feat(vegas): let live content keep its place in the ticker

Live content used to preempt Vegas outright: while any plugin reported
live priority the display controller refused to run the ticker at all and
showed a full-screen scoreboard instead. Keeping the marquee meant not
seeing live scores; seeing live scores meant losing the marquee.

Two changes, both off by default.

vegas_scroll.live_in_ticker keeps the ticker running through a live game.
Three places assumed the takeover and all three now honour it: the
controller's gate, the coordinator's per-frame pause, and the rotation
switch that would otherwise move current_mode_index underneath a ticker
that never yields.

And the rotation is no longer a strict round robin. It was one slot per
plugin per cycle, so with a dozen plugins enabled a live score came round
once a lap and could be minutes old on screen. A plugin can now hold
several slots, placed by Smooth Weighted Round-Robin -- the same
scheduler the sports plugins already use to rotate their own games. The
property that matters is that repeats are spread through the cycle
rather than clumped: three in a row and then silence would be worse than
no boost at all.

Weight comes from the plugin first, via a new optional
get_vegas_priority_weight(), then from the core: live content earns
live_weight, everything else 1. So existing plugins gain the behaviour
without changes, and the hook exists for the one thing the core cannot
work out -- the core can see that a game is live but not whose, so only
the plugin can say a favorite is playing.

Documented in ADVANCED_FEATURES (worked example, why weights are per
plugin not per game, and that frequency is not freshness),
CONFIG_REFERENCE, PLUGIN_API_REFERENCE, and the config template.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Udr6MfaFLUPhX5Fgo67Jf5
This commit is contained in:
ChuckBuilds
2026-08-12 16:29:01 -04:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent bb1a1671ec
commit 8c00df2e13
10 changed files with 466 additions and 4 deletions
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@@ -64,10 +64,92 @@ JSON is optional.
| `target_fps` | `125` | Target frame rate |
| `buffer_ahead` | `2` | Number of plugins buffered ahead |
This table is a subset — `display.vegas_scroll` supports 26 keys in
This table is a subset — `display.vegas_scroll` supports 29 keys in
total. See the full list in
[CONFIG_REFERENCE.md](CONFIG_REFERENCE.md#displayvegas_scroll--continuous-scroll-mode).
### Live Content in the Ticker
By default, live content **preempts** Vegas mode: while any plugin reports
live priority, the display controller refuses to run the ticker and shows
that plugin's full-screen display instead. You get a big readable scoreboard,
but the marquee stops entirely for the duration of the game.
Set `live_in_ticker` to keep the ticker running and let live content take
**extra turns inside it** instead:
```json
"vegas_scroll": {
"live_in_ticker": true,
"live_weight": 3,
"favorite_live_weight": 5
}
```
#### Why weights exist
The rotation is otherwise a strict round robin — every plugin appears exactly
once per cycle. With a dozen plugins enabled, a live score comes round once a
lap and can be minutes old by the time you see it. A weight of *N* gives a
plugin *N* slots per cycle.
The slots are placed by **Smooth Weighted Round-Robin**, the same scheduler
the sports plugins use internally to rotate their own games. The important
property is that repeats are *spread through the cycle* rather than clumped:
three appearances in a row followed by a long silence would be worse than not
boosting at all.
Twelve plugins, with a favorite's baseball game and an ordinary live hockey
game (`live_weight: 3`, `favorite_live_weight: 5`):
```
baseball > hockey > weather > clock > baseball
stocks > news > flights > baseball > hockey
calendar > f1 > music > baseball > tides
birds > hockey > baseball
```
18 slots for 12 plugins. Baseball appears 5 times, hockey 3, everything else
once, and no plugin ever appears twice in a row.
#### Where the weight comes from
For each plugin in the rotation, in order:
1. **The plugin's own answer.** If it implements
`get_vegas_priority_weight()` and returns a number, that wins. This is the
only route for favorite-team awareness — the core can see *that* a game is
live, but not *whose*, so a scoreboard has to say so itself.
2. **The core's default.** When the plugin returns `None` (the base-class
default), a plugin where both `has_live_priority()` and `has_live_content()`
are true gets `live_weight`.
3. **Everything else** gets 1.
Because of step 2, **existing plugins need no changes** — any scoreboard with
`live_priority` enabled already gets extra turns. Step 1 is opt-in, for
plugins that want to distinguish a favorite's game from any other live game.
Weights are clamped to 110. A weight of 1 is no boost; a weight below 1 would
drop the plugin from the rotation entirely, which is never what is meant.
#### Things worth knowing
- **Weights are per plugin, not per game.** A scoreboard showing four live
games still occupies one slot at a time, rotating its own games within that
slot using its own `favorite_live_boost`. This controls how often the
*plugin* comes round.
- **The ticker is zero-sum.** Giving baseball 5 slots does not make the cycle
faster; it makes the cycle *longer* and everything else proportionally
rarer. If you want live scores sooner in wall-clock terms, pair this with a
smaller `plugins_per_cycle`.
- **Frequency is not freshness.** Each appearance redraws from the plugin's
current data (`refresh_updated_plugins()` drops cached content when a
plugin's data changes), but how current that data is depends on the
plugin's own `live_update_interval`. Showing a stale score five times a lap
is no better than showing it once.
- **Everything still appears.** A boost never starves another plugin out of
the cycle; low-weight plugins keep their single slot.
### Per-Plugin Configuration
Override Vegas behavior for specific plugins:
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@@ -103,7 +103,8 @@ logical image to multiple chained physical panels.
## `display.vegas_scroll` — continuous scroll mode
Read by `src/vegas_mode/config.py` (`VegasScrollConfig.from_config`). See
[ADVANCED_FEATURES.md](ADVANCED_FEATURES.md) for behavior details.
[ADVANCED_FEATURES.md](ADVANCED_FEATURES.md) for behavior details, including
[live content in the ticker](ADVANCED_FEATURES.md#live-content-in-the-ticker).
| Key | Type / default |
|---|---|
@@ -134,6 +135,9 @@ Read by `src/vegas_mode/config.py` (`VegasScrollConfig.from_config`). See
| `max_cycle_duration` | int, `240` |
| `frame_based_scrolling` | bool, `true` — frame-count-based scroll stepping |
| `scroll_delay` | float, `0.02` — seconds between scroll updates (~50 FPS) |
| `live_in_ticker` | bool, `false` — keep scrolling during live games instead of handing the display to a full-screen scoreboard |
| `live_weight` | int, `3` (110) — slots per cycle for a plugin with live content |
| `favorite_live_weight` | int, `5` (110) — slots per cycle when a plugin reports a favorite team is live |
## `sync` — multi-display synchronization
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@@ -170,6 +170,45 @@ Default returns `False`.
List of display modes to show during a live takeover. Default returns the
plugin's `display_modes` from its manifest.
#### `get_vegas_priority_weight() -> Optional[int]`
How many slots per Vegas cycle this plugin should get. Default returns
`None`, which defers to the core.
The Vegas ticker is otherwise a strict round robin — every plugin appears
exactly once per cycle — so with a dozen plugins enabled a live score can be
minutes stale by the time it comes round. A weight of *N* gives the plugin
*N* slots per cycle, spread evenly through it rather than clumped.
**You usually do not need this.** When the hook returns `None`, the core
already gives a plugin `vegas_scroll.live_weight` whenever
`has_live_priority()` and `has_live_content()` are both true. Live sports get
extra turns with no code at all.
Implement it only when the plugin knows something the core cannot. The
motivating case is favorite teams — the core can see *that* a game is live,
but not *whose*:
```python
def get_vegas_priority_weight(self):
if not (self.has_live_priority() and self.has_live_content()):
return None # let the core decide
vegas = self.global_config.get('display', {}).get('vegas_scroll', {})
if self._favorite_is_live():
return vegas.get('favorite_live_weight', 5)
return vegas.get('live_weight', 3)
```
The weight is per *plugin*, not per game: a scoreboard showing four live games
still occupies one slot at a time and rotates its own games within it. Values
are clamped to 110 by the caller, and an exception here is caught and
treated as weight 1 rather than breaking the rotation.
Only consulted when the user has set `vegas_scroll.live_in_ticker`. With the
default (`false`) live content preempts Vegas entirely and there is no ticker
to be weighted within. See
[ADVANCED_FEATURES.md](ADVANCED_FEATURES.md#live-content-in-the-ticker).
### Vegas scroll hooks
Vegas mode shows multiple plugins as a single continuous scroll instead of