Updated EmulationStation for Windows

f.caruso

Hi everyone,

New release 2.10.0.4 today, with a big changelist. You can see the changelog on my github.
It was focused on bugfix and optimisation. For exemple, loading time is really faster, and memory usage is really better. I added an On-Screen keyboard, Text glows, ability to override grid size globally or by system, fixed video starting time and fading, added security for gamelist.xml (sometimes the file was saved empty), reviewed SVGs sizing & loading ( Previous versions unloaded/reloaded SVGs each time a container of a different size needed to display it because of a size calculation problem, consuming disk & time ).

You still can download the Release and see source code here :
https://github.com/fabricecaruso/EmulationStation/releases

You can also download the complete pack including my personnal updated theme, which demonstrates all the new possibilities here :
http://fabrice.caruso.free.fr/EmulationStationMod.7z

@jero You problem should be fixed, and video/image fading should now be really better ( and fixed : it started at bad timing ).

@jdrassa @mitu Thanks for your answer and sorry for the delay of my answer. I updated readme.me & theme.md on my github so you can see the - almost - full changelist & documentation about the new theming possibilities.
The thing is, I'm now 50 commits ahead Retropie, and I really modified a lot of small things everywhere and most of the new features are dependant one from another. For exemple I had to modify Video, Image components for the grid, which impacted detailled view, which impacted viewcontroller... and so on...

If we have to start from retropie current master, I can give you easyly small things easyly like initial loading which is now threaded ( and much faster ), or menu theming... But it will be a very hard work to give you the GridView without doing a very big effort and a huge MR... It will be hard too if I gave to you the memory optimizations I did on FileData & Metadata storage ( very consumming - on Windows with my gamelists on my machine I saved almost 50 Mo ram use ).
For thoses big features : Better time taking my whole master, honestly !

So, I propose to you :
Either look at my changelist and tell me things you want and I'll see according to the effort needed. For the features that will not take too much effort, I'll try do it.
Either test & play with my version, and tell me exactly what you want me to fix or modify and take the whole package for Retropie... (honestly, now : the second solution will be easier to do and you'll have a real big new version for the next retropie release, containing many things people are waiting for, for so long)

A Former User

Nice! Excited to download this and give it a try this weekend!

dukeblooders

@f-caruso Hi,

I can't launch your last .exe.
Nothing happens, even if I clear my .emulationstation folder (and there's no process in the task manager).

f.caruso

@dukeblooders Redownload it, I re-uploaded it again cuz I had an error in the files

dukeblooders

@f-caruso Thanks for your work, everything works fine now.

jero

@f-caruso Thanks works perfectly for me. Great job, thanks for your effort, it's amazing the change you gave to ES, for windows

drcnyc

@f.caruso You are amazing - thank you so much for your work on this! I am having a couple of issues with the latest build, one is minor - the log file is showing the errors below, but they don't seem to affect anything? Perhaps you will know from looking at them what could be causing this. Next, I'm experiencing unusual behavior - the app seems to work every other time I load it (I am running the portable exe as admin) -- but after working successfully, the next time I load it, it just quits at the loading screen, and the log shows the same errors below. Perhaps related? let me know what you think.

lvl1: Unknown property type "iconKodi" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconKodi" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconRestart" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconShutdown" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconFastShutdown" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconKodi" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconRestart" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconShutdown" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconFastShutdown" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconRestart" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconShutdown" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconFastShutdown" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "color" (for element of type video).
lvl1: Unknown property type "color" (for element of type video).
lvl1: Unknown property type "color" (for element of type video).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconKodi" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconRestart" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconShutdown" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconFastShutdown" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "color" (for element of type video).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconKodi" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconRestart" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconShutdown" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconFastShutdown" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "color" (for element of type video).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconKodi" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconRestart" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconShutdown" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "iconFastShutdown" (for element of type menuIcons).
lvl1: Unknown property type "color" (for element of type video).

UPDATE I was able to eliminate the errors by just commenting out these items in the theme.xml file, so the above is more of just an FYI as to the issue. Still having the intermittent starting errors; seems that no matter what I try, the program only starts every Xth time I run it - sometimes every other time but more often every 3rd or 4th time I try to run. Any ideas what could be causing this? I am running Windows 10 (latest build), and also note I was using the pre-compiled pack that you posted in your last message; not sure if the update you posted for @dukeblooders was fixed in this as well?

PittStone

I have this Problem too. Emulation Sation quits at the loading screen. Many of Issues in the log file. I have tested the preconfigurated .zip file and it crashes too.

LiveFreeDead

@PittStone I had the same problem, instead of only having it boot sometimes and/or return from games without crashing, I ended up reverting to 2.9 by jdrassa because for me stability is more important than new features, When it doesn't crash it still takes longer to load in the 10s of thousands of zipped roms due to me scanning each time instead of using only XML's, but the 2.9 only takes 30 to 40 seconds to do this, so tolerable, 2.10 mod actually took 2+ minutes and would hang after loading the systems.

I will keep testing his future releases, but hopefully he gets a chance to test for this loading bug with his work.

hhromic

@f-caruso @mitu @jdrassa

If @f-caruso 's fork does build and work fine on RPI devices, perhaps a good idea to integrate it (for now) could be to create a scriptmodule for it alongside the stock EmulationStation shipped with RetroPie. Similar to mehstation and pegasus-fe for example. So users can have an option to install let's say emulationstation-fcamod similarly to what they can do with the existing emulationstation-dev. In other words, just another flavour of EmulationStation.

And because @f-caruso 's fork is still ES, it shouldn't be that difficult to do. What do you think?

f.caruso

Hi all,

@drcnyc Don't worry about the logs : you are using a theme which menu was copied from a recalbox theme. My version just does not supports useless icons like Kodi or restart. Lvl1 items are just informations.

@LiveFreeDead, @PittStone, @drcnyc I really don't understand your starting errors (or the 2mn loading time). Jero & dukeblooders didn't report it, and I never had a single problem on any of my 3 machines. So I'm wondering is there's something about your configurations. What has changed is that I use a multi-threaded loading : I count processors and create as many threads as available cores.

~~In order to help me, can you tell me more about your configurations -> CPU frequency & how many cores. What theme do you use ? What kind of storage do you have ( usb key, hdd, ssd ?)~~

Forget it, I found why... I'll post a patch very soon.
But i'm still interessted in knowing your configs ( cores/theme )

PittStone

@f-caruso I can send you my core and theme configs. Can i send you a pm anywhere for that?

f.caruso

@PittStone PMs are deactivated on this forum...

sikboy

@f-caruso I'm too dumb to get the padtokey function to work, I've tried with project64 and redream so far and nothing works, Am I missing something? Both emulators use a combination of ALT+F4 to close. Attached is an example:

As you can see, I tried to use select+start to trigger ALT+F4 with no success.

Also as you recommended is ran ES as administrator, but nothing. Any suggestions?

LiveFreeDead

@f-caruso https://mega.nz/#!Dkg1BYKY!_WoDJNz1lLa0W_LLVeAF1M1ihMumPQiwgy9e_cGtgVA

Here is my settings, looking forward to any fixes you share :)

PittStone

@f-caruso O.k. is send it.

f.caruso

@LiveFreeDead LLOOLL I wasn't talkin about emulator cores... But CPU Cores !!!!

jero

@sikboy You have tried, go to properties of the exe and say in properties that always start as administrator. That solved the problem for me.

f.caruso

@sikboy @jero the padtokey xml looks good. As I already said, I is generally because processes don't run with the same privileges. Run task manager, go to detail, and add column "elevated" (right click on columns). You emulators (like redream) and emulationstationportable need to have the same elevation level. It's a limitation in Windows since W8. If not, adjust in the exe properties. I personnaly don't like the "run as admin" trick. An emulator or a launcher should never run elevated - only system programs should. Plus you have UAC dialog, so you deactivate UAC which is discutable. Maybe you should juste ensure redream IS NOT elevated ! ( It works perfectly on my machine without elevation )

sikboy

@jero @f-caruso I'm on Win7 X64, Tried running both EmulationStationPortable.exe and redream.exe as Admin, no success. I cant find the elevation level anywhere in the task manager. No luck at all.