bypassing emulator frontends

[timothee]

Hi there,


So I've been using my pandora for a while, and I've realized my usage pattern is typically to be engrossed in *one* game for days or weeks at a time. During that period, I seldom switch games, and I find that the frontends get in my way: I want to start that one game but I find myself scrolling through a list of games and waste time.


In some instances, I've gotten so used to where the game is in the list, that I know when the emulator fronted powers up, I must press page-down 6 times, then arrow down 3 times and enter, and I can do that at at great speed, without even looking at the screen... I can't believe I've wasted brain cells and muscle memory to remember that :/ .


Of course that could be helped somewhat if the front ends remembered the last selected games in the list (CapexFE does a good job at that), but there's still an unnecessary step of launching the frontend at all.


So I've made a few custom scripts to be placed on my desktop to launch the games I use. It's nothing fancy, but I think it's cool, so I thought I'd share (and sorry if this is already common practice :/).


I assume the emulators have been launched at least once with with front-ends (since they typically do some setup at first launch). If you want to try, you'll have to adjust the pnd and rom path to your own values; and make sure the scripts are chmod +x to be able to double click them.


for snes9x4p_20120226.pnd, script file to launch fzero: ~/Desktop/fzero.sh

#!/bin/bash


/usr/pandora/scripts/pnd_run.sh \

-p /media/PANDA64_1/pandora/apps/snes9x4p_20120226.pnd \

-b snes9x.skeezix.alpha \

-e snes.sh \

-a /media/PANDA64_1/roms/snes/fzero.zip

(using absolute path to rom file, I was having issues with spaces in file names (even with escaping), so I renamed it to not have any)



for gngeo_0.8.5.pnd, script file to launch magicaldrop3: ~/Desktop/mdrop3.sh

#!/bin/bash


export SDL_VIDEODRIVER=omapdss

export SDL_OMAP_VSYNC=1


/usr/pandora/scripts/pnd_run.sh \

-p /media/PANDA64_1/pandora/apps/gngeo_0.8.5.pnd \

-b gngeo_pepone \

-e gngeo \

-a magdrop3

(note for gngeo, your rom path must have been set in frontend first)



for fba.pnd, script file to launch progear: ~/Desktop/progear.sh

#!/bin/bash


export SDL_VIDEODRIVER=omapdss

export SDL_OMAP_LAYER_SIZE=800x480

export SDL_OMAP_VSYNC=1


/usr/pandora/scripts/pnd_run.sh \

-p /media/PANDA64_1/pandora/menu/fba.pnd \

-b fba-dave18 \

-e fba \

-a /media/PANDA64_1/roms/fba/progear.zip

So the reason I have the exports in there is because the frontends typically set those in a launch script, but that launch script does not take arguments so I can't use it as is to start up the game. So instead, I copied the exports that were obvious into my own launchers, but I don't know if I need to bring more stuff(?). The 3 games above work fine for me with these launch scripts, so I didn't dig deeper


So I hope that helps, and if you have launch script for games of other emulators, do share


And if this was a terrible idea, pls do tell me too .


Cheers,


Tim.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Good idea.


Hope this is the start of a meta frontend ;^).

 

[MooTheKow]

Hey - you might be interested in this thread from last November about how to create PND's that auto-launch into specific games:

 

[timothee]

Hoo nice, thanks for the reference!... and shame on my search skills


I must say making a pnd per game feels a little overkill to me :unsure: . For my use case of making a launcher for the game I'm addicting to at a time, a script feels quicker to do and change (only change the rom name/path in the script).


Anyway, very good reference nonetheless!

 

[SNESFAN]

Theres a snes emulator on the dingoo that has a very fantastic feature "autoload last ran rom" you can always go in and load another after the first launch but it is still a killer feature.


If they were to do an option of auto loading last save state as well like they have on some android emulators that would be even better.


I know this is of no help besides pointing out features other platforms have =P


Sent from my MB612 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Foxgod]

Is there a front end that can be used for all games/emu's ?


Is there a pandora frontend where:


-You can set all emulators per system


-You set a rompath


-Be able to switch between systems with the L and R button


-Can launch a game by simply highlighting it and clicking an assigned button


-The user has the option to show a screenshot for every game that is highlighted


-The user can switch back to the emu by simply exiting the game, and/or pressing a key combination (would require script running in background).


This way the user can choose for a centralised game center, and never has to switch between emu's again.

 

[timothee]

Is there a front end that can be used for all games/emu's ?

On my living room system (xubuntu), I use cabrio fe ( http://www.cabrio-fe.org/ ), which does what you said (mostly). Although, having a single path for cross system roms storage is probably a bad idea; and cabrio lets you do what you want as far as roms organization goes. cabrio should be portable to pandora, provided someone takes care of the opengl code to be opengles...


Even then, this is still a slightly different topic, if I have to launch a meta-frontend to select a game, it's still wasting my time if I play just that game over and over. But I do like that "autoload last game" idea, Android!

 

[mcobit]

This frontend looks good, but every emulator would need to be integrated one by one to do the exports etc. That are normally done while mounting the pnd and running the startupscript.

 

[Foxgod]

Is there a front end that can be used for all games/emu's ?

On my living room system (xubuntu), I use cabrio fe ( http://www.cabrio-fe.org/ ), which does what you said (mostly). Although, having a single path for cross system roms storage is probably a bad idea; and cabrio lets you do what you want as far as roms organization goes. cabrio should be portable to pandora, provided someone takes care of the opengl code to be opengles...


Even then, this is still a slightly different topic, if I have to launch a meta-frontend to select a game, it's still wasting my time if I play just that game over and over. But I do like that "autoload last game" idea, Android!

Indeed, looks great, might be a nice thing for someone to pick up for the next rebirth competition

 

[timothee]

This frontend looks good, but every emulator would need to be integrated one by one to do the exports etc. That are normally done while mounting the pnd and running the startupscript.

Hmm, sorry, I'm not sure I understand what you meant. cabrio has a pretty involved process to setup atm yes, especially since you have to set up your own emulator list, own game list, and screenshots, etc. :/ . Still I thought that if cabrio was ported, it'd be a thin pnd package and people would set up emulators to come from other pnds (and configuration snippets could be shared in these forums or elsewhere, so not everybody has to do the same thing).


For example, I _think_ it shoud be easy to have cabrio fronting snes9x4p, the cabrio config would just have a emulator block like this (using my own paths):

    <emulator>

	  <name>snes</name>

	  <display-name>SNES</display-name>

	  <executable>/usr/pandora/scripts/pnd_run.sh</executable>

	  <platform>SNES</platform>

	  <params>

	    <param><name>-p</name><value>/media/PANDA64_1/pandora/apps/snes9x4p_20120226.pnd</value></param>

	    <param><name>-b</name><value>snes9x.skeezix.alpha</value></param>

	    <param><name>-e</name><value>snes.sh</value></param>

	    <param><name>-a</name></param>

	  </params>

    </emulator>

and then add a game like so.

    <game>

	    <name>F-Zero</name>

	    <rom-image>/media/PANDA64_1/roms/snes/fzero.zip</rom-image>

	    <platform>SNES</platform>

	    <images>

		    <image><type>screenshot</type><image-file>/media/PANDA64_1/sshots/snes/fzero.zip</image-file></image>

	    </images>

    </game>

I suppose if a path containing the roms files for snes is provided, it would be possible to make a script to auto-generate the game list too.


Is that what you meant?


Tim.