DreamPi Desktop

Online games, how to get online, and anything involving Dreamcast online can be discussed here.

Moderator: pcwzrd13

Windows9X
photon blast
Posts: 104

Re: [Release] DreamPi Companion | 1.3.1 released! (SEPT/2/19)

Post#121 » Wed Sep 04, 2019 5:50 am

Hi, everyone. I'm looking into a small crash with the Linux and Mac versions of DreamPi Companion.

Just wanted to make this clear.
Author of original DreamPi Companion..

Windows9X
photon blast
Posts: 104

Re: [Release] DreamPi Companion | 1.3.2 released! (SEPT/5/19)

Post#122 » Thu Sep 05, 2019 7:06 am

Hello everyone. 1.3.2 is now available.

This MacOS/Linux specific crash is now fixed along with a few other slight refinements.
Author of original DreamPi Companion..

Windows9X
photon blast
Posts: 104

Re: [Release] DreamPi Companion | 1.3.2 released! (SEPT/5/19)

Post#123 » Sun Feb 23, 2020 2:45 am

Hello, everyone! It's been a few months, hasn't it?

Aside from Title ID updates, (thanks for changing them Kazade...... *sigh), There really wasn't much else to improve on, stability excluded. (I know DreamPi Companion freezes for a few seconds here & there; Blame Kazade's Hoster's server)

After digging through the code now and then for a couple of months, optimizing and shortening it in my free time, I ended up compiling a list of things that could be tweaked or added and as of this post, they've been implemented! So, what's new? Here's the list:

Release 14 | 2.0
---------------------------------------------------
- Updated TITLE ID database (More common games show properly); Thanks Roareye.
- Usernames no longer overflow in length on the 'Player List', 'Favorites List', 'PlayerDex' & 'Welcome Setup' screens
- Search screen text has been rewritten
- Searching has been upgraded; You can now filter my 'contains' and 'begins with'
** Themes from older versions are incompatible with this release due to new resource additions.
- 'Player List' & 'Favorites List' page counters relocated to the middle of the 'page selection' arrows
- 'Player List' & 'Favorites List' page counters only highlights when MORE than 1 page is available
- 'Player List' has been renamed to 'Players'
- Various setup prompts rewritten
- Personal 'Playerdex' can no longer be tricking into view with a spoofed .DPP title (guest mode)


Yeah, that's right; We're now officially version 2.0! That's how much I've meshed my code like play-doh. Hopefully everyone will enjoy the new search filtering; Just remember you'll get no results if the player hasn't been indexed to begin with. Kazade's server refreshed every 2 weeks, so i'll be uploading a DPP Database pack with all of the latest user indexes.

Also, thanks for 180+ downloads (last time I checked!) -- I know it's been a while, but hopefully everyone is still enjoying DreamPi Companion. Thanks and much love to my users <3

I'll be uploading the 2.0 builds shortly after this post; Depends on compile time <3 <3
Author of original DreamPi Companion..

Windows9X
photon blast
Posts: 104

Re: [Release] DreamPi Companion | 2.0 released! (FEB/23/2020)

Post#124 » Sun Feb 23, 2020 4:45 am

Version 2.0 is now released for Windows, MacOS/OS X and Linux.

Classic theme for 2.0 as well as a database cache are also available to download. Enjoy!
Author of original DreamPi Companion..

Windows9X
photon blast
Posts: 104

Re: [Release] DreamPi Companion | 2.0 released! (FEB/23/2020)

Post#125 » Tue Feb 25, 2020 7:16 pm

Hey, everyone.

TL;DR - Icon Caching coming soon

Full story:

It's time to finally address and hopefully (mostly) neutralize the UI 'lag' in DreamPi Companion. I know this is a hindrance to my userbase and it's been requested to be patched over previous iterations.

While I have acknowledged these people and HAVE indeed provided patches here and there to supplement this, each patch only goes so far. Since DreamPi Companion connects to a network in order to function, lag continues to occur based on the end user's (your) internet speed, the speed and connection strength of Dreamcast.Online/Now/ and also the current task being handled by DreamPi Companion's back end (thread controller).

One MAJOR reason for delays would be the actual avatar icons of each user; DreamPi Companion connects to your network in order to download each avatar and store them into RAM. However, in order to save space for lower end machines, DreamPi Companion ONLY stores 9 LIVE and 9 FAVORITES avatars into RAM at once, as well as your own personal avatar. When you change to another page in either/or list, you'll notice a slight stutter because the previous icons are being 'unloaded' and new ones are being 'downloaded'. This very procedure is what lit a light bulb in my head.

Theoretically speaking, a mechanical hard drive, even ones as old as a quantum fireball, will always be faster than an internet connection (Any type via Wi-Fi or Wired) in terms of loading. So, what if we were to 'cache' each icon onto our HDD after downloading? Well, as I figured, the delay is nearly seamless now. Very minimal stutter, with this approach, at the expense of storing more data on our system. -- Each icon is about 6kb in size; The current database is roughly a little over 1000 players. Not everyone will have a database this large, unless you keep downloading the latest databases I upload to SourceForge. In other words, the average user will have anywhere between 30 to 120 icons stored (6*120=720kb), which in today's age of gigabytes and terabytes in nothing.

Of course, I understand that storing extra data is controversial and not everyone wants to cache, whether it be for this tool, a web browser or something else. So, Let's just make this feature a toggle!

It's more ethical to let the user choose, so we'll go with that. That being said, Icon Caching will be available in the next update.

This will eliminate A LOT of delay/"""lag""" that isn't Dreamcast.Online's fault. Some other 'tricks' are in my bag too... slowly getting there.
Author of original DreamPi Companion..

User avatar
deluxux
Black Mesa
Posts: 1400

Re: [Release] DreamPi Companion | 2.0 released! (FEB/23/2020)

Post#126 » Wed Feb 26, 2020 12:10 am

Thank you! A really great app that keeps getting better and better! I use it all the time! Great work! I need to try it on my WIn98 Machine!

Windows9X
photon blast
Posts: 104

Re: [Release] DreamPi Companion | 2.0 released! (FEB/23/2020)

Post#127 » Wed Feb 26, 2020 12:17 am

deluxux wrote:Thank you! A really great app that keeps getting better and better! I use it all the time! Great work! I need to try it on my WIn98 Machine!


Thank you so much!

It *might not work on your 98 machine; Depends on the processor. I have a Pentium 3 in my machine and it refused to run due to multi-threading.

I initially targeted W95 as a bare minimum, but single threading was terrible. Any net related functions would halt the software completely until completion, which isn't ideal. Hated it, but it had to be sacrificed, so your mileage may vary.

Thanks a bunch, again. I appreciate your feedback.
Author of original DreamPi Companion..

SMiTH
Black Mesa
Posts: 1492

Re: [Release] DreamPi Companion | 2.0 released! (FEB/23/2020)

Post#128 » Wed Feb 26, 2020 12:48 am

this is a cool app for sure.

i have always wondered if there is a way to code an app for windows that replicates what dreampi does.
i know that you can run dreampi code in linux and there is a tutorial on this site on howto do that.

has anyone tried emulating raspberrypi and running dreampi then configuring network connection etc?
idk it would be cool to have the option to run software similar to dreampi using windows.

User avatar
deluxux
Black Mesa
Posts: 1400

Re: [Release] DreamPi Companion | 2.0 released! (FEB/23/2020)

Post#129 » Wed Feb 26, 2020 12:51 am

Its all in python and linux commands, very easy on another ARM linux box, changing that to win x64 is another game AFAIK

Windows9X
photon blast
Posts: 104

Re: [Release] DreamPi Companion | 2.0 released! (FEB/23/2020)

Post#130 » Wed Feb 26, 2020 12:59 am

deluxux wrote:Its all in python and linux commands, very easy on another ARM linux box, changing that to win x64 is another game AFAIK



Python is available for Windows and the latest build of Windows 10 does integrate and Ubuntu shell, but it's not that easy. Porting will still need to be done.

For DreamPi Companion, initially getting Linux/MacOS to build was a pain.
Linux, as usual, was dependency hell and needed quite a few. - MacOS needed XCode and I'm not not registering an apple account, so I had to get creative with torrents.

Then or course, I had to update my codebase to amend directory slashes (/, \) based on if x86 or *nix was detected. Bah humbug.

Then of course, Linux is designed to where you cannot embed an icon for some stupid reason. Best you can do is make a .Desktop, but the end user had to do that, so I just include the icon file with the linux package.
Author of original DreamPi Companion..

  • Similar Topics
    Replies
    Views
    Last post

Return to “Online”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users