Menu simplification

[hizzlekizzle]

http://hastebin.com/paxeqivofo.vhdl

Audio could actually probably go away altogether since mobile has its own volume buttons Rewind could be an issue, might be best to force-disable.

Quick menu should have only: Resume Main Menu (instead of close content) Save State Load State > always in slot 0 Core Options

Shaders could go in regular settings or leave in the quick menu, dunno what's better.

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[andres-asm]

Main Menu:

• Remove Start Core, only a handful of cores need this, heck remove it for advanced too and only show it when a core that supports no game is selected
• Load Core, hide it on easymode, please don't chage it to Load System
• Load Content, remove the submenu altogether, act differently depending on the context
  • If a core is loaded, just use that
  • If no core is loaded do detect
  • If no cores are available, go to the core updater and then load? not sure if this is feasible
• Load Recent, leave it there
• Add Content, hide on easy mode
• Online Updater, dunno, leave it there?
• Information, leave it there
• Load Configuration, hide
• Save Current Configuration, add OSD feedback it doesn't tell the user if it worked
• Save New Conig, hide
• Help, ok
• Quit, ok

[andres-asm]

Regarding the settings menus, I think first order of bussiness would be to have less menus and have subcategories

There is nothing wrong with having too many settings if they are organized We could maybe follow this or kodi for ideas. It wouldn't be under on the same menu, but having them as submenus like:

• General
  • Configuration
  • Saving
  • Updater
  • Playlists

etc would go a long way, it's an extra step but it's less to swallow than the huge list we have now.

Also some menus have so little settings that they seem redundant, I would collapse menu, user interface and menu file browser in one menu.

[rz5]

For this easy mode, I'd like to see tooltips or text scrolling on a footer that give contextual information on the currently highlighted item.

Looking at the screenshot @fr500 posted, maybe it's also a good idea to display which keys 'Select' and go 'Back'

[kivutar]

I can start implementing that. At least start hidding some entries in the quick menu.

First I have to know how we can set the easy mode. We already have an boolean option called "Show Advanced Settings". Shouls we use this one? Or make it an integer and have more than 2 levels of complexity?

[RobLoach]

Or make it an integer and have more than 2 levels of complexity?

That's an interesting idea. Kodi has "Settings level", which switches between Basic, Advanced, and Expert. @fr500 mentioned this above....

[kivutar]

I like that. Let see what the others think. If we go this way, we should make sure that we have very clear definitions of each levels. If not, it will cause an endless debate for each menu entry.

[andres-asm]

Three levels may be too much, the problem is not the settings themselves but the organization. Regarding playlists, we really need a few improvements to make the whole system better.

For starters, we should move away from making thumbnails named like on the database. From what I understand this makes it impossible to change the thumbnail.

So why not add an extra field to the playlist format for... well artwork?

We also need some builtin management functions. nothing too radical, not a fully fledged CRUD implementation but some simple options per-entry:

Maybe the first playlist item should not be a game, but a dummy entry with

• Select default core
• Clear default core
• Rescan playlist

That would allow us to remove the playlist submenu in settings altogether (which works fine but the implementation is really rough around the edges, navigating to the top level menu to select a default core for a playlist, and the core is saved in global settings instead of the playlist itself...)

Maybe we could have a few fields at the beggining of the playlist indicating the user desired title of the playlist and the default core.

This isn't entirely gui related but it has gui repercussions so bear with me: Now:

D:\Games\Console\Nintendo Entertainment System\Super Mario Brothers 2 (Japan).zip#Super Mario Brothers 2 (Japan).fds
Super Mario Brothers 2 (Japan)
D:\Emulators\RetroArch\libretro\nestopia_libretro.dll
Nestopia UE
F04CD4CD|crc
Nintendo - Famicom Disk System.lpl

Proposed:

Playlist name: Nintendo Famicom Disk System
Default core: D:\Emulators\RetroArch\libretro\nestopia_libretro.dll
Content: D:\Games\Console\Nintendo Entertainment System\Super Mario Brothers 2 (Japan).zip#Super Mario Brothers 2 (Japan).fds
Content Name: Super Mario Brothers 2 (Japan)
Core: D:\Emulators\RetroArch\libretro\nestopia_libretro.dll
Artwork name: D:\Games\myartworkname.png
CRC: F04CD4CD|crc
Nintendo - Famicom Disk System.lpl

By default the scanner would fetch and name thumbnails accordingly so the current playlists would still work, but it would also allow the user to specify the thumbnail and the core in the correct playlist instead of this:

playlist_names = "Nintendo - Game Boy Color.lpl;Nintendo - Game Boy.lpl;Nintendo - Super Nintendo Entertainment System.lpl;Atari - Jaguar.lpl;Bandai - WonderSwan Color.lpl;SNK - Neo Geo Pocket Color.lpl;SNK - Neo Geo Pocket.lpl;Sony - PlayStation.lpl"
playlist_cores = "DETECT;DETECT;D:\PortableData\GameData\Emulators\RetroArch\libretro\bsnes_mercury_balanced_libretro.dll;DETECT;DETECT;DETECT;DETECT;DETECT"

[kivutar]

To me that is a completely different problem. Even if we change the playlist stuff, the settings still need a level.

[andres-asm]

There is already an advanced level it's just a matter of re-sorting them into the levels. I didn't say there shouldn't be levels I said we shouldn't overdo it.

On Sat, May 7, 2016, 3:42 AM Jean-André Santoni notifications@github.com wrote:

To me that is a completely different problem. Even if we change the playlist stuff, the settings still need a level.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/issues/2731#issuecomment-217620557

[kivutar]

OK. Can we discuss your other proposals on separate threads? I have some proposals about them.

[RobLoach]

I think this can be closed. "Show Advanced Settings" is in there.

[RobLoach]

Closing this for there. There are a few other issues with specific feature requests about the menu.