9.8-beta-1 Released

[PanteraZombie]

4 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

The pause screens are entirely emulator-specific. So I'll need details on what game or emulator it is, first and foremost.

I have only tested pause with MAME v201 64bit so far. Pause technically works, but really hesitates going in and out of the pause screen. Also, not sure if it's only meant to work in BigBox up to this point, but I couldn't get it to work in LaunchBox with the button I assigned in LB settings.

[Jason Carr]

Just now, PanteraZombie said:

I have only tested pause with MAME v201 64bit so far. Pause technically works, but really hesitates going in and out of the pause screen. Also, not sure if it's only meant to work in BigBox up to this point, but I couldn't get it to work in LaunchBox with the button I assigned in LB settings.

Not sure if that is performance-related or not. All my testing with MAME has resulted in very quick transitions. Are you running Windows 7 or 10? What are your hardware specs?

I'll look into the LaunchBox button issue.

[PanteraZombie]

8 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Not sure if that is performance-related or not. All my testing with MAME has resulted in very quick transitions. Are you running Windows 7 or 10? What are your hardware specs?

I'll look into the LaunchBox button issue.

I am running Windows 10, i7, 32gb ram, rtx2080. Otherwise, everything else seems to run fine as usual...

Update: I went back and tried a few different MAME games and didn't seem to hang quite as much as the first attempt. It transitioned fairly well but the game audio hangs for a few seconds. I also tried a few systems within RetroArch to compare and everything worked perfectly.

Edited May 2, 2019 by PanteraZombie

[FlightRisk]

Windows 10, older machine, Pentium dual core 2.8gHz, 4GB ram, GE Force GT-710 2GB, Using MAME .198. I sent a crash window that I saw twice also.

[FlightRisk]

I just tried launching by right clicking and telling it to use RetroArch and MAME-Libretro and it seemed to work a little better. But it "flashes" windows. I chose exclusive full screen mode. So when I go into pause, it flashes the game window, then when I go out, I see the game flash quickly, then all black very quickly, then the game again. Hitting the key every 5 seconds, it locks in pause screen sooner or later. Usually 5 to 10 pause unpause cycles. I was able to hold down alt-tab and then hit the X on the pause window and get back into LB. No error popup so far in RA MAME as opposed to Standalone MAME. Oh and GO 'Canes!

[FlightRisk]

@PanteraZombie, you bring up a good point. I will try different games as well. So far I have been only in my classic arcade games. I tried 005 and 1941 just because they are on the first row of my list  May be time for bed and do more testing tomorrow. 

[deliyuerek85]

@Jason Carr

will you add game specific options for pause screens like with startup screens too?

This would come handy for PC games.

Edited May 2, 2019 by deliyuerek85

[Jason Carr]

10 hours ago, PanteraZombie said:

I am running Windows 10, i7, 32gb ram, rtx2080. Otherwise, everything else seems to run fine as usual...

Update: I went back and tried a few different MAME games and didn't seem to hang quite as much as the first attempt. It transitioned fairly well but the game audio hangs for a few seconds. I also tried a few systems within RetroArch to compare and everything worked perfectly.

If you are able to record a quick video of the slow transition, that would probably help me to figure out what's going on. I do get an audio stutter (which I can probably handle just by muting eventually), but it's rather brief.

10 hours ago, FlightRisk said:

Windows 10, older machine, Pentium dual core 2.8gHz, 4GB ram, GE Force GT-710 2GB, Using MAME .198. I sent a crash window that I saw twice also.

It would help to know the specific error, so please post it here if you get it again.

10 hours ago, FlightRisk said:

I just tried launching by right clicking and telling it to use RetroArch and MAME-Libretro and it seemed to work a little better. But it "flashes" windows. I chose exclusive full screen mode. So when I go into pause, it flashes the game window, then when I go out, I see the game flash quickly, then all black very quickly, then the game again. Hitting the key every 5 seconds, it locks in pause screen sooner or later. Usually 5 to 10 pause unpause cycles. I was able to hold down alt-tab and then hit the X on the pause window and get back into LB. No error popup so far in RA MAME as opposed to Standalone MAME. Oh and GO 'Canes!

Depending on the emulator, the flashing windows might be something we just have to deal with here. We're treading in new waters and with fullscreen exclusive mode, some things just aren't possible. Full-screen exclusive mode requires some sort of an Alt-Tab in order to switch between the pause screens and the emulator, and there's nothing at all that we can do about that if it's a dirty process because of the way the emulator's built.

One thing to look for: make sure that your emulator is using your desktop resolution. Neither the startup screens nor the pause screens will ever work ideally unless you're using the desktop resolution in the emulator.

[Jason Carr]

6 hours ago, deliyuerek85 said:

@Jason Carr

will you add game specific options for pause screens like with startup screens too?

This would come handy for PC games.

Yes, that is the plan.

[FlightRisk]

@Jason CarrOk, will do on checking resolution and whatever else I can. Also, all my testing until now has been in LB only, not BB. And the error was posted to your website. The error box was yours and had a button to report. So I clicked it. I didn't see that it attached the log, maybe it did, but I cut and pasted it anyway. It is your bitbucket issue #4865. "Cannot set visibility to visible or call Show, showdialog, close, or WindowInteropHelper.EnsureHandle while a Window is closing", etc. It is a system.invalidoperationexception. The log shows a log of "AM Music." stuff. There are multiple "AM Music.Pause Start" messages and then an exception. The last items I think in the stack trace were your "Wpf.Views.MainPauseView.CloseAndDispose()" method call and then the System.Windows namespace's "InternalClose" method. If I had to guess, my uneducated, ill-informed, unsolicited out loud thinking is that it may be a threading issue where a window is still open in one thread and LB is trying to close a window when another thread isn't finished with it. Or... Gremlins.

[FlightRisk]

I am testing mostly using the MAME 1941 rom. It freezes in BB too. I normally use RockeLauncher, so from BB, select "run with" and use MAME (I have also tried just switching to MAME in options). It seems to show the pause screen, but often it doesn't return. Right now it just sat there. So I looked with alt-tab and see a black screen for mame and another one for "launchbox game startup". I tried hitting escape the the game startup window went gray. Trying different things (like escape) Windows pops up the "BigBox is not responding" dialog. 

If I try to exit BB and come back, when I launch a game, I just get a black screen. Looking at the open windows, I see MAME is there and blank. I exit BB, check again and MAME is there and hosed. I can't close it. I bring up task manager and see "console window host" and "MAME" when I expand the "MAME(2)" item in the list. MAME shows as "Suspended" and has a little leaf (eco mode icon) next to it. I have never seen that before. I looked it up and see it is a relatively new feature of Windows 10. I assume it is something you are doing to pause or suspend an application running in a window? So that may tell you something. I have to terminate MAME in order to test again. Even clicking on the X to close the window does nothing.

[Jason Carr]

Alright, beta 9 is out now with the following:

• Fix for the game pause keyboard key not updating until restart of LaunchBox
   
• New game pause screen setting on emulators for "Suspend Emulator Process While Paused". Previously, this was always happening. Unchecking the box will stop LaunchBox/Big Box from suspending the emulator's process during pause, but then you'll need to use the AutoHotkey script to pause the emulator, or it won't really pause. There may be some emulators that require this, as the suspend process may not work for all of them.
   
• New game pause screen setting on emulators for "Forceful Pause Screen Activation". This was previously always happening as well, but I figured out that for MAME, it's a much smoother process if I remove a bunch of the steps to activate the pause screens that some of the other emulators require. At least on my system, unchecking it for MAME results in much faster transitions.

Emulator pause screen settings will be reset with this new beta, so you may have to make any customizations again. This of course won't happen after the official release.

[Jason Carr]

Hmmmmm...I'm seeing some minor issues with pause screens when startup screens are disabled. So FYI...for folks having issues, that could be the problem. I'll need to address that separately.

[Jason Carr]

4 hours ago, FlightRisk said:

@Jason CarrOk, will do on checking resolution and whatever else I can. Also, all my testing until now has been in LB only, not BB. And the error was posted to your website. The error box was yours and had a button to report. So I clicked it. I didn't see that it attached the log, maybe it did, but I cut and pasted it anyway. It is your bitbucket issue #4865. "Cannot set visibility to visible or call Show, showdialog, close, or WindowInteropHelper.EnsureHandle while a Window is closing", etc. It is a system.invalidoperationexception. The log shows a log of "AM Music." stuff. There are multiple "AM Music.Pause Start" messages and then an exception. The last items I think in the stack trace were your "Wpf.Views.MainPauseView.CloseAndDispose()" method call and then the System.Windows namespace's "InternalClose" method. If I had to guess, my uneducated, ill-informed, unsolicited out loud thinking is that it may be a threading issue where a window is still open in one thread and LB is trying to close a window when another thread isn't finished with it. Or... Gremlins.

Thanks, I'm hoping this is fixed in beta 9.

 

[Jason Carr]

FYI, hold off on testing. Found a couple bugs. New beta will be out shortly.

[Jason Carr]

Alright, beta 10 is out now with fixes for the following bugs from beta 9:

• When disabling forceful pause screen activation on an emulator in Big Box (MAME for example), the pause screen was not always showing and hiding properly
• After exiting games in Big Box, the game startup screens were not always exiting properly

[kmoney]

Great job...the pause screen transitions are working butter smooth in MAME even with bezels enabled in the newest beta.

[FlightRisk]

Ok, good job Jason. Much better. I give it 80%. You still can't keep hitting the pause key though. It works so much better but at some point will still leave the MAME window suspended and stop responding to the pause key. I am not jabbing the key, I am pressing it about every 2 or 3 seconds. If I alt-tab through the open windows, I can hear the ones not suspended (LB if it is playing music, for example).  Once the emulator is "locked" (won't come out of suspend) there is almost nothing I can do. For those who don't want to reboot, this is the only way to get out of it:

1. Press Alt-Cntrl-Esc. This will bring up task manager, but you won't see it because exclusive full screen mode is buggering you

2. Press Alt-O. The options menu for task manager should display over the exclusive full screen window.

3. Press Enter for "Always on top"

4. Now the full task manager will be visible and you can find what is suspended (MAME in my case which has a command window and the emulator in it), right click on the main tree item for MAME and terminate it.

You may experience issues with the mouse cursor, but I am usually able to get it back by moving it around if it disappears.

[FlightRisk]

I also turned startup screens on. I did have them off. I'll run through all the combinations including the new options in the "manage emulators" menu for "forceful pause screen activation" and "suspend emulator process while paused". Right now they are at the default for beta 10.

[Jason Carr]

15 hours ago, FlightRisk said:

Ok, good job Jason. Much better. I give it 80%. You still can't keep hitting the pause key though. It works so much better but at some point will still leave the MAME window suspended and stop responding to the pause key. I am not jabbing the key, I am pressing it about every 2 or 3 seconds. If I alt-tab through the open windows, I can hear the ones not suspended (LB if it is playing music, for example).  Once the emulator is "locked" (won't come out of suspend) there is almost nothing I can do. For those who don't want to reboot, this is the only way to get out of it:

1. Press Alt-Cntrl-Esc. This will bring up task manager, but you won't see it because exclusive full screen mode is buggering you

2. Press Alt-O. The options menu for task manager should display over the exclusive full screen window.

3. Press Enter for "Always on top"

4. Now the full task manager will be visible and you can find what is suspended (MAME in my case which has a command window and the emulator in it), right click on the main tree item for MAME and terminate it.

You may experience issues with the mouse cursor, but I am usually able to get it back by moving it around if it disappears.

I can't replicate that freezing issue with MAME, so I'm guessing maybe there's a MAME setting that's causing it. Can you try testing with a fresh install of MAME with default settings? It has to be either a MAME settings discrepancy or a driver issue.