Hide Pre-Installed does not hide Ports

[Zing]

@lhari84

On the other hand, I‘m sure RB developers are very smart and can handle that (uncommon) situation of no custom roms + hiding included ones

You are right about one thing: the developers of the Recalbox team are very smart!
But, unfortunately, not everything is as easy as it seems, and among several problems reported, this fact is not something of utmost urgency, so, unfortunately, for now, do not wait for an immediate solution.
Thank you for understanding!

[sergioad]

@zing then I would prefee Cave story being the non removable, it is not a trunk shareware and it is kid friendly I think that could be the best option

[cdtpepette]

Hello, you can add emulationstation.collection.ports.hide=1 in recalbox.conf

[Pitch64]

@cdtpepette be REALLY CAREFUL with this option. If EmulationStation is crashing, do not complain!

[cdtpepette]

@pitch64 Thank for the advice. I 've git my backup, rsync is my friend.

[Fourch]

@koim I found a way: you have to remove them from the /recalbox/share_init folder, accessible using winscp.

Then, you can shut down RB, and delete Ports folder in your USB drive.

If it keeps coming back, then instead of removing folders, move subfolders into an "unwanted"-named folder so that the system doesn't keep on copying them back.

[Pitch64]

@fourch and on next update, all will be back

[danimourinho]

@pitch64 very poor developer decision. Specially for parents that are making this retroconsoles for young kids. Literally makes no sense

[Alvin]

@danimourinho
Yes, it seems so.
In old Versions of Recalbox (I'm still using Recalbox 6 on my Raspberry Pi 3B+) you could simply delete the preinstalled Games and they never showed up again..
Didn't know why they changed that.

[Scavy]

@danimourinho said in Hide Pre-Installed does not hide Ports:

@pitch64 very poor developer decision. Specially for parents that are making this retroconsoles for young kids. Literally makes no sense

@alvin said in Hide Pre-Installed does not hide Ports:

@danimourinho
Yes, it seems so.
In old Versions of Recalbox (I'm still using Recalbox 6 on my Raspberry Pi 3B+) you could simply delete the preinstalled Games and they never showed up again..
Didn't know why they changed that.

You can hide all preinstalled games, in fact what is the problem ?

What is the link between parents making retroconsoles for young kids and preinstalled games ?

[Alvin]

@scavy said in Hide Pre-Installed does not hide Ports:

@danimourinho said in Hide Pre-Installed does not hide Ports:

@pitch64 very poor developer decision. Specially for parents that are making this retroconsoles for young kids. Literally makes no sense

@alvin said in Hide Pre-Installed does not hide Ports:

@danimourinho
Yes, it seems so.
In old Versions of Recalbox (I'm still using Recalbox 6 on my Raspberry Pi 3B+) you could simply delete the preinstalled Games and they never showed up again..
Didn't know why they changed that.

You can hide all preinstalled games, in fact what is the problem ?

What is the link between parents making retroconsoles for young kids and preinstalled games ?

So what now ?
Here
https://forum.recalbox.com/topic/26804/hidden-games-reappearing-after-restart/2
you say
"for all preinstalled games, you can hide them using the option in the menu but... if there's no games at all, ES is not working. So devs choose to keep these 3 games to prevent ES crashing."

So it's not possible to hide ALL preinstalled Games.
And for me it's still a stupid decision, because on Recalbox 6 I deleted all preinstalled Games und it was still running even without any Game.

And whats the Problem with someone who wants to build a Recalbox for his Kids ?
Do you want your 4 year old Daughter playing a Game where you're running around shooting Humans, Demons an other Monsters ? (Yes I mean Doom, it's preinstalled and you can't hide it)

[Zing]

@danimourinho @Alvin

very poor developer decision. Specially for parents that are making this retroconsoles for young kids. Literally makes no sense

I understand your revolt, but please understand that it is not something as simple as it seems, the development of an operating system goes through several stages in which for an evolution in general, sometimes it is necessary to temporarily give up some resources, and unfortunately it was that's the case.

It's not like the developers wanted this to happen, it's something that they were forced into the development process and had to choose to evolve a lot of features and give that one up, or keep everything as it was just for the sake of it.

You can follow the tips given above and you will get what you want, even if unfortunately not the easiest way.

In old Versions of Recalbox (I'm still using Recalbox 6 on my Raspberry Pi 3B+) you could simply delete the preinstalled Games and they never showed up again..
Didn't know why they changed that.

On Windows XP I was able to move the taskbar to the sides or to the top, and on Windows 11 I can't. I'm sure you don't understand why either.

Microsoft, with a giant team (where everyone gets paid for their work), numerous resources, which sells its operating system, went through this situation that I mentioned before, and decided to launch a new system, without a resource that seems basic and already existed previously.
The Recalbox team, formed by a small team, with extremely limited resources, which depends on the participation of volunteers who do not earn anything for it, and still distributes its system for free, deserves to be harshly criticized and constantly charged as if it were a case of life or death?

It is not possible to understand when you are not the developer, when you have not been part of the development process, and have not analyzed the source code. If anyone finds a definitive solution in the source code, that doesn't affect more important features, please explain and tag any team members or active moderators.

It's very easy to superficially analyze, not understand, and charge because you don't understand. Developing an operating system is extremely complex, developing code, testing, distributing it for free, and still being charged by someone who has already made it clear they don't understand, is demotivating.

If you would like to receive an operating system for back-emulation for free, please appreciate it and support the team. Of course, we appreciate positive feedback, but we also understand negative feedback, as long as it occurs constructively, flagging issues and suggestions for improvement are welcome as long as they are done in a polite manner.
If you just want to criticize, don't do it here, use your own social networks, because this space is also distributed for free by the Recalbox team, but it serves to clear up doubts from users, not for destructive criticism of the system being distributed for free with so much effort.

Please don't think, "Just because it's free doesn't have to be bad," because that's not the point. The point is "It's free because the developers do it because they love retro-emulation and want to share it with everyone, and they try their best even for free", so how about acknowledging all the positives instead of just emphatically criticizing the points you don't like?

Finally, to clarify better, the developer team is working on this situation, testing the possibility of hiding all games unless there is no game installed, which would solve the situation. But it's in the testing phase and I'm not a developer, so I can't say that it will be possible, nor when this feature will be released.
But, it's not like it's been forgotten, it hasn't been resolved yet because it's not as simple as it sounds, especially when you have a small team that only works in their spare time and with limited resources.

[Scavy]

@alvin said in Hide Pre-Installed does not hide Ports:

And for me it's still a stupid decision, because on Recalbox 6 I deleted all preinstalled Games und it was still running even without any Game.
And whats the Problem with someone who wants to build a Recalbox for his Kids ?
Do you want your 4 year old Daughter playing a Game where you're running around shooting Humans, Demons an other Monsters ? (Yes I mean Doom, it's preinstalled and you can't hide it)

It's maybe a stupid decision, but it's a dev decision. If you delete all games, ES can crash and users would claim "i have deleted preinstalled games and it crashed". Man can think it's also a stupid decision. Wanting and coding are 2 different things.

No problem to build a recalbox for children : you don't want Doom ? you select your doom game, you can hide it. So what ?
A new time, where is the problem ?
You can check it as you want, you can hide your games.

On every release, we can read : wow this version is the worst, i prefer the older ones. Even on your so beloved v6 release.

ES is like Pokémon, it's evolving. And evolved versions are more powerfull than the base one.

Everyone can create the recalbox he wants : with former versions, with preinstalled games or not, with the pads he wants.

BUT, the Recalbox someone is using is not the perfect Recalbox for another user.

So, if the team has to choose the way to develop the project, users should just respect the team's choices.

[yatrajee11]

I found a way: you have to remove them from the /recalbox/share_init folder, accessible using winscp.

[yatrajee11]

Thank for the advice. ###ANDROID APK LINK REMOVED###

[Alvin]

@yatrajee11 said in Hide Pre-Installed does not hide Ports:

Thank for the advice.

Why did you post a Link to a TV App for Android here, which has absolutly nothing to do with Recalbox ?

Is this even allowed ?

[Xerobit]

@scavy said in Hide Pre-Installed does not hide Ports:

...
What is the link between parents making retroconsoles for young kids and preinstalled games ?

Apologies for just dropping into the conversation, but maybe this might help explain the link between parents making retroconsoles for young kids and preinstalled games. The implied concern here is that an impressionable child being exposed to the possibility of running games with things like mutilated corpses, demons, gore, etc. (i.e. Doom), when the preinstalled games reappear during an auto-update, without the parent's knowledge or consent, can be not only upsetting for the parent, but mentally damaging for the impressionable child.

One suggestion to the poster/parent would be to turn off the auto-update, and just plan on setting aside some time to re-hide the pre-installed games, when they manually do an update, periodically. Yeah, it's not as easy as set-it-and-forget-it, but then it's your responsibility to protect your children, and that requires you to be active, not passive. Alternatively, what would happen if the poster/parent just renamed the executable of another game they don't find objectionable, to doom.exe, and copied the game's entire contents over the existing doom game? Unless the RB update is doing something to verify the game files, and replace them, that should remove the chance a child could run Doom. If the parent then scraped the altered game, the images in the RB menu should then default to no-image, because it won't match the hash values stored in the games database.

The devs of RB are definitely doing a great job of building the software, and the community. That doesn't mean every decision they make is right, easy, or going to please everyone. The choice to include more mature content in every install is questionable, considering the target audience is from 1 to 100+ years old. Maybe the choice of which games are kept and repopulated, to prevent the looping bug, could be reviewed and or changed to something with a wider acceptable audience? If the answer is no, then people should respect that decision and do what they must to keep their children from encountering objectionable material; even if that means using a different piece of software.

[Pitch64]

In 8.1, you will be able to hide all preinstalled games from the menus but at one condition : you must have any other system displayed.

If there is no other system displayed and you selected to hide all preinstalled games, ports will visible despite your choice in the menu