tty2tft Soft & Hardware Add-On (shows core based pictures and videos on a color TFT display)

[MiSTer Consoles]

I did some brief testing with the new script this afternoon. So far everything seems to be working brilliantly. I took a few images for different games, resized them to fit the display, and converted them from png to jpg. When I launched the games those images magically pulled up and they looked very cool on the little display. I did have some questions though:

1) Are png images possible with TTY2TFT? The jpg format does not support transparency apparently. With logo files like the one below you end up with a rectangular image and the background must be filled with some color. However, if the program supported png then I think it would just have a consistent black background throughout the entire display by default.

8 Eyes (USA).png

2) Now that there is the potential to have thousands of new image files, is it possible to use folders or even subfolders to group them together by core instead of having to sort them by name? Perhaps the core name could be used for the folders in order to help the program find the location of the images for a given core?

3) Is it possible to display the core image by default if no game-specific file is found? I noticed there is a graphic that appears when a match can't be made. It would be nice to just continue seeing the core graphic when a game does not have an image available for it.

[Kevh182]

I did some testing. I am using the following logo for Resident Evil Directors Cut from EmuMovies. I converted the PNG to JPG.

Resident Evil - Director's Cut (USA).jpg

When i load the game I see the game logo appear on the TFT display as expected.

image1.jpeg

If I bring up the Mister Menu, the game logo disappears and the core logo appears. In this case the PlayStation logo.

image2.jpeg

The core logo will stay on the TFT after exiting the Mister Menu screen. The only way to get the game logo back is to load a different game and load RE DC again. The same thing happens if I load another game without game artwork (I see the "file not found" as expected) the core (PlayStation) logo appears when bringing up the Mister Menu and stays on the TFT until a different game is loaded.

image3.jpeg

One thing I also noticed. Once the screen saver for the TFT kicks in. It cycles through "Mega Super System" Logo -> "TTY2TFT" logo -> back to the Game logo. When the game logo reappears, it is off center. I did not do any resizing on my end of the logo. I just converted the PNG to JPG. Maybe operator error?

image0.jpeg

This is a great start to adding game artwork to the TFT.

[RealLarry]

1) Are png images possible with TTY2TFT? The jpg format does not support transparency apparently. With logo files like the one below you end up with a rectangular image and the background must be filled with some color. However, if the program supported png then I think it would just have a consistent black background throughout the entire display by default.

Yes, PNG is possible and was on my list, but I dropped that idea. PNG on ESP is somewhat slow to display. The next time consuming difficulty is ESP's slowness in general. Everything is slow on the ESP and I/O operations are very limited, no "search" command available and lookout for available images consist of >=6 steps: OPENSD -> OPENDIR -> EXIST? -> OPEN -> LOAD -> CLOSE This is taking around 1 sec. The culprit is ESP's SD-Framework. The more EXIST operations, the slower it is (see next question)

2) Now that there is the potential to have thousands of new image files, is it possible to use folders or even subfolders to group them together by core instead of having to sort them by name? Perhaps the core name could be used for the folders in order to help the program find the location of the images for a given core?

The slowness of ESP/SD-Framework made it necessary to use alphabetical subfolders. In the beginning of tty2tft I used just /jpg/ but the more pictures I did, the slower it (SD operations) got. I could catch that by using alphabetical subfolders, but think about question 1, if using more and more folder and decisions to take into account, the slower it will get.

3) Is it possible to display the core image by default if no game-specific file is found? I noticed there is a graphic that appears when a match can't be made. It would be nice to just continue seeing the core graphic when a game does not have an image available for it.

Yes, for sure. I'll have to fine tune the IF's and THEN's in my code on MiSTer's side. The changes I did yesterday were a fast-shot to see if its working the way as requested...

[RealLarry]

The core logo will stay on the TFT after exiting the Mister Menu screen. The only way to get the game logo back is to load a different game and load RE DC again. The same thing happens if I load another game without game artwork (I see the "file not found" as expected) the core (PlayStation) logo appears when bringing up the Mister Menu and stays on the TFT until a different game is loaded.

Thanks for your detailed report! I'll have a look to these "issues". It is a bit difficult to see exactly what MiSTer's/Core's code is doing with these informations - and when... every step you are doing in OSD/Filebrowser is resulting in changed informational files which I have to analyze.
Another thing MAY be that the core is doing something wrong or different. While testing these things with only a handful of Computers and Consoles I saw that at least the AtariST core is doing something weird and I couldn't get ANY loaded game to display (the informational files reported a "cancelled" instead an expected "selected" entry in OSD).

That said, I'd say that "it is working by 75% and the rest is technical cosmetic to do"

[Kevh182]

You’re welcome. I’ll do some more testing with different cores and multiple games within each core tested over the weekend to see if they behave differently from the PSX core.

[RealLarry]

I'll do the same here on weekend before further (re-) coding to collect the "what happens where and why (not)".
Best would be if you also post the/some log messages when something misbehaves. See my announcement how to watch the logile.

[RealLarry]

Woah there! That was way easier than I thought: No new line of code, only an addition to an existing line (plus some optimization).
New version attached for your satisfaction.

[MiSTer Consoles]

Woah there! That was way easier than I thought: No new line of code, only an addition to an existing line (plus some optimization).
New version attached for your satisfaction.

A new version already? Looking forward to testing it out. What “new” behaviors should we expect with the updated script?

In regards to using png images I think I can just create new jpgs by placing the logo files on a 480x320 black background in GIMP to get around the transparency issue.

As far as folders go, would adding ones with core names for console/computer artwork to sit along side the alphabetized ones for arcade cores increase the latency of displaying images? Perhaps the code could look for a folder that matches the core name first to find artwork and then go alphabetically if one doesn’t exist?

[RealLarry]

Woah there! That was way easier than I thought: No new line of code, only an addition to an existing line (plus some optimization).
New version attached for your satisfaction.

A new version already? Looking forward to testing it out. What “new” behaviors should we expect with the updated script?

Nothing very special, only a fix about what @Kevh182 discovered some posts above.

As far as folders go, would adding ones with core names for console/computer artwork to sit along side the alphabetized ones for arcade cores increase the latency of displaying images? Perhaps the code could look for a folder that matches the core name first to find artwork and then go alphabetically if one doesn’t exist?

Sounds plausible. Could you send me a handful of pictures and their corresponding roms/disks for a real-life test, please?

How many pictures for a core can we expect? I'm thinking about doing these special subfolders either as

/jpg/c64/
or
/jpg/c64/a/
/jpg/c64/c/
/jpg/c64/c/
and so on...

Problem might be (again), as describes before, that throwing hundreds or thousands of pictures into a single folder will slow down I/O operations of the ESP...

[Kevh182]

I sent you a PM with your ROM/Picture request. When I was adding some artwork last night, I noticed that the updated script seemed to fix the issue with the Mister menu taking away the game picture and reverting back to the core picture. once i get some more artwork transferred to my TFT, I will do some more proper testing.

I'm thinking about doing these special subfolders either as

/jpg/c64/
or
/jpg/c64/a/
/jpg/c64/c/
/jpg/c64/c/
and so on...

This might fix something I noticed last night when I uploaded artwork for "Rally Cross (USA)" for PS1. When I loaded "Rally Cross (USA).chd", the artwork displayed. When I loaded "Rally Cross 2 (USA).chd" that does not have artwork assigned. The TFT picked up artwork for another arcade "Rally" game. So I would assume moving the artwork to "/jpg/PSX/R/" might fix that issue. Again, I will do some proper testing with log messages enabled either tonight or tomorrow.

[RealLarry]

Received, thanks a lot!

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When I loaded "Rally Cross 2" that does not have artwork assigned. The TFT picked up artwork for another arcade "Rally" game.

Yeah, my ESP code is searching for a similar name if none was found earlier. It shortens the given name character by character until something is found, or show "not available" at the very last.

[MiSTer Consoles]

I sent you a PM with your ROM/Picture request. When I was adding some artwork last night, I noticed that the updated script seemed to fix the issue with the Mister menu taking away the game picture and reverting back to the core picture. once i get some more artwork transferred to my TFT, I will do some more proper testing.

I'm thinking about doing these special subfolders either as

/jpg/c64/
or
/jpg/c64/a/
/jpg/c64/c/
/jpg/c64/c/
and so on...

This might fix something I noticed last night when I uploaded artwork for "Rally Cross (USA)" for PS1. When I loaded "Rally Cross (USA).chd", the artwork displayed. When I loaded "Rally Cross 2 (USA).chd" that does not have artwork assigned. The TFT picked up artwork for another arcade "Rally" game. So I would assume moving the artwork to "/jpg/PSX/R/" might fix that issue. Again, I will do some proper testing with log messages enabled either tonight or tomorrow.

Kevh182: Thanks for providing those files.

RealLarry: Let me know if you need any other samples.

Received, thanks a lot!

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When I loaded "Rally Cross 2" that does not have artwork assigned. The TFT picked up artwork for another arcade "Rally" game.

Yeah, my ESP code is searching for a similar name if none was found earlier. It shortens the given name character by character until something is found, or show "not available" at the very last.

I also noticed that some of my console game files like Ghouls and Ghosts and Darius matched with arcade artwork due to their similar naming conventions. I think this is useful to be able to display something related to the game if no exact match on the filename is found. Ideally the core's graphic would display at the very last if there is no match found at all. If other users prefer the "not available" graphic perhaps there could be a user specified toggle for which item is displayed?

[RealLarry]

Another small update. The tty2tft Daemon is now sending CORE+GAME instead of GAME only if log_file_entry=1 is set. This is enough for the ESP to interpret this as an "extended path" without knowing anything about that fact

For your sent examples that means that all pictures have to go the following way to EPS's SD:

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/jpg/320x240/A/Atari2600/Pitfall! - Pitfall Harry's Jungle Adventure (USA).jpg
/jpg/320x240/A/Atari2600/Pitfall II - Lost Caverns (USA).jpg
/jpg/320x240/S/SNES/Super Mario Kart (USA).jpg
/jpg/320x240/S/SNES/Super Metroid (Japan, USA) (En,Ja).jpg

and so on. Note the size, I did this for 320x240 here with resized pictures.
No alphabetical subfolder here for now because I'd to have an extensive rewrite to the ESP code otherwise. This may slow down SD access when throwing thousands of pictures into a single folder, especially then accessing the ESP by FTP. Reports about it are welcome.

[Kevh182]

I tested the latest "tty2tft.sh". I batch converted and resized a couple thousand .png to .jpg images from EmuMovies using ImageMagick. I placed them into /jpg/480x320/<Letter>/<CoreName>/FileName.jpg (i.e. /jpg/480x320/S/SNES/) on the TFT SD card. I pulled the SD card out of the screen to copy them over directly on the SD card on my PC. I did not want to attempt this via FTP

I did this as kind of a stress test to see how the updated script handled many game artwork files in a core folder. The game artwork loads up when there is artwork associated with it. When I load a game without artwork, the TFT goes back to the core artwork. I have not seen the "Not Found" artwork. This is great, i feel like this is a better experience.

If a core has lots of game artwork (PSX folder - 2,897 images). The initial loading of the game artwork is quick. If I load a game without artwork next, while the previous game artwork is loaded, it takes 30 - 60 seconds to load the core artwork. This is expected, as you mentioned there would be delays with thousands of files. Moving to a core with less images, Atari 5200, the script loads game artwork and core artwork very quickly.

Overall, i think this is working great. I will keep tinkering with it some more

[MiSTer Consoles]

I tested the new script today as well. I basically had the same experiences as Kevh182. Everything seems to work extremely well for the most part which is very cool. There are occasional delays with loading a new image when you move from a game that doesn't have an image available to another game/core that does. However, that's a fair compromise to be able to display graphics for each game. I've got lots of images I still need to convert and resize. I'm hoping performance does not slow further with the addition of more files to the SD card.

It does seem that moving large #'s of files around is probably not going to be feasible with FTP thru WiFi. I think most people will want to load the majority of images to the SD card using a PC and then might update a handful of images as needed using FTP.

I think I might have asked this before, but is it possible to access the SD card in the Uno module through a USB hub connected to the DE-10 using FTP like we can do with other devices such as hard drives?

[RealLarry]

Thank you both for the report! Looks like I'm/we're already at or near the finish line!?
I'll do a review and cleanup the next days if nothing unexpected will be repoted.

I think I might have asked this before, but is it possible to access the SD card in the Uno module through a USB hub connected to the DE-10 using FTP like we can do with other devices such as hard drives?

Yes and no. No for our ESP's, yes for newer ones but they aren't available as UNO style boards yet. Looks like the newer ESP32-S2 and -S3 are capable of this feature, also the Raspberry Pico/RP2040 boards, but for our D1-R32 we are bound to WiFi protocols like FTP, WebDAV and similar. Have a look
at this thread for an overview.
That was one of many details why I went further for tty2rpi: To shake off the chains of limitations in many ways.

[MiSTer Consoles]

Thank you both for the report! Looks like I'm/we're already at or near the finish line!?
I'll do a review and cleanup the next days if nothing unexpected will be repoted.

I think I might have asked this before, but is it possible to access the SD card in the Uno module through a USB hub connected to the DE-10 using FTP like we can do with other devices such as hard drives?

Yes and no. No for our ESP's, yes for newer ones but they aren't available as UNO style boards yet. Looks like the newer ESP32-S2 and -S3 are capable of this feature, also the Raspberry Pico/RP2040 boards, but for our D1-R32 we are bound to WiFi protocols like FTP, WebDAV and similar. Have a look
at this thread for an overview.
That was one of many details why I went further for tty2rpi: To shake off the chains of limitations in many ways.

Thanks again for implementing this functionality RealLarry! Do you think you will add the game image matching to the TTY2RPi project as well? I'd still like to give that one a try at some point. It definitely sounds more robust and flexible than the Uno based displays.

[RealLarry]

Thanks again for implementing this functionality RealLarry! Do you think you will add the game image matching to the TTY2RPi project as well? I'd still like to give that one a try at some point. It definitely sounds more robust and flexible than the Uno based displays.

Yes, and it is already implemented, but not yet published. Almost all tty2* project are having the same codebase, therefore I was implementing this to tty2tft and tty2rpi in parallel.

[MiSTer Consoles]

Thanks again for implementing this functionality RealLarry! Do you think you will add the game image matching to the TTY2RPi project as well? I'd still like to give that one a try at some point. It definitely sounds more robust and flexible than the Uno based displays.

Yes, and it is already implemented, but not yet published. Almost all tty2* project are having the same codebase, therefore I was implementing this to tty2tft and tty2rpi in parallel.

Very cool!

[Kevh182]

Thank you for fulfilling this request for the TFT. It definitely adds a new dimension to the Mister experience.

[RealLarry]

I'm very glad that you both are very glad Thank you both for tickling me. Even when it was some hours of work, it was a handful lines of code at the end.

[RealLarry]

After cleaning up and last handcraft on fixing small things it went public now! Just run update_tty2tft.sh on MiSTer and enjoy zillions of new pictures for consol- and computer cores now! (Same goes to tty2rpi but it will get it's own announcement later)

BTW looks like I've found an old but small bug and not noticed so far: When returning to Menu after a core and screensaver is activated, screensaver rotates between clock, MiSTer logo, tty2tft logo and "last played core/logo". The latter shouldn't happen in Menu and need some investigation.

[MiSTer Consoles]

After cleaning up and last handcraft on fixing small things it went public now! Just run update_tty2tft.sh on MiSTer and enjoy zillions of new pictures for consol- and computer cores now! (Same goes to tty2rpi but it will get it's own announcement later)

BTW looks like I've found an old but small bug and not noticed so far: When returning to Menu after a core and screensaver is activated, screensaver rotates between clock, MiSTer logo, tty2tft logo and "last played core/logo". The latter shouldn't happen in Menu and need some investigation.

I ran the update yesterday evening and all seems to be working as expected. Thanks again for implementing this feature. It really enhances the user experience quite a bit for me personally.

I have noticed that if I go into a core too soon after the MiSTer boots that the Uno has trouble pulling up the graphic for that console (and subsequently for each game I launch). Do you think that is an issue with the Uno or perhaps with MiSTer still undergoing some booting processes and failing to write the core name for your program to grab? It's not a huge deal as I just need to be patient and not go into a core right away after powering on the MiSTer. Just wondering if there could be some enhancement on the MiSTer side if that would help.

[RealLarry]

I have noticed that if I go into a core too soon after the MiSTer boots that the Uno has trouble pulling up the graphic for that console (and subsequently for each game I launch). Do you think that is an issue with the Uno or perhaps with MiSTer still undergoing some booting processes and failing to write the core name for your program to grab? It's not a huge deal as I just need to be patient and not go into a core right away after powering on the MiSTer. Just wondering if there could be some enhancement on the MiSTer side if that would help.

I'm more confused about the "and subsequently for each game I launch". Yes, if you are starting a core faster than MiSTer could complete its boot process all tty2 startup scripts aren't up then and will miss the "changed core". But normally, after returning to Menu and/or starting another core, the new core/game should be displayed.
I can't reproduce that: all my MiSTer data (cores and ROMs/games) is stored on a NAS and I have always to wait until all is found, mounted and initialized

[MiSTer Consoles]

I have noticed that if I go into a core too soon after the MiSTer boots that the Uno has trouble pulling up the graphic for that console (and subsequently for each game I launch). Do you think that is an issue with the Uno or perhaps with MiSTer still undergoing some booting processes and failing to write the core name for your program to grab? It's not a huge deal as I just need to be patient and not go into a core right away after powering on the MiSTer. Just wondering if there could be some enhancement on the MiSTer side if that would help.

I'm more confused about the "and subsequently for each game I launch". Yes, if you are starting a core faster than MiSTer could complete its boot process all tty2 startup scripts aren't up then and will miss the "changed core". But normally, after returning to Menu and/or starting another core, the new core/game should be displayed.
I can't reproduce that: all my MiSTer data (cores and ROMs/games) is stored on a NAS and I have always to wait until all is found, mounted and initialized

I'll do some more testing today. When this happens I usually do a "soft reset" from the core's menu and that seems to confuse the Uno further. That could be the issue. Should that action trigger the menu graphic to be displayed?

[RealLarry]

I have noticed that if I go into a core too soon after the MiSTer boots that the Uno has trouble pulling up the graphic for that console (and subsequently for each game I launch). Do you think that is an issue with the Uno or perhaps with MiSTer still undergoing some booting processes and failing to write the core name for your program to grab? It's not a huge deal as I just need to be patient and not go into a core right away after powering on the MiSTer. Just wondering if there could be some enhancement on the MiSTer side if that would help.

I'm more confused about the "and subsequently for each game I launch". Yes, if you are starting a core faster than MiSTer could complete its boot process all tty2 startup scripts aren't up then and will miss the "changed core". But normally, after returning to Menu and/or starting another core, the new core/game should be displayed.
I can't reproduce that: all my MiSTer data (cores and ROMs/games) is stored on a NAS and I have always to wait until all is found, mounted and initialized

I'll do some more testing today. When this happens I usually do a "soft reset" from the core's menu and that seems to confuse the Uno further. That could be the issue. Should that action trigger the menu graphic to be displayed?

You mean the "soft reset" from ESP's touch menu? Then could be...if no or no stable communication established to MiSTer (the tty2tft Daemon) weird things can happen.

[MiSTer Consoles]

You mean the "soft reset" from ESP's touch menu? Then could be...if no or no stable communication established to MiSTer (the tty2tft Daemon) weird things can happen.

Actually I'm talking about doing a soft reset of MiSTer using the "Reboot [Hold --> Cold Reboot]" option at the bottom of the second menu page for each core.