Strange freezing on BigBox

[Light Sock]

I've been developing a theme on the community theme manager for more than a year now. Came back at it this week to update it and integrate coin ops theme. I'm not developing my theme on my arcade machine where strangely is less powerful and where the theme is working on it.

There's a strange overlapping freeze when I switch from a view to another. Like in this screenshot you can clearly see the Platform list overlapping on the game list view. It gets stuck there and strangely my video background continue to play and will eventually freeze too.

I've asked y2guru who made the community theme builder and he told me that everything seems fine on my theme and he suggested that I should ask Jason.

Could it be because I have 4 screens plugged on my 2080ti? It was working before though but lately had an issue with a software because of my 4 screen monitor setup. I tried changing the screen and it does the same thing.

I'm running Bigbox on a i9-9900k, 2080ti, 32gb ram and 3200read/write m.2 ssd.

I'm lost here and loosing a lot of my dev time for the community on this strange issue! I would be really please if someone can help me! ?

Edited March 2, 2021 by G22

[Light Sock]

UPDATE: I tried the theme on my arcade for the whole night and it finally froze just like on the dev computer. So something in the theme seems to not be working well with Bigbox.

Any ideas?

[Ripcord2000]

I get something like this occasionally.   Strangely, if I hit ctrl-escape (windows menu) it suddenly unfreezes.  I haven't spent much time looking into it (or found a solution) yet, though.

[LiL fleX]

On 3/2/2021 at 2:54 AM, Ripcord2000 said:

I get something like this occasionally.   Strangely, if I hit ctrl-escape (windows menu) it suddenly unfreezes.  I haven't spent much time looking into it (or found a solution) yet, though.

I been having this same scenario going on with the Retrotastic theme. I start up bigbox with Retrotastic as the active theme and when I select a platform the program freezes in a transition that looks similar to OP's screenshot, the only solution is to hit windows key and it unfreezes. I have tried restarting bigbox and even restarting my PC to see if it was a minor hiccup but it seems to always occur, from what i've gathered though is that it seems to be strictly happening with the Retrotastic theme (at least from my experience) and might be an error in the specific theme folder that is causing it as I have attempted to get the same problem to occur with multiple custom bigbox themes but it has never happened.

[Light Sock]

Thanks for everyone's feedback. I think there's something somewhere between both our themes that Bigbox doesn't like and crash.

Also is the Retrostatic theme built from Community Theme Manager? If yes, there must be something that software can do that isn't compatible with Bigbox.

@Jason Carr would you like me to upload the theme version that have the issue? If yes, where would you like me to send it?

Thanks a lot!

[C-Beats]

I would wait until next beta version comes out first and then update to that to see if the issue changes at all. We have a LOT of upcoming changes to Big Box theming and some of them may help resolve some of the issues you are seeing.

[Light Sock]

4 minutes ago, C-Beats said:

I would wait until next beta version comes out first and then update to that to see if the issue changes at all. We have a LOT of upcoming changes to Big Box theming and some of them may help resolve some of the issues you are seeing.

Excellent then! Is there a changelog I could read somewhere? I'm also a little bit afraid as I've heard that the next beta is really broken atm.

[C-Beats]

Yeah, this beta has a lot of big changes and the current release does have some known bugs in. Why I said I would wait until next release, or even wait for the full version to come out where we should have everything ironed out. I just have a feeling some of the changes we made to make some of the new stuff function may affect anything some of the stuff that could be causing what you are seeing and would be nice to find out for sure before making too many more changes.

[Light Sock]

Just now, C-Beats said:

Yeah, this beta has a lot of big changes and the current release does have some known bugs in. Why I said I would wait until next release, or even wait for the full version to come out where we should have everything ironed out. I just have a feeling some of the changes we made to make some of the new stuff function may affect anything some of the stuff that could be causing what you are seeing and would be nice to find out for sure before making too many more changes.

This seems like the reasonable way to go! I'll wait patiently until the next official release! Thanks for your reply!

[C-Beats]

No problem. If I remember I'll hit ya up after the full release and you can let me know if you are still having the problem or if it has gotten better or worse.

[gaialily]

4 hours ago, LiL fleX said:

I been having this same scenario going on with the Retrotastic theme. I start up bigbox with Retrotastic as the active theme and when I select a platform the program freezes in a transition that looks similar to OP's screenshot, the only solution is to hit windows key and it unfreezes. I have tried restarting bigbox and even restarting my PC to see if it was a minor hiccup but it seems to always occur, from what i've gathered though is that it seems to be strictly happening with the Retrotastic theme (at least from my experience) and might be an error in the specific theme folder that is causing it as I have attempted to get the same problem to occur with multiple custom bigbox themes but it has never happened.

It happens very frequently with the coinOps theme for me (every time I go back to platform wheel) , a theme made with the community theme manager too, so as G22 said, it must be something with this software and bigbox.

[Jason Carr]

The new beta is out guys, so let us know if you're still experiencing issues with specific themes. Please turn on debug logging under Tools > Options > General > Debugging in LaunchBox and share the log files with us from when you get a crash; that will help us to figure it out. The log files are located in LaunchBox\Logs once you enable them.

[LiL fleX]

On 3/16/2021 at 5:43 PM, Jason Carr said:

The new beta is out guys, so let us know if you're still experiencing issues with specific themes. Please turn on debug logging under Tools > Options > General > Debugging in LaunchBox and share the log files with us from when you get a crash; that will help us to figure it out. The log files are located in LaunchBox\Logs once you enable them.

So I ran Big Box 6 times with the theme that was giving me the freezing error and only had one instance where it did not occur. Mind you when it occurs the program doesn't crash but becomes stuck with just the first platform selection and the only way of unfreezing it is by hitting the windows key. I labeled the 6 logs by: method of launching bigbox and whether or not I skipped the intro video (assuming if it may have correlation to the loading assets of the theme.) For 3 of logs I launched via a batch file that I have instilled with admin rights (it is my method of launching bigbox with admin privileges from my TV via Moonlight Streaming), two attempts I skipped the intro and for the third I did not. All 3 of those fell to the same result of freezing when selecting a platform. For the next 3 I launched via LaunchBox desktop, on one try it worked flawlessly with no error. Hopefully y'all can find something useful from the logs.

Debug (batch file & skipped intro) attempt 1.log Debug (batch file & skipped intro) attempt 2.log Debug (batch file & DID NOT skip intro).log Debug (launchbox desktop & skipped intro).log Debug (launchbox desktop WITH admin rights & skipped intro).log Debug (launchbox desktop WITH admin rights & DID NOT skip intro) [Freezing issue did not occur in this instance].log

[Jason Carr]

@LiL fleX Thanks for all that troubleshooting. One important thing to note first: it is never a good idea to run LaunchBox or Big Box as admin, and it should never be required. My first recommendation would be to stop running them as admin. We've seen some weird issues with that, so who knows, that could even be the stability problem. Why are you running it as admin in the first place?

[LiL fleX]

3 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

@LiL fleX Thanks for all that troubleshooting. One important thing to note first: it is never a good idea to run LaunchBox or Big Box as admin, and it should never be required. My first recommendation would be to stop running them as admin. We've seen some weird issues with that, so who knows, that could even be the stability problem. Why are you running it as admin in the first place?

For most of the programs I run through LaunchBox it requires admin rights, running LB as admin makes it more convenient to run the programs instead of having to accept a prompt box for game launches.

[Jason Carr]

Just now, LiL fleX said:

For most of the programs I run through LaunchBox it requires admin rights, running LB as admin makes it more convenient to run the programs instead of having to accept a prompt box for game launches.

I see, interesting. I guess it's the first time I've really heard of that. What are the apps that require admin rights?

Just to make sure it's not the issue, it would probably be good to test without admin rights to see if it happens to resolve the issue. It's a weird enough issue that it's not out of the question that it would be caused by the admin rights thing. No need to send us a bunch of log files again; we just need to know if you're still getting the issue without admin rights.

[gaialily]

Personally I don't run bigbox or launchbox with admin rights. And I have freezing too with retrotastic or coinops theme.

The new beta didn't resolve this. 

I use wheelgameview on coinops and when I come back to platform view it freeze most of the time. 

Interessant thing : to be able to use this theme I like, I adapt a unified wheelgameview xaml to be near identical. And now it doesn't freeze anymore.

I assume it's something in the xaml wheelgameview (and the horizontal view too) that do this.

I don't know what are the differences between create a theme with the community theme manager and visual studio, but the code in the xaml seem a little different.

Edited March 19, 2021 by gaialily

[Light Sock]

1 hour ago, gaialily said:

I don't know what are the differences between create a theme with the community theme manager and visual studio, but the code in the xaml seem a little different.

I'm pretty sure it's in how the code is generated from the community theme manager. Have Bigbox or community theme manager updated the XAML version? Maybe some code from the community theme manager isn't supported. Maybe there's no version for XAML but I remember there were versions on XML with Retropie and Recalbox when I was theming for the community.

Unfortunately haven't got the time to test the new beta but I can confirm that pressing the Windows key unfreeze bigbox thus confirming I have the same issue as others.

I don't run Bigbox in Admin mode. I think it could be great though for the reason mentionned above. I can't remember which one, but I got some emulators back then requiring admin rights.

This is really strange!

[Light Sock]

I saw that a new BETA was out. Any news if this issue have been fixed? Thanks!

[Jason Carr]

We've fixed a ton of stability issues in recent betas, so yes, it's possible that it was fixed. We also have a new beta coming out today that has some additional fixes.