OSD Improvements

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Now that the OSD is in trunk, there are a number of issues, mostly 
minor / aesthetic ones that can be improved to really let this shine. 
Ideally some of these would be addressed before the 1.4 release. (I'm 
sure we'll get user complaints if they aren't) 

Major:
- Fading seems to slow down the emulator (roughly 50% on r300 boards). 
Possibly we want to make fading vs. jumping an option or check if this 
might be a more serious bug. 

Moderate:
- Option to disable OSD. This would help the automated regression tester. 
Possibly a whole tab in the config.
- OSD queueing should be disabled when the emulator isn't running, 
instead info_message should be used to direct messages to the 
commandline / statusbar. When running messages should goto both.
- Better control of long messages. I.e. if the width gets too long, break 
up the message into two lines.

Minor:
- Since we have TV out users, OSD should be title safe, i.e. move the 
left start from 0 pixels to x% (7.5 I believe) of the screen. 
- I was told OSD supports aliasing, this should be turned on or made an 
option.
- Our font is too big, specifically too wide, suggest a change to 
Bitsream Vera Sans (as its open and free) or another more suitable font.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by sknau...@wesleyan.edu on 17 May 2008 at 12:50

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Adding on to this list.

Moderate:
- Smearing is a problem in some games that create a border (Smash Brothers is a
perfect example)
- It would be great if users could select a custom font, color, and size (based 
on
screen ratio).

Minor:
- Cooler status bar messages, but this might be a major minor thing. (irony) I 
guess
it's not that important.
- Controlling where each message appears.

Original comment by sgorman07@gmail.com on 18 May 2008 at 5:02

[GoogleCodeExporter]

This is not a good bug report, because these are all separate issues.  Grouping 
them
together makes them difficult to track.  I'll give some responses just for the
benefit of the reporter and later invalidate this report.

1. Fading causing slowdowns - the OGLFT code currently regenerates the gl 
bitmaps
whenever the color changes.  This could be fixed (because we're using the 
Monochrome
class), but the fix would break the other Font classes.  Therefore if this fix 
were
implemented the code would have to be cleaned and the unused classes removed.

2. Disable OSD - we could add an option for this but I would recommend against 
it. 
I'm currently refactoring the screenshot code so that the screenshots are saved
without the OSD overlay.

3. TV out - the left start offset isn't necessary because PCs with TV out 
already add
a border so that pixel 0,0 is visible.

4. Aliasing - do you mean anti-aliasing?  The Font class which is currently 
used is
Monochrome, so it does not do anti-aliasing.

5. Font - ebenblues has expressed an interest in using a sans-serif font.  I 
agree
the current font size is too big.

6. Smearing on games like SSB - this is a problem, but it will probably have to 
be
fixed in the video plugins.  They need to clear the screen for each frame.  I 
have
observed this problem even without the OSD, where game polygons smear into the 
border.

Original comment by richard...@gmail.com on 18 May 2008 at 1:21

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Some of these issues have been fixed in recent commits.  Others won't be fixed. 
Closing issue report.

Original comment by richard...@gmail.com on 31 May 2008 at 4:06

• Changed state: Invalid