Updated EmulationStation for Windows

PittStone · 27 Jun 2019, 13:25

@f-caruso O.k. is send it.

f.caruso · 27 Jun 2019, 13:56

@LiveFreeDead LLOOLL I wasn't talkin about emulator cores... But CPU Cores !!!!

jero · 27 Jun 2019, 14:53

@sikboy You have tried, go to properties of the exe and say in properties that always start as administrator. That solved the problem for me.

f.caruso · 27 Jun 2019, 15:23

@sikboy @jero the padtokey xml looks good. As I already said, I is generally because processes don't run with the same privileges. Run task manager, go to detail, and add column "elevated" (right click on columns). You emulators (like redream) and emulationstationportable need to have the same elevation level. It's a limitation in Windows since W8. If not, adjust in the exe properties. I personnaly don't like the "run as admin" trick. An emulator or a launcher should never run elevated - only system programs should. Plus you have UAC dialog, so you deactivate UAC which is discutable. Maybe you should juste ensure redream IS NOT elevated ! ( It works perfectly on my machine without elevation )

sikboy · 27 Jun 2019, 21:33

@jero @f-caruso I'm on Win7 X64, Tried running both EmulationStationPortable.exe and redream.exe as Admin, no success. I cant find the elevation level anywhere in the task manager. No luck at all.

LiveFreeDead · 27 Jun 2019, 22:16

@f-caruso
That's easier:
Intel Core i5 2500K
Cores 4
Threads 4
Name Intel Core i5 2500K
Code Name Sandy Bridge
Package Socket 1155 LGA
Technology 32nm
Specification Intel Core i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz
Family 6
Extended Family 6
Model A
Extended Model 2A
Stepping 7
Revision D2
Instructions MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, Intel 64, NX, VMX, AES, AVX
Virtualization Supported, Enabled
Hyperthreading Not supported
Fan Speed 667 RPM
Stock Core Speed 3300 MHz
Stock Bus Speed 100 MHz

drcnyc · 27 Jun 2019, 23:46

@f-caruso I just noticed something interesting. I was having the startup issues on my laptop which is running an Intel Xeon E-2176M (https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/134867/intel-xeon-e-2176m-processor-12m-cache-up-to-4-40-ghz.html) but when I ran it on my media server, which has an Intel Xeon E3-1275L v3 (https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/76300/intel-xeon-processor-e3-1275l-v3-8m-cache-2-70-ghz.html) the startup issues seem to have disappeared. Might be nothing but thought I would mention just in case this helps.

drcnyc · 27 Jun 2019, 23:54

@f-caruso also, kind of unrelated to the startup issues above but it seems to work fine when I just run emulationstation.exe without using the portable executable. I don’t have the %home% variable set or anything like that - so curious why the portable executable is needed?

f.caruso · 28 Jun 2019, 07:09

@drcnyc The startup random crash is related to a change I did in custom/auto collection management. The new PC may have no custom/auto collections. It's solved. I'll try to release it today.
@LiveFreeDead I really don't understand why it takes two minutes to load on your machine, I've tested my threaded loading on several machines (one has 2 threads, the others have 8 - yours has 4) and loading is generaly about 2x faster, even with an usb key. I'll add an hidden option to deactivate threaded loading, just in case...

f.caruso · 28 Jun 2019, 07:24

@sikboy Did further testing with redream. redream does not respond to SendInput. The only thing that work is SendMessage(WM_CLOSE)... I'll have to think about what do to...

sikboy · 28 Jun 2019, 13:43

@f-caruso Also Project64 acts the same way, I appreciate all your work so far. I'm not complaining at all, the padtokey feature is a big seller since it gives a universal way to handle your games with a controller, the same as Retropie.

f.caruso · 28 Jun 2019, 16:59

Hi,

New version 2.10.0.5 today. See my previous messages for urls.

New features are about theming : You can now set a "table reflexion" on images in the Theme, and set a gradient to selected menu or list items. See the screenshots.

I mainly hope this one is bug free ;-)

Enjoy.

@sikboy You'll have to replace (%{F4}) with (%{CLOSE}) to use the WM_CLOSE method...

@LiveFreeDead The startup crash is resolved. If threaded loading is slower on your machine, you can disable it in the advanced settings menu.

LiveFreeDead · 29 Jun 2019, 01:18

@f-caruso

Ok I figured out why mine takes 2+ minutes to load.

I disabled my Custom Collections, I made one called 5 Star Games and one called My Favorites
the 5 Star Games has 178 items in it and slows it down by about 15 seconds loading - it has items from many/all systems in it. The My Favorites one has 1944 items in it and takes AGES to load in, if you get a chance to optimize your routines I would appreciate it, the ES v2.9 doesn't have a problem loading these in within seconds each. As for the other problems they are fixed.

I have another problem tho that you'll need to check on, if you have a custom category it adds to the system count, but if it isn't shown (has 0 items) then it will start ES without a wallpaper/background on the main systems list for each time a custom collection is not added. I have also had it lose collection's icons in the past (even when they are not empty) so somewhere in the code the amount of shown collections/systems is different to the ones it's loaded in the theme.xml settings for (or something).
I really wish you could share how your compiling ES10 so I could offer you code fixes instead of trying to explain how to reproduce a seemingly random problem. Maybe a link to a complete with pre compiled extras needed to make the exe, I just can't get it to work.

f.caruso · 29 Jun 2019, 08:15

@LiveFreeDead Ok. Seein my codes changes in populateCustomCollection I immediatly found the reason why it is slow... I did't see cuz my custom collections have very few items. It's already solved in my machine ( when you know where to find... ) and will be ok for the next release.

Concerning the second problem, I don't really understand and can't reproduce. You need to be more specific about the manipulations.

Concerning the build : The difficuly is in the dependencies - and some need to be compiled. You'll find a copy of the dependencies, precompiled on https://mega.nz/#!mU5GVC5B!1fC7UiMbVftiL35FvvKFUFTMfcvX46dNUAzWx149TSI. Extract them in c:\src\libs. Now just follow the guide here : https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/5202/step-by-step-how-to-build-emulationstation-on-windows

jero · 29 Jun 2019, 08:52

@f-caruso I have made a file proposal on the github. It's a Spanish translation and it works well for me. I have seen that some texts that speak of recalbox have been deleted. I think it's a good option to have eliminated that. I hope you have done well the proposal is the first I do github. As soon as I add more changes, I will update the file. There are still things that are not translated, such as parts of the screensaver and some more, but it is amazing how well I see the menu now.

I have noticed that your ES gives me some problem to start recognizing my Xbox 360 pad, the Jrassa ES always left a message of not connected in case of not being and was quicker to recognize it. Now with its version I have to start the pad much earlier to have no problem.

I also have slow start problems, sure that is why you have commented on the favorite games, so I will wait for the new update

As always great work.

f.caruso · 29 Jun 2019, 09:08

@jero Can't see anything from you on GitHub.
Concerning the controller, I have the same problem - EDIT : I don't when not using Gamestream - but I didn't change anything. I didn't comment about auto-collections but only custom collections.

jero · 29 Jun 2019, 13:40

@f-caruso Sorry, I did not hit the pull request button. hahahaha

You will tell me if it has been possible

f.caruso · 29 Jun 2019, 14:28

@jero I merged your translation file. Had to move the po file in the good folder....
@LiveFreeDead, @jero I managed to automate build on appveyor like jrassa does.
You can download my latest changes as my development progresses on Github Release page. (not in my full pack which I have to update manually)

jdrassa · 29 Jun 2019, 14:36

@hhromic said in Updated EmulationStation for Windows:

@f-caruso @mitu @jdrassa

If @f-caruso 's fork does build and work fine on RPI devices, perhaps a good idea to integrate it (for now) could be to create a scriptmodule for it alongside the stock EmulationStation shipped with RetroPie. Similar to mehstation and pegasus-fe for example. So users can have an option to install let's say emulationstation-fcamod similarly to what they can do with the existing emulationstation-dev. In other words, just another flavour of EmulationStation.

And because @f-caruso 's fork is still ES, it shouldn't be that difficult to do. What do you think?

I certainly don't have the final say on this, but I am not sure that we would want to do this. With the emulationstation-dev script module, there is an understanding that the new features that are added there will eventually make it to stable. We can't give the same guarantee for any changes added to external forks. It also provides less incentive for those features to be implemented into the RetroPie repository.

@f-caruso said in Updated EmulationStation for Windows:

So, I propose to you :
Either look at my changelist and tell me things you want and I'll see according to the effort needed. For the features that will not take too much effort, I'll try do it.
Either test & play with my version, and tell me exactly what you want me to fix or modify and take the whole package for Retropie... (honestly, now : the second solution will be easier to do and you'll have a real big new version for the next retropie release, containing many things people are waiting for, for so long)

I can say with confidence that we will not just be accepting your changes as is. It is not how we accept changes and it is not how most open source projects accept changes either. We want PRs that consist of individual features/changes. That makes it easier to review and test as well as isolate the cause of any regression that is missed during the initial review.

I will look through your changelist and can identify the changes that I think are most wanted/beneficial. Obviously, you are under no obligation to put in the effort to push them to RetroPie, but if eventually we may accept conflicting changes which will make it difficult to stay in sync with RetroPie.

drcnyc · 29 Jun 2019, 15:48

@f-caruso thanks again for your continued work on this one. The latest build is causing some issues on my system (the older Xeon system that had no issues with the last build). The startup problem has returned, but this time it seems to crash out when loading favorites (at least that's what is shown on the screen when it crashes). No messages in the error logs, just crashes. Like last time, it works once every few tries, but seems to be specific to this new build as the last one was working fine on this machine.