Solution for " White Screen of Death "

hansolo77

OMG WOW GUYS!!!

I've not actually visited the forums in a few weeks. I got my system working and have been working on a way to get the games that work in RetroAchievments to work, so my visitations have been mostly on THAT site. So I'm in the middle of scraping some games (romhacks that weren't included in my original set) and I saw this thread. Just finished reading through it. All I can say is that ^^^^^ just.. wow.

I'm eager to try this out as well. I currently have 31 systems on my Rpi3 setup. I've not bothered getting heavy into the video previews side of things yet because none of the available themes that support them were capable of working with all my systems. Now that this HUGE STEP forward is more or less tested and working, I can't wait to get my hands on it and maybe test further for you.

So before I do anything, I'm (of course) going to make a backup image of my existing SD card. Then, what do I do? I'd like to avoid starting from scratch again because I have a lot of customization on my system. Specifically, I'm using some xboxdrv joystick remapping and all of my roms are stored on an attached USB HD. So I think the first thing that needs to happen is the modification of the memory split right? It looks like the modifications to ES though were made so you don't have to do that. I just want to know where to begin. After that, is it a simple matter of using RetroPie's built in setup menus to update from source the latest EmulationStation? I'm not sure about that since most of the instructions leading up to where we are say it needs done manually in the terminal; but then it says you pushed the PR fix..

I just want to test it further using official means, if that's where it's at now. I can go back after installing the update and re-download various themes to test.

fieldofcows

Hi @hansolo77,

Others can probably advise you better on backing up your system to ensure nothing breaks when trying this but, yes the fix is now included in the 'official' version which you can update to using the retropie menu to update from source.

I'm not sure how many others have tried and tested this so always appreciate any feedback on whether it is working correctly for you or not.

Good luck :)

KillerQ

@fieldofcows said in Solution for " White Screen of Death ":

Hi @hansolo77,

Others can probably advise you better on backing up your system to ensure nothing breaks when trying this but, yes the fix is now included in the 'official' version which you can update to using the retropie menu to update from source.

I'm not sure how many others have tried and tested this so always appreciate any feedback on whether it is working correctly for you or not.

Good luck :)

Is this the actual EmulationStation package, or is it another package that needs to be updated?

I see the ES release dates on the site appear to be older still. Just checking.

Thanks.

joyrider3774

@dankcushions

i think this one actually gives you the used vram

sudo vcdbg reloc |grep "\[" | awk '{split($0,a," "); print a[12]}' | awk '{split($0,a,","); print a[1]}' | awk '{sum+=$1}END{print sum}'

if i do

sudo vcdbg reloc

i get to see

Relocatable heap version 4 found at 0x1f000000
total space allocated is 492M, with 490M relocatable, 2.3M legacy and 0 offline
1 legacy blocks of size 2359296

free list at 0x3db120c0
349M free memory in 58 free block(s)
largest free block is 332M bytes

0x1f000000: legacy block 2.3M
0x1f240000: free 332M

so it's tell me i have 349M free of ram

if i do (notice edited to show in MB the /1024/1024 part with sum)

sudo vcdbg reloc |grep "\[" | awk '{split($0,a," "); print a[12]}' | awk '{split($0,a,","); print a[1]}' | awk '{sum+=$1}END{print sum/1024/1024}'

gives me 140.709 (MB)

so 140.709 + 349 gives me 489.709 which pretty much equals "490M relocatable"

that's why i think it shows you the used ram while the 1st one can be used to see the free ram

hansolo77

Just wanted to updated quickly with my experience. Using a Pi3 without any modifications to the memory split. I started by downloading a couple of themes using the built in ES THEMES menu. I've used this method in the past and selected themes I know were giving me problems in the past (Zoid and Tronkyfran for instance). I then exited ES THEMES and went to RetroPie Setup and installed (from source) the updated Emulation Station. I then rebooted from within the Setup menus. Once it was fully loaded back up, I changed the theme from within Emulation Station (Press Start, go to UI Settings, Theme is the last option).

First theme I tried was Luminous. It is the prettiest theme available that has all the artwork required for my system. Although it uses icons (favorites, etc) from the "other" custom build of Emulation Station. (Speaking of which, any chance of merging those options into this one?). At first, the screen was white while the ES theme selector menu was still on the screen. After that closed out, the screen refreshed and displayed the theme. Everything worked great. I even experimented with quick scrolling as it was reported to be a potential bug, but I didn't have any issues.

The next theme I tried was Tronkyfran. This one I was eager to see what would happen because the background images for each system are rather large. I'm happy to report that it worked perfectly as well. I did notice a slight, maybe half second lag when it was rendering the background images some times. It would be a white background for an instant then the image would actually load. Not noticeable if you didn't know it wasn't supposed to work like that. The only issue I have with this theme is that it doesn't have all the system images for systems I have. Namely GENESIS (probably need to have it listed as MEGA DRIVE), WonderSwans, and a couple others I can't remember. I'm sure this is easily resolved. I don't like the way this theme has a very small, almost thumbnail sized image/screenshot for the games though, so I probably won't actually use it.

The last theme I tried was Zoid. It had a lot of similar characteristics as the Tronkyfran theme does. Everything is working but every now and then there is a slight glitch where the white background shows but is quickly rendered over with the correct background image. This is all while on the main home screen. Inside the various systems, everything works like it should. Again, this one has very small images for game art, so I probably won't be using it either.

All-in-all, I'm very impressed. The problem seems to be solved for the most part. Just that minor millisecond glitch of displaying a white screen before loading the background image. But as I said, it's only noticeable if you know it's not supposed to be there. It's an excellent fix!

Now on to finding a theme I really like. I'd like to get one with video previews but I'm not sure what themes are available. I asked in the Video Previews thread but so far nobody's responded. I know the "Old Room" theme is available, but it looks like it will require a bit of extra work to make it work right. Using the UXS scraper I can get the videos, but I don't know about the other artwork that his theme uses.

Hope that's a helpful documentation of my experience for you @fieldofcows .. Let me know if you would like any further information. Way to go buddy!

Nismo

@hansolo77 I'm uploading the atwork in the same theme thread... https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/8019/oldroom-theme-w-i-p-media-packs?page=1

Also I made carbon theme work with video, and I uploaded a pixel theme with video support in it's thread.

CRT theme also have video support.

hansolo77

I seem to recall mentioning it before, but I don't remember what our solution was determined to be. Are these "video" themes going to be listed in the official release (like with a -video flag next to it) so you can easily pick them from the ES THEMES menu item inside the RetroPie menu? It would certainly make things easier. If nothing else, there should be a localized list somewhere of what themes we have that support them.

Nismo

Video tag it's a good idea, but I think video support it's very new, and with a bit of time all themes will support video.

Also I'm trying to help every theme developer to make it compatible with video if they have problems with that.

hansolo77

Yeah I think that was what had been decided, that it was just too much hassle to include that as a seperate option when installing themes, especially if the plan is to incorporate video eventually with them anyway. So long as NOT having videos doesn't break it lol.

MWGemini

@hansolo77 That brief white screen is the normal/expected behavior. That will happen while ES is removing old/unused textures from memory and then loading in the new texture. In all my tests, Tronkyfran has the largest images (and I've customized my own version of it with even higher res images), so it tends to be the slowest to load, but even with that theme, the hiccup is barely noticeable. I think that's as good as we're ever going to get on the Pi, with it's limited memory and processing power.

hansolo77

Yeah it's not a big deal at all, was just reporting it if it was something new. Thanks for all the work!