EmulationStation Sluggish and Scraper Broken with 4.7 Release

maserspark

Raspberry Pi: 3B (stock 3B, not 3B+)
RetroPie: 4.7
EmulationStation: 2.9.4RP
ES Theme: anthonycaccese/es-theme-art-book

I updated my RPi 3B with the latest 4.7 release. Since rebooting, I've found EmulationStation to be noticeably more sluggish than before. Transitions between systems and games are slow, though I don't have large images saved for my scraped games. This is a noticeable change between RetroPie 4.6 and 4.7, and I'm not sure what's causing it.

I've also noticed that scraping through EmulationStation doesn't work anymore. On RetroPie 4.6.X, it worked fine; I even scraped something right before upgrading to 4.7. But now, even popular games like EarthBound or Advance Wars don't come up with results. I tried rescraping Sonic 1 for the Genesis/Mega Drive, but it only returned Master System results.

Games play perfectly well, across every system I've tested.

I've tested 4.7 with and without overclocking and both issues persist. I'm using a 1080p television; disabling overscan fixes nothing. I even rebuilt my SD card with the official 4.7 image and there's no change.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Even if it's as simple as upgrading to a RPi 4 since my 3B is pretty old at this point.

maserspark

Checking the output of EmulationStation, I see this when I try to scrape a game with TheGamesDB

write(3, "Nov 02 14:45:44 lvl1: \tTheGamesDBJSONRequest - Response had no include boxart data.\n\n", 85) = 85

BuZz

@maserspark I'll look into the ES speed issue.

maserspark

@BuZz Thank you! I've also tried giving ES more VRAM through the 'Other Settings' menu. Increasing it from 80 MB to 500 MB also had no change, though that was a bit of a Hail Mary.

Hopefully the output I provided for the scraper provides some hints on that.

mitu

The Scraper(s) haven't changed significantly between 4.6 and 4.7, so if it's a problem, it might be a temp issue with the scraping source (TheGamesDB).

vt_fbcoach

@maserspark I can also confirm sluggish ES behavior with the 4.7 update on my Pi 3B (not 3B+).

namedjughead

@vt_fbcoach @maserspark I can also confirm this behavior on the Pi 3B (no +).

GreenGriffon

Also confirming very sluggish behavior in ES simply browsing between systems.

fCIbX6r1uN

Running a Pi 2B, I also have slow framerates with ES on RetroPie 4.7 (having updated both to latest versions).

Kapow

Also seeing low framerates in ES on a Pi 3B+ after upgrading a nearly-fresh 4.6 image to 4.7.

Also, every time I start a game it prints the message "VolumeControl::init() - Failed to find mixer elements!" before the runcommand dialog comes up, sometimes several times in a row. The volume is much louder now, and when I open the ES sound settings (which I hadn't touched before), the System Volume is set to 0%. If I set it higher, close the menu, and reopen it, it's set back to 0%, but it's still very loud. The Audio Card is "Default" and Audio Device is "PCM". It was working fine before the upgrade.

EDIT: After switching Audio Device to "HDMI" the volume control worked and the error stopped appearing. ES is still sluggish, so this was probably unrelated.

BuZz

@Kapow the audio issue is well documented (there's a thread on the forum - it's due to a driver change).

I will sort ES today and roll new images. You will be able to update once this is done.

maserspark

@BuZz Thank you!

Simrose

Pi4b 2gb
Official PSU
Hdmi
4.7 updated via retropie setup, I ran update and choose yes to everything.

I had my first emulation station crash since updating I just had to hit ok on this little square screen it took me to cli and I typed emulationstation and it reloaded fine.

But after approx 1 year of stable this was a surprise hopefully it will sort itself with updates.

My issue might be aeperate,is there a Emulation station crash log?

Crash image
Thanks
Sim

BuZz

Please do an update from RetroPie-Setup and the performance issue with EmulationStation should be sorted. Note you can either do a full update or update Retropie-Setup script, then EmulationStation.

maserspark

@BuZz It's fixed! Thanks so much!

Unfortunately, the scraper is still broken. TheGamesDB hasn't reported anything wrong on their forum, and the error of TheGamesDBJSONRequest - Response had no include boxart data.leads me to believe it might be ES.

mitu

@maserspark said in EmulationStation Sluggish and Scraper Broken with 4.7 Release:

Unfortunately, the scraper is still broken. TheGamesDB hasn't reported anything wrong on their forum, and the error of TheGamesDBJSONRequest - Response had no include boxart data.leads me to believe it might be ES.

If no games are scraped, then you may be over your monthly request quota.

maserspark

@mitu This issue concerns about three games I added to my collection most recently. The rest of my games are scraped and have been so for years. The new games are:

EarthBound (SNES)
Phantasy Star IV (Genesis/Mega Drive)
Fushigi no Umi no Nadia (Genesis/Mega Drive, Japan-only)

All three scraped fine in 4.6. I didn't save my changes before updating to 4.7, so I have to rescrape them.

mitu

@maserspark Yes, you're right - there's a bug in EmulationStation's scraper. We'll have to fix it.

BuZz

A fix from @mitu has been applied to the scraper and new ES binaries are available again (v2.9.6rp)

maserspark

And that works too. Thank you so much for everything, @BuZz and @mitu!