Loki v1.2.0

Loki v1.2.0

109 commits since v1.1.0 · 340 files changed · +47,051 / −9,908

Couch mode — rebuilt as a television interface

The largest area of work in this release; effectively a rewrite.

• A full TV dashboard layout, drawn against its own background rather than the launcher's
• Every section driven end-to-end from the controller, with keyboard and mouse support alongside
• Games get a full page of their own instead of a cramped sheet, and a long press raises one menu rather than several
• Movies and Shows split into separate tabs, each built as a proper catalogue with category rails
• Shelves size themselves to the cards on them; the posters got back the room the featured card was holding
• Search moved out of the rail; systems counted rather than collections
• An opening sequence, and an announcement when the launcher switches into couch mode

Streaming

• TorBox added alongside Real-Debrid for turning a torrent into a stream
• Moonlight PC streaming gains a television section of its own, an on-screen keyboard drawn as a card, removable PCs, and an in-app explanation of how any of it works

Widgets

An entirely new subsystem.

• App widgets through a proper AppWidgetHost — the part that owns and preserves ids across restarts
• Launcher-drawn widgets built from your own library: Continue Playing, Spotlight, Favourites, Library, Clock
• Long-press an empty grid cell to add one
• Resize and move in edit mode, with on-screen buttons, since the panel it runs on is a touchscreen
• A widget is a single stop for the cursor and consumes every cell it covers

Metadata and scraping

• IGDB added as a provider, authenticated through Twitch with no approval step
• Hash matching — CRC, MD5 and SHA1 sent to ScreenScraper, so a file is identified by what it is rather than by what it was named
• Choose the match by hand — a two-stage dialog: which game, then which cover, driven by the controller, with no countdown answering for you
• Completion times from IGDB and RAWG, measured against your play time as progress bars in the info panel and in couch mode
• Artwork import from another launcher's media folder
• Each artwork slot asks the provider that is good at it
• A ScreenScraper account on its own is now enough to scrape

RetroAchievements

Full integration, including what is still left in a set rather than only what has been done.

Emulators

• Recognised by what they descend from rather than by an exact package id, so forks and variants match
• Cemu added; 86 emulators known, up from 81
• Emulator selection moved into a dialog, with any installed app selectable for the ones no list will ever cover
• Games no longer tell you to go and open the emulator yourself — the launch is tried first, and the advice only appears if every attempt fails

Profiles

Multiple profiles, each with its own settings and library, and a notification panel that asks for the permissions it needs.

Display and scaling

Every surface is now drawn against a fixed canvas rather than the screen's raw dp, so the interface holds its proportions across Smallest Width, resolution and density changes — in couch mode and dual-screen alike. Both screens also come back correctly from sleep.

Appearance

• The app mark redrawn as the dual-screen device, and again so it survives being small
• All platform highlight icons redrawn as one coherent set
• Palettes generated rather than written down by hand
• Info panel style: a solid card, or blended so there is no visible edge at all
• The open-folder banner removed, and grid size, spacing and icon size made identical inside folders, outside them, and in the drawer

Fixes

• The launcher crashing instantly on start
• Every emulator reported as missing after one failed system call
• Widgets deleted by the startup scan
• The scrape prompt being invisible while Settings was open
• The A button doing nothing in the emulator dialog
• Descriptions cut mid-word, and synopses cut short by the scraper
• A large blank gap between the description and the platform highlights
• The scanner importing everything that happened to sit beside a ROM

Extensions

movies.json and stream.json are attached below. Movies & TV and PC streaming ship inside the launcher but stay switched off until one is imported — until then there is no section in the bar, no settings category and no pages. Download the file for the part you want, then Settings → System → Extensions → Import an extension. Nothing is downloaded and both work offline. Removing one takes everything it added away again and keeps your settings in case you add it back.

Unchanged from v1.1.0, so there is no need to re-import if you already have them.

Notes

Completion times come from IGDB or RAWG only — ScreenScraper carries no such field. Add IGDB credentials or a RAWG key in Metadata settings and run a scrape; the pass now picks up games that were already scraped before the field existed.

"Ask during a full scrape" is off by default, so a library-wide scrape runs unattended. Scraping a single system still always asks.

The APK is signed with the debug key, as v1.0.0 and v1.1.0 were.

Loki Launcher 1.1.0

Couch Mode becomes a television interface of its own, and screen recording now renders the launcher inside a drawn dual-screen console.

Couch Mode

A living-room interface rather than the handheld layout at another size.

• Horizontal content rails — Continue playing, Favourites, the selected platform, Apps and Collections, built straight from your library so empty grid cells and handheld density never reach the television
• Platform sub-navigation — switch systems in place; the game shelf is replaced without opening a folder
• Sections along the top — Home, Movies, Stream and Settings, where a television puts its navigation
• Layered hero — the focused title crossfades into a drifting backdrop with its scraped logo and a floating cover
• Status cluster — clock and battery in the header
• One-screen Movies and Stream — catalogue, details, sources, hosts and live actions stay together, so the darkened handheld panel is never needed to finish anything

Settings → System & accessibility → Dual screen → Screen mode → Couch mode

The bottom panel is held black while it runs, so the system cannot light it with the wallpaper.

Screen recording

Recordings are drawn as a dual-screen console with each panel inside its own screen, the lid's larger than the base's.

Three faults fixed along the way:

• Recording only rendered in dual-display mode — starting one in any other mode wrote a file with nothing in it
• The encoder's size limit was applied to width and height separately, so a frame taller than the ceiling kept its width and lost its height, and the bottom panel was cut off
• Each panel is now composed at its real screen's density, not merely its shape, so a panel drawn smaller lays out identically to the screen it stands for instead of laying out as a smaller screen

Also

• Information panels rebuilt on a shared dossier layout, so the game and platform panels cannot drift apart
• Settings can no longer be lost by a removal. Retiring a setting used to make every settings file that named it unreadable, which Loki reports as corruption — and corruption resets everything. Grids, themes, ROM folders and API keys were all at risk on upgrade
• The walkthrough takes input again; it had been running with every button falling through to the launcher underneath
• Standalone emulators are preferred over RetroArch and Lemuroid, with 71 recognised
• The grid no longer reserves space for a section bar that is not drawn

Install

1. Download Loki.apk and open it on the device
2. Allow installation from unknown sources
3. Press Home and pick Loki

Extensions are optional. Download movies.json or stream.json and import from Settings → System & accessibility → Extensions.

Notes

Built for the AYN Thor and not tested on other hardware.

Signed with the Android debug key. It installs and runs normally, but is not a distribution identity — if a later release moves to a proper key you will have to uninstall and reinstall, losing your grid layout and settings.

Loki Launcher 1.0.0

A dual-screen launcher built for one device: the AYN Thor.

Both panels are driven from one state — the grid you hold, and the screen that describes whatever the cursor is resting on. Your games, saves and emulators are untouched, and you can uninstall at any time.

Install

1. Download Loki.apk below and open it on the device
2. Allow installation from unknown sources when asked
3. Press Home and pick Loki as your launcher
4. A guided walkthrough runs on first launch, across both screens

Extensions

Films & shows and PC streaming are optional and ship switched off — a launcher you only want for your ROMs has no section, no settings category and no pages for either.

To add one, download the file below, then:

Settings → System & accessibility → Extensions → Import an extension

File	Adds
movies.json	Browse films and shows, find sources, play them
stream.json	Find PCs on your network running Sunshine and stream from them

Nothing is fetched and it works offline. Remove it from the same page and everything it added disappears, with its settings kept in case you add it back.

What's in it

• Two panels, one state — grid on the screen you hold, details on the one you read
• 47 systems, 73 emulators recognised, each handed a ROM the way it expects. Standalone emulators are preferred over RetroArch and Lemuroid, and you can override per system or per game
• Scraping for box art, screenshots, logos and descriptions
• Icons stay where you put them — an empty cell stays empty, and nothing reflows
• Eight grid densities, from 3×2 to 8×5, by pinch
• 15 themes, each with a wallpaper chosen to go with it
• A controller pointer for anything a gamepad cannot press, with its own keyboard that can type into other apps
• Its own keyboard, because Android's appears on the wrong screen here

Notes

Built for the AYN Thor and not tested on other hardware.

This build is signed with the Android debug key. It installs and runs normally, but it is not a distribution identity — if a later release moves to a proper key, you will have to uninstall and reinstall, which loses your grid layout and settings.