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Potential gaming platform
I know it's been said on other forums, i'm not sure if it has been said in this one though. Anyways, with supposed unrestricted use to the services of the phone, i can't wait to see what sort of games we can see on Android. With wifi, 3g, and bluetooth, this can be the ultimate gaming platform and capitalize where wm and apple didn't. Imagine mmo's, multiplayer deathmatches, or something as simple as spades, all online or played on bluetooth. And androids focus on playing in wm territory can mean potential for a huge installer base. The future for Android looks bright indeed.
http://www.techcrunchit.com/2008/07/18/google-remove-xmpp-support-in-android/
apps for android are Managed code in java which in most cases is the enemy of speed
and supporting 3d features in cpu and gpu though
Any phone I have had since the Nokia 3300 has become a gaming phone for me. Special kudos to playing Dragon Warrior I & II on the Nokia 6600's gameboy emulator.
(I wish the trackball would be on the left like gaming controllers, which was the first major thing I had to adapt to when going from Wing to G1, but oh well - what can ya do?)
The one thing i would love to see for the android is pocketnesterplus. I'm not sure if there is a way to use it with g1, but hopefully one will come out soon for the nes games. Its extremely hard to play alot of the nes games on most phones but with trackball it would be easier to control the directions. I've heard some of the top game companies are coming on board, all of them better if they're smart!!!
it seems like there was an opengl demo by google a while back where they ran doom I would like to see more 3D games esp if they are written to run off the kernel and display thru the FB device that android creates. As far as I know there is no reason that android apps NEED to be in java.... maybe to be on the market they do... but it's a linux kernel... it should run arm9/11 compiled programs
Does anyone know if there will be development of an emulator for old school consoles like NES and SNES?
dshyang50 said:
Does anyone know if there will be development of an emulator for old school consoles like NES and SNES?
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Click to collapse
Haven't seen any announcements of one(except that there's a really slow gameboy emulator on the marketplace) but I can say with 99.999999% assurance that there will be some.
** I haven't been around to keep this thread updated. Thankfully, AriStar has done a great job maintaining an extension of this thread over on the developers board. For the most updated status, please follow this link: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1097428 **
I'm looking start up a bounty to get a development effort going around the Native PSX Emulator that comes on the Xperia PLAY.
The preloaded Crash Bandicoot as well as the selection of PSX games available from Sony use this native emulator, the performance in which is PERFECT, compared to FPse and PSX4Droid which have sound and choppiness issues at times.
Some discussion on this topic is in another thread, here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1044755 . We can see the psx image on the SD card with little effort, however the formatting of this image and the steps required to inject our own images is still unknown.
My ultimate goal here is to be able to run FF7 in the Native PSX emulator and support the disc changes needed. (From the PSX Emulator menus, disc swapping looks to be included, but as no multi-disc games are released, this may be tricky).
I'd like to throw in $20 to start this bounty and get discussion going.
Please post under this thread if you can contribute either to the bounty or to the development effort. If you have any requirements attached to your bounty contribution (ie: "Must be able to play FF7") then please include those as well.
Bounty now up to (or over): $280 + Xperia X1
Levistras said:
My ultimate goal here is to be able to run FF7 in the Native PSX emulator and support the disc changes needed. (From the PSX Emulator menus, disc swapping looks to be included, but as no multi-disc games are released, this may be tricky).
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Click to collapse
Disc swapping is probably less of an issue than it sounds - you only have to swap discs once every 10-12 hours for most games, and almost every single game that has a disc swap also lets you save after completing the disc and before the swap, so in theory if the PSX Emulator only allows for once disc at a time, you just make a wrapped image of each disc, save when you hit the end of one disc, and boot the image for the second/third/etc disc and voila.
While ultimately it would be a great feature, it's probably not strictly necessary and will amount to a minor nuisance in the short term.
Also, put me down for $10CDN towards the bounty as well.
10 Euro more. As long as it works, I'm cool with it.
Nice idea.
But my games run perfect in fpse.
Tell me what games you find choppy and i'll test them for you. So far i've played -
Time Crisis (touch screen as light gun, dam awesome)
Demolition Derby
Rampage Universal Tour
Point Blank (touch screen as light gun, dam awesome)
Strider 2
Die Hard Trilogy
and they all run flawlessly.
Would of tried more but i've been hooked on the nes/snes/master system/genesis and native xperia play games (backstab/nova2 etc) for the last month.
dsswoosh said:
Nice idea.
But my games run perfect in fpse.
Tell me what games you find choppy and i'll test them for you. So far i've played -
Time Crisis (touch screen as light gun, dam awesome)
Demolition Derby
Rampage Universal Tour
Point Blank (touch screen as light gun, dam awesome)
Strider 2
Die Hard Trilogy
and they all run flawlessly.
Would of tried more but i've been hooked on the nes/snes/master system/genesis and native xperia play games (backstab/nova2 etc) for the last month.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The one I care most about is Final Fantasy 7. Battle sequences tend to be choppy, the sound slows to a crawl when coming into and out of battle. The music sound sync in general also just isn't perfect. It's "good enough" for the most part, but stammers a bit, feels like a beginner drummer that can't really keep time.
Levistras said:
The one I care most about is Final Fantasy 7. Battle sequences tend to be choppy, the sound slows to a crawl when coming into and out of battle. The music sound sync in general also just isn't perfect. It's "good enough" for the most part, but stammers a bit, feels like a beginner drummer that can't really keep time.
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Click to collapse
Yeah sound emulation is more difficult to do than it seems. A ton of emulators (even today's Gamecube/Wii emulator, or the PS2 one) have sound issues more than anything else.
Also, I'll throw in $20 CAD for this. Hopefully it's actually possible and Sony's emulator is actually already complete. It'd be a shame to crack it but only find out it needs to be patched by Sony anyway.
Levistras said:
The one I care most about is Final Fantasy 7. Battle sequences tend to be choppy, the sound slows to a crawl when coming into and out of battle. The music sound sync in general also just isn't perfect. It's "good enough" for the most part, but stammers a bit, feels like a beginner drummer that can't really keep time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
final fantasy VII runs pefect to me on fpse, did you turn the sound sync and boost mode on?
AndroHero said:
final fantasy VII runs pefect to me on fpse, did you turn the sound sync and boost mode on?
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Yeah ive turned on sound sync. It helps but the sound is not accurate. It eliminates the stutter but the actual sounds are inaccurate, plus the graphics arent smoothed and are overly sharp and a bit ugly. Compared to the smoothed graphics of the official Sony emu they look poor. PSX games run at 1/2 the res of the Xperia screen so smoothing is essential. Fpse slows to a crawl when smoothed
Fpse is good, but still has a way to go before its good enough for me to use for everything.
Sent from my R800a using XDA App
I'll throw in £5 UK into the bounty.
Thats about $5000 US isn't it?!
illuminerdi said:
Yeah ive turned on sound sync. It helps but the sound is not accurate. It eliminates the stutter but the actual sounds are inaccurate, plus the graphics arent smoothed and are overly sharp and a bit ugly. Compared to the smoothed graphics of the official Sony emu they look poor. PSX games run at 1/2 the res of the Xperia screen so smoothing is essential. Fpse slows to a crawl when smoothed
Fpse is good, but still has a way to go before its good enough for me to use for everything.
Sent from my R800a using XDA App
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Click to collapse
Does the XPlays native emulator really have smoothing? I did think that Crash looked better than I remembered but put that down to the small screen and the fact that last time I played crash 1 was on a large HDTV.
I dont think it does, sony erricson has already done alot of things in an attempt to save the phones battery life (like the whole no autobrightness off thing)
I doubt they would add smoothing as it would get use up more of the CPU thus draining more battery life.
The only advantage I see with the official ps1 emulator is that fram rates are excellent and there are no graphical glitches.
Correct me if Im wrong, wouldn't one advantage be that Fpse doesn't really support the dual touch pads, but the native app should support them for any game launched through it.
Also for an update,
bounty is at 20CAD+10CAD+10Euro+20CAD+5GBP
50 CAD+10 EUR +5GBP
or about
75 US Dollars if u think in those terms .
bubblegumballon said:
I dont think it does, sony erricson has already done alot of things in an attempt to save the phones battery life (like the whole no autobrightness off thing)
I doubt they would add smoothing as it would get use up more of the CPU thus draining more battery life.
The only advantage I see with the official ps1 emulator is that fram rates are excellent and there are no graphical glitches.
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It does smooth, trust me - playing Wild Arms is proof enough for me - the graphics are softer and less pixellated than in FF7 via FPSE.
I'll see if I can take some comparative screenshots of Wild Arms in the Sony Emu vs FPSE (as I do have WA on CD as well) just to be 100% sure, but I'm already 99% sure it smooths (is that a word?).
Besides, smoothing wouldn't add that much hit to the battery - you're basically just talking about the bilinear interpolation function of the graphics chip, which is a pretty minor hit overall.
The reason FPSE chugs when smoothing is because FPSE is a generic Android app, written to work on ANY Android phone - so it probably has NO hardware GPU access at all - which in my opinion is pretty lame and shoddy programming. There are, what, like 30 different graphics chips currently used by Android devices? If I'm correct, they'd basically have to write in detection and calls for every chip into FPSE.
Whereas the Sony emulator was written explicitly for the Xperia Play and its hardware (the Adreno GPU). That's why it's 10x more efficient and faster than FPSE, and why it can turn on smoothing and still run better than FPSE does.
I know, my first post but trust me Im good for $10CAD
count me in for $10 CAD
put me in for $20USD
put me in for 10 AUD
illuminerdi said:
It does smooth, trust me - playing Wild Arms is proof enough for me - the graphics are softer and less pixellated than in FF7 via FPSE.
I'll see if I can take some comparative screenshots of Wild Arms in the Sony Emu vs FPSE (as I do have WA on CD as well) just to be 100% sure, but I'm already 99% sure it smooths (is that a word?).
Besides, smoothing wouldn't add that much hit to the battery - you're basically just talking about the bilinear interpolation function of the graphics chip, which is a pretty minor hit overall.
The reason FPSE chugs when smoothing is because FPSE is a generic Android app, written to work on ANY Android phone - so it probably has NO hardware GPU access at all - which in my opinion is pretty lame and shoddy programming. There are, what, like 30 different graphics chips currently used by Android devices? If I'm correct, they'd basically have to write in detection and calls for every chip into FPSE.
Whereas the Sony emulator was written explicitly for the Xperia Play and its hardware (the Adreno GPU). That's why it's 10x more efficient and faster than FPSE, and why it can turn on smoothing and still run better than FPSE does.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Opengl should solcem ost of the problems of the multitude of gpu chips there are as the calls to all the gpu's would become the same.
Also, to reply to an earlier post, the touchpads will probably be supported in a future version of fpse, probably the devs don't have an xperia play just yet.
The game ISO is in a file called image.ps and appears to be encrypted. That encryption will need to be cracked before we can do any sort of injection of PSX ISOs.
ill throw in £5 GBP ive tied reverse engineering the app, tried and failed; i dont know what source code their using, but i cant get it recognized by anything so far!
Alright, i want to make this flat out, i am at the middle of almost everything when considering picking up an tablet.
Right now, i have already owned a massive computing in a form of a laptop (i7 3610QM + GTX 675M + 16GB RAM) and i do all the heavy stuffs on it (Photoshop, Vegas rendering ... blah).
But with the growing of the tablet market, i find myself a little bit out of place and really considering of picking up a tablet myself, a Windows Tablet ( i don't like anything that related to iOS and find Android to be unsecured) . Just because i think the tablet might come very handy in some situation that you can't always bring out the 17-inch laptop like what i have. But the thing is, i am stuck between choosing the nVIDIA Tegra 3 Windows RT tablet with the Intel Atom Clovertrail series with x86 Windows 8. Sure, Microsoft has Surface Pro and i love that thing, but i don't necessarily need the power of the i5 in such a small tablet like that, because i have already had my i7 do all the heavy work.
The thing is, with all the review that i have read so far, 10/10 of them said that the Atom is seriously underpowered and will cause "not-pleasant" Windows Experience, but in this case, they are running the x86 version of Windows 8, that mean all the Legacy Programs will work. While the Tegra 3 (Surface RT) has been claimed to give a smooth experience with Windows RT, but then again, sometime you will feel out of place because you can't run any x86-based App.
So my question is , what is your suggestion? I am leaning a little bit over to the Atom x86 side, just because it can run the Legacy apps, but the Windows RT won't really bother me to the point that i can't handle it. I would love to hear anybody here that are using the RT version, and also the x86 version of Windows 8 but with the Atom Chip.
I use the Surface RT (Tegra 3 ARM chip), but I make heavy use of the hacks available to unlock third-party desktop software and have compiled several such desktop apps myself. I also sometimes use the x86 compability layer that mamaich (on this forum) has hacked together; it's far from fast but suffices to run some software that I was unable to port.
I make very, very little of Windows Store apps except for a handful of games. With a genuinely full web browser available (including Flash and ad blocking), and the Touch Cover trackpad, I find myself using the browser probably more than all non-game apps, including Mail and Skype (the only two I use much at all) combined. I do use Office on the tablet, however (again, in desktop mode).
GoodDayToDie said:
I use the Surface RT (Tegra 3 ARM chip), but I make heavy use of the hacks available to unlock third-party desktop software and have compiled several such desktop apps myself. I also sometimes use the x86 compability layer that mamaich (on this forum) has hacked together; it's far from fast but suffices to run some software that I was unable to port.
I make very, very little of Windows Store apps except for a handful of games. With a genuinely full web browser available (including Flash and ad blocking), and the Touch Cover trackpad, I find myself using the browser probably more than all non-game apps, including Mail and Skype (the only two I use much at all) combined. I do use Office on the tablet, however (again, in desktop mode).
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Click to collapse
So there are actually a way to run Legacy App on the RT with an extra layer of Virtualization? I mean, most of the time i can just use the laptop, so i don't require the tablet to be able to run 100% what i want to run with Windows 8, but some x86 app like Foobar2000, i would like to see it run because i also have a lot of music in FLAC and others type that XBOX Music App doesn't play.
And are there any news on the VLC for RT? Heard that they have been developing that, would be nice if they can play MKV files.
It's an emulation (well, technically dynamic recompilation) layer, not virtualization in the usual sense. The performance hit is massive - I certainly would not recommend trying to run a software media decoder through it - but it doesn't require running a whole additional OS (the way virtualization usually does). My point was basically that RT works for me because I ignore at least 50% of its intended use cases and add a bunch of new ones - something that a normal user would not do. If I were limited just to what's in the store, I would feel that the RT is a waste of money, but that's because I don't like the way the store apps work and have yet to discover one that was A) worth using and B) couldn't be done better using a desktop app.
The x86 emulator is very slow. 0.1ghz as an incredibly rough guess that's not entirely accurate but gives a vague idea of performance. The original Age of empires plays ok as do a few other old applications but chances are most things you run through the emulator won't actually run.
There is a jailbreak for windows RT that allows installation of non store applications, but these applications need specifically porting to windows RT. The advantage of the ported applications is that they aren't being emulated, they are run natively utilising the full power of the tablet. However few applications have been ported so far but the situation is improving.
If you need desktop apps then you are best off with the atom tablets. They aren't as slow as the media make out, they just aren't fast either. The chips in current tablets are a bit more powerful than those in netbooks and are at a higher clock speed but they still won't come anywhere near your other machine. I do know a few people that happily use minecraft and visual studio on atom netbooks.
i've got both the 700t and 500t but find myself using the 500t far more. mainly it's used for media consumption and artwork. i use sketchbook pro, sai, and photoshop 12 (cs5) with no real problems. sure it's not as fast as the 700t, but i can keep on going for 12+ hours on the atom where the i5 dies after 5.5 hrs (faster when watching a movie). i generally keep my screen at 0% brightness since i'm indoors and the battery life still sucks on the 700t. if i have to remain tethered to an outlet i'd much rather be using something more powerful.
i have no regrets about getting the atom, but the i5... i should have sent that back and bought a gaming laptop. i'm not saying that the 700t is a bad tablet, it's pretty dang good, but the way i use my tablets battery life is more important. i thought i could squeeze 6-7 hours out of the 700t since i keep the screen dim.
So I just recently learned about how good of a deal the nook hd/hd+ were so I picked one up but wont be able to use it till after Christmas cause its a gift from my wife but I'm wandering if I made a good decision I will not be using it for reading but more for youtube Internet surfing and gaming but not anything crazy I usually play strategy games that have very minimal animation or maybe hill climb racing my question is, is it ok for gaming I know it has a nice screen but I dont want it to be laggy or slow while watching videos or gaming
Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk 2
timmyd463229 said:
I'm wandering if I made a good decision I will not be using it for reading but more for youtube Internet surfing and gaming but not anything crazy . . . I dont want it to be laggy or slow while watching videos or gaming
Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk 2
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Click to collapse
I'm running CM 10.1 on my Nook HD+, and just finished watching the last 9 races of the America's Cup on it (using the official America's Cup app from Google Play store). No problems at all, looked great. Watched a number of HD videos that I'd downloaded (e.g., Harvard Science and Cooking lectures). Fine all around, screen resolution is fantastic.
Not a big gamer, but have been playing Where's My Water (after watching my daughter play it) and a version of the old favorite Tetris. Again, graphics are fine, no lag issues.
I think you'll be very happy.
ttablet said:
I'm running CM 10.1 on my Nook HD+, and just finished watching the last 9 races of the America's Cup on it (using the official America's Cup app from Google Play store). No problems at all, looked great. Watched a number of HD videos that I'd downloaded (e.g., Harvard Science and Cooking lectures). Fine all around, screen resolution is fantastic.
Not a big gamer, but have been playing Where's My Water (after watching my daughter play it) and a version of the old favorite Tetris. Again, graphics are fine, no lag issues.
I think you'll be very happy.
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Click to collapse
Yeah it will be nice to watch breaking bad on a bigger screen than my note 2
Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk 2
Nook hd/hd+
timmyd463229 said:
So I just recently learned about how good of a deal the nook hd/hd+ were so I picked one up but wont be able to use it till after Christmas cause its a gift from my wife but I'm wandering if I made a good decision I will not be using it for reading but more for youtube Internet surfing and gaming but not anything crazy I usually play strategy games that have very minimal animation or maybe hill climb racing my question is, is it ok for gaming I know it has a nice screen but I dont want it to be laggy or slow while watching videos or gaming
Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I bought one (hd+) about 3 months ago, and have been using CM10.2-sdcard as daily driver for about a couple of weeks. Reasonably fast for Netflix, Hulu-plus, Adobe Reader (PDFs with heavy graphics). Not sure about games. Not laggy at all for videos.
I have a Nook HD+ at my home, I gave it to my father. He lets my younger brother play with it all the time; playing various Google Play games, Nintendo 3DS ROMs and so much more. It's rarely ever used for reading at my home, other than when web browsing.
I would completely recommend a Nook HD+ for your entertainment purposes. It plays 1080p video files (.avi, .mp4 and .mkv are all what I've tested) perfectly fine using MX Player. Games work on it perfectly too, however, don't expect too many games to be compatible or expect to play the latest high-end graphical games. The three reasons for this is, firstly, the graphics performance of the tablet is not the greatest, but then again we can't expect it to be at a bargain price. Secondly the dual-core processor can't push as much as today's quad-cores can, and finally; many games and apps don't support the full 1080p resolution of the tablet (i.e. Sims FreePlay and other similar apps only support 720p or lower resolution screens). Of course, the last factor plays a major role but more apps are starting to support the higher resolution.
Games are compatible however, and you have a large selection on the Google Play store. The Nook should be able to run Hill Climb Racing, granted the game supports the 1080p resolution. If it does, the Nook will eat the game for breakfast. The games I've run on the tablet which was slow/laggy are Asphalt 7 and 8. FIFA 14 seems to run decent though.
Once you do open your Nook, remember to install CyanogenMod 10.1 stable (not nightly), of course by then we could have CM10.2 or even later. I used the Nook before the 2.0.10 update, and it was not worth having (no apps/games were installable, nor did Google Play come as standard). Once CyanogenMod was installed, it was a full fledged tablet, competing against the likes of the Nexus 7. Of course, with the 2.0.10 update, the Nook can now download Google Play apps. For the sake of Android, I would still recommend CyanogenMod however.
Once you install CyanogenMod, which is an easy process, you'll love your tablet. It should completely satisfy your entertainment needs.
I hope you enjoy it, and an early Merry Christmas.
HiddenG said:
I have a Nook HD+ at my home, I gave it to my father. He lets my younger brother play with it all the time; playing various Google Play games, Nintendo 3DS ROMs and so much more. It's rarely ever used for reading at my home, other than when web browsing.
I would completely recommend a Nook HD+ for your entertainment purposes. It plays 1080p video files (.avi, .mp4 and .mkv are all what I've tested) perfectly fine using MX Player. Games work on it perfectly too, however, don't expect too many games to be compatible or expect to play the latest high-end graphical games. The three reasons for this is, firstly, the graphics performance of the tablet is not the greatest, but then again we can't expect it to be at a bargain price. Secondly the dual-core processor can't push as much as today's quad-cores can, and finally; many games and apps don't support the full 1080p resolution of the tablet (i.e. Sims FreePlay and other similar apps only support 720p or lower resolution screens). Of course, the last factor plays a major role but more apps are starting to support the higher resolution.
Games are compatible however, and you have a large selection on the Google Play store. The Nook should be able to run Hill Climb Racing, granted the game supports the 1080p resolution. If it does, the Nook will eat the game for breakfast. The games I've run on the tablet which was slow/laggy are Asphalt 7 and 8. FIFA 14 seems to run decent though.
Once you do open your Nook, remember to install CyanogenMod 10.1 stable (not nightly), of course by then we could have CM10.2 or even later. I used the Nook before the 2.0.10 update, and it was not worth having (no apps/games were installable, nor did Google Play come as standard). Once CyanogenMod was installed, it was a full fledged tablet, competing against the likes of the Nexus 7. Of course, with the 2.0.10 update, the Nook can now download Google Play apps. For the sake of Android, I would still recommend CyanogenMod however.
Once you install CyanogenMod, which is an easy process, you'll love your tablet. It should completely satisfy your entertainment needs.
I hope you enjoy it, and an early Merry Christmas.
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I read there are apps that make the games run at 720p so if they cant run 1080p it will be smoother
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Heavy 3D suffers a bit at the high resolution of the HD+, but general GUI and video always seem smooth to me.
timmyd463229 said:
I read there are apps that make the games run at 720p so if they cant run 1080p it will be smoother
Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That app creates instability and can create boot issues. Not worth it IMO, but already "took" my $2. This function is more suitable at kernel level and part of settings. Best IMO to avoid.
It is also a battery sucking mess in sleep mode. The app must constantly poll the chipset.
rushless said:
That app creates instability and can create boot issues. Not worth it IMO, but already "took" my $2. This function is more suitable at kernel level and part of settings. Best IMO to avoid.
It is also a battery sucking mess in sleep mode. The app must constantly poll the chipset.
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Ok sounds good to me just use the apps that work and forget the ones that dont lol its not like there aren't a surplus of apps on the play store
Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk now Free
It is not as much the app as how it changes the resolution that is standard for all.
I got mine from Best Buy last week. It has 4.2 out of box and I plan on sticking with that due to emulators playing slower on 4.4 and 3rd party external writing killed. I am really liking the device more than expected. Here are IMO key points (good & bad).
+ Battery life and standby time are great
+ Display is very good for 720p
+ Controller works great
+ The key reason I like this design over using an external gamepad is the integration with apps. Huge plus.
+ All emulators tested work superbly: NES, GBC, GBA, PCE, Genesis, SNES, Neo Pocket, Amiga, C64, MAME, PSX, N64, DC, Wonderswan, Master System, Gamegear and DS. Playing Dead or Alive 2 with Reicast is super serious superb.
+ DoomGles is great and so are the Quake games. Those games and Android games are much better with the Shield controller.
+ I find myself going back to games I stopped playing due to the controls. Dual sticks for shooters is pure good.
+ Speakers are as everybody says. Very good.
- Wifi is robust, but sometimes stops working even though says still connected. I have a LOT of devices and this is the only one that has the issue.
- The 5" display is too small for MAME games that are designed for long portrait displays like most shootemups, Digdug, etc. At least with a tablet of phone you can rotate the display and not have black bars taking up a lot space.
- Not a Shield negative, but Google and their blatant attempt to passively aggressively kill off external storage. Even if emulator issues are fixed in the next Nvidia update, I will not bother due to this. I would rather not root, since means starting all over again and brick concerns. I vested some fairly serious time in setting everything up.
- I find games like Modern Combat and NOVA 3 too small on the display, so would expect PC games to be even more tiny. The Shield 2 could fit a 5.8" display and that would help. At least for the Android games. MC 4 and NOVA 3 both play great though, and ditto for Asphalt 8.
As far as a Shield 2:
1. At least a 5.5" display, but can stay at 720p. Better for game performance and battery.
2. Have a plugged in and battery mode option. Full tilt with fan when plugged into power and allow customizing if not.
3. 32GB flash. Goople's lame card killing effort compels this for a gaming device. Really.
4. K1, of course.
That is pretty much it. I would buy this again if just added the four things noted above. Shield would be a 10 if had a bigger display. 9/10 as is
They didnt kill writing to the sdcard completely. Apps can only write to their respective folders which no big deal how many games need to access a different games folder. You can still move apps to sd and you can still write anything you want to the sd card using a root explorer. As for The emulator slow downs they are so minor you cant really notice them. I had to update to 72 because it supports laptop streaming.
hexitnow said:
They didnt kill writing to the sdcard completely. Apps can only write to their respective folders which no big deal how many games need to access a different games folder. You can still move apps to sd and you can still write anything you want to the sd card using a root explorer. As for The emulator slow downs they are so minor you cant really notice them. I had to update to 72 because it supports laptop streaming.
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Click to collapse
The big issue is people are reporting zipped roms have issues as well as saves. A nice thing about the emulators is a resume mode that is relative to the rom folder. Since I have a bunch of roms, not practical to use internal for that. For people that say "Just leave all roms unzipped", that results in on average at least three times more storage space being needed. Even worse for PSX games, since in compressed PBP mode, the games average anywhere from 15MB to 600MB. In correct PSX image mode, a 15MB game is 700MB. Big difference.
Anyway, not a hit on Nvidia, but is with Android. The emulator issue is actually pretty bad to me, since results in game going from smooth to sporadic stutters with 4.4, depending in part on control pad use. Smooth to not smooth is not a good option, IMO. Kind of like using an old Tegra 2 again for emulators. Tegra 2 had some throttle issues, but not due to the OS. Tegra 3 (not Tegra 2) with my Excite 7.7 is smoother with most emulators than Shield with 4.4.
Added: I also have a S4 and Note 2014 and am leaving those on 4.2 as well. Not sure if the emulator issue is Shield specific, but do know the card write issue for all devices. 4.2 does what I need, so no desire to update and then have to go through the trouble and brick potential with rooting. Yes, this is an ironic perspective for an XDA forum.
Hmm thats odd i havent had any troubles with zipped roms on any emulation app. And i have a few. As for the sony pbps i hear you there. Its ridiculous how much filler are in those, i use to rip psp and psx games.
The shield is nearly unbrickable its almost ridiculous how well they did with that. No need for root to go back and forth from system firmwares, but you do have to have an unlocked bootloader which voids warranty although i had to return a rooted unlocked shield and they didnt give me any guff. Not trying to say upgrade to KK but i will say its not as bad as you think.
N64 emulation is superb? Mupen has a lot of N64 games which it cant handle. Granted I know this is an emulator issue, and not an issue with shield capability, but its still disappointing that android emulation hasn't advanced further.
I've read reps from Nvidia stating how surprised they were with emulation being such a popular feature with the Shield. Would it be illegal for Nvidia to work and release emulators, designed exclusively for the Shield, which emulate N64 and Dreamcast games? Considering Reicast and Mupen are allowed on the google play store I don't see why Nvidia can't release their own emulators.
I always thought the roms unzipped into RAM and there was no writing to the card for this process, but reports are some emulators have issues (saves being a key). MAME writes into it's parent directory and no special path can be created for the Android version. Given the 10GB size of my MAME roms, internal storage is not an option and losing settings for roms would mean redoing the settings every time the game is played. No thanks :silly:
As far as N64, I am referring to the control use with games. The PC version is about the same as far as what works, but using certain video plug-ins with Mupen makes a huge difference it what is playable. Mupen plays more games than N64oid as a result.
Going back to zipped file sizes, same thing for PSP, but not as big a ratio. ISO files on average are 50% bigger than compressed CSO files.
For me shield = massive paper weight
None of the games I would use it for on PC or android support it.