Screensaver shows hidden games and freezes emulationstation

scocasso

i have the Feeling that the Screensaver is working differently and it is now Looking into the gamelist.xml files

Oh, very interesting, because I just updated my pi and my screensaver stopped working, just goes to a black screen. I have only one video in a hidden xml gamelist (hidden because there is no game link, only a video link). Does not play it.
[https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/21258/just-updated-retropie-now-screensaver-doesn-t-work](link url)

I tried putting it into an actual gamelist listing, still won't play it, just a black screen.

So, the way the screensaver works is certainly different now, but it's not searching the gamelist.xml files, or it would find mine. I tried all kinds of different ways, to no avail.

If I am on a console screen, one can push SELECT to activate the screensaver. If I do that, it takes about 14 seconds while all controls are frozen to finally go to the blackscreen.

I wonder why yours are playing and mine are not.
Do they play in the game info preview box?

ES V2.8.1RP
Raspberry Pi 3B
Linux 4.14.71-v7+ armv71 #1145 SMP
Retropie 4.4.8

scocasso

@robertvb83

but with the clean gamelist the Screensaver works just fine and responds quickly…

What do you mean, "clean gamelist"?

mitu

@robertvb83 OK, so you have complete gamelists - but not all the media.

I've taken a look over the screensaver code and it indeed uses the gamelist to find the video/pictures, however this part has always been like that - even in the previous version. There must be something else that changed in the 2.8.x version that affects the performance of the screensaver video selection.

You can compile an older version of ES if you'd like, but I think would be easier to make a backup of your install, put the 4.4 image, save the /opt/retropie/supplementary/emulationstation folder from that older version and then restore it on your current image.

robertvb83

@mitu said in Screensaver shows hidden games and freezes emulationstation:

@robertvb83 OK, so you have complete gamelists - but not all the media.

But i have at least all media for the installed roms plus a few additional videos without roms

I've taken a look over the screensaver code and it indeed uses the gamelist to find the video/pictures, however this part has always been like that - even in the previous version. There must be something else that changed in the 2.8.x version that affects the performance of the screensaver video selection.

You can compile an older version of ES if you'd like, but I think would be easier to make a backup of your install, put the 4.4 image, save the /opt/retropie/supplementary/emulationstation folder from that older version and then restore it on your current image.

For me compiling would be more conveniant i think switching sd and images will be time consuming

robertvb83

@scocasso said in Screensaver shows hidden games and freezes emulationstation:

If I am on a console screen, one can push SELECT to activate the screensaver. If I do that, it takes about 14 seconds while all controls are frozen to finally go to the blackscreen.

This is the same for me

I wonder why yours are playing and mine are not.
Do they play in the game info preview box?

I have many entries in the gamelist of roms that are not installed. E.g. for fba all roms of the romset are included in the gamelist but i have only 150 installed on my system

Once i put a clean gamelist that only contains entries of games that are actually installed, the screensaver seems to work just fine.

However it still shows videos of roms that have a hidden tag set when i am in kiosk mode. This should not be like that

mitu

@robertvb83 said in Screensaver shows hidden games and freezes emulationstation:

But i have at least all media for the installed roms plus a few additional videos without roms

Yes, that's what I meant.

For me compiling would be more conveniant i think switching sd and images will be time consuming

OK, if you're comfortable enough with the command line (I recommend you do this over a SSH session), try these commands (ignore the lines with #, they're just comments and exit Emulationstation before executing them).

# Grab the full source tree from github
git clone --recursive https://github.com/retropie/emulationstation
cd emulationstation
# Switch to the previous stable build
git checkout 920db2b6204

# Compile
cmake .
make

After the compilation is finished, you should have a emulationstation file in the folder where the sources have been download (emulationstation), which you can copy to /opt/retropie/supplementary/emulationstation/.

Then either restart or run emulationstation to start ES again.

EDIT: if you make it work and you're running the previous stable version, remember that the scraper doesn't work.
I would also be interested to know if the hidden games issue re-surfaces - during my quick look over the screensaver code I didn't notice anything regarding that, so I'm wondering if this wasn't already there before, but you didn't notice it.

mitu

Ah, I remember now - the kid/hidden thing might not actually be a bug, the old stable version was actually hiding games in Kid mode, when it was supposed to hide them only in Kiosk mode.
See https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/20867/game-not-shown-in-kids-mode-while-hidden-kidgame-tags-are-on. It was fixed in the new version.

robertvb83

@mitu thank you for investigating this.

I think I can figure it out now. And it seems that it is not an issue with Emulationstation update, but with my change in philosophy for the gamelists.

before making these new full scraped gamelists, I also had overloaded gamelists with all games e.g. for mame/fba (I scraped the complete romset and made my gamelist) but with this I also put ALL videos on the sd card.

What I changed now with full-gamelists also for other systems, due to space limitation I only put videos on the sd card for roms that are installed. And this is what makes the screensaver laggy and not working correctly. I assume it just does not find videos for the randomly chosen games.

I yesterday cleaned my gamelists and deleted all non-installed game entries. Now every rom in the gamelist is installed and also has a video snap. Screensaver is working like it should! I think installing an older version of Emulationstation is now off the table for me. I'll have to go with the clean gamelists.

The other issue with the hidden games video: As I had a full gamelist for arcade, I just copied this for fba and mame-libretro and also for the hidden adult folder. So the full arcade gamelists also contain all the adult games and I suppose those where just randomly chosen in the gamelist no matter if the actual roms are present or not. So with the clean gamelists both problems are solved

mitu

@robertvb83 I actually have a fix for this problem - also discussed from @scocasso's topic - for the screensaver to ignore the entries that have and empty video/image tag. The screensaver's picking of videos/images whena Kiosk/Kid mode is one is also something that maybe should be implemented.

robertvb83

@mitu the thing is, ALL my entries of the full-gamelist have a video tag in advance, in case I add a rom + a video, I don't need to scrape

but still I am interested about that fix...

mitu

@robertvb83 said in Screensaver shows hidden games and freezes emulationstation:

but still I am interested about that fix...

That fix would apply only to @scocasso's case (where he had empty video tags), in your case the behavior would be the same - the screensaver would read the video path, check the video existance, not find it, then go to the next - a few tens/hundred times until it will give up or actually find a valid video file.

vinz2k

@mitu hello
I’m in version 2.8.3RP and the screensaver of emulationstation is showing some black screen. I suspect that it’s the game without video preview.
Do you think your fix should resolve this issue ?
Thanks

mitu

@vinz2k It depends - do you hear the audio from the video ? Do your gamelist also have empty video tags ? I think the fix should be in the 2.8.3rp version, so maybe you're experiencing another problem.