Feature: Add a toggle to hide multi disc games cover art

[Mullmania]

When there are games with multiple discs, the cover art is repeated, in some cases showing 4 of the same cover (D2 is an example). Adding a toggle to hide all covers except for disc 1 in the Grid and standard menu would clean up the clutter.

[mrneo240]

How do you propose to launch the other discs?

[Mullmania]

You unhide them with the toggle (button or menu "on"/"off" option). Also, doesn't the GDEMU go to the next disc by pushing the button on the PCB?

On Fri, Jul 9, 2021 at 1:41 PM Hayden Kowalchuk @.***> wrote:

How do you propose to launch the other discs?

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[Drakonas]

Yeah, to add my thoughts to this, I think having it merged or have the other discs hidden would be nice. Most games have most content on the first disc as the last one tends to have a lot of video files typically.

So the first disc would be used the most generally. Also, Mullmania is correct. The GDEmu can go to the next disc with the button on the PCB, and this is generally super quick, so ideally you could just load the game you want, then tap the button 1-3 times to get to the disc you want.

This saves scroll space, and I wish the GDMenu had done this, because otherwise the PCB button seems slightly more pointless except when you need to actually swap in-game.

The only annoyance is with couch-sitters that have the DreamPort installed for being able to remotely power on the Dreamcast without getting off the couch. Requiring to press the PCB in all cases is not ideal for those reasons, so offering an option is definitely what I recommend.

Perhaps to take two birds out with one stone, you can give the user the ability to hide specific games manually. Perhaps have a tick option in name.txt or something to have the entry hidden on launch.

The reasons a hide option is handy is SD cards do not have an infinite number of writes. They have a way lower amount of writes than SSD's, so this can save writes if the user wishes to have some games hidden. Also, perhaps this could act as a Parental control feature as well.

[Toyota-ice]

The skip disc button is not working on all of the clone gdemus

[Drakonas]

The skip disc button is not working on all of the clone gdemus

I didn't know that was an issue. But again, I repeat that it could be added as an option rather than permanent. Or use my proposed "Hide game" feature, if that's possible.

[Mullmania]

Yes my original request is that this be an on/off toggle so that it is not mandatory.

On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 4:29 AM 3rdN3rd @.***> wrote:

The skip disc button is not working on all of the clone gdemus

I didn't know that was an issue. But again, I repeat that it could be added as an option rather than permanent. Or use my proposed "Hide game" feature, if that's possible.

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[mrneo240]

I like the idea of compacting multi disc titles into a single file and giving the user choice which to launch

[Mullmania]

If that is possible that’s a great solution. Like a pop up asking which disc to launch.

On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 12:03 PM Hayden Kowalchuk @.***> wrote:

I like the idea of compacting multi disc titles into a single file and giving the user choice which to launch

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[Drakonas]

One problem with that: I think the current GDEmu disc files do not actually indicate what disc number they are.

I can propose two solutions I can think of. Either that data would have to be added to GDMenuCardManager's install functions, or the user would be expected to have all discs in order and named appropriately.

Naming could be handled two ways with the latter method.

1. Name them with GD1, GD2, etc at the end of the game name. This not ideal though since there's a character limit and some game names max out and won't fit "GD1" at the end.
2. Name all discs the same and have openmenu detect games with the same name and treat them as a multidisc setup. This would require the user to make sure that games do have different names for different games.

Personally I think the latter method is not asking too much of the users, and most installs will have the games set up this way already anyway. Plus this method brings less coding work, as I expect adding the code to have disc numbers installed to the SD card and then have openmenu detect these disc numbers would be a lot more work than keeping SDCardMenuManager stay the same, and have openmenu check for games with the same name.

Obviously one of the things to worry about is overhead on having openmenu look up that information at boot every time. One of the nicest things about openmenu is the menu's loading time is so sublime compared to GDMenu. It'd be nice to make sure it's a priority to be careful with adding too much to the load time.

[Mullmania]

Good points. Each games meta data has number of discs and which disc number. I think this can be leveraged rather than a naming scheme. It’s already built into the SD card manager and openmenu.

mrneo - correct me if I am wrong.

On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 8:09 PM 3rdN3rd @.***> wrote:

The downside of asking which disc to boot is the current GDEmu disc files do not actually indicate what disc number they are.

Either that data would have to be added to GDMenuCardManager's install functions, or the user would be expected to have all discs in order and named appropriately.

Naming could be handled two ways with the latter method.

1. Name them with GD1, GD2, etc at the end of the game name. This not ideal though since there's a character limit and some game names max out and won't fit "GD1" at the end.
2. Name all discs the same and have openmenu detect games with the same name and treat them as a multidisc setup. This would require the user to make sure that games do have different names for different games.

Personally I think the latter method is not asking too much of the users, and most installs will have the games set up this way already anyway. Plus this method brings less coding work, as I expect adding the code to have disc numbers installed to the SD card and then have openmenu detect these disc numbers would be a lot more work than keeping SDCardMenuManager stay the same, and have openmenu check for games with the same name.

Obviously one of the things to worry about is overhead on having openmenu look up that information at boot every time. One of the nicest things about openmenu is the menu's loading time is so sublime compared to GDMenu. It'd be nice to make sure it's a priority to be careful with adding too much to the load time.

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[mrneo240]

I believe this should solve your feature request:

Video here showing it off: https://streamable.com/j26aw5

[Drakonas]

Thanks you good sir. I want aware the game had this data