ES Gamelist Scroll Bug - Black boxes appear when rapidly scrolling through the game list

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft thanks! I will try this today and report back! We are going to the Zoo today! The girls are super excited, so I will report later.

It's interesting about the fact that it may be the theme causing the issue, I am running the same #of systems as before and have optimized the theme so it is now smaller than before. I did not have this issue until this update attempt (updates after ES v2.1.6RP). Another test I might run is changing to carbon theme and then attempting to update from source.

Last thought, well more of a question, I noticed in the docs that instructions for overclocking have changed a bit. For the record I am not oberclocked on any of my builds at the moment, however I do see that the overclock snow suggest setting the total mem to 1024. My question is, why would setting this be negative for anyone? The overclock in this case would simply allow you to use a total mem of 1024 if needed. If the mem is not needed, it should run at whatever is needed, however if more is needed it will allow it to use up to the max at 1024. Should alleviate the issues of the themes right? I also read your post on the flashing of the theme and completely running out of memory, this should help with that as well? Just a question I had since I saw this update to the docs.

You Have a great weekend as well!

pjft

@TMNTturtlguy Hope the zoo visit went well! :)

Yeah, I mean - I'm just speculating on the cause. It might be completely unrelated to the theme, and it might be just that ES has grown more demanding to compile. I don't know.

I was not aware of that recommendation on the 1024 memory on the overclocking page. From a general standpoint, I wouldn't know why it would be included in that section, given that it does not necessarily relate to overclocking but rather getting more available memory to the system. But I'm not that picky.

From what I was able to read about that, that memory is usually allocated for the gpu to access peripherals - a touch screen, a led or lcd panel plugged to it, etc. It will likely not matter to the majority of users who plug it to a TV via HDMI (I think), but for those who have their RPis connected to such screens or peripherals (like those who build their RPi-based RetroPie on a GameBoy or portable device of sorts), it might not be good to enable.

Also, RPi models who don't have that amount of memory would not want to have that setting enabled (i.e. if they only have 512MB, that setting used to cause some crashes on boot, but seems to have been fixed recently).

That being said, it's just increasing memory by a paltry 16MB. Sure enough, it's more than before, but I'm not sure it'd impact anything significantly.

Hope this clarifies, from what I was able to gather, but I'd love to hear from anyone more knowledgeable about this topic.

Have a great weekend!

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft Zoo was great! Thanks for your research and input regarding the total memory. I was surprised to see it show up in that doc as well, and with little explanation on why. Based on what you said, it makes perfect sense to me. Later in my day I will fire up the pi and try to reinstall the Main ES build with carbon as my theme and see what happens. I will then make the modifications to my .sh file for your script and run your script with the comic book theme installed and report back.

Side note on the comic book theme, thanks for the input on the logos. I have found that a ghost line appears at the top of several of the system logos. Not sure why as i created them all from the same template, but on several of them 1 pixel width of the dot matrix overlay did not delete from the selection. I am in the process of cleaning those up and they will be in the next release. You must have a nice TV or monitor to pick up on them!

pjft

@TMNTturtlguy Glad to hear it went well - it's always a hit with the kids!

I do have a large TV, but I'm actually extremely nitpicky in regards to graphical details (you could probably tell when I started picking on the comic filter, and dot sizes), so if there's anything that I feel can help improve, either by myself or by giving feedback, I usually will. :)

Best.

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft said in ES Gamelist Scroll Bug - Black boxes appear when rapidly scrolling through the game list:

rpSwap on 512

change to a higher value,
rpSwap on 750

and see if it makes a difference? That's my best bet, and since you can consistently replicate it on your end, might be easier to validate if that change helps or not.

@pjft - it is definitely the theme doing it. I can verify that. When i do the update from source from both the Main ES branch and your branch with Carbon as my theme it is fine. When i do the update from source from the command line screen it is fine. When i do it from source with my theme active, stalls at 81% gamelist everytime. That does not sit well with me.....don't like that my theme breaks this process. I am assuming other themes will suffer the same fate.

As for the test above - does not work. Still stalled out at 81%. Can I up that value to 1024?

pjft

@TMNTturtlguy I imagine you can, but I'm not the expert in that area. I've seen that change being applied in other out of memory occasions, so I assumed it'd help.

I believe this thread has probably already gone quite off topic and others who may have more to add or help won't see it.

I'd suggest either creating a new topic and/or filling a bug in RetroPie-Setup, both stating the error, when it works, and the steps you've taken so far to test and troubleshoot. I'll sure someone who actually knows their business will help, rather than me sending you on wild goose chases. :)

I'll still send you on those, though, but the odds of someone sorting it out are higher :D

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft Thanks! You identified the solution, just update with another theme or from command line, we are good for now, others will start having problems in the future as we continue to have more complex themes. I will start a new thread and open a case.

pjft

@TMNTturtlguy thanks. Just confirming, this happens with the main ES branch as well? If so, I'm fairly sure others will be running into this as well, just haven't updated ES in a while, so definitely submit it.

If it's only on my merged version, it's a trickier case as it may be dismissed (potentially correctly so) as being related to something on my end.

Best.

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft it is on the main branch as well. I just successfully updated from source after changing rpswap to 1024! will open a new thread and submit. This solution will only work for RPI3 :(

pjft

@TMNTturtlguy great that you found that.

Well, I'm not sure that's the case. I don't know what that particular setting does, but a swap file is usually something you'd write on disk, and not as much related to the physical memory. In fact, you're doing it so that the system does have enough memory to compile, by resorting to a larger swap file.

Also, a pi 2 also has 1gb of RAM, I believe. :)

Well done in tracking it down.

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft Thanks, but once again you were major help! You pointed me right to I needed to be and I just pushed a few buttons.