Themes not loading fully?

[A Former User]

Pi Model or other hardware: 3B
Power Supply used: WD Power Kit
RetroPie Version Used (eg 3.6, 3.8.1, 4.1 - do not write latest): 4.2.3 (updated all core packages this morning).
Built From: Berryboot
USB Devices connected: 1TB PiDrive, Buffalo USB SNES controller
Controller used: Buffalo USB SNES controller

Has anyone else had issues with themes not loading fully since the newest ES update? I am not sure if this is a problem with having too many games or if it is the new ES update.

Sometimes the theme for an entire system won't load. Sometimes the theme for the system will load but boxart won't appear. Both of these issues are in this video:

Lastly, ES menus are getting garbled, for lack of a better term. That is shown in the attached photo.

I have tried switching themes to see if it was an issue with the theme I was using but ran into it with Carbon, Simple and others as well.

[A Former User]

And apologies for the siren in the video. Almost unavoidable in this city. :/

[AlexMurphy]

@LiveFastCyYoung Haha! I thought it was outside initially.

[A Former User]

Anyone?

[AlexMurphy]

@LiveFastCyYoung You don't state the power rating of your power supply. A weak power supply can cause all sorts of crazy behaviour. What have you got your VRAM set at? How much space is left on your SD card? Are you storing roms on the external drive and themes / art on the SD? What sort of memory usage is happening when ES is running?

EDIT just looked at the WD Power kit. 5V @ 3A should be plenty and I imagine being WD it's good quality.

[A Former User]

@AlexMurphy I am using a 1TB PiDrive. It has about 300GB left. Everything is stored on the PiDrive. Roms, software, themes, etc.

I know how to check memory usage using the command prompt. How can I check memory while running ES?

[Aliendon]

Pi Model or other hardware: 3B
Power Supply used: 5V @ 2.5A
RetroPie Version Used 4.2.3 updated yesterday
Built From: Official https://retropie.org.uk/download/ for the Pi 3
USB Devices connected: wireless dongle for keyboard and mouse, Xbox 360 wired controller, 128 GB thumb drive
Controller used: Xbox 360 controller

I have the same problem after updating cores and every thing on the pi the other day but i recently filled my thumb drive that i am running the roms from and there are videos and snap shots of every game. unplugged my thumb drive and put a couple systems on the sd card and no problem, to many games with videos and snap shots and not enough memory. clearing out my thumb drive now and seeing if it still does it, but i also realized it didnt start messing up until after i installed the comic book theme but dont think that is the problem

[AlexMurphy]

@LiveFastCyYoung SSH in and run free -h

[mark1986]

Have you also updated your themes since running the update script? I had a similar issue that fixed itself once I updated my themes

[pjft]

I'm shocked with the frequency of these reports now.

The font bit in the menu scares me a bit, as that should be the exact same font as the rest. The fact that that's messed up doesn't inspire me any confidence:/

Also, did you perform an update to all packages, including kernel? There was another thread just a few days ago by @hansolo77 that seemed to have been related to a kernel / firmware update. That scares me.

If you revert your EmulationStation to a few days prior, does that still happen? I imagine you won't know how to do that manually, so if that's the case let me know and we'll try to figure something out.

It will involve a bit of messing with ssh/the terminal.

Also, you wouldn't be overclocked per chance?

Best.

[pjft]

@LiveFastCyYoung also, on ssh, run

sudo vcdbg reloc

To see available GPU memory. If you can run that immediately after starting ES and then after one of the box art fails to load it'd be great.

Paste the results of both over at pastebin or something.

I'm starting to suspect there may be something going wrong with releasing GPU texture memory.

[Aliendon]

@pjft Yes i completely did an update for all packages and kernel. i will try and update the themes tomorrow. i also noticed it mostly messes up when i scroll through systems or game lists fast but as soon as i start a game and exit the game the theme is back to normal until i scroll through system or game lists fast again, i think it might just be i have to much space used up on my thumb drive and scrolling to fast the pi is having trouble getting all the information off of the drive.

[pjft]

@Aliendon oh. Hm. I'd recommend reducing VRAM then - it should be around 100, but if your theme is too big I wouldn't be shocked if you go to 90 or 80.

Didn't this happen in previous versions, though? If you can make a movie of what's happening it'd be very much appreciated!

Thanks.

[A Former User]

@Aliendon it's definitely not anything to do with SD card space. As I mentioned, I'm booting from a 1TB PiDrive and am having the same exact issues.

Had a couple job interviews yesterday so wasn't able to SSH in. Will get to it sometime today. Thanks everyone.

[pjft]

@LiveFastCyYoung No biggie - hope they went well. Those, after all, are more important :)

Let us know what happens when you run these commands. I might end up suggesting/asking to install an older kernel version to see if the situation is better.

Actually, though, this seems common when installing from Berryboot. Found this old issue. Maybe the GPU split isn't set by default.

Do increase the memory split in /boot/config.txt , ideally 256M for GPU would be a good starting point for the Pi3. See https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Memory-Split and/or just add gpu_mem=256to your config.txt file.

I'm curious, though: were you using this setup in the past and had no problems before the upgrade, was that it?

Best.

[A Former User]

My memory split was already set to the default of 256M. I am not overclocked.

First things first, I updated the Retropie Setup Script and updated everything from binary before I started. I also uninstalled and reinstalled the theme I was using, even though it had been happening on other themes as well.

I SSH'd in and ran the commands, fresh off of a system reboot. Here are the results of both: free -h, sudo vcdbg reloc

https://pastebin.com/zRfS6Vf8

I was using this setup in the past and had no problems.

Another new problem I've run into is sometimes when scrolling between systems, it'll get stuck and stutter back and forth very quickly. This problem is much more rare though. The main issue happens every time. I will try and get a video of that as well.

[pjft]

@LiveFastCyYoung so, two things jump straight to me when reading those logs. The first is that you have no GPU memory available from just loading EmulationStation - you see the first few lines saying largest few block 352 bytes! If you want a quick, patchy fix, reduce the VRAM to 50, restart EmulationStation, and see if it works or not, and then if it loads the theme successfully and you still have problems, try reducing slowly, restarting again and see how it goes. You will get to a point where the theme won't load at all because you are allowing to little memory for it, but until you get there see what works.

The second thing, and a more obvious observation, is that you do not have the right memory split. You can tell that easily from looking at the log for the free command. It states total memory is 858, which means that you have around 160mb allocated to the GPU, give or take (1024 - 858 - 16 MB of potentially reserved memory, unless you have tweaked your config file).

Maybe the update messed up that setting or something, but I'd strongly recommend setting the split again, and confirming that the free command shows something closer to 768 total memory. If you struggle with this, do send over your config.txt file via pastebin.

The third recommendation is also to try a lighter theme - namely Carbon - on top of all of this.

Hope these help, let us know your findings.

[A Former User]

@pjft I'm very confused with the memory split issue. My config.txt in the boot folder is the following...

gpu_mem_256=128
gpu_mem_512=256
gpu_mem_1024=256
overscan_scale=1

[pjft]

@LiveFastCyYoung can you send over the full contents, so we see if there's anything overriding it per chance?

Thanks.

[A Former User]

@pjft The full contents of /boot/config.txt?

That is the full content. There are no other lines in the file.