List of bugs / issues encountered on 5.18/5.19 + suggested default improvements

movisman

Hi there,

New user here, first wanted to say thanks for creating such a great OS which is pretty much ready 'out of the box'. Especially having Amiga support (i think you are the only one to have CD32 working out of the box on FS-UAE). I am fairly experienced in setting up an x86 instance of RetroPie and customising the various cores, and after trying out Batocera I noticed a few fairly minor niggles on a fresh install of 5.18+5.19beta, which i'm hoping you can take note of and potentially look into? Also a couple of suggested emulator defaults for x86/x64 users.

Here we go off the top of my head (will post others when I next boot Batocera to test):

5.18 + 5.19beta tested, using XBOX 360 wired gamepad, running over USB.
Hardware: Lenovo Thinkcentre M93p Tiny Desktop, Intel Core i5-4590T Processor (4th Gen), 8gb RAM, Intel HD Graphics HD4600

I have a 4k TV and as suspected, emulation was unusable out of the box because it was displaying in 4096x2160/30. I followed the xandr guidelines and forced 1080p/60 (and tried 720p), which resolved these issues. My PC is connecting to my TV with a DP>HDMI connection. However the decorations/overlays were not displaying. So I tried plugging the PC into a 1080p monitor (which is DP to mini DP rather than DP to HDMI) and the overlays all show up in Retroarch. Any idea why overlays appear using the monitor at 1080p (they also work at 720p), but the moment it runs through the TV overlays are no longer displayed? The only difference here is the display output is detected as DP using the monitor and HDMI on the TV. I have compared the output of xandr and it all looks pretty normal. Apart from it being output as HDMI, I don't have a clue why the TV will not show the overlays up.
On the same subject of resolution, if you try to force a lower resolution, the lower you go, the smaller the fonts are on the "F1" GUI (i was looking at the 5.19 application options), to the point of them being unreadable. When my TV is forced to 1080p they are just about ok, go any lower (720p) and you cannot read the fonts. The icons and windows though scale correctly, and show up fine. So something perhaps up with the scaling of the font?
Dolphin emulator. Unlike all the other cores, this one always displays in 16/9. As most games are 4:3 everything appears stretched. If I force 4:3 in ES, this sorts the problem, but then we will have issues playing 16:9 supported games. So I hit F1 and opened up the dolphin-emu config, which I am familiar with from RetroPie. Under graphics, you can see the aspect is set to forced 16:9. So I changed this to 'auto' and went back into ES. Launching the game again, still 16:9. Go back to dolphin-emu config and forced 16:9 is set again. Can you perhaps look at why this happens and if you can find out, have it set to 'auto'? My RetroPie instance is set to auto and it always detects the correct ratio for the game and displays accordingly. PS. Also the shortcut to dolphin-emu has a typo.
Amiga FS-UAE. Quick question here, is there any way to look into having it so hotkey+start quits the emulator, rather than having to open the menu (which is either hotkey or start) and clicking the cross at the top right? I imagine maybe not, but all other emus it looks like you have managed to configure this.
N64. Some issues here, out of the box when the default emulator/core is set, games (z64 extension) are not launching. I think the default is non-libretro/glide 64mk2. Not sure why this is, changing to a libretro core such as Parallel, games will then boot. Any idea on this?
N64. Out of the box with the Xbox 360 gamepad, loading goldeneye on any core, the left stick controls are messed up. Pressing up on the analog stick walks forward+looks down simultaneously, and pressing down walks backward+looks up simultaneously. Any idea on this?
Would you consider adding BSNES/Higan for SNES emulation? Or is it too experimental? From what I understand, it is more accurate and recommended for x86/x64 users.
Amiga CD32 is missing its theme, and Amiga is missing a description. I guess you already aware of this and maybe this might be sorted in the future (if I stick using Batocera I can probably make a CD32 image?)
I need to test this more, but when messing around with emulator defaults, on a couple of occasions I had it where I reset the emulator settings back to DEFAULT/DEFAULT and games would no longer load. Explicitly setting the emulator would then fix it. But going back to default then breaks it. This happened a couple of times but worked out no pattern. Have you seen this before?
Out of the box, PSX was way too fast playing Battle Arena Toshinden, I guess this is some hack which is enabled? Changing the default emulator to Beetle (which is more accurate) sorted it. Below is some more info on maybe thinking about changing the default emulators for x86/x64 users:
Regarding emulator defaults on x86/x64, I have a few friendly suggestions to amending a few defaults, as follows. (I don't provide a full list, only a few which you currently have different defaults for, based on the emus I use. This is for x86/x64 users who generally have more powerful machines, NOT Rpi users):

Master System/Megadrive/Mega CD - Genesis-plus-gx I think is preferred to Picodrive
N64 - not sure here, maybe keep the default non libretro one if it's the most stable/fastest, but for me it didn't work? Otherwise maybe Parallel is the most accurate (although potentially slower)?
NES - FCEUMM (not sure if this is the default already?)
PSX - Beetle should be preferred over the other one for x86 for sure
Saturn - Beetle again over the other one for accuracy, some games wont load on the yabause emu either)
SNES - I use BSNES/Higan on RetroPie and this runs flawlessly, but it doesn't exist in Batocera? Maybe it could be considered?

If you need any further information, please let me know. I think Batocera is really great but wanted to point out my initial findings when booting from a fresh image, in case it helps develop a more stable product. Let me know what you think of the above.

Cheers!

nadenislamarre

hehe really nice. some points i knew, some i didnt, some easy to improve, some to test by myself to understand.
thanks a lot for this feedback very interesting from an experienced user.
im currently on holliday away from any computer. ill reread this message more attentionnaly and answer pointby point when im back.

movisman

Thanks a lot for the quick reply, I really appreciate it. Some of the points I mention are quite difficult to explain, but if you need further information just let me know. I do use a few other emulators not mentioned above such as MAME and FBAlpha, but i've not tested those yet. The above is more of an 'initial findings' rather than anything too in-depth, but hopefully it helps. Enjoy your holiday!!

Cheers

nadenislamarre

4K TV and overlay
i've no 4K tv to make tests, but maybe i may force a lower resolution in case it becomes to high. What do you think about it ?
for the overlay, it's because in 4.18, decoration only works if you have 2 of the allowed resolutions. Today, i've changed it to allow any resolution having the 1.778 resolution ratio or higher (+- 0.1).
fonts : require some tests. I didn't get that issues. if you have idea to fix, maybe don't allow to high resolutions.
dolphin resolution:
i didn't know that dolphin did it automatically. i thought it was not done automatically, so, i forced 16/9 and 4/3 depending on your screen and your es configuration : https://github.com/batocera-linux/batocera.linux/blob/master/package/batocera/core/batocera-configgen/configgen/configgen/generators/dolphin/dolphinGenerator.py#L75
so, in case of "auto", i should set "auto" in dolphin i guess. 'ill make some test.
when you start an emulator in batocera, you go thought configgen that do some configuration on your config files. it's why changing some of them via the application menu has no effect while it's erased when you start a game. can you give me a game which is 16/9 and an other 4/3 for my tests please ?
dolphin typo ?
ok, it's here https://github.com/batocera-linux/batocera.linux/blob/master/package/batocera/core/batocera-desktopapps/apps/dolphin-config.desktop#L8
thanks, i fixed.
Amiga FS-UAE exit
for each emulator, i take time to patch it to allow this feature is not possible out of the box or by configuration.
it can take time, for example, for pcsx2
https://github.com/batocera-linux/batocera.linux/blob/master/package/batocera/emulators/pcsx2/004-hotkey.patch
and thus, not all emulators have it for the moment. i add one regularly.
added in my todo list for fsuae
Z64, i've to reproduce and check the log
n64 buttons : it can be a configuration issue with your pad, or a bug in configgen of mupen64. i've to reproduce to analyse.
BSNES/Higan
why not. you should come on the chat, maybe somebody else would be interested to add it. my todo list is growing faster than i can do it.
theme : yes, unfortunaltly, nobody on the team is working on themes ;-( if you're interested, you're welcome ;-)
defaults emulator:
the way default emulators are handle is not correct for the moment. in fact, there is only 1 emulator by default (for all arch), and this value is overriden by the default configuration file of each arch. it's not nice, and can target to your bad behavior. it's in my todo list to make this default list betterly handled.
psx : on the team (and on the chat) airhead is working on updating emulators and testing what's the best. maybe, we can suggest him to test that. but first, i must clean the default emulators i think.
i will transfer him these information while it can be very better.

note that batocera is still young. we are still at the step to add emulators. a lot of work was done, but clearly, there is still a lot of things to do.
thanks a lot for these feedbacks.

movisman

Hey there,

Thanks a lot for taking the time to give me such a detailed reply on your findings to my report. Most of it looks like things you need to test, but I have a few comments to help clarify a couple of points.

Regarding the first commend about forcing a lower resolution, personally I support this. I think it should be a maximum of 1080p and no more. The reason for this, is if you are running Batocera on a 4k resolution, on a regular powered x86 machine, emulation will be much slower (even master system was slow on my i5), and also the ES menus are quite sluggish, even with just a few games. Dropping to 1080p using xrandr solved all of these problems, and emulation is full speed for me. Maybe you can come up with a way to change the resolution via ES or something in the future for all of the common ones.

Regarding the overlay, when I get chance I will test it and see if they appear on my 1080p display.

The second comment about the fonts, just in case there is confusion, what I meant was when displaying the F1 environment in 4k or 1080p, the fonts are actually ok. But as you go to a "lower" resolution, eg. 720p, 800x600 etc, the fonts actually get smaller, pixelated and hard to read but the icons and everything else scale properly. So if you set your resolution to say, 800x600 or something, does the font not mess up a bit for you? I can take a picture if you like to show you what I mean.
Regarding the Dolphin 4:3/16:9, that sounds good. I know Super Monkey Ball is 4:3, but I don't have any 16:9 games currently on the system. Check this link out:
http://research.omicsgroup.org/index.php/List_of_Nintendo_GameCube_games_with_480p_and_16:9_support

It shows the 4:3 and 16:9 supported games. This will help you with any testing?

Regarding the n64 buttons in Goldeneye, perhaps the default configuration for the Xbox 360 pad is not quite correct. This doesn't only affect Mupen64, it happens on the other emulators too.
I may look into creating a theme for CD32 to help out, perhaps when I have a little time i'll have a go at it! 🙂

As for all other points, all sounds good to me. Thanks a lot for adding some of them to the ever growing to-do list Completely understand Batocera is still in it's early stages, hopefully some of the feedback is useful.

Another thing I noticed, which is the same in Recalbox, is when moving around ES, sometimes the whole screen will freeze, and then about 5 seconds later it processes all the buttons you might have pressed during this time and catches up. It's a bit random and there are hardly any games installed to cause a resource issue. RetroPie ES doesn't do this at all, so I wonder what might be occurring there.

Thanks!

nadenislamarre

4k TV : the resolution is minimized if too high at X startup. moreover, i've added in the advanced menu the choice of the resolution by emulator. (thus, you can choose a lower for ps2 for example for performances).
Dolphin emulator: in the dolphin gui, you can choose only 16/9 or 4/3, there is no auto mode. how do you select it ?

movisman

Hey.

Regarding the Dolphin emulator, in the GUI under graphics settings, the options are just there. There is 'auto', 'force 16:9'. 'force 4:3', and 'stretch to window'?

I was not selecting 'auto' by doing anything special on the CLI, it is just a standard option within the emulator for me.

Cheers