[garbear]

I opened a PR on githut to get some feedback from the coders: https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/12367.

The menu has been reduced to three dialogs total:

* Main menu: GameOSD.xml



* Video settings: DialogSettings.xml



* Input settings: DialogGameControllers.xml

[sectune]

Personally I do not think that such one-second-interval granual rewind should be possible for games. How about instead implement from the OSD just give three simple the option to jump 10, 30, or 30-seconds back in time, (and a similar 5/10/60 option for skipping forward instead of classic fast-forwarding).

Rewind is a part of libretro. I believe one of the (possibly unofficial) goals of Retroplayer is to have feature parity with Retroarch. It would probably take more work to artificially limit the intervals that can be used. Skip steps and additive skipping still apply, so you're getting that functionality for free!

I for my part would hide the FF/rewind functionality completely - including the long seekbar GUI element from VideoPlayer. This way the more advanced user (anyone who dealt once in a life with Emulators knows that he should take a look/change the configs) can map the skip buttons to any buttons on the controller he likes using the button mapping via gamepad input GUI and the normal everyday user can play the games without missing any functionality (as the FF/rewind was obviously not there in the originals). This would also reduce complexity in my opinion as we have one GUI less which looks like "it's out of place" for gaming scenario.

[jurialmunkey]

What purpose does the progress bar serve (e.g. as seen in the savestate manager image)? Does it provide some ability to rewind play or something like that?

Indeed, it is for rewind. The progress bar is the rewind buffer, so it starts at 0:00 (no rewind buffer) and runs until 1:00 (a minute of rewind time). It's like video, you can rewind or seek backwards, at least up until a minute in reverse.

Obviously this bar is left over from video, but that begs the question, what should we do for games? Hide it completely? How to show the user they have a minute of rewind time? Or when fast-forward becomes possible, how to show the user they're able to fast-forward/seek forward?

Not gonna lie, this is an area I haven't put any thought into yet so I'd like to hear your opinions.

I've been thinking about this a bit. What if the progress bar and controls are put in the GameOSD.xml menu at the bottom.
I made a quick (and very rough) mock-up
I'm not sure exactly what controls you would need -I'm guessing the pause/stop buttons are not so useful but I imagine it would be useful to have two types of RW/FF - one that is like a standard RW or FF like on a VCR or DVD, and another that does a seek jump in increments similar to how pressing right/left works for video in kodi.

[velocity]

Interesting, I like this idea.
Maybe have a clearer seperation from the rest of the settings, like a larger gap or a line/seperator (if available), or a small seperate sub-menu without the title bar.

[sectune]

What purpose does the progress bar serve (e.g. as seen in the savestate manager image)? Does it provide some ability to rewind play or something like that?

Indeed, it is for rewind. The progress bar is the rewind buffer, so it starts at 0:00 (no rewind buffer) and runs until 1:00 (a minute of rewind time). It's like video, you can rewind or seek backwards, at least up until a minute in reverse.

Obviously this bar is left over from video, but that begs the question, what should we do for games? Hide it completely? How to show the user they have a minute of rewind time? Or when fast-forward becomes possible, how to show the user they're able to fast-forward/seek forward?

Not gonna lie, this is an area I haven't put any thought into yet so I'd like to hear your opinions.

I've been thinking about this a bit. What if the progress bar and controls are put in the GameOSD.xml menu at the bottom.
I made a quick (and very rough) mock-up
I'm not sure exactly what controls you would need -I'm guessing the pause/stop buttons are not so useful but I imagine it would be useful to have two types of RW/FF - one that is like a standard RW or FF like on a VCR or DVD, and another that does a seek jump in increments similar to how pressing right/left works for video in kodi.

Generally I would also not mind having this as end-user, but as it is right now (in your mockup state) it looks to be a bit overloaded to me, I can imagine that the "normal user" might get lost because it is a lot of buttons/info for such a tiny window Maybe if the window would be a tiny bit bigger and more spaced out between each elements, it would look better

[Hitcher]

Just had a quick look and I think the emulator selection should probably use DialogSelect instead of DialogContextMenu as the labels are so wide.

[jurialmunkey]

@garbear
My other idea was that you could use DialogSlider.xml for RW/FW and just have a menu option like "Rewind Game" or something (not sure what it would be worded like). Similar to how when you click "Audio Offset" or "Subtitle Offset" when watching a video.

Interesting, I like this idea.
Maybe have a clearer seperation from the rest of the settings, like a larger gap or a line/seperator (if available), or a small seperate sub-menu without the title bar.

Yeah I definitely agree. Was just a quick mockup to give the general idea of what I was suggesting. Definitely need some sort of separator with a label of some sort telling you what it is.

The advantage of having it in the menu is that it gives a clear indication that it is meant to control the game and get away from looking like you are playing a video.

Generally I would also not mind having this as end-user, but as it is right now (in your mockup state) it looks to be a bit overloaded to me, I can imagine that the "normal user" might get lost because it is a lot of buttons/info for such a tiny window Maybe if the window would be a tiny bit bigger and more spaced out between each elements, it would look better

Yeah definitely. I think the pause and stop buttons should go because they aren't useful. Not even sure if you would need more than one RW / FW button each as it is only a minute of rewind time. Definitely would be more space and some sort of separator telling you what it was -- was just a quick and very rough mockup to give the general idea of what I was proposing.

[Gade]

I'll probably end up with something like this for Rapier:



I'm still not sure about the title in the header.
The regular DialogSeekBar.xml will keep the progress bar and time info (it can be disabled in the skin settings).

I like the OSD buttons jurialmunkey suggests, but figured they are pretty redundant.
The current Resume button has the same function as a Play/Pause button.
The current Exit button has the same function as the Stop button.

[sectune]

I'll probably end up with something like this for Rapier:



I'm still not sure about the title in the header.
The regular DialogSeekBar.xml will keep the progress bar and time info (it can be disabled in the skin settings).

I like the OSD buttons jurialmunkey suggests, but figured they are pretty redundant.
The current Resume button has the same function as a Play/Pause button.
The current Exit button has the same function as the Stop button.

Like this one a lot, besides the seek bar (time) in the bottom right corner - I do not think this information is useful for anyone (would be great if it would be off by default so the nerdy users of us could still display it if they would like to have it for any reason)

[Gade]

Like this one a lot, besides the seek bar (time) in the bottom right corner - I do not think this information is useful for anyone (would be great if it would be off by default so the nerdy users of us could still display it if they would like to have it for any reason)

Thanks a lot for the feedback - appreciate it.

I have the same thoughts about the seek bar and might end up removing it.
Same thing with the finish time. Maybe I should change it to displaying the clock.

Anyone else see any benefits displaying a seek bar?


Heres a try without the seek bar and with regular time instead of finish time:

[sectune]

Heres a try without the seek bar and with regular time instead of finish time

it is almost perfect imho - just one tiny thing which annoys my OCD



is it possible to remove it (red box) or to have a switch to hide it (together with a seekbar) by default?

[Gade]

is it possible to have a switch to remove it (red box) or to have a switch to hide it (together with a seekbar) by default?

Remember that this is for the Rapier skin - not Estuary.
And this is to show ideas for the OSD - not hijacking the thread.

There's a skin setting to hide the seek bar.

I created a seperate post to discuss specifics for Rapier: https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid2612043
But ideas that benefit all are welcome here as well.

[sectune]

I think your skin is perfect - it can very well have a benefit here. Of course I only speak for myself, but thanks to you I now know which skin to use if I won't be confident with the outcome of the discussion for Estuary Hope Estuary goes the same way as your mockup.

Thank you!

[Gade]

Thanks a lot for the kind words.

[garbear]

I've started on the next phase, a Player Manager. Here's the current mockup:



This dialog was difficult to design, because as you can see in the Player Management thread, we have some pretty steep design requirements. The hardest feature is Multitap support. If you know what that is, the "Virtual ports" panel should make sense to you. If not, then this panel will seem confusing.