@mitu thanks for the heads up, will do.

@pjft said in [ES-dev Bug Report] "Hidden" filter fails at system level after entering a subfolder and returning:

@roslof Well, check fps as well

I can create a new thread if desired, since this work is a bit off topic -- but for now, here we go:

First off, my theme is heavy, leveraging (among other things) one large 1160x1080 .jpg per system, and using roughly 80-90 systems.

VRAM LIMIT is set to 200Mb

I ran through the flow again (UI MODE from FULL --> KIOSK --> FULL) using the ES flow, and there is definitely a major performance hit during and after each subsequent load for the duration of the session.

Most notable side affects:

Load times increase dramatically Navigation through the systems UI* eventually becomes uncontrollable, as the system continues to move through games, and player input is ignored FPS tanks during step #2 above

At idle, ES reports Tex Max increases dramatically:

At Boot: 626.99 After two (2) Swaps: 930.43

All other stats remain the same after swaps.

Also, at idle, using htop, some stats increase:

VIRT: 899M --> 937M RES: 653M --> 687M CPU: 25.7% --> 32.2% MEM: 38.6% --> 40.6%

However, when hitting F4 to exit ES, then typing "exit" at console to re-launch ES, everything going back to original values. I believe using QUIT | RESTART EMULATIONSTATION also clears the performance problem.

Lastly, an early check indicates a similar, if not identical issue when switching ES Themes back and forth.

Again, hope this information is helpful.

Actually looks like some of the performance issues have been resolved for a couple of shaders in later version of Retropie. But some seemingly simple and old filters have terrible performance, like 2xsai.

What i like to use in Retroarch is the Simple2x CPU filter + bilinear filtering. This way the pixels still look like squares, but they are not razor sharp.
In Retropie the closest is sharpbilinear shaders, but those are way too sharp for my taste.

Personally i do not like the looks of the "advanced" CRT shaders. The phosphor and grille look just too messy to me. I like a more clean look.
So i look for a much more simple scanline filter. But not with black scanlines, but maybe something like 50% brightness of the normal brightness.

Some time ago i changed crt-pi to look like simple scanlines.

I changed these parameters :
#pragma parameter SCANLINE_GAP_BRIGHTNESS "Scanline gap brightness" 0.50 0.0 1.0 0.01
#define MASK_TYPE 0

But i understand that zfast should perform better. I might try to do the same with the zfast_crt_standard. Although the code looks quite a bit different.

Yep i tried but there is registration probleme on their forum. I'm blocked

@pjft you're my hero! I'll try that when I get home and update this if it's solved or not. Thanks, man!

@hurricanefan Heh, yeah... It just kind of grew. It's not a complete list, as I'm sure the "Collection" section will continue to grow as I go through more of my Gamelists.

@SpudsMcToole I just edited that post that @UDb23 is linking to above with a note that setting the display resolution is no longer necessary with AdvanceMAME 3.x because it now has improved Pi support for video settings.

As for the fancier filters like bloom and trail effects, I would love to see this, but these options are not available on the older versions of MAME that are otherwise working nicely on the Pi. However, it would be interesting to explore newer versions of MAME that are experimentally available to see if it is possible to get an advanced shader like this working. Effects like those that were running on the old AAE emulator in Windows were amazing, but if I recall, even back then it required a decent GPU to pull them off. Can the Pi handle such a challenge, even if it was being done almost a decade past? I have doubts. I have settled for high-res vectors, some transparency and flicker, and maybe some shadow masks on color.

MAME shaders aside, I am curious about what could be done with a retroarch shader in this regard. I don't really know much about them, but someone like @davej might be able to pull a rabbit out of hat, even if it meant making a few compromises. To make it worthwhile, we would first want vector games to render in full-res on lr-mame2003, not to mention, someone like davej would need to have more than a passing interest in old vector games to generously contribute his time to the effort.

I prefer the Steven Selph scraper too. The built in scraper pretty much sucks (not RetroPie's fault, it's built into EmulationStation). The built in is too slow, and it's fuzzy logic is terrible. Whenever it doesn't have an EXACT 100% match, it prompts you for the game, even when there is only 1 game on the list. Steven's is much faster, requiring no user input. The fuzzy logic built into that one is like 99% accurate. I've not come across any mismatched games, but the scraper doesn't find them all. A lot of Japanese games just fail "hash checks". I haven't figured out a way around that, other than scrape with Selph's first, then go back in and use the built-in one.

But the other replies are correct. Before I started building my setup, I went through the WIKI and DOCUMENTATION. In fact, just about everything is already covered in the video on the homepage's link to Installation:

https://retropie.org.uk/documentation/installing-retropie/

@PopetheRevXXVIII said in What Scanlines do you use if any?:

@Floob Oh? I haven't figured out how to do that yet.

You create a file with .cfg at the end and put it in the same folder as your rom.
So if the game is 1942.zip, the config file is 1942.zip.cfg, then you just put the relevant shader or overlay instructions in that file as you would in any other retroarch config file.