Feature Requests: What do you want to see in PiPlay?
  • Is it possible to update xboxdrv to 0.8.6? I really would like to get the logitec f310 to work with piplay!
  • Started playing around with this the other day. I must say, it's very nice! I especially like that my Mayflash SNES dongle was recognized and the navigation *just worked* (though it took me a little time to figure out to use the X button to select -- not an intuitive choice)

    Some suggestions:

    Support folders in ROMs list. Navigating with arrow keys takes a very long time, and I have a ton of ROMs. I have divided them by letter in subdirectories (and further like BA-BE in the B/ directory), but piplay doesn't pick up anything not in the root folder.

    Sorting like above automatically might be nice (the algo isn't hard :-), but it might be a stretch.

    Additionally, it seems input is blocked till the image on the right is loaded and there's no auto-repeat. In order to browse through long lists of ROMs, auto-repeat should be enabled and the image load should delay for .5~1s when the navigation stops. (nitpick)

    Since I've just got 2 SNES controllers plugged into the thing, I don't have spare buttons for things like "Exit to menu" or "Reset emulator". It's also a bit of a pain to connect a keyboard for these buttons. What I *do* usually have within reach is a tablet/smartphone with a web browser on it. It would be nice to see buttons like those in addition to Reboot/Shutdown on the tools menu of the web portal. Extra credit for additional emulator keys like Load/Save Savestate :-)

    -- seems that a lot of folks here want to build an arcade cabinet with this, and these suggestions might go against that "goal", if it indeed is one. Hope I'm not too far off-base.

    Thanks for all your effort! It looks great so far.
  • @jjjordan - press the 'menu' button ('tab' or 'button3') in the rom list. This will allow you to quick jump to any letter of the alphabet.

    There is an auto repeat for keyboard, but not for joystick yet (it's a little trickier). If you press right or left, as opposed to up or down, you can essentially page skip to get through your list faster.

    The input shouldn't be blocked by the rendering of of the image on the right. I multithreaded the romlist, so that the image draw is it's own thread. Are your roms on your sd card, or on an external drive of some sort?

    That's not a bad call on the web portal buttons. It should be fairly easy to implement and I can imagine a lot of people using it. I have been toying around with something in the same realm, so maybe I'll go ahead and work on that.

    Our goal is to make retro-gaming accessible for everyone. I built an arcade, but I also plan to build a more classic 'console type system' pretty soon here.

    Keep the comments and suggestions coming!
  • Thanks for the fast response, mholgatem.

    And thanks for the navigation tips. I'll use those more at my next opportunity and see how it feels.

    I s'pose I was jumping to conclusions on some implementation details there. I am using a 32GB Transcend SD card (cheaper, but slower than SanDisk/Kingston on the Pi, from my observations -- despite them all being C10) and I could see how that might be affecting it. I'll see whether installing it on a better card makes a difference.

    Thanks again! Will be following this project.
  • @jjjordan - In SNES emulator documentation, default mapping for "Quit Game" function are pressing "SELECT + START" simultaneously. I have been tested and works.
    For quick saving & quick loading, you can map joystick buttons to this function by editing snes9x.cfg (I've got mapped these functions to a buttons 7,8 respectively in a pc/ps3 controller, and it works).
    The only thing i don't know is how to assing a 2 button simultaneous pressing to an action in snes9x.cfg.
    I hope this can help you.
  • Some thoughts concerning pi(mame)play-menu :

    - if nb_items_to_show == max_nb_items_per_screen then don't create a new page menu, just show the items since they fit on a single page.
    Why : cause it looks better ^^

    - option (config.yaml?) to disable or enable joystick/pad _in menu only_
    Other way could be to make joystick less sensible in menu, but that sounds tricky imho.
    Why : some are too sensible/unstable (while perfectly fine in game) and are a pain to deal with within piplay-menu, changing the selected item "by themselves". (this one is medium to high priority imho)

    (those last ones are obviously suuuper low priority, just some thoughts for 0.9 or 1.0)
    - Regarding themes, i think something's wrong in the logic between config.yaml and theme.yaml files, i believe it should be easier to localize the UI for example.
    - Regarding loading screen / launchmenu : it is far better in the last beta, but still not fast enough imho. Maybe it's a matter of feeling rather than real performance though.
  • @jjjordan - yeah, originally I used a way slow class 4 card and had my roms stored on a thumb drive that was ntfs formatted. Upgrading to a good class 10 and changing the format of my thumb drive to (ext4? or maybe fat, I don't remember) really sped up the romlist stuff.
  • Here's an early patch to enable the "disable pad" option ;-)
    Seems to be working fine so far.

    * pmconfig.py :
    class PMOptions:
    def __init__(…)
    […]
    self.allow_pad = opts['allow_pad']


    * mainscene.py
    def handle_events(self, events):
    […]

    to disable axis, change from :
    if event.type == pygame.JOYAXISMOTION: action = self.CONTROLS.get_action('joystick', event.dict)
    to :
    if event.type == pygame.JOYAXISMOTION and self.cfg.options.allow_pad: action = self.CONTROLS.get_action('joystick', event.dict)

    same logic applied to the next line to disable buttons too, if needed (i didn't) :
    if event.type == pygame.JOYBUTTONDOWN and self.cfg.options.allow_pad: action = self.CONTROLS.get_action('joystick', event.dict)


    * config.yaml :
    choose
    allow_pad: False
    or
    allow_pad: True
  • @lateo, I think that I can edit the sensitivity of the joypad so that you won't be getting false joystick movement.
  • In next or future versions of piplay (this great project), can be useful include a context menu (with a mouse right click over an icon) in main screen with several options that allows, for example:
    - emulator configuration (if it's possible)
    - setup controller (only for the selected emulator)
    - or any other that void edit configuration files

    Add an option in the main screen pop-up menu to enable/disable emulator or special options (like "exit" or "shutdown") visualization

    Add an on-screen keyboard can be useful too
  • I'd love to see PicoDrive as a replacement or alternative to DGEN - I've had a bit of a play with it and it runs a bunch of things DGEN doesn't run - if I get it going well I'll submit my workings.
  • @danx - really? I havent had anything not run on dgen yet. what games are you having problems with, I'd love to do some testing.
  • MK3, MK5 are the two I've tried which work well in PicoDrive.
  • @mholgatem : try this one http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Squadron or this fix it felix homebrew http://68000.web.fc2.com/felix/index.html and let me know what happens with dgen. Also Dgen is not working with EmulationStation with composite output (but it's not a problem for piplay).
  • @danx, @ian57 - ok, thanks guys! I'll check 'em out. see what I come up with.
  • I'd like to get VectorMAME running on there- there's a board "Zektor" that used the parallel printer port to drive arcade vector monitors. (color/B/W)

    That board is no longer available but I think the functions (+_12V, 4 channels) can be reproduced and added to the pi. And a standard oscilloscope would also be capable of displaying the games..
  • First off thank you for the amazing work Shea and team!

    What I'm hoping to see is Atari Lynx support (Handy Emulator). Great games like California Games (BMX!), blue lightning, electrocop, xybots, gates of zendocon, xarlor mercenaries, toki, etc. Lynx would be perfect alongside the other emus in PiPlay.

    This distro is what inspired me to finally get a pi and so far I'm loving it. Keep up the great work!
  • @lateo, I just worked in a fix for the controller sensitivity issue that you are having. It should be available in the next update, or you can grab it off of my repo. The only files that need to be updated are pimame-menu/controller.yaml and pimame-menu/pmmenu/pmcontrollerconfig.yaml.
  • Atm I'm loving this distro! Fantastic way to use a PI, but I'm missing ps3 support, I would love that ! I hope it will get implemented soon :)
  • No, sorry @kristoffer55. It will never happen. The ps3 is way to powerful to emulate on something like a raspberry pi.
  • Emphasis on 'way to powerful' :D
  • hi there!
    my requests

    1. a "vertical" edition - at least for mame (to use vertical games with right-up displays)

    2. i would prefer a file struktur like
    /emu/mame_037b
    /emu/fceux_v2.2.2
    /emu/mednafen_v0.9

    pimame could be located in its own folder like
    /emu/pimame

    imho it would be easier to maintain settings/programs and so on - indipendent if using pimame or another frontend (e.g. copy settings from another image to the piplay image and use the same config-files for mame and so on)
  • addition to my last post:
    a global preferences file where the location of the emulator is stored would do the same job (every one could use his own file-structure)

    i have to say - i´m a hyperspin user - so i would like to have the same file structure everywhere.

    new request:
    3. (like hyperspin) - simply let the users plug in their emulators
    the ini file could contain something like this
    emulator name=Sega Genesis
    executable=/emu/fceux/fceux.bin
    rompath=/mnt/Emu/Sega/Genesis/ROMS/
    extensions=bin|zip
  • In the settings, have the option to check what you want displayed and what you want hidden. For example it will show me a list of all the things that I can have displayed and then I can just un-check what I dont want, like the restart option, and rom scraper...etc
  • @krayzielilsmoki - we decided against doing something similar to that in order to keep the menu smaller. There is an option to 'hide system tools' which will hide anything that labeled as 'type: UTILITY' in the /home/pi/pimame/pimame-menu/config.yaml. If you need even more control, you can just set the 'Visible' property for each item in config.yaml.
  • Is there a quick hide all emulators with no Roms setting?
  • nope, but that's a setting that we could add. good suggestion.
  • I actually have a couple site related feature requests of my own :D

    @SSilver2K2
    I think the PiPLAY site (www.piplay.org, www.pimame.org) needs a bit of an update.
    The emulator list, video, and quick start guide are all (really) outdated...
    And I think a few more tutorials would be good.

    Also, I think we need a tag system or something on the forums. Or maybe categories. I just think it needs to be a bit easier to find stuff.

    Anyway, thanks!
  • First of All.. Great work on PiPlay! I am very impressed with the progress so far. Here are a couple of things I would like to see:

    1. While looking at my games list in Mame4All with pimame v. 7.10 I was able to highlight my favorite games by pressing the insert coin button. I would love to see this feature added to PiPlay's game list.
    2. Is there a way to return to the Mame4All game list after exiting a ROM instead of returning all the way back to the main PiMame main menu?

    Thanks!
    Alfredo
  • @azapatero -
    1. That's a pretty excellent idea and shouldn't be too hard to implement. We are thinking about going to a true database to store the rom info, so as we do that, I'll keep this feature in mind.
    2.Yes! There is a way to go straight back to the game list! just grab the latest update, it has that feature built in.
  • @mholgatem Excellent. Thanks again!
  • There's just one thing that misses for me: a driver that enables the use of (S)NES-controllers connected to the Pi's GPIO
  • Really liking it so far; you've provided something that has finally turned my Picade from an expensive shelf ornament into a useful and fun toy! :)

    A few of my feature requests:
    Customise mappings so that there is standardised controls across all emulators (EG "Back to PiPlay Menu" button is the same in all applications.)

    In the FAQ/similar, within the PiPlay menu itself, provide a list of the formats/versions of roms each of the emulators expects (EG, does it want a .bin or a .gen file, does it support zipped roms, etc.)

    Make Bezel support work out of the box in MAME4all (IE, this: http://www.pimame.org/forum/discussion/21/solved-artwork-bezel-not-appearing/p1) and add these as something that is scraped like the artwork. Add automated scraping of sound samples (EG for Berzerk etc.); these things aren't roms and the MAME community generally considers these things as 'fair game'. ;)

    Eliminate the humming/low static on the menu (EG play a looping 1sec silent .wav or similar).

  • A friends list...that also allows you to have a local, and shared, leaderboard for games.
  • +1 for scraping of sound samples and bezel/cabinet artwork.
  • An mp3 player app on the mainscreen. I already have a big old box sitting in my living room that blares arcade sounds, it may as well be a jukebox as well.
  • +1 for the MP3 player!
  • @Pettycash
    Check out www.ignition.io
  • MP3 player - I looked into this a bit and found that MP3 support is not natively built into pygame. It doesn't mean that we can't add it, but it's going to take some doing. I added background music as a theme option in the meantime, but it's limited to .wav and .ogg file formats (wav is better, uncompressing the ogg file puts a lot of work on the rpi cpu).
  • I had a couple of thoughts if anyone is interested. Sorry if it has already been discussed...

    1) Wiimote support. I have added this to my installs each time I update. I did a writeup here on what I as up to getting it to work. Once I get the packages installed I add a menu entry to initiate the connection.

    2) Add .pce to the list of extensions for the ROM uploader. All my TG16 ROM's are this extension. I modified mine to add this extension.

    3) Add a "startx" menu item to get into the desktop environment. I do this on mine.

    If there is interest, I'll share what I have done...
  • @dmroeder
    Brilliant suggestions! Thanks
  • Hi, I just discovered Piplay and I really enjoy it, so simple and almost ready to use. I wish it could be possible to use shortcuts on a joystick to save/load states instead of using a keyboard when it is allowed in the system.

    I wish I could be able to change the ratio aspect for the neogeo (top and bottom are cropped) and the arcade system.

    By the way there are many mistakes when I try to set up my joystick e.g. button B instead of C for the neogeo and button top 3 instead of 2 for arcade systems etc.
  • Is it possible have a video player or a way to run XBMC from PiPlay?
  • Props on the new update! Great job! So far I haven't found any major issues. BTW +1 to XBMC on PiPlay
  • support Banana Pi
  • I'm not sure if this has been suggested before, but any thought on a favorites list. Perhaps a separate folder on the main menu to store a list to launch any game from any emulator. I apologize if this has already been posted.
  • it would be really usefull to be able to delete/rename and add images to rims using the rom uploader.
  • @mcgufa - that will be coming. We are switching over to a localized database soon. When that happens, I plan on adding the ability to drag and drop images.
  • Will this new version of PiFBA be implement in PiPlay one day? http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=78&t=91731

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