Playlist Menu?

[dustind900]

Is it possible and how would one go about creating a menu for playlists?

I want to use playlists instead of sub collections so i can have a universal favorites for each system. But I want the playlists to be in a visible menu when i select a system. As an example If I select Sega Genesis I want the next menu to be - All Games(US), JAP, Fighting, Hacks, etc.. I know how to setup and use playlists, but I cant figure out how to have a menu of playlists in my theme.

[Agent47]

I might be wrong since I haven't been following development lately, but unless something has changed recently it's not possible.

A playlist menu is one of the few things RetroFE is missing for me personally. I think I may have brought this up as a request a while ago but I don't think it went anywhere. IMO, playlists are just too clunky to navigate without a menu to the point where they're not worth using, sadly.

[Pieter Hulshoff]

I wouldn't say that. Playlists are exactly what e.g. CoinOPS NEXT 2 will be using. The horizontal selection is a collections menu; the vertical selection is playlists. It's just not as easy to set up, and it won't scroll automatically.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_grCb5ida0

[Agent47]

I don't want 2 menus to scroll through. It doesn't look good IMO and the playlists aren't easy to identify. Not sure how well that would work with more than a few playlists either.

Ideally I'd just like to see where you press a hotkey and the playlist dir is loaded as a normal collection and the playlists could have the normal media assets applied to them. To me that's a lot simpler, cleaner, and usable.

If it's not something that's going to be implemented any time soon I may just look into implementing it myself at some point.

[dustind900]

Thanks for clarifying guys. I have a couple more questions if you don't mind.

Do I still have to increment menu index if I use multiple layout files?
Also same question as far as layers are concerned.

Would it be possible to add some extra info to RetroFE StdOut? Like selected and highlighted menu/collection/game. I could add more features to the frontend with this info.

Can RetroFE be controlled via command switches? If not is that something that could be added in the future? This and the previous would allow many third party features to be added to RetroFE.

Thanks

[Agent47]

Can RetroFE be controlled via command switches? If not is that something that could be added in the future? This and the previous would allow many third party features to be added to RetroFE.

The only switch I'm aware of is for creating a collection. I'm curious, what exactly would you want to have control over from CLI?

Other than launching directly into a collection/playlist or overriding the layout specified in the conf file I'm not really sure what you could have in mind. Even those 2 things would be pretty niche in terms of usage I think.

[Pieter Hulshoff]

Do I still have to increment menu index if I use multiple layout files?

Whenever RetroFE enters a layout.xml file, the menuIndex gets reset back to 0.

[dustind900]

The only switch I'm aware of is for creating a collection. I'm curious, what exactly would you want to have control over from CLI?

Other than launching directly into a collection/playlist or overriding the layout specified in the conf file I'm not really sure what you could have in mind. Even those 2 things would be pretty niche in terms of usage I think.

As far as CLI input that would really only be useful if it could be executed while retroFE was already running. With something like that I could easily code a search overlay. I could code one as is right now, but there would be no way to switch to and launch the game inside retrofe. I realize it's a planned feature, but there are other use cases. I would say this is less important than output info.

With output information there are a ton of possibilities. I want to use it for things like automating retroarch. If I knew what game and system retrofe had highlighted I could create an overlay that allows me to choose if I want to play a snes game with multitap or not. I can dynamically create the config before the game ever gets launched avoiding the need to enter retroarch quick menu during gameplay or having to have a separate 4 player system in retrofe. Please don't push RocketLauncher. Its a great system, but in many cases it's just too much. Plus RocketLauncher does everything post launch, I want to do it pre launch.

Did I mention custom LED control? Cause that would work awesome with some output from retrofe

[dustind900]

I think I found a way to have a playlist menu using images.

Side note: I can only add 3 attachments

[The SPY]

So how did you manage to get the playlists working ? And where did you find those images ? They look great

[dustind900]

I got the individual images from emumovies. I put them together like that so they span my screen like a horizontal menu. Now when i switch playlists using the images it gives the "appearance" of a playlist menu. Setting the images to change with no animation makes it look like its actually moving when you change lists. Images have to be put together in the exact order of your playlists.