RetroFE forums

I've just released RetroFE 0.10.30 to the download section. This release contains the latest memory fixes as well as a core 1.4 directory for those people who want to use gstreamer 1.4 (just rename the core directory to core 1.18 and the core 1.4 directory to core). The default core directory uses a recent gstreamer release (1.18). I will continue to release executables for the latest stable gstreamer release as well as for 1.4 until the video issues with the themes have been resolved.

I hope to update the documentation later this week. Most of the new features are already present, but some of the latest fixes may not yet be in there.

Edit: WARNING: I've replaced the 1.20 gstreamer version with the 1.18 gstreamer version again. 1.20 does not work well together with video walls for some odd reason. The sound is a huge mess.

I just had to do a restore of the RetroFE website, because the site went down after a WordPress update. I'm not sure if we lost anything important in this way; if people's posts were deleted as a result, then I apologize. I guess that will teach me not to update other people's software...

I've uploaded RetroFE 0.10.20 to the download page; the source code can be found at https://github.com/phulshof/RetroFE. This is an intermediate full release to provide you all with the latest core directory using the latest SDL and gstreamer libraries. I've been told it greatly reduces GPU usage, and should as such make things faster. I'm still in the process of rewriting the video handler, so it still contains the same memory leak it has contained since the beginning, but which becomes apparent if the theme displays a lot of videos at once. The (Windows) installation instructions have been updated accordingly.

For a full list of changes, see https://github.com/phulshof/RetroFE/commits/master.

I'll try to update the documentation in the upcoming weeks.

Edit: Yes, I've moved over to github. Bitbucket stopped supporting Mercurial, so I figured if I needed to move to git, I might as well move to github as well.

Looks like my external development HDD just died. I've lost a bunch of work, and I'll probably need some time to get everything up and running again I'm afraid.

RetroFE has been using the Aeon Nox theme as default theme for quite a while now, but as recent releases have shown us: RetroFE is capable of so much more, provided people add all the artwork necessary to make it look pretty. I was wondering: is it time for RetroFE to shift to a new default theme, and if so: which one? What are your thoughts?

It's been a while since we had an official release, so I've put 0.9.0 on the download page. You can find the list of changes here.

Some highlights:
- Support for menu directory as alternative for the menu.txt file. This makes it much easier to create unzip and play game packs easier.
- Support for exclude_all.txt to allow games to be removed from the auto generated "all" playlist.
- Support for volume as animated type to allow fade-in/fade-out of video sound.
- Support for attractModeNextTime as attract mode setting. This allows for an initial time to start, and a consequent activation of the random selection.
- Support for playlist attract mode switching.
- Support for last played playlist via the lastplayedSize configuration setting.
- Support * for playlists to include an entire collection as playlist in stead of having to add each game individually.
- Support minScrollTime for menu tags to separate the scrolling acceleration from the minimum scrolling delay.
- Replaced autoFavorites with firstPlaylist parameter to allow for free first playlist selection.
- Several bugs fixed.
- Code cleanup.

I hope to update the documentation later this week so people know how to properly use the new features.

It's been a while since we had an official release, so I've put 0.8.18 on the download page. You can find the list of changes here.

Some important updates:
- Updated SDL2 to the latest version to fix several graphical glitches on Windows.
- Added support for monitor ratio in the layout names; you can now use layout 4x3.xml, layout 16x9.xml, etc., and RetroFE will select the one that fits your monitor ratio.
- Added animation types for menu jumps and playlist changes.
- Added support for the latest truRIP superdat format and directory structure. Keep an eye out for their future releases.

Unfortunately the key configuration menu is still WIP, but I hope to get that up and running soon. After that I'll add the possibility to launch scripts from the menu, change other settings like theme, and add a search function. I've dropped a few other projects I was working on so I could spend some more time on RetroFE in the near future.