Disappearing background template images?

[deviantla]

As a long time lurker of this forum, I've got to say I've learned tons from everyones contributions here.

I have been out of pocket for a while and wanted rebuild my cabinet. I ran Mala on my first cab a few years back and loved it, so naturally I wanted to stick with it. I've got the latest version 1.74 installed, all of my emulators set up and everything seems to be working perfectly, except I am noticing that when I am switching emulators, my background image sometimes does not come up. It is completely random when it happens. I have tried using both PNG and JPG images (both RGB) and also moving images into the same directory as the MLL file as well as separate directories, even renaming and rebuilding the templates and images. The file size is no more than 150KB. The snap images and AVI videos load just fine, along with the game list and other text options, just not the background.

I don't recall having this issue with my previous layout, which were PNG files roughly the same file size. My previous version Mala was 1.04.

Any suggestions or ideas as to what may cause this are greatly appreciated!

EDIT: Not sure if it's relevant, but the PC I am using is an old Dell Precision 450, 2.53GHz Intel Xeon, 512MB RAM with 128MB VGA video card running to 26" LCD. Front end and all support files installed on internal IDE HD.

[deviantla]

Still looking for ideas here. It makes no sense that background images would just not load. I've run Mala in debug mode, however did not see any errors being reported in the logfile regarding the GUI layout.

[loadman]

Still looking for ideas here. It makes no sense that background images would just not load. I've run Mala in debug mode, however did not see any errors being reported in the logfile regarding the GUI layout.

Try reducing the Screen Size of the image

[deviantla]

Loadman, thank you for the reply.

My background images are 1024x768. I don't recall having this issue with 1024x768 PNG images before in the older version of Mala. How much smaller should they be?

[loadman]

Ideally foe effecientcy the same size as you want them displayed .

I dunno just guessing

Using the latest beta with the logs in debug level do they not re real load errors?

[deviantla]

Out of pocket for a while, but thanks for the reply. I am not running the latest beta, but the stable release 1.74.

I am running Mala at 1024x768 with a fixed size layout, since I have no need to switch resolutions. The disappearing background images only happens when I am switching emulators, and even then is random. "A" works fine, "B" has missing backgorund, "C" works fine, "D" works fine, "A" has missing background, so on and so forth.

One thing that I tried differently was to create a batch file that kills explorer.exe, then loads Mala. Of course, at Mala exit, I have it running explorer.exe. I thought that this resolved my issue temporarily, but I still randomly lose my background layout images.

[deviantla]

Frustratingly still having this issue. Moved from my dedicated PC to my work laptop (i5 2.53GHz, 6GB RAM, 1.0GB graphics card) and have this issue here as well.

Debug log is attached. Nothing that stands out to me other than I do see where the error is reported.

[ragnar]

Loadman,

This sounds like an issue I had a long time ago.  It might have been you that helped me out.  I know you made a special build that would retry loading if the load failed.  It had to do with Delphi.

I don't know if your fix made it into the official release though.

In my case, I think the issue was with BMP files.  Simply saving he file as a JPG also resolved the issue.

[deviantla]

So I rebuilt all of my MLL files and restructured a bit. Rather than having all of my emulator AND background files in my layout folder, I created separate folders for each emulator's image and changed the GUI setting for the layout in Mala. So far no issues, and everything is coming up as it should. Very odd that way back when on my old cab this was not an issue, but I'm not one to complain. I love Mala and the ease of making things look the way I want them to. Thanks!

[ragnar]

windows is notoriously bad for folders with a large number files in it.