.

#5

I get what you’re saying to a point. And I mean no disrespect but… Retroarch is already very complex.

If I wanted simplicity, I’d just use SNES9x, and load up a directory with all my ROMs organized the way I want them.

But I quickly realized the potential of using Retroarch, so I switched to something that is better. The reason it is better is because it is complex. There was nothing simple about it, right from the beginning. Hours of googling to find some obscure BIOS file to make a core work, trial and error, reading the forum… again, no disrespect. I love what you’ve created. But people who are using your creation are very much invested. All I’m saying is the best user interface you could possibly create would be intuitive (it already is to a degree, and I see improvements being made), efficient, and customizable.

The playlists within playlists would be awesome in my opinion, I’m sure I’m not the only one that would like it. I saw another thread where someone had a long tutorial about MAME, and I saw the user loaded up a mame config and had several playlists. That would be a perfect example of a place where playlists within playlists would be beneficial. For example, MAME/Capcom/(then a tree with different genres of games).

Totally not trying to argue with you so much as convince you. :slight_smile: But in the end this is your project and I am still very grateful for what you’ve done, and respect your decisions.

One more idea - maybe make it so that when you press the start button, you switch back and forth between your current position (e.g. Nintendo - Nintendo Entertainment System playlist), and the main menu, to get around faster. If you need to switch settings or something, it would make things more efficient, especially if you have a lot of playlists.

#6

If you use LaunchBox as a frontend for RetroArch you already can have voice recognition :slight_smile:

#7

Awesome, thank you for bringing that to my attention!

#8

Do i undertand it correctly:

Retroarch doesn’t do an automatic “controller icon” for CD based games like “SEGA CD” in the xmb -?- like i have NES, SNES & Genesis - and they all have thier “Controller Icon” and cover/box art showing for the roms in xmb…

In other words, i have to manually modify the playlist section to have a dedicaded “SEGA CD Controller Icon” ?

I do scan all my SEGA CD games but they don’t appear in the xmb / user interface like my NES/SNES/Genesis games…

#9

I’ve been using this: http://memkis.ru/index.php?session_new=aHR0cDovL3Bhc3RlYmluLmNvbS92WUpZR1p2TQ$$?

It isn’t perfect… for example, if your games have “!” in them (e.g. “Goal!” for SNES), it doesn’t add the “!,” and you have to manually edit the playlists for those titles.

Your other option is to manually load a core, and manually load the game. The playlists are more for convenience than anything. It saves you having to dig through folders and specifying a core.

I agree that retroarch would be a lot better if it had increased functionality for playlists, but I can understand that it isn’t priority when there are other ways to accomplish it. Also, it isn’t like the devs are getting paid to do this. They do it in their spare time.

#10

Yes i stumbled to this as well:

But that stuff is too advanced for me - i’m definitely plan to learn more about scripts and .cfg files, but at the moment in life i don’t have that time. I’m moving living places at the end of month.

Of course you are right, i’m not disagreeing with you - maybe i did sound wrong. But i was really suprised/happy to see the xmb ui displaying the roms (compared to the older retroarch builds) so i was a little sad that it didn’t do the same for CD games. But it’s all good :wink: It really is a nice programm and i WANT to learn more about it, about emulation in general.

Thanks.

#11

[QUOTE=Typhon;48162]1. The ability to manually add files to any playlist.

I understand the advantages of having standards for ROMs. But every now and then, I’ll notice that a ROM in my sets get skipped (even after switching to No Intro for everything). For example, Happily Ever After on NES. It’s not a big deal to just manually load a core and pick out the file, but it would be nice to be able to pick and choose games that normally would not match the databases and have them ready to go. Like translations, hacks, etc.

  1. The ability to create custom playlists with existing icons.

I can’t get any of my Turbo Graphics CD games to pass the checks, so it would be nice to be able to create a playlist called “Turbo Graphics - Super CD-ROM,” add all my games, and give it that nifty little TG16 controller as the icon. I’d also make an ‘NES Hacks’ Playlist with the NES controller icon. You could specify these playlists simply by pointing the UI to a specific folder where the user has already organized their favorite games, and the games could automatically be loaded without doing the check.[/QUOTE]

I’m interested in these two the most. #1 falls under playlist management, which seems like a standard feature. On top of games that get skipped during a scan, other games may need to be added manually due to being altered in some way (translation patches, rom hacks, bug fixes in rare cases). I’d suggest the ability to manually remove (or hide) playlist entries as well, for cases like duplicate entries, or games that have simply been deleted due to disinterest.

As for #2: Personally, I’d love to make a playlist specifically for Super Game Boy-enhanced games. I understand this is currently possible using a custom .BAT launcher, and I can technically create a custom playlist with a text editor. But I’d prefer to have a playlist with its own global launch settings (ie: bsnes core + sgb rom + subsystem “sgb” enabled), so that I could then add games to the playlist (ala #1) and have those games simply work as expected.

External management tools exist, but they exist to fill holes in RetroArch’s current capabilities. I feel what’s most important is that the user should be able to work inside RetroArch as much as possible, as long as it’s related to RetroArch’s native features. The lest that a user has to rely on external tools, the more robust RetroArch would become.

(whispers loudly) Patreon. Patreon. Patreon. :pray: Seriously, I’d be a very happy supporter.

#12

[QUOTE=CHICAGO-lollie;49026]I’m interested in these two the most. #1 falls under playlist management, which seems like a standard feature. On top of games that get skipped during a scan, other games may need to be added manually due to being altered in some way (translation patches, rom hacks, bug fixes in rare cases). I’d suggest the ability to manually remove (or hide) playlist entries as well, for cases like duplicate entries, or games that have simply been deleted due to disinterest.

As for #2: Personally, I’d love to make a playlist specifically for Super Game Boy-enhanced games. I understand this is currently possible using a custom .BAT launcher, and I can technically create a custom playlist with a text editor. But I’d prefer to have a playlist with its own global launch settings (ie: bsnes core + sgb rom + subsystem “sgb” enabled), so that I could then add games to the playlist (ala #1) and have those games simply work as expected.

External management tools exist, but they exist to fill holes in RetroArch’s current capabilities. I feel what’s most important is that the user should be able to work inside RetroArch as much as possible, as long as it’s related to RetroArch’s native features. The lest that a user has to rely on external tools, the more robust RetroArch would become.

(whispers loudly) Patreon. Patreon. Patreon.  Seriously, I’d be a very happy supporter.[/QUOTE]

The latest nightlies actually have the ability to remove entries from playlists, which is nice. Definitely a step in the right direction.

I can only imagine how must work would go into developing something like retroarch… because simply being a user of retroarch at the advanced levels is quite a large investment of time.

But yeah… I’d personally contribute to see these features added. Especially the ‘playlist within a playlist.’ I’ve got over a dozen systems emulated, and it’s actually a chore to get around in the user interface now.

Launchbox makes users pay for the ‘Big Box’ version, I don’t see why RetroArch devs don’t deserve some compensation for all their hard work.

#13

Man lmao, that’s the second time I’ve “suggested” something that’s already been added to the nightlies since I last updated. Cool though!

I suppose if there’s an interface change that I’d like to see, it’d be to clean-up the settings menu. Split it up into categories, and maybe consolidate some of the sub-menus. I can find my way around the menu easily enough now that I’ve been using RetroArch for some months, but for new users it is kind of daunting. Having categories would add an additional button/key-press, but at least it’d only display the options that the user is looking for. (a “simple/advanced settings” toggle would be good too)

I’d actually like to see the quick menu, settings, and media folders get shifted onto their own “row” or “screen”, so to speak. Think PS4, with settings and other utilities available on the top row, and all the games on the bottom row. It’d mean that the quick menu and settings are always readily available just by hitting “up” from the “games” row, and “down” to get back to the games playlists from the “options” row.

These are both just quality-of-life suggestions though, wouldn’t consider them hugely important.

mGBA offers a vanity build of the emulator with a golden icon - no special features, just a token of goodwill. Cemu offers early (one-week priority) access to the latest versions, and the usual “get your name in the credits/on the website” thing for higher-paying patrons. Surely there’s enough people willing to support the Libretro project, even for very minor “rewards”.