Wheel disappears

[Bubba1212]

For reasons unknown, I lose my wheel hence unable to select a game.  My only recourse is to restart HyperSpin.  This happens frequently when my kids are using my cabinet however, I'm unable to figure out if there is a sequence of button presses that triggers this behavior.

Does anyone have any ideas?

[gigapig]

If it happens every time then it's a setting in HyperHQ which is the Alpha channel (fade) under wheel settings. If intermittent then possibly bad wheel art.

[slizzap]

I've been having the exact same issue for a long time (years?). This always happens when I have a party and there's people (mostly younger kids) that like to step up to the cabinet and randomly mash on buttons and the joystick while in HyperSpin. Last time I had people over I had 2 different cabinets I had to reset a few times for this reason. I just recently got motivated to try to reproduce the problem, which I never could before. I seem to have found a pretty consistent way to do so. If I spin the joystick fast in a clockwise circle while rapidly pressing the HyperSpin button (other buttons work in my testing as well, but this is most consistent) I can get the wheel to disappear within a few seconds. The background images and wheel pointer all remain and the video continues to play, but the wheel art disappears and you can't get it back without doing an Alt-F4 to close out of HyperSpin. Normally after the video ends, the wheel cycles and randomly stops on a game, then the preview video for that kicks off. In this case, it's forever stuck on the game you're on and will loop the video until you close HS.

There's definitely nothing wrong with my wheel art. I checked the Alpha blend on my HS and it's set to 1 (never disappears). The log doesn't show anything useful. I initially suspected my XML, but I can also reproduce this with the HyperSpin XML pulled from HyperList.

[slizzap]

Here's a Youtube clip showing 3 reproductions of this issue. First couple clips you'll probably think it's ridiculous that anyone would actually do that with the buttons, but apparently they do as it keeps happening. However, the 3rd clip I was able to do almost instantaneously, which shows exactly how quickly/easily it *can* happen.

https://youtu.be/Jk5t-AqAri0

BTW: I'm currently on the latest version (1.5.1) on all my cabinets. However, I'm pretty certain this problem existed going back to 1.3.x and 1.4.x. I could verify that if it would be helpful.

[Spawk]

Without watching the video, I am sure it's the circular motion with the joystick. Left and right act like page up/down so switching back and forth real fast mixed up with regular up/downs in there... it probably just cant refresh fast enough. Try changing the skip up/down in HQ to some unused keys... even just for testing. Then you will only ever be moving 1 up or down and it should keep up with the refresh.

[Mrmikey73]

This is what I get worried about. I’m running old school hyperspin now with hyperlaunch and have zero problems like this or the memory leak I’ve heard about on newer hyperspin. I can leave my cabinet on all day and night and it’s fine. Kids come over for the holidays and go to town and it’s perfect. I’m currently upgrading on a different pc to see if I want to put it in my cab cause I do like all the bells and whistles of RocketLauncher and could use some updates on emulators (Retroarch is amazing). Even thought of jumping ship to Launchbox but really love Hyperspin. 

[slizzap]

6 hours ago, Spawk said:

Without watching the video, I am sure it's the circular motion with the joystick. Left and right act like page up/down so switching back and forth real fast mixed up with regular up/downs in there... it probably just cant refresh fast enough. Try changing the skip up/down in HQ to some unused keys... even just for testing. Then you will only ever be moving 1 up or down and it should keep up with the refresh.

While I will do this just for testing purposes, this would not be considered a solution. I can't disable the ability to skip up and down by letter because it would simply take an unacceptable amount of time to browse to a specific game. Also, with that logic, you should be able to reproduce the problem by simply circling the joystick repeatedly, but that did not reproduce the problem (see #4 below). For some reason you have to perform this motion along with *any* other key input.

Here are details of some additional testing performed:

1. Disbled LEDBlinky, which I'm currently using for HyperMarquee. Still reproduces the problem.
2. Enabled "Keyboard Delay" (found in HyperHQ under Controls tab -> Keyboard tab). Still reproduces the problem.
3. Unmapped the Skip Up and Skip Down buttons. Does not reproduce the problem. However, this is not a surprise as you're basically disabling navigation.
4. Quickly rotated the joystick in a clockwise motion without any other button/key input. Does not reproduce the problem.
5. Quickly rotated the joystick in a clockwise motion while pressing *any* other key that is specifically not mapped within HyperSpin (for example, I used button #6 which is mapped to the letter "D", but not mapped within HyperSpin). Still reproduces the problem.
6. Reverted back to v1.4.0.0 and v1.3.2.0. Still reproduces the problem.
7. Used the official HyperList XML in place of my own, with all 3 HyperSpin versions that I have (v1.5.1.0, v1.4.0.0, and v1.3.2.0). Still reproduces the problem.

It's also worth noting, something I forgot to mention before, is that when HyperSpin is in this state it is completely unresponsive to input. Visually speaking, the joystick animation at the bottom of the screen still works and the video preview is still looping. Pressing the Start button does not start the game. HyperSpin is locked up at this point requiring an Alt-F4.

Attached is a copy of the HyperSpin log file for a session where I reproduced the problem. At line #16 I start rotating the joystick for 40 straight seconds with no issues. I specifically placed the wheel at Kung Fu Master (kungfumd) at line #131 and let it sit there for a few seconds. I then started rotating the joystick while pressing a button and it locks up 7 seconds later when it gets to Hyper Drive (hyprdriv) at line # 154. BTW there's no specific game that it can land on that causes this problem...it's a different game every time. I'm just pointing these games out so you know where it locks relative to the log file.

 

log.txt

[slizzap]

Any input on this?

I had a friend over playing my cabinet last night. I stepped away for 15 mins and when I came back he said the system was froze. It did this exact same thing again. I know for a fact that he was not randomly pressing buttons and rotating the joystick. While I used those motions just to reproduce this consistently, there's clearly a deeper issue here.

[Mrmikey73]

So I’ve had my old school hyperspin setup running for 10 years and never noticed this. I watched your video and tried it on mine and same thing happened. I guess most people don’t do this in a menu so it never happens. It won’t do it in game where this motion would happen. I’d be interested in what’s causing this though. 

[Mrmikey73]

Double post 

[slizzap]

That is helpful that you were also able to reproduce the problem, so thanks for checking on that. I do want to reiterate that there are clearly multiple ways for this problem to surface. My video, which you used to reproduce the problem, simply shows one way I can reproduce this on demand. I just don't have a camera that can capture what people are actually doing with the control panel. Some people, kids or otherwise, apparently like to fidget and mash on buttons as they or others are selecting a game. Others, myself included, can navigate the interface without a problem. The simple fact of the matter here is that there appears to be some type of navigation bug that exists, and it would be amazing if this could be found and squashed.

[slizzap]

I reproduced this issue recently by simply holding in one direction. I was playing with a friend and as a way to "random select" I would hold the joystick up for a random amount of seconds, then release and press start. After playing a handful of games I did the same again...simply held up for about 5-10 seconds, and upon release the wheel disappeared.

This is the first time I've personally reproduced this problem without doing anything unusual/odd/erratic.

[slizzap]

Reproduced this for the 2nd time today without doing anything unusual. I was watching the attract mode and after the video of the currently selected game finished the wheel started spinning. I pressed left or right a couple times before I realized that I had to press up or down to get the wheel to stop spinning. I pressed up and when the wheel stopped spinning it just completely disappeared. Had to completely shut down HyperSpin and restart it.