I noticed some strange random flickers on gp2x screen very unpleasant. =(
thank's in advance to fix this bug
Marcus.Zone
maybe update youre GP2X ?
it's not the gp2x, seem it's glbasic
(i have the last firmware) .
thank you
thats the GP2X ;)
all games written in glbasic have this problem on gp2x ;/
yes, on your GP2X ;)
There is no other with the same problem ;/
Sorry for my bad English. (google)
I pence begin to know the glbasic on gp2x, I just wear two games, Poker and Puckman.
I asked several programmers on gp2x test if they had the same propleme flash with the glbasic.
Indeed this problem is on display all the games glbasic and all gp2x.
If you deny this problem and do not débugez, I should therefore change the language to get a quality display correctly on my next games gp2x.
Other people that I talk about this bug on other posts:
http://www.glbasic.com/forum/index.php?topic=1669.0
"I also noticed some strange random flickers on gp2x screen"
http://www.glbasic.com/forum/index.php?topic=1838.0
"Nice game but i wonder why the screen flashing, i have notified that is on many games writted with Glbasic on gp2x, anyone know why gp2x games with GlBasic flash?"
...
QuoteOther people that I talk about this bug on other posts:
http://www.glbasic.com/forum/index.php?topic=1669.0
Thats a soundproblem :noggin:
Quotehttp://www.glbasic.com/forum/index.php?topic=1838.0
there is one other with your problem, but no more ;)
Something wrong on your GP2X, but i dont know what!
Quasist : "I also noticed some strange random flickers on gp2x screen"
Thats a soundproblem ?
Grz- :"Nice game but i wonder why the screen flashing, i have notified that is on many games writted with Glbasic on gp2x, anyone know why gp2x games with GlBasic flash?
there is one other with your problem, but no more ? Grz > heliuse ?
It is easier to say that is the gp2x bug than a glbasic bug
Strange that my GP2x bug only with games coded in gbasic ! :rolleyes: ...
Can you please post your game so we can try it? I have never had any flickering on our GP2X.
Its also very easy to complain that ist's not working but try debugging something without having the actual problematic item. It's like telling your car-dealer that you have troubles with the car and then hang up the phone :-)
ALL gp2x games coded in Glbasic .
buy glasses :rolleyes:
:offtopic:
Dear Helios,
we have started with wrong feet :-)
I have writen dozen programs with GLBasic (GP2XPaint,
GP2X_TLI, BisfoG, ADIC2X,GP2XInitSound etc.) but
I don't seen this problem.
Please post the version of your firmware and GP2X
version (F100 or F200), if you use batteries or plug.
And the name of one program (for test) which you
see the big problem !
Thanks,
Neurox
I agree with heliuse.
This is not the GP2X, i see this problem on some GP2X games written in GlBasic but it's hard to see it for peoples who don't have the eye or simply don't get attention to it, for example, try the game "B'lox" on GP2X, stay at the intro screen (with the image of the GlBasic competition), after some seconds or minutes (depending when it want to show :p) you will surely notice a quick flicker... :)
It's not the GP2X because i play several games and emulators on it, i code on it too and all my stuff don't have this flicker, GlBasic games have it. (i don't code in GlBasic)
BTW: B'lox intro don't have any sounds played. ;)
GLBasic games do flicker occasionally on GP2X machines - I have an F100 and an F200 (and lovely it is too, thankyou Gernot and the other judges). But it's not a big deal. Flickering may just be one frame in a second and not at all regular (it can be seconds or minutes between flickering).
This is not a sound problem but it is noticable, although honestly it's not something I worry about. It would probably take more time to diagnose and fix than it is worth. It's a tiny little niggle in the grand scheme of things and I think Gernot (and everyone involved in GLBasic) should be applauded for what has been done with the language.
It's not necessarily a bug, just an occurrence and one that I just ignore TBH. But it does exist.
a game programming language should display perfectly
That's just not possible. There will ALWAYS be bugs and glitches in code and displays. Even big games like GTA IV aren't perfect - there's loads of glitches, bugs and pop-up in pretty much every game. Some don't matter so much (like flickering on a GP2X), whereas others are atmosphere killers.
You have to appreciate that sometimes there is more work involved in finding and curing problems than it's actually worth - even professional game studios don't fix every bug that they know about.
Gernot is a one man army, working on the ONLY commercial programming language that compiles for the GP2X. There is only so much that he can do. I'd rather he implemented new features and fixed other bugs than spend time on something so trivial. Maybe he'll get around to looking at the issue - I know he has looked into it in the past, as it was a lot worse then, so he might know where the problem lies.
But you also have to remember the GP2X isn't exactly a quality bit of kit and it's build quality and support is less than satisfactory. Are you writing to them to ask why the volume control is software only, or why their headphone jacks break off? Or why the battery life is so crap? Why does it take so long to boot up? etc. etc. etc.
Accept it for the time being. Maybe it'll get sorted, maybe it won't, but whatever the case it's not a game killer.
It's different, GTA IV and others console games or PC games are based actually on a API like OpenGL, Direct3D etc... which provide all basics things for displaying stuff on the screen, same in 2D, and these API should be PERFECT because it's the display base for some games... after, it's just a inherent problem on how the game is programmed.
When you code in Basic you can't have the same control as a low level language has... but i think peoples who pay 60€+ for a game language can have a perfect display, because it's the base for a game. I'm ok with the GP2X quality, i'm patient so i don't care to the boot time, the battery life ? With a good 2600mah it's not a problem. The GP2X screen have a good quality, all works correctly for basics stuffs, it's not perfect for extended stuff but it's perfect for basic things and GlBasic should have a perfect display too because it's the base.
I know it take time to fix it, but in ~2years (i don't know when GlBasic come to GP2X) it should be already fixed. :)
And no it's not the only commercial programming language on GP2X, Game Editor is too. (ok it's not a full language but it provide a advanced scripting system similar to a basic language)
Are you using the mmuhack? I have noticed this flickering, if i use mmuhack.o in "c++" programs. Delete the file mmuhack.o and check, if the display always is flickering.
Thomas
It's funny, I had seen it happen before but not really noticed it as it seems so infrequent.
I would agree, it needs to be fixed, but on the grand scale of things I would not rank it as a high priority. Hopefully Gernot will be able to fix it at some point. I don't know any of the history behind the previous flicker issues but as Ian suggests it may not be a simple thing to track down so it could take some time and I'd agree that there are other things that are probably a higher priority right now.
For example, there was a problem on the PocketPC where after an amount of time the display would just lock up. Now that is a serious problem and it took some time to track it down and fix it.
Gernot has done a fantastic job to date with GLBasic, but I also understand the amount of time he can spend on it is limited being something he does mostly in his spare time. I think it's fantastic that GLB compiles for so many platforms, with very little (if any) modification of code as long as you design with a broad scope of support in mind.
Personally I'd like for the PocketPC music support to be completed and for the bug with Music / Media shoeboxes on the GP2X to be fixed first, but that aligns to my priorities ;) I'd also like to see built in support for MOD/IT music on ALL platforms and would rank this a higher priority too.
I'm sure an improvement to this bug will come at some point ... just maybe not today :)
There is no difference between a game and a programming language - there will ALWAYS be some things that don't work perfectly, but work well enough to be more than passable. Sometimes the consumer doesn't notice. Sometimes they do. Sometimes it isn't that important. Obviously to you this is.
In a perfect world there would ne no flaws in software or hardware. But this isn't a perfect world and there are flaws.
Like I said, maybe Gernot will be able to find out what's causing this problem, maybe he won't. Arguing the toss with me is pointless - I can't fix the problem. At least I can confirm the problem exists. But to me, it's not an issue. But that doesn't mean that I wouldn't like to see the problem fixed either.
(http://perso.wanadoo.fr/marcus.zone/gif/gp2x.gif) :noggin:
Since I'm still waiting for an example with flickering screen (WITH SOURCECODE!!!) I created one myself. Then I sat down for 10 minutes and stared on the screen and didn't see any flickering. No I didn't miss one while blinking, I changed eyes so I would always have one eye on the screen. My test code only contains a LOADBMP and a DRAWSPRITE command, and also a PRINT statement.
Since this gave no result I added the mp3-song you had in your game Poker. Still no flickering, not even while loading the mp3-file. Can you mabe try to remove parts of your program to try to figure out what is causing the flickering in your game?
Right - here is evidence of a flicker on GP2X with a GLBasic app. Be aware, my camera is really shite and the lighting conditions etc. are not optimum.
http://www.iprice.remakes.org/stuff/flicker.rar
The flicker occurs about 4.5 seconds in. On the GP2X it's much more pronuounced, but as my camera uses a more stop-frame approach to moving images it's not so good, but it is still evident.
I have seen the GP2X flickering but I have never seen sourcecode for an application that flickers. I'm no expert but I imagine it's horrible to debug something like "my screen flickers, fix it", without any sort of example code. Please at least show us the source of the thing that flickers and mabe remove all code that doesn't change the flickering.
My games run without flickering and I have no idea how to make them flicker.
Note: I'm no GL Basic developer, I just want to help the poor guy so he has a chance to find the problem when he has time for it. Mabe you could help a bit too?
Ian Price: :good:
Moru: "My games run without flickering and I have no idea how to make them flicker."
ALL games written in glbasic have this problem on gp2x .
LOADSPRITE "sprite.png",1
WHILE TRUE
DRAWSPRITE 1,0,0
IF key(44)=1
END
ENDIF
SHOWSCREEN
WEND
(http://perso.wanadoo.fr/marcus.zone/gif/pek_glb.gif) :noggin:
I concur with heliuse, all GLBasic games flicker on GP2X at some point - no matter how simple or complex.
Ah, finally some sourcecode. :nw: See, could have saved me half a day of wondering how to recreate this. I was loading a background picture and they DO NOT FLICKER. However if I load a sprite that covers the whole screen and draw that one each frame it does flicker after 5-10 minutes. A sprite on the background doesn't flicker what I saw but it doesn't move as smooth as I would preffer. (I made a loop moving my 64x64 sprite smoothly over the screen but it's getting stuck now and then for one frame so it doesn't look smooth)
The gp2x has some flickering problems with the lower right 4 pixels (sound problem) and some occasional flickering (Sync problem).
I don't know how to get rid of it, and all other programs do have the same problem for me.
If your flickering is bad, please post a video and your source code.
at your place i considerate this bug as a major problem for a language who peoples need to pay. the sdlbasic and fenix are free and display correctly.
the gp2x version of GlBasic has been released in 2006 and this kind of bug should be already fixed in priority.
No. Please post a video of your flickering here and the code. GLBasic has no more flickering than any other program on my devices.
ALL games written in glbasic have this problem on gp2x .
just take the time to play with a game in glbasic to notice the flash.
games fenix or c + + did not have this problem .
thank you to correct this flash visible only has the eye and very poorly on a video
Strange. Can you please post a small video of the bug? I don't know what you mean, but with a video I might get this fixed, easier.
It's a bit hard to catch on video as it can happen once in 10 minutes or even longer. I'll try to find my testcode that shows it and the one that does not show any flickering.
This is source with some comments and the compiled gp2x files for running it, one version that flickers and one that don't. The only difference is the flickering runtime is displaying the background as a sprite every VBL, the non-flickering file is displaying the background with LOADBMP "xx.png".
The flickering occurs around 7 seconds in I think, I was lucky with the recording, last time I had to wait around 10 minutes :-)
testflicker.zip (http://gamecorner.110mb.com/games/testflicker.zip)
OK. I'll try to get this working now.
Ah. I see. Can you confirm it's not flickering, when you remove the music1.mp3 file?
It might be a bug in the libSDLmixer...
It's not playing the MP3 file in my movie but I can check anyway by removing it totally from the program. I only tested that because I coudln't get any flickering at all so had to dig around in other games that was said to flicker and they all used mp3 players so I stole a song from someone and tried it but still no flicker. But that was while I was using the background drawing I mentioned earlier.
Ok, flickers after 20 seconds the third time I run the program, without mp3.
OK, please try setting the CPU clock back to 200MHz:
FUNCTION foo:
ENDFUNCTION
INLINE
#ifdef GP2X
extern "C"
{
typedef long off_t;
typedef long mode_t;
typedef long size_t;
int open(const char *path, int flags, ...);
void *mmap(void *addr, size_t LEN, int prot, int flags, int fildes, off_t off);
}
#define MAP_SHARED 0x01
#define O_RDWR 0x02
#define PROT_READ 0x01
#define PROT_WRITE 0x02
int memfd;
unsigned long* memregs32;
unsigned short* memregs16;
int InitGP2Xregs()
{
memfd = open("/dev/mem", O_RDWR);
memregs32 = (unsigned long*) mmap(0, 0x10000, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED, memfd, 0xc0000000);
memregs16 = (unsigned short *)memregs32;
}
#endif
#define SYS_CLK_FREQ 7372800
void SetClock(unsigned int MHZ)
{
#ifdef GP2X
InitGP2Xregs();
unsigned int v;
unsigned int mdiv,pdiv=3,scale=0;
MHZ*=1000000;
mdiv=(MHZ*pdiv)/SYS_CLK_FREQ;
mdiv=((mdiv-8)<<8) & 0xff00;
pdiv=((pdiv-2)<<2) & 0xfc;
scale&=3;
v = mdiv | pdiv | scale;
unsigned int l = memregs32[0x808>>2];// Get interupt flags
memregs32[0x808>>2] = 0xFF8FFFE7; //Turn off interrupts
memregs16[0x910>>1]=v; //Set frequentie
while(memregs16[0x0902>>1] & 1); //Wait for the frequentie to be ajused
memregs32[0x808>>2] = l; //Turn on interrupts
#endif
}
ENDINLINE
FUNCTION SetGP2XClock: mhz
INLINE
SetClock((unsigned int) mhz);
ENDINLINE
ENDFUNCTION
Still flickered after waiting for one minute this time but that is different from time to time as I said earlier. Not that I find this irritating, I didn't even think about it until someone else pointed it out :-)
I know. But it is a bit concerning.
What is the differencec between you flicker/noflicker version!?
When I draw the background (white with text) picture with "DRAWSPRITE 1, 0, 0" i get flickering
If I draw the background by running LOADBMP "title.png" in the start it doesn't flicker so I'm guessing there is some trouble with the backbuffer clearing and swapping and then skipping one vbl, showing a black screen?
Gernot Frisch : "What is the differencec between you flicker/noflicker version!?"
On my gp2x flash is visible on 2 versions.
Moru : "Not that I find this irritating, I didn't even think about it until someone else pointed it out :-)"
I'm still waiting for the correction of this bug to continue a program to glbasic on gp2x
thank you
OK, it seems there's a problem with the vblank somewhere. When you use SDL with hardware accelleration (GLBasic uses the GP2X blitter a _lot_), you experience the same. Thus, fenix does not have these problems, since they use the CPU for blitting.
I'll have to investigate further.
@heliuse - does the flickering occour more frequently for you? It happens once minute or so for me.
Kitty Hello :"does the flickering occour more frequently for you? It happens once minute or so for me."
randomly.
on average once per minute
Kitty Hello :"I'll have to investigate further."
thank you very much
HA!
I think it's a sync thingy. Please try setting LIMITFPS to 55 and to 65, and see if any of these might fix it, or make it worse/better.
First try with LIMITFPS 55 resulted in 2 flickers within 30 seconds but after that I didn't get any more. Second try is running 3+ minutes now without flickering.
With LIMITFPS 65 I got one flicker after 1 minute.
the flash are random whatever fps.
there is a serious problem display.
we must resume glbasic to the base.
problem SHOWSCREEN !?
MUHAHAHAHA!!!! I finally fixed it!
I was too busy making sure the blitter _really_ has finished, that I eventually missed the vsync signal. Fixed and closed forever with the next update.
thank you very much. =D
I tested it
Excellent :D
Wooo!
:doubt:
the flash is less frequent.
on average once every three minutes.
Nah.. Please no.
patient :S
you will eventually find