Assets loading as white placeholders

[Dal1980]

Hi guys

I've tried searching to see if anyone else has had this issue. Seems the closest explanation is White Screen of Death or WSOD but this has been resolved for about a year and should no longer exist.

I see the issue goes from bad to worse depending on the amount of VRAM I set within ES>Other Settings with low causing glGetError 0x505 and increasing simply causing strange problems that effect drawing of everything. On some restarts it can be quite stable but scrolling through the menu to 5 or 10 systems in and the WSOD issue is back

Image: RetroPie
Current ES Build Ver April 10 2018 V2.8.0RP-DEV
Hardware: Rasperry Pi 3 (not the latest +B version)

I currently have 92 system + [RetroPie, Recent, All and Favorites]

Image assets would be regarded as a size suitable (i.e. I'm not using 4K resolutions for icons lol)

I do have experimental packages installed so I can see some of these extra systems to view them while I build the theme but these should not be affecting ES directly right?

Photos using phone

Cheers
Dal1980

[mitu]

@dal1980 said in Assets loading as white placeholders:

I've tried searching to see if anyone else has had this issue. Seems the closest explanation is White Screen of Death or WSOD but this has been resolved for about a year and should no longer exist.

Yes, but it also needs correct settings in the config.txt file - see the recent topic at https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/17349/video-previews-not-working-correctly-with-custom-game-collections-added/10.

It could also happen because you're on the -dev branch and some changes related to Grid View are added in this period - does the same thing happens with the stable branch of the ES version ?

[Dal1980]

Thanks mitu

Can't find anything out of place in config.txt. The VRAM thing was a quick fix to see if it would solve anything.

If I'm in the dev branch then I've either been moved onto this from installing experimental packages or it is the branch that comes as part of the retropie image.

Cheers
Dal1980

[Dal1980]

Ok got this solved

After trying to debug where the error occurs and spending considerable time moving all 96 directories, assets and xml files around in different configurations I found the culprit:

Having a main theme .xml (i.e. esdee.xml) in the root of your theme folder with variables to pull in the corresponding selected system assets from a global folder (rather than having assets in the individual folders for each system) could be the issue. If not it certainly is the issue when you import that .xml (i.e. esdee.xml) into your theme system folders theme.xml file

For example

themes/esdee/esdee.xml

...
<image name="logo">    
    <path>./_inc/assets/${system.name}-logo.png</path>
</image>
...

snes is used as an example selected system but would apply to all folders/selections
themes/esdee/snes/theme.xml

<theme>
    <formatVersion>4</formatVersion>
    <include>./../esdee.xml</include>
...

I don't know how ES is put together but it feels like it's stuck looping multiple times through populating the selected system variable + importing that file.

I've now fixed the issue by making a static call to the graphic:

To borrow from the example above:

themes/esdee/esdee.xml

...
<image name="logo">    
    <!--this no longer contains the path of the image... just static attributes like size, pos etc-->
</image>
...

snes is used as an example selected system but would apply to all folders/selections
themes/esdee/snes/theme.xml

<theme>
    <formatVersion>4</formatVersion>
    <include>./../esdee.xml</include>
...

<image name="logo">    
    <path>./../_inc/assets/snes-logo.png</path> <!--notice the extra /.. to signify the 'up one level' since we are now inside a system folder-->
</image>
...

The idea of using variables in the first place would have made changing and updating the theme more intelligent since there would not be any literal references and everything would have been built from the current selection.

Perhaps there needed to be static references given to provide the information on the other possible selections in the wheel/menu. Like I say, I don't know how it is put together but I detail my findings here to help others.

Hope it helps someone
Cheers
Dal1980

[mitu]

@dal1980 While you're developing your theme, it's good to start ES with the --debug flag and look in the log file to spot any errors coming from the .xml files parsing. The log file is in /home/pi/.emulationstation/es_log.txt.