Custom D.E.O.T. V2.0+/Clockwork OS v0.5 image - With customised DEOT interface, Kernel 5.7, Optional 1400MHz OC, Debian 10 Buster, Retroarch 1.9.0, Mupen64+ plus more! (Current build: 200903)

I don’t know if anyone has issue with some GBA games on gPSP standalone emulator (I don’t like RetroArch because of its battery and CPU consumption). I had a blank white screen when starting some Pokemon games (FireRed, Ruby).
Googling around and found that gPSP requires special configurations for some specific games to run correctly.
Copying game_config.txt file from Github repo in gpSP for gameshell alone build to /home/cpi/apps/emulators will resolve this. :smiley:

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Oh damn, thanks for finding that! I had no idea about that, having not tried that combo! I will definitely include this in the next release! Thanks so much!

Also, do you actually find that retroarch uses more battery/cpu cycles? Is this a feel thing, or actually by SSHing and viewing the process/number of threads etc.
I think by default, the 5.3.6 uses the performance governor, so it would probably be running full speed all the time, without any throttling. I haven’t looked into this much more, re: retroarch specifically, but that is definitely something good to potentially know!

Is anyone aware of a way to make the text on Drastic’s built-in menus larger? It’s absolutely unreadable on the tiny GameShell screen.

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Jav, I just wanted to say thank you so much for this build. You fot me completely re-excited aboit the CPI again with this. I absolutely hated the cluttered file structure that I just couldn’t wrap my head around and the bland UI was completely off putting to me when I got mine a year ago.

This build has fixed so many things I hated and has made me understand so much more whats going on behind the hood.

Thanks so much, bud. I really appreciate all the hard work. This thing rules!

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Hullo! Welcome to the forums. I’m afraid it doesn’t seem as though you can really change the DPI, short of plugging it into an external screen via HDMI.
Most of the functions can be edited via the config.
The fact it has a GUI is a step up from mupen64plus and mednafen.
If anything we’d need to use some kind of GUI or front end.
I’ve tried emailing the author of the emulator for the source code. According to his FAQ, if you seem to be genuine, he will provide it. I linked this forum, the community and the thread to show where our genuine intentions and ambitions lie. I haven’t heard back; I’m assuming possibly because he now focuses more on his android apps, which are paid for content.
I could be wrong, but if we want to change the DPI of the GUI, we would need to have the source code.

@Cha0 Thank you so much for your kind words! What you said was exactly what I was hoping to achieve, ie show the entire process of modifying the OS, step by step as I’m thinking things out. I’m not a coder or software engineer by trade, and just a regular “user” like everyone else. If I can even just show people where to find information, then my job is done!
I agree! The directory structure was indeed in a confusing state, with a strange naming directory structure for rom placement.

Re: bland UI, I’m wanting to eventually make a new UI from scratch, having contiguity throughout. Ie all of the consoles/items having the same feel. I’m wondering how far we can actually push the Awesome™ UI.

It really means a lot to hear that people are getting enjoyment and rekindled love for the console! I will continue to make things exciting for as long as I can! Let me know if any suggestions you’d like, and I’ll see what I can do! Keep me busy. :slight_smile:

Could I ask if anyone is willing to do a Retroarch core update via the online update within Retroarch, and test as many games as possible for any changes; be it improvements or incompatibilities. Ive only really tested the consoles that I use (which is most but not all) and am nowhere near close to testing EVERY game on each console.

I was hesitant to do it with the recent releases, given the number of changes that have been made across the board, and the fact that generally most of the Retroarch cores run pretty well.
See here for the core change list.
https://www.libretro.com/index.php/libretro-cores-progress-report-april-2-2020/

Of course, I have it always updated on my day to machine, but I only play the games that I play.

Keep in mind, this will only update Retroarch cores, and not standalone emulators.

Also can I get a confirmation on whether the colecovision emulator actually works? Another thread had a user report it not working. Likewise with Fuse, UAE and Lynx. I have never used any of these emulators, or have Roms to test them with.

Yeah, RetroArch (RA) battery drain is just my skeptical thought. I’ve just do a quick test on one GBA game, and the answer is: It depends:

  • gpSP standalone emulator: it eats a hell out of CPU (almost full load one core)
  • RA using gpSP core: it’s much cooler, CPU usage is around 50% (single core) most of the time
  • RA using mGBA: it’s another CPU eater, always over 90% of one core

I see that RA is not a bad guy, it’s just the core who stealing my CPU and battery so bad :smiley:

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i use retroarch gpsp with only 2 cores at 600mhz …

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@javelinface Just want to let you know that I changed mednafen.cfg for the virtual boy. Now it is in mono scope mode (black & white), bilinear interpolation is turned on, the picture quality is much better, buttons layout is in SNES mode, and I made new keyboard shortcuts for shoulder buttons (L1- decrease save slot, R1 - increase, L2 - save, R2 - load).
But my shoulder buttons is modded into the standard shell so it is reversed upside down, so if you using standard layout you need to reverse key inputs values in the config file (just search in the file strings “save_state” and “load_state”, “state_slot_dec” and “state_slot_inc” and reverse key values)

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You absolute champion! I was hoping to find a way to make it look less over layed. That said I wonder if we can use old school red/blue style cellophane 3d glasses to achieve a 3d effect. Or if it’s even worth it haha.
Thanks for this! Is it okay if I provide it in the next release?
Also, have you tried your hand at configuring mednafen for any of the other consoles?

Sure you can use it :ok_hand:
I haven’t tried to tweak other cores because I only needed VB and I don’t see any point because of other alternatives. Do you think it is worth of trying?
Anyway, it is easy to do, just edit mednafen.cfg file in any text editor using this documentation:
https://mednafen.github.io/documentation/

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The annoying part is specifying where each bios is, and praying that you don’t change too much at once, and accidentally break something else!
I started doing a batch remap of controls, and stupidly did all of them at once. Result: I broke the config, and felt too distraught to bother debugging it to find out exactly what went wrong hahah!

From what I’ve heard, mednafen particularly excels at virtual boy, wonder swan and Dreamcast; Although I haven’t tested dreamcast yet. I’m not holding my breath! Maybe a tonight job! :wink:
Edit: Oops! Nope, it doesn’t support Dreamcast!

I’d consider using solely mednafen if I was to say, have a setup using emulationstation. Mednafen runs enough things fairly well, that I might consider emulationstation as a similar kind of launcher as Retroarch.

As it stands, my emulationstation is using a bit of a frankensteined mix of Retroarch and standalones. It would be nice to have everything standardised.

@podmaz - Just looked at the config. The Bi-Linear filtering although pretty is possibly hitting the frame rate pretty hard. Going to test things a bit more! Otherwise, it’s looking very nice!
Edit: Turning Bi linear interpolation barely makes any change to the frame rate. The fact that the emulation looks way better means I’d be happy to take the 1 - 2 frame hit. Good call! :slight_smile:

I see you’ve done a pretty similar thing to what I did re: Control mapping. I thought it was the opposite at first, but that’s because I was comparing my “GM” console, and not my day to day one where I made the changes ;). SNES layout for life.

Before I knew about the SDL can mode re: key mapping, I made a little conversion chart. Might be helpful for others wanting to modify their mednafen scripts.

14 = A

13 = B

12 = X

24 = Y

11 = Shift A L2

15 = Shift B R2

28 = Shift X L1

18 = Shift Y R1

44 = select

40 = start

Down = 81

Left = 80

Right = 79

Up = 82

I’ve configured the majority of the mednafen console key binds.
That’s not to say that everything necessarily runs, or runs well. Eg. SNES runs awfully!
Probably the most noteworthy consoles emulated are Virtual boy; which was the reason for embarking on this journey, Wonderswan; something that may be a bit niche and NES; which is possibly a replacement candidate for FCEUX, which now runs terribly.
Here it is.
https://pastebin.com/wvkPtp6x
I never grew up with a sega console, so can’t really vouch for how it “feels” configuration wise for games, given sega has a (3x2)+2 vs a [(2x2)+(2+2)]+2 config. I mapped it as close as I could.
I haven’t done any turbo keys, since I don’t feel that they’re necessary. There will be some overlap of controls for state save toggle/load/save, using @podmaz’s config above. If you ever decided to actually emulate something that uses trigger buttons, you’ll need to disable them.

In the file, /home/cpi/launcher/sys.py/UI/page.py, on line 116, there’s this convenient bit of info.


Just tested putting a file named “background.png” into there.
Yup! Looks like the mode made it into the official release!

What this means is, if we put a file called “background.png” into the skin’s root, it will be displayed as the background. Neat!

First attempt. Eh, not that great.

background
Just put together this subtle little background. Might use it next time. Might not. But the option is now there.


(That’s with the brightness at max - it’s not actually that apparent; Just did it to illustrate the background in action)

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Here’s another take

background
Alternative background. I think I like this more. Looks less like a failing LCD/bird poo.

And finally I think I’ve settled on this one:

The question is, would anyone actually want that in the default DEOT Launcher? It’s now deviating away from what the original DEOT OS looked like, but hopefully still keeping it spiritually in the same realm of what it would have looked like, had this page.py mod existed when DEOT was first made.

Thoughts?

  • Include retro vector background
  • Keep it as nothing

0 voters

I may have been inspired by this meme

Files below. Also, check out the alternative DEOT Light variant


background backgroundL

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New update!

DEOT v2+ Build 200423
23rd of April 2020

  • Activate the extra mednafen modes, keybinds, and optimisations, eg bios paths etc (they’re currently hidden in the apps/launcher menu); in particular addressing virtual boy appearance
  • Add in the gpsp game config file see here
  • Fixed some line colours in the settings page
  • Include “hacker man” vector grid background
  • Disabled beetleVB, because mednafen is just better in every way
  • Alternative DEOT Light theme included
Future fixes
  • Doctoring all the icons to be used in the default theme, so there are no longer just initials representing the new apps
  • Continue to try and get the airplane and storage menu settings pages working
  • Do an apt-get full-upgrade, and pray nothing breaks
  • Provide an optional script to install emulationstation
  • Optional Abbaye des morts script - pending How to install l’Abbaye des Morts?

This is being uploaded to the google drive from the original post, then will shortly appear on mega.

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separate data (roms) to an other new partition would be good, allowing flash the updated os to partition 2 without deleting and retransfering the wholes user games

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Definitely something I’ve been thinking of! That would definitely make flashing new releases easier.
Or potentially harder, providing instructions that are easy for the “every day” user to write individual partitions.

Ha I’m getting flash backs of Android image writing; specifying system, data and cache partitions. Been a while since I did that?

This would however fragment a lot of the tutorials reference things. Although just making everything use symbolic links would make most things work. However that would just be for things that I define in the image.

I fear I will need to be here forever, or hand the torch to someone else to maintain this image, and provide tech support for every user who will question why they can’t install or modify action.config files etc. Looking at recent threads, it’s hard enough as it is!

But on that note, like you said in another post, 80% or the information in the forums are now out of date and no longer 100% relevant. The point of the image ultimately was to provide solutions for people who have problems. So perhaps setting a new standard starts here with us, the users.

This might be something to bring up with the developers, re standardising things that will be prevalent from now on. Something as major as a separate partition would be something I’m sure most people would want to jump onto, as long as it is officially supported. The last thing I want to do is fragment my image from the mainline release too much.

@yong @hal @Veronica - who would be the person to contact in order to suggest large scale changes to the mainline clockwork OS for future releases, short of making pull requests on github.
Something like a separate partition for data would be an excellent addition, and would allow streamlined future maintenance/OS system partition upgrades.

man, I just re-flashed your image yesterday after messing up the stock 0.5 :smiley:

But now, i’m on your latest build, because of the light theme is so addictable. I can’t stand the night mode on that screen anymore :dizzy_face:
Icons and text color in light theme are a little inconsistance, though :stuck_out_tongue: I think it will much cooler if they’re in black

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Thanks for reporting back! I can always trust you to check every detail - And it really helps!
I actually haven’t tested out the Light theme too much - I just put it together “for fun” messing about with backgrounds, and thought “hey, this kinda looks good!” Let me know which icons in particular are less consistent, and I can do an emergency hot fix :slight_smile:

I’ll eventually do a batch run to make all the icons black and white, or possibly even a sepia shade. Here’s my master file of all the icons, represented as layers in photoshop.

Essentially, I would enable layers as I needed them, edit them, and then export them as pngs. Admittedly, not all the layers are named correctly, as I just used this for my own internal usage mainly.
It would be a simply matter of selecting a layer, and changing the mode to black and white.

Also, changing the selection box and all the other UI elements would require pretty much the same treatment to the contents of skin_name/sys.py/gameshell/.
It’s not difficult per se, just repetitive. I could probably smash it out in an hour or two.
The text shouldn’t be green. Uh oh. Please tell me the text isn’t green on yours.

I’m not sure if I linked it earlier or not, but I’m eventually wanting to do a port of the Nier Automata UI.


Or at least heavily inspired by it. That’s why I was looking into changing the background, to enable to art deco style header/footer decorations. I admit. The dark theme was getting a bit old, and I thought I’d spice things up a little bit.

It’s like on my Nintendo Switch - I got a new one recently, and thought “Hey what’s this cool new bright theme? I love it!” - completely forgetting it’s the default one. Same with Twitter, my Phone, and heck! Even the forums! It’s like they should be featuring a “non dark mode” as a feature! haha!

For a new theme, essentially, I would be using the Photoshop PSD, and subtituting out the hexagon for whatever shape I decide to use in future, then running a batch file to generate the new icons; mainly for things like emulators etc; things that I’d like to try and keep relatively consistent in style. Other things like the home menu items, I’d stylistically change acording to the theme. And of course, I’d need to change the hexagonal section cursor to match the new shape too.

I’m glad that someone has fiddled with it to try out the new stuff! Keep at it, and let me know what else needs fixing! I’m so sorry I released it RIGHT after you flashed a new copy! Ahhh!

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