direct: a home page and an n64lle Settings page before Play (direct_mode 3)

[TechnicallyComputers]

What

Direct mode opens a home page instead of booting straight in. The page has Play, n64lle Settings, Mods and Quit, and closing the game returns to it. --boot keeps the old behaviour. direct_mode goes to 3, and docs/RELEASES.md calls out that a revision-2 command line now opens the page. No script or test runs Direct mode unattended, so nothing breaks; the only automated call is the packager's --run-core-without---rom parser check.

The settings page follows the Super Nintendo page's layout and helpers. The library opens it from an N64 platform header's n64lle Config.

• System tab: the options the core declares, in two cards: player-facing, and developer (behind a toggle).
  • Opened for a title, it can edit "All N64 titles" or "this title only".
  • Values layer platform < title < --opt.
  • Stored options the core no longer declares are listed for removal.
• Gamepads tab: four seat cards, each Auto, Keyboard, a specific gamepad, or None. Configure opens a controller page over a new N64 pad picture (assets/src/pad_n64.svg, drawn in pad_snes.png's flat style).
  • Every input has a chip labelled with the core's own name (A, B, Z, C-Up…); click one, then press the key or pad input.
  • The page also has a stick deadzone (off by default), Reset this seat, and Copy to all seats.
• Where the page's contents come from: retro-core-runner --describe (runner: --describe prints a core's options and input labels, no ROM needed Retro-Runtime#1), cached per platform in core_description.txt. A runner without describe 1 still plays; the page says what it is missing.

Input: PlaySession reads seats and maps from src/hub/hub_core_settings instead of a hard-coded table.

• A gamepad plays exactly as before.
• The keyboard gains TFGH for the right stick. The old table had none, so a keyboard player had no C buttons.
• The library's play path reads the same files.

Mods:

• The hub reads n64lle's layout (mods/<origin>/<id>/manifest.toml, selection in <title dir>/mods.toml, written exactly as n64lle writes it) beside psxrecomp's, and writes whichever layout it found.
• The home page shows what the core logged about mods in the last session.
• "Enable all" now skips built-in provider packages, as their checkboxes already did.

Files it writes (all under <data dir>/platform/<platform>/)

• input.ini: seats, maps and deadzone
• options.ini: option values for every title
• options/<stem>.ini: one title's overrides
• core_description.txt: the last --describe

Tests

• New retro-hub-settings-test (the repo's first ctest). It covers:
  • --describe parsing on real n64lle records, and escapes;
  • seat and option round-trips, and option layering;
  • seat planning (claiming a pad by GUID, Auto order, keyboard fallback);
  • the n64lle mods reader and writer (bare dotted section ids; duplicate ids refuse both);
  • the description cache.
• ctest 12/12, including the vendored Retro-Runtime tests.
• By hand, Direct mode on Pokemon Stadium, screenshots at each step:
  • home → Play → quick menu → Close game returns home;
  • a title-scoped renderer change was saved only to that title's file and reached the core (render=software);
  • key capture wrote only seat 1's map;
  • with n64lle feat/core-mods (RetroPortingToolKit/n64lle#47), mods were applied, and a stale package was refused and the refusal shown on the home page.

Not covered

• Binding from a physical gamepad (only keyboard capture was driven).
• The library's n64lle Config button was not clicked live: no N64 titles were in a test library.
• Named controller profiles, which the SNES page has, are not built.
• Gameplay feel with a real controller.

Merge order

RetroPortingToolKit/Retro-Runtime#1 and RetroPortingToolKit/n64lle#47 first. This PR degrades cleanly without either: no labels without --describe, and mods written but not applied by an older core. It is only fully useful with both.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code