Disappearing sprites (possible frameskip issue)

pamput

Hi everyone.

I've recently reinstalled my entire retropie setup and I think I'm having a problem that wasn't present before.

I'm sure all of you are familiar with the "flickering" effect certain games use to give the idea of transparency, usually used to let the player know that the character si temporary invincible. This effect is usually implemented by making the sprite of a certain object/character disappear every second frame.

The other day I picked up Super Metroid and noticed that whenever Samus is hit she just disappears for a couple of seconds instead of flickering. It feels like certain frames are being dropped in sync with the toggling of the visibility of the sprite. I don't think I ever had this issue in the past. I'm not experiencing any other problem. The gameplay is fluid without any stuttering or input delay.

My current setup is a Raspberry Pi 4 running Retropie's latest master (everything recompiled just a couple of days ago), with an official power brick. Retropie/Emulationstation were installed manually following the official guide over rasbian. I've seen the issue happening on Snes9x and Snes9x2010 (both lr-*). The configuration of the two emulators is the default one that comes with retropie.

I'm happy to give more information if necessary.
Sorry in advance if I'm missing anything obvious.

Thanks

dankcushions

@pamput can you please go to the command line and tell me the output of tvservice -s?

pamput

Interesting:

state 0x9 [HDMI CUSTOM RGB lim unknown AR], 4096x2160 @ 30.00Hz, progressive

Also, something I forgot to mention is my tv is set to gaming mode.

dankcushions

@pamput yep! this was my guess. your display is defaulting to 4k, and 4k defaults to 30hz on pi4, so the transparency effect in these games, where they flicker on and off at 60hz, will not work.

you can tell the pi to run 4k at 60hz, but running 4k at all is going to be less performant, so instead i would go into raspi-config and set your resolution to a 1080p 60hz mode.

pamput

We are definitely on the right track, but I got more issues.

retro-config refuses to change my resolution. Whenever I try to go advanced configs -> resolution, the script crashes and returns me to the first screen.

Interestingly, the resolution in the emulationstation menu is:
state 0xa [HDMI CUSTOM RGB lim 16:9], 1920x1080 @ 60.00Hz, progressive

AND same resolution in every emulator with the exception of RetroArch:
state 0xa [HDMI CUSTOM RGB lim 16:9], 1920x1080 @ 60.00Hz, progressive

It seems RetroArch is unhappy in some way and defaults to 4K. I've also checked what's the prefered in my tvservice, and it gives this one:
CEA: (prefer) mode 16: 1920x1080 @ 60Hz 16:9, clock:148MHz progressive
Not sure how much this is relevant though.

Also, changing the resolution via the runcommand doesn't seem to do anything.

Any ideas?

dankcushions

@pamput hmm, are you able to change your videomode via the runcommand, before launching a lr- emulator ? https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/runcommand

i know we've done some changes recently to the resolution stuff, so it might be worth updating retroarch, runcommand and the retropie-setup script.

dankcushions

tagging @mitu as someone more familiar with this side of things!

quicksilver

@pamput you didnt recently run rpi-update did you?

pamput

@dankcushions said in Disappearing sprites (possible frameskip issue):

are you able to change your videomode via the runcommand

I've tried, no luck.

I've also tried to mess with custom_viewport_width and similar, no luck either.

@quicksilver said in Disappearing sprites (possible frameskip issue):

@pamput you didnt recently run rpi-update did you?

No I didn't, should I give it a go?

pamput

Quick update: changing the video mode in runcommand doesn't solve the problem, BUT changing the render res does! If I set it to 1980x1080 I get:
state 0xa [HDMI CUSTOM RGB lim 16:9], 1920x1080 @ 60.00Hz, progressive

Assuming this is the right area, how do I make this the default for retroarch system wise? Also this way I get some black borders around the screen, which is not nice (integer scaling is turned off).

Quick update 2: ignore the black border issue, somehow the overscan got turned on (maybe when I was fiddling with raspi-config?). Anyway, that's gone.

pamput

Theoretically I could work around this by changing the video output resolution using the retropie setup script. But this feels like a nasty work around rather than a fix :/ I feel there should be a way to set the default resolution instead system wide. Somewhere in /boot/config.txt?

mitu

@pamput Post your RetroArch log from /dev/shm/runcommand.log, after you've toggled debug/verbose output in the Runcommand launch menu. Use pastebin.com to add the output. Add also your retroarch.cfg file from /opt/retropie/configs/all.
The global resolution should work being set via raspi-config (which just modifies /boot/config.txt).

pamput

@mitu said in Disappearing sprites (possible frameskip issue):

The global resolution should work being set via raspi-config (which just modifies /boot/config.txt).

Ok, this is interesting then. I can't set the resolution via raspi-config. The script dies on me every time I try to change the resolution. Maybe my config.txt is in a bad state? Here is my config.txt: https://pastebin.com/JSeu62Sa

Here's my debug logs: https://pastebin.com/Fu6Rxty1

mitu

[INFO] [GL]: Detecting screen resolution 4096x2160.

RetroArch sets the resolution to the 1st detected video mode, which is a 4k resolution.
Try updating your RetroPie-Setup script and then update RetroArch from source. Settings the resolution via Runcommand launch menu should work also, or you're not running the latest version of RetroPie-Setup.
How did you install RetroPie ?

quicksilver

@pamput said in Disappearing sprites (possible frameskip issue):

No I didn't, should I give it a go?

I wouldnt, I did earlier when I was testing out retropie on my pi4 and it broke my screen resolution settings and I ended up stuck at 4k.

pamput

@quicksilver said in Disappearing sprites (possible frameskip issue):

it broke my screen resolution settings and I ended up stuck at 4k.

Does the setup script run rpi-update when you update the packages and you answer yes to the question Would you like to update the underlying packages (Or something similar)? If the answer is yes, then I actually did :/ So we might be having the same problem.

@mitu said in Disappearing sprites (possible frameskip issue):

or you're not running the latest version of RetroPie-Setup.

I'm pretty sure I run a reasonably up to date version. I think I've updated from master around christmas. I'll checkout master again and update retroarch from source. Fingers crossed.

Mini Update: I've updated the script and now it runs:

RetroPie-Setup version: 4.5.10 (49703399)
System: Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) - Linux raspberrypi 4.19.75-v7l+ #1270 SMP Tue Sep 24 18:51:41 BST 2019 armv7l GNU/Linux

@mitu said in Disappearing sprites (possible frameskip issue):

Settings the resolution via Runcommand launch menu should work also

It kinda does... It only works if I change the rendering res :/ the other one is ignored.

@mitu said in Disappearing sprites (possible frameskip issue):

How did you install RetroPie ?

Manually, in a nutshell:

Got Buster on my rpi4
Checkout fkms_rpi4 (at the time it wasn't merged into master yet)
installed by running the setup script

I'm not on fkms_rpi4 anymore, since I noticed it was merged into master at some point before christmas. I'm on master now.

mitu

@pamput said in Disappearing sprites (possible frameskip issue):

I'm pretty sure I run a reasonably up to date version. I think I've updated from master around christmas. I'll checkout master again and update retroarch from source. Fingers crossed.

You're not really up-to-date, the latest version has a more recent RetroArch and the Runcommand launch menu doesn't have a 'Set Render resolution for RetroArch'. Switch to the master branch, then upgrade all your packages, including RetroArch.

You should also restore the default config.txt and try setting your resolution to 1080p from raspi-config.

pamput

@mitu I've pulled master and updated retroarch from source. The problem seems to be fixed now! I've also noticed the notification messages now come in a fancy animated bubble instead of the old style yellow text.

Could it be I was stuck on a old version because I did update from binary instead of source? I'd assume the script does download the latest release from github, which doesn't match master necessarily.

I'm updating the entire stack now from source. This is going to take a long time...

mitu

@pamput said in Disappearing sprites (possible frameskip issue):

Could it be I was stuck on a old version because I did update from binary instead of source? I'd assume the script does download the latest release from github, which doesn't match master necessarily.

You were running on the dev branch, some things have changed since you first installed. I'd advise to update from binary for all packages, then check the RetroArch version - if it's not 1.8.4, then update from source again.

pamput

@mitu thanks for your help. This helped me a lot. The frameskip issue is now gone, but I'm facing a brand new problem now :(

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/24606/rpi4-freezes-at-boot-after-update

Thanks to everyone else helping me here! :)