Retroarch: [Request] Enhance Playlist Generation/Manipulation

[prime-sentinelprime]

Description

RetroArch already offers playlist generation by matching scanned files to a community maintained database, but the database exposes a lot more than just the system details currently being used.

Expected Behavior

Allow users to ask for playlists to be created by other database categories, such as genre or franchise, during playlist creation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-F8hpfC_5o&t=1m5s

Actual Behavior

The RetroArch scanner is currently limited to generating playlists for specific systems.

[fr500]

This sounds like a cool idea, the database isn't leveraged at all, what I would really like is full text search, so I could search capcom and then it would cross reference playlists and the databases and show all capcom games.

Also, @bparker06 and I had the idea of moving playlists to a json notation, to be able to add any arbitrary fields on the future without removing all lists, and add playtimes and stuff like that when the time comes.

As I see it right now, the playlists are... disposable, anything goes wrong, we just nuke them. It shouldn't be the case.

[prime-sentinelprime]

Moving to JSON for playlists would be fantastic. You could more easily add features that can be fine-tuned by some users while still providing reasonable defaults for distributions like Lakka.

I'm thinking of something like playing a music sample, as does the PS4 for example, while navigating playlists. As is, you'd have to base the location off a form of the name recorded in the playlist or something from the database when the scanner finds a match.

Another example would be automatic loading of cheat files when starting a game. Sure, you can take the approach used by XMB to find art for thumbnails, but the optional field could be used to override or extend the defaults.

An optional field saying "look here for a .cht file", "look here for a mp3", or "look here for the box art i want instead of the default" solves some problems and allows users more freedom. I like it!

As a matter of curiosity, are you thinking of a particular library yet?

[fr500]

The biggest advantage in my opinion with a more flexible format is that you can forget the whole "everything has to be named exactly the same" non-sense and add an option to "link a thumbnail" or yeah "link background music" or whatever.

With fixed structure format like the one RA has now you can't add anything without breaking it for everyone.

[hizzlekizzle]

While Twinaphex is against breaking the current playlist format, it sounded like he was okay with creating an entirely new format that does whatever we want it to do as long as we don't get rid of the existing format/functionality.

As for the 'search for capcom' example, isn't that what the "cursors" were supposed to do? I don't know if that ever got implemented.

[markwkidd]

Is this what you're suggesting @hizzlekizzle ?

1. Playlist parser checks the first line of a playlist. If it is {, then the JSON playlist mode activates.
2. If not, legacy scanning mode is used (i.e the current playlist format)

That seems straighforward.