Included in the Jacaranda 2601.0 release we rolled out a new special type of overlay system that, at first glance, may not look like anything fancy…
This overlay system is not tied to any emulator, core, or content. Instead, it operates at the lowest rendering layer itself, allowing us to draw visual elements on top of anything whilst using the device. This works across most, if not all, SDL and OpenGL ES render paths.
Content is completely unaware the overlay exists. We have tried our best to accommodate all displays and automatically adapt to screen resolution which can sometimes vary by emulator, core, or even individual content like Portmaster games.
There is a new configuration menu option which allows you to change specifics relating to, position, scale, and transparency of which all can be changed to suit your play style.
In addition to these overlays we have also added brightness and volume indicators along with a handy low battery notification, which of course can be customised by themes. All of this happens with very minimal overhead and without impacting gameplay.
However we should state that it works for the majority of content and there will be some content that won’t utilise it unfortunately.