I made an original game for RetroPie

quicksilver

Just had a chance to test the game out. It's simple but quite addicting! Something ive noticed is that even when idle on the player select screen my Pi's CPU is right around 200% usage. I know that your game is solely CPU based but is it normal for the CPU to be slammed on the player select screen?

I also tried scraping the game as well, hopefully soon you should have all the scrapes you need to add your games info on screenscraper. Please update us if/when you do.

Edit: I also noticed that the high score screen only pops up when you first load up the game. Once you've played one round the high scores never pop up again until you exit the game and restart it.

j.e.f.f

@quicksilver While I haven't noticed the CPU usage, I usually get the temperature warning come up on screen when I play this game, and usually only after a few plays. My guess is that the CPU is slammed at this point, but I haven't taken the time to measure it yet.

quicksilver

@j-e-f-f run "top" from the terminal on a remote session and you can see how much CPU its using. This is why your pi is heating up so much. It actually makes the fan in my case turn on which very few games usually do (its set to turn on when the CPU reaches 65C). Not sure why the CPU is running so hard when nothing is going on onscreen.

j.e.f.f

@quicksilver CPU operating at over 300%, cpu / gpu temp at 82°. Kids have been playing for about 5 minutes.

pjft

@j-e-f-f and what's the process that's consuming the most? Could you send over a screenshot perhaps?

ellohir

@Rincewind said in I made an original game for RetroPie:

The new high score system is done, I have made quite a few changes and I want to test it thoroughly before pushing it to the main branch.

Could we skip entering names pressing start? I'm thinking pressing starts moves the cursor to the end character, like in the original Pokemon games. Moving to the "end" character is a bit of a chore with my classic snes controllers, and the message appeared all the rounds I played.

j.e.f.f

@pjft I took a bunch of screen shots. This is on a non-overclocked Pi 3B+. Retropie 4.4.12.

I started the Retropie and let it sit idle on EmulationStation for about 10 to establish a baseline CPU usage and temp metric. This was with a video snap playing in the menu.

CPU Usage: 32.9%
Process: emulationstatio
CPU Temp: 63°C
GPU Temp 63.4°C

Admittedly my Pi runs a little warmer than normal at idle, since I have it in a case without a fan and minimal airflow. CPU and GPU both have heatsinks attached.

I launched Super Flappy Birds. Once the title screen appeared, I took another reading. Immadiately CPU usage jumped, and temperature began to rise.

CPU usage: 224.2%
Process: retroarch
CPU Temp: 67°C
GPU Temp: 66.6°C

I left Super Flappy Birds to idle for 5 minutes. I didn't play, I just let it cycle through the title screen and high scores.

CPU usage: 222.1%
Process: retroarch
CPU Temp: 76°C
GPU Temp: 75.8°C

I played once (beat my son's high score in the process), then took another reading:

CPU usage: 271.9%
Process: retroarch
CPU Temp: 79°C
GPU Temp: 79.0°C

I played two more times. This caused the temperature warning icon to appear:

CPU usage: 293.4%
Process: retroarch
CPU Temp: 81°C
GPU Temp: 81.7°C

I quit Super Flappy Birds and returned to emulation station. Immediately CPU usage dropped to baseline levels and temp began coming down.

CPU usage: 31.2%
Process: emulationstatio
CPU Temp: 78°C
GPU Temp: 77.9°C

I left Emulation Station idle for a few minutes. CPU usage dropped completely and temp dropped to baseline levels.

CPU usage: 3.0%
Process: mpg123
CPU Temp: 65°C
GPU Temp: 65.5°C

For comparison, I started an N64 game, one of the most demanding things for the pi to do.

CPU usage: 56.2%
Process: mupen64plus
CPU Temp: 67°C
GPU Temp: 67.7°C

After playing one race in MK64, cpu usage actually dropped slightly, temp increased slightly.

CPU usage: 43.8%
Process: mupen64plus
CPU Temp: 69°C
GPU Temp: 69.3°C

These are all cropped down for brevity. I have the full screen shots including the top-line stats for each step. Let me know if you need any of those.

I hope this helps!

Jeff

pjft

@j-e-f-f you're absolutely right, that's retroarch, meaning it's the game. I can't say I experienced it myself as I haven't benchmarked it in detail on my end. Would you share your retroarch config file though - maybe there's something to look into? I'm not with my pi this week so I'll likely not have the chance to test it on my end but would gladly look through the settings just in case. Are you running lookahead for the game and using more instances for it? It's under the latency menu in retroarch.

Apologies for not being able to help further without more details and without my pi but maybe someone else can?

j.e.f.f

@pjft Happy to help! This game is a lot of fun, and my kids like playing it with me, although my oldest is NOT happy with my current score of 97!!

Do you have an email I can send my retroarch.cfg file to? I can't post the contents here -- it makes the post too long -- and I can't attach it as a file, as it says I don't permission to do so.

Jeff

quicksilver

@pjft I have noticed this behavior as well and reported a few months ago. The CPU is slammed even when on the main menu. No run ahead for me. Who would have thought that flappy birds would work my pi harder than quake 3? 😂

pjft

@j-e-f-f You could use pastebin, but if @quicksilver is also experiencing this then I'd imagine that's not related. I don't know if @Rincewind still drops by every now and then - his profile says he hasn't logged in in the past 11 days so I don't know - but it could be worth reporting it on his github page here.

I'd also be envious of your 97 score - I usually settle around the 30s before losing my focus :D How old are your kids?

One thing you may choose to try to reduce the CPU overhead might be to change the video mode and render resolution to, say, 640x480 in the runcommand menu (the one between ES and the game). See if that'd help. Not ideal, I know, but maybe a workaround for now?

j.e.f.f

@pjft they're 7 and 10 years old, and quite competitive. Also quite whacky!

I'll try reporting the issue on his github page.

quicksilver

@j-e-f-f I went ahead and opened an issue already

herb_fargus

I put up a bounty to have it added to the retroarch downloader. We'll see if anything happens with it.

pjft

Just saying that if you're playing this on a pi4, explicitly disabling threaded video and reducing resolution to 720p will help with overheating and the CPU getting slammed.

Still a fun game to play with the kids :)

andy1m

Just found this very interesting game. Why there is not sound effect during game play. Only when crash has sound effect?

top-specci

Just installed and seems a funny game, thx a lot !!

But is it possible to skip the need to enter players name at the end?
Have always to move: left-left-left-left-left-left-down-down-key

Maybe a "Hotkey" to jump direct to "End" or cancel the whole hightscore process?