[New ES Theme] VectorPie (16:9)
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@zachariel Alas, its not really fixed, as I can only choose whether I want the strange fading or white screens on the Pi. I couldn't test it again on my mini PC, yet. Here more data from my tests on the Pi 3b:
- With 100-110 MB VRAM, fading and occational black screens happen.
- With 120 MB VRAM or higher, white backgrounds and/or system pictures happen.
- These effects are mostly limited to the background, wheras the titles and system pictures remain. Rarely, and then mostly at "border" screens between the correct screens and the faulty ones, the background is okay but the system's picture is a black or white block.
- I have 9 systems plus 4 Retropie categories. I don't want to get into more detail in a public forum, sorry.
- When I start at the first system with 140 MB VRAM and browse to the right, the 5th screen (excluding the starting one) has a white box instead of the system picture, and from the 6th on, all backgrounds are white with only the titles and consoles being shown correctly. From the 10th on (5th from the left of the start), the screens will be correct again. It seems that ES preloads a couple of screens left and right from the starting one until it hits the memory barrier.
- No screensaver videos are played when your theme is loaded with 140 MB VRAM, just black screens. I didn't test other VRAM settings.
- I also tested other themes that seem heavy on graphics, namely Magazine Madness, Showcase and Superdisplay. None of them showed any of those effects even with only 100 MB VRAM. Only sometimes on the gamelist screens, they couldn't keep up with my fast system switching and loaded the graphics 1-2 seconds after the switch, but every time completely. So they must do something™ differently than your theme.(?)
By the way, did you test your theme on a Pi?
As for ES, I can't judge its code at all, but at least on a Pi, the main reason for these problems seem to come from hardware limitations. ES can be set to 1000 MB VRAM, after all. And even if ES could be optimized in this matter, it probably won't happen soon, so you'll have to work with the current conditions.
Please take all this as constructive criticism. I like your theme very much and I would like to help making it perfect. :)
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@clyde No, of course. Constructive criticism is always good!
Yeah, the problems stem from the hardware limitations, but it's because ES was never optimized to manage the limitations. But you're right, it definitely won't be changing any time soon.
I did test it on my pi, but I've got like 30 categories and I can't really see any rhyme, reason, or pattern to what gets left out. While I was initially developing it I loaded each specific system theme at a time to my pie and I started getting the white images/pages after five systems, so I pretty much accepted that as the inherent limit of my design.
My theme does load more individual images at once than those other themes, but it's actually smaller in size per system than Magazine Madness for instance. Taking a look at their code I can't decipher anything that's being done different, other than fewer total images per page, of course that could be the inherent flaw right there.
When I run Magazine Madness on my pi, I get all of the console "magazine" images, but only three of the actual system pages will load, the rest are all white, so my theme seems to be on par with that. I really did all I could to maximize it's operation before the initial release, but I'll be glad to take any suggestions from others.
I have other design optimizations that I know need to be made, mostly with colors and clipping of logos, but that won't help it operate better. For now I think I'll have to accept it as a limitation that I can't do anything about. But if someone better than me (not hard) has any suggestions, I'm all ears. :-D
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Hello again everyone,
Just wanted to let you know that over the past few days I've made a great many changes, corrections, and improvements, mostly cosmetic. There were a couple optimizations, so it may run better than the original release. Thanks for all the input so far!
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@zachariel Thanks for the update! The glitches are still there, but apparently less severe. The threshold between black backgrounds that sometimes (!) load the graphics after a few seconds (or not) and white backgrounds and/or whole screens is approx. between 120 and 130 MB VRAM. The update reduced the amount of systems affected by roughly 30%, I would say.
One noticable system that nearly always shows a white box instead of the console picture is Neo Geo, even if it's selected as the system ES is starting in, and even if the adjacent systems are okay. So it seems that there's something problematic with it especially.
Keep on the good work! o/
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@clyde Thank you for your in depth assessment. I appreciate the attention you put into it. That's quite strange about the Neo Geo. I'll study on that area and see if there's something really wrong there that I missed. Could be a graphic that's way out of wack.
Alright, so I checked it out, and the weird thing is that the Neo Geo page is one of the smallest and simplest ones. I have no idea what that's about.
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@zachariel said in [New ES Theme] VectorPie (16:9):
Alright, so I checked it out, and the weird thing is that the Neo Geo page is one of the smallest and simplest ones. I have no idea what that's about.
*stunned* Okay, I will keep an eye on it in further updates, then.
[irony] Maybe ES thinks, „nah, I won't load that tiny thing while I'm having much bigger problems!“ [/irony] 😄
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@clyde Actually, I did consider that maybe ES was prioritizing other things for some reason, but I have no idea. lol
I just issued another big round of optomizations. I think it might be a bit better now.
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@zachariel It actually is! I still get many white boxes and screens with 120 MB VRAM and above. In the 110 MB test, only two of my 13 systems and categories were white. With 100 MB, I can actually switch through the whole carusel without any black screens which occurred with this amount of VRAM before, although not smoothly but with some minor stuttering. But alas, the black screens return when I also switch through all gamelists and then again through all system screens in the main carusel. But it is a noticable improvement.
Though it may arise at the end that the Pi just does not have enough ram for such a theme with as many systems that I have, it seems that you didn't hit the final wall, yet. 😊
edit: Oh, and this time Neo Geo didn't stand out. So maybe it is/was just random coincidence. 😈
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Update: I finally got around to test VectorPie on my mini pc again. There, from 110 to 120 MB VRAM and higher, the theme works smoothly and flawlessly. With only 100 MB, it shows the occasional fade outs I described earlier when changing systems even in Instant and Slide mode. But it never shows white boxes or screens (no wonder though, with integrated graphics but 8 GB RAM to grab the VRAM from).
One thing I noticed on both the Pi and the mini pc: The videos appear rather late after selecting a game. In other themes, the videos appear nearly instantenous. Did you code that on purpose or is that another issue you might want to look at?
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@clyde Hey, glad to hear that on both counts! Seems like it just doesn't like Neo Geo. lol I can actually scroll though all 30 some-odd categories of mine in the games list menus without getting any black or white outs, but then of course there's a lot of white on the carousel. It kind of seems like maybe ES prioritizes the games lists. Glad to hear it runs smoothly on your mini PC, of course it worked just fine on my windows ES while I was creating and testing. I'm sure it runs smooth on anything with a bit more ram than the Pi, which comes up just a touch short for the way I did the design. It is my first design after all, and I didn't know anything about themeing for ES on a Pi (or at all) going into it.
Yes, I did make the video come up slow on purpose so that I can show the box art, or what have you, for a few seconds first. I made it a little long during testing because I was watching for some things. Seems like I should probably shorten that time down a bit. That will be the next thing I do.
Thanks again for all of your input and enthusiasm. I really appreciate it.
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@zachariel My pleasure. 😊 In my opinion, there are only a handful of original and well designed themes, and yours is certainly one of them. I am curious what future works may follow this astonishing debut. (I don't want to put any pressure on you, of course.) 😇
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@clyde Thank you very much for your kind words. I actually do have a couple of other ideas I'd like to work on. I'll be sure to post them if I do!
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