New XMB

RetroArch General
#1

The new XMB looks really nice, but I’m having some issues with it.

  1. Banding. There doesn’t appear to be any dithering used in the gradients so there’s quite noticeable banding. How noticeable it is depends on the color selected. Undersea seems to demonstrate it quite well.

I took a screenshot of one corner to show the banding, and then recreated the gradient using dither to show how it should look. [ul] [li]Undersea [/li][li]Recreated with dither [/li][/ul]

And here are the same two images with the levels adjusted to make the difference easier to see. [ul] [li]Undersea [/li][li]Dithered [/li][/ul]

  1. Options not wrapping around. There seems to be an increasing number of options in RetroArch which cannot be wrapped around any more. One example is the new Menu Shader Pipeline option. It wraps around when going right, but there’s a hard stop at Off when going left. Please follow the Navigation Wrap-Around setting for this.

The option where I actually encounter this the most is the Aspect Ratio Index control. It has a huge list of options and it’s very frustrating when you accidentally go one over, and have to loop around the whole thing again.

Soft-stops seem like they would be a better option: Tapping left/right will always wrap around. Holding left/right will stop on the first option when it wraps around, but you can still tap (and hold) left or right again to start cycling through the list in either direction.

Hard stops where you cannot wrap left are awful.

  1. XMB Shadows are focused on being pretty rather than functional. Can we get an additional option which adds “functional” shadows? Though I like the animated XMB when I launch RetroArch, I use a transparent background image when I’m running a game so that I can shader configuration changes as I make them, without having to constantly toggle the menus on/off. The new shadows help, but it would be a lot clearer if they were more like an outline than a drop shadow, with a much higher opacity.

[ul] [li]Shadows Off [/li][li]Shadows On [/li][/ul]

  1. Options in a list should not be using the toggle switch graphic for “Off”. Toggle switches should only be used when the only options are on or off.
#2

You’re right. Your dithered gradients do look better; no apparent banding.

Regarding options not wrapping, I’ve also experienced this. I just tested in the latest version and noticed that the “Aspect Ratio Index” control does not wrap left.

An text outline option would be nice for transparent in-game menu backgrounds indeed.

Regarding the toggle switch graphic for “off”, I’m with you there. Text just saying “off” would be preferable.

You seem competent. Do you have any implementation ideas for fixing these issues? If so, can you code some fixes and submit pull requests on github? I’m sure they would be greatly appreciated.

#3

Unfortunately I only know how to fix these things from an image point of view, I don’t know what is required to fix them via shaders/code.

#4

Another issue that I’m experiencing after updating to the latest nightly: Setting menu_shader_pipeline in my core-config overrides is now being written to retroarch.cfg when I load that core.

My core configs set this to 0 so that I can use a transparent background, while my retroarch config is set to 2. Now when I load up any cores this is being saved to my retroarch config as well, so when I exit a core I get a black background instead of the animated background.

#6

They’re overrides. I’ve done a bit more testing and it only seems to happen when I use the “close” option in the menus to quit a game.