Please Fix This MGalaxy... happy to beta test

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Juzzotec
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Joined: Wed Mar 11, 2020 8:02 am

Hi Guys,

Problem 1
MGalaxy and Retroarch do not play nice together... the main issue is since Retroarch relaunches the application on core and game launch.
What happens is the taskbar flickers when loading the game, this is the behaviour of Retroarch... so when launching a game you briefly see the taskbar/desktop. Is there anyway to fix this and make the launch of retroarch cores/games a smooth transition? maybe keeping MGalaxy maximised? I am not sure.

Problem 2
Allow a game database that launches .exe files not links. Using links and cmd.exe makes the opening transition ugly and abnoxious. You see a quick command prompt window then the application launches. It doesn't look clean and similiarly as before its not a great experience.

Features
Please add more platform themes, your themes are the best thing about MGalaxy
Make the transition to emulator startup/shutdown similar to Launchbox
Performance improvements, sometimes the scrolling will lag out - micro stutter

I want to help make this frontend even better, I love the light weight and pure concept. I want to get involved, I am Happy to test out betas for you.
My only question is... how active is the development of MGalaxy?

Please PM me for application testing  ;)
Last edited by Juzzotec on Sat Mar 28, 2020 8:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
jmd
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MGalaxy and Retroarch do not play nice together... the main issue is since Retroarch relaunches the application on core and game launch.
What happens is the taskbar flickers when loading the game, this is the behaviour of Retroarch... so when launching a game you briefly see the taskbar/desktop. Is there anyway to fix this and make the launch of retroarch cores/games a smooth transition? maybe keeping MGalaxy maximised? I am not sure.
There's an attribute in UserSystems.xml that allow the frontend to be launched in 'hidden' mode. I can see that it's already set to 'hidden=true'...don't know what to do more, sorry
Allow a game database that launches .exe files not links. Using links and cmd.exe makes the opening transition ugly and abnoxious. You see a quick command prompt window then the application launches. It doesn't look clean and similiarly as before its not a great experience.
Maybe there set 'hidden' to true? I can see that it's set to 'false'. Otherwise, I think that the problem is (the developer would have to confirm) that mGalaxy needs an emulator (so, an application exe) to be set for each system. If you leave the 'Application' field empty the system is deactivated. So maybe find on the net a utility that would run an application from a command line without showing a command prompt!??
Performance improvements, sometimes the scrolling will lag out - micro stutter
Are your bitmap files optimized? The only time I get a lag is when one or more media I'm using are larger than needed. For instance if you're using a 1920x1080 image for background, the same size for screenshot, the same size for the video...and why not the same size for the cover or logo ;) ...no surprise, mGalaxy is trying to load all those files concurrently and the lag is actually a wait for the hard drive to complete loading.
Last edited by jmd on Tue Mar 31, 2020 9:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
Juzzotec
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Joined: Wed Mar 11, 2020 8:02 am

Thanks for replying... :)
There's an attribute in UserSystems.xml that allow the frontend to be launched in 'hidden' mode. I can see that it's already set to 'hidden=true'...don't know what to do more, sorry
Yes this is already set to hidden but I think part of the issue is the way games are launched and then MGalaxy is minimised. Its during this time potentially when the taskbar flicker occurs. Have you tested retroarch and are you seeing the same thing?
Maybe there set 'hidden' to true? I can see that it's set to 'false'. Otherwise, I think that the problem is (the developer would have to confirm) that mGalaxy needs an emulator (so, an application exe) to be set for each system. If you leave the 'Application' field empty the system is deactivated. So maybe find on the net a utility that would run an application from a command line without showing a command prompt!??
I will look into this but it seems easy enough to allow a games list to launch from exe. May be useful for many people too.
Are your bitmap files optimized? The only time I get a lag is when one or more media I'm using are larger than needed. For instance if you're using a 1920x1080 image for background, the same size for screenshot, the same size for the video...and why not the same size for the cover or logo ;) ...no surprise, mGalaxy is trying to load all those files concurrently and the lag is actually a wait for the hard drive to complete loading.
My images are from screenscraper and emumovies, this is mainly with loading videos wheel art and screenshot files in Arcade Room theme.

I feel if the developer can chime in, we can maybe improve the launch scenario with different emulators but mainly retroarch.
Juzzotec
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[glow=red,2,300]@mgalaxy are you interested in fixing integration with Retroarch?[/glow]
jmd
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[quote="Juzzotec"]
[glow=red,2,300]@mgalaxy are you interested in fixing integration with Retroarch?[/glow]
[/quote]
Forgive me...but by fixing, you mean preventing the taskbar to show during a fraction of sec when RetroArch is launching?
Last edited by jmd on Thu Apr 09, 2020 8:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Juzzotec
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[quote="jmd"]
[quote="Juzzotec"]
[glow=red,2,300]@mgalaxy are you interested in fixing integration with Retroarch?[/glow]
[/quote]
Forgive me...but by fixing, you mean preventing the taskbar to show during a fraction of sec when RetroArch is launching?
[/quote]Yes it doesn't look great and may be an easy fix, launch option or mgalaxy option that just needs to remain on top.

This doesn't happen in Launchbox for comparison.

Sent from my SM-N975F using Tapatalk
Last edited by Juzzotec on Thu Apr 09, 2020 11:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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mgalaxy
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[quote="Juzzotec"]
[glow=red,2,300]@mgalaxy are you interested in fixing integration with Retroarch?[/glow]
[/quote]Not for now, cause I'm working on a new feature that takes all my free time...but yes, why not!?
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