Default theme stretches on failed game launch

[Zing]

@stigzler What is your hardware?
What's your version of Recalbox (say the version, don't say "the last one")?
Did you build your Recalbox yourself, or download a ready-made image from the internet, or did you buy everything ready?

[stigzler]

Hi Zing

Raspberry Pi 3 b+
Version 7.1.1-Reloaded
Installed via RaspberryPi Imager

Video of the problem:

https://youtu.be/R8xrsoRM_a0

It's not just on MSX, it's also on C64 and others, I'm sure.

[stigzler]

Any ideas anyone? Is this a bug with Recalbox?

[Zing]

@stigzler Strange, have you modified any image settings? Smoothing? Overlay? Pixel Perfect?
With a clean configuration, without modifications, this should not happen.

Can you test on another monitor / TV?

Or, can you redo the installation and try with a clean installation?

[RustyMG]

I have also just had this problem.
Setup an old Pi2 with clean install of 7.11, copied over a few systems, loaded up my first game to try it out, Sanxion tape version on the c64, and when I exited back out, it did exactly as shown in your video.

Just tried Crash Bandicoot on PSX and on exiting game it did the exact same.

Im sure its the front end theme related.
I had made a few changes, to large screen pic, light background and a few other changes and it appeared to lower the resolution - id manually set mine at 720p in the config file.

Going to try and put theme / front end back to normal to see if that fixes it.

[stigzler]

Yes. I'm wondering whether it's theme related. I did a reinstall via pi imager and then incrementally recreated what I did on the malfunctioning installation. So far, nothing has recreated the error.

The only things I can put it down to is using installing NextPixel theme on my malfunctioning installation. IN the video - I've reverted to the default theme. Now on the malfunctioning one, I had next pixel 720p installed (read some advice that if running on pi 3, use 720p for some reason). However, Have the 1080p on the working install, so wondering whether it's got something to do with the 720p version..

Will investigate further once I have some time.

Thanks for the contribution, @RustyMG

[RustyMG]

Oooh, first thing i did was enter the CEA 4 mode (cant remember exactly) to force Recalbox to 720p to save on video RAM...

May try leaving alone to see what happens.....

[stigzler]

@Zing OK - so after a few days of thinking it was my modifying things or the way I installed things and changing things as a result, it turns out it is a bug in Recalbox's vanilla install. See the video below for an example:

https://youtu.be/encKNBAfjNo

Basically, on a fresh install, C64>Rescuing Orc launches fine. However, if you change Games Settings>Shaders Set to Scanlines, it produces the stretched image error + the game does not load.

Weirdly, if you return the setting to none, the game will not load again. I have also confirmed the same behaviour on the MSX game, Night Knight (whilst not in the video, it runs fine prior to changing the Shader Sets to scanlines).

I haven't tested each and every system, but I'm sure this bug will be there for other systems.

I'll see if there's a bug report system somewhere for rb. 3 days of my life I won't get back on the theory that it couldn't be a fault with recalbox....

[Zing]

@stigzler
If you edit the videomode in recalbox.conf on the line:
system.es.videomode=
The game does not start, but, you no longer have the "problem with theme stretches".

I did some tests here and reproduced the problem, but I couldn't help noticing one thing:

Rescuing Orc
Night Knight

Both games are from the same developer:
Juan J. Martínez

And, in both games, the developer name is in the file name, and, I tested renaming the file name by removing the accent from the i, changing to Juan J. Martinez. I changed the name of the picture, and edit the gamelist.
After that, the problem didn't happen anymore.

Can you test?

[stigzler]

Well surely this is still a bug in Recalbox if it can't handle accents in game names/files? Any launcher should be able to handle these as there's potentially thousands!

Also, recalbox are including two files in its release that will cause this bug. Again, this would need some consideration by the developers?

I'm not wishing to sound ungrateful. As someone who's written a lot of software and completed a lot of projects for the retro gaming community, I know how much work they can be and how ungrateful others can be. However, if this was happening on one of my apps, it would be my issue to sort. I wouldn't ask users to ensure that none of their game files had accents in. It shouldn't be a mammoth coding task (just an encoding issues, most likely).

Here's the issue ticket if you want to update it:

https://gitlab.com/recalbox/recalbox/-/issues/1542

I will also post a link their to this thread.

best wishes

[stigzler]

Confirmed: amending the accent in all the references solves the problem.

[Pitch64]

Usually, it's not recommended to have accents in the rom name. As example, at No-Intro, accents are not allowed in rom names following their naming convention.

I'm not sure if this will be considered as a bug by devs, we'll see

[davidb2111]

@Pitch64 True, but that game is shipped with Recalbox, so we have to make it works

Thanks @stigzler for your bug report, we will check that.

[stigzler]

@Pitch64 - I take your point, but as a front end developer myself, you just can't dictate to your users that they can't use any romsets with accented characters in. There a lot of problems with this. Firstly, you may have a set of 2000 where only 3 have an accented filename. You can't ask a user to go through all 2000 and weed out the accented ones. Also, users may lose games without their knowing. I'm also aware that recalbox is french, therefore it would surprise me if they would try to force the anglicisation of all game names (what about french games with a french title?).

The solution is often in things such as database encoding setup etc and shouldn't be too hard a fix. Essentially, I'm easy, but good design would dictate an accommodation of accented game names.