Android Nexus 7 not good enough for DS emulation?

[the_randomizer]

Nope. Actually I wanted to know because its pretty cool to have him on the temp.

I honestly had no idea he was even on here Boy is my face red now. Shit, I hope I didn't do or say anything stupid on accident again. Ugh. I'm at a standstill, I want DS emulation on my Nexus 7 but my demo test results....are less than satisfactory. Dragon Quest VI, at default settings, had a choppy framerate; trying to adjust the frameskip to 1 or off is a no go. I did enable the option to use more CPU cores, but that is sure to be one helluva battery life killer. I truly am shit out of luck with DS emulation. Well, that's a bunch of BS. Go fig. Truly am SOL.

I think I might send him a PM or email apologizing, I had no right to express my unwarranted concerns.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I have the same tablet and DraStic ran just fine on mine.

 

[the_randomizer]

I have the same tablet and DraStic ran just fine on mine.

Then what the hell is going on with mine? I downloaded the official demo, ran Dragon Quest VI, ran like shit on a frameskip of 4, tried 1, and off, audio became choppy . Surely, my tablet must be cursed to never run DS at full speed. This really sucks. Android version? Emulator version? 2012/2013 model? Not going past 4.1.2 because of Wii remote support breaking in future OS updates FYI..

Close to giving up, very very close. Why? Because this isn't looking good. People are saying it runs fine, but, are they even running 3D DS games?

 

[Exophase]

So you work for drastic? Sorry if it sounds stupid.

Yes, the emulator is by me and Lordus. I do the core while he does everything to port it to Android, user interface, and so on (and license stuff)

Close to giving up, very very close. Why? Because this isn't looking good. People are saying it runs fine, but, are they even running 3D DS games?

Of course, not all games have the same demands and it can vary by a factor of more than 4 from least demanding to most demanding, but even 2D games usually use the 3D capabilities of the DS heavily.

I talked to Lordus and he says that Dragon Quest VI runs at about 130-140% on his Galaxy S3, which has quad 1.4GHz Cortex-A9s (GPU speed doesn't really matter). The Tegra 3 in Nexus 7 2012 is a little slower, but I'd expect it'd still usually be over fullspeed, although I wouldn't recommend running it with auto frameskip off. So this performance definitely seems a lot worse than it should be. There are a few possible things I can think of trying:

- Increase the audio latency setting. Normally this isn't something that should get better with frameskip, but I can't rule it.
- If you have a Bluetooth audio device paired those are known to sometimes make the latency even worse, so try disabling Bluetooth.
- There's an issue with Qualcomm SoCs in Lollipop where some texture uploads cause big stalls sometimes, which goes away if you use the 16-bit output option (slight quality degradation of 1 bit lost on red and blue). That shouldn't apply here, but it's worth trying.
- Make sure there isn't something else running in the background sucking up CPU time. Maybe using an app like this? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bigbro.ProcessProfiler&hl=en
- Make sure that the device isn't put into an efficiency/power save mode that prevents it from clocking very high. An app like CPU-Z can check current clock speeds.

Normally, the device will thread 3D rendering on two or three cores if it can, so more than one core will be used a fair amount regardless of whether or not the threaded 3D option is set (which can cause further issues since it isn't really emulating things correctly)

To try to narrow down what's going try enabling the framerate display and see if it's erratic. If you have a sudden huge performance spike the auto-frameskip may spend a while trying to make up for lost time.

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

Dumb question for you randomizer, but do you have a DS flashcart? I can't help but feel that all your DS issues would be solved by that alone

 

[the_randomizer]

Yes, the emulator is by me and Lordus. I do the core while he does everything to port it to Android, user interface, and so on (and license stuff)



Of course, not all games have the same demands and it can vary by a factor of more than 4 from least demanding to most demanding, but even 2D games usually use the 3D capabilities of the DS heavily.

I talked to Lordus and he says that Dragon Quest VI runs at about 130-140% on his Galaxy S3, which has quad 1.4GHz Cortex-A9s (GPU speed doesn't really matter). The Tegra 3 in Nexus 7 2012 is a little slower, but I'd expect it'd still usually be over fullspeed, although I wouldn't recommend running it with auto frameskip off. So this performance definitely seems a lot worse than it should be. There are a few possible things I can think of trying:

- Increase the audio latency setting. Normally this isn't something that should get better with frameskip, but I can't rule it.
- If you have a Bluetooth audio device paired those are known to sometimes make the latency even worse, so try disabling Bluetooth.
- There's an issue with Qualcomm SoCs in Lollipop where some texture uploads cause big stalls sometimes, which goes away if you use the 16-bit output option (slight quality degradation of 1 bit lost on red and blue). That shouldn't apply here, but it's worth trying.
- Make sure there isn't something else running in the background sucking up CPU time. Maybe using an app like this? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bigbro.ProcessProfiler&hl=en
- Make sure that the device isn't put into an efficiency/power save mode that prevents it from clocking very high. An app like CPU-Z can check current clock speeds.

Normally, the device will thread 3D rendering on two or three cores if it can, so more than one core will be used a fair amount regardless of whether or not the threaded 3D option is set (which can cause further issues since it isn't really emulating things correctly)

To try to narrow down what's going try enabling the framerate display and see if it's erratic. If you have a sudden huge performance spike the auto-frameskip may spend a while trying to make up for lost time.

-The only Bluetooth I have enabled is for the Wii classic controller because frankly, I don't like touchscreen controls all that much, I'm weird that way Unless I got a Power MOGA controller, I mean, I'd rather not give it up.
-I did enable 16-bit textures, I really didn't notice too much texture quality degradation so it's a non-issue in all honesty.
-Latency is already set to high, no audio issues with that thankfully.
-Oh right, yeah, didn't actually think about that CPU power-saving mode actually, heh, but I will download CPU-Z. The CPU is a ARM Cortex-A9 Nvidia Tegra 3 T30L 1.2 GHz quad-core (1.3 GHz single-core mode) 1MB L2 cache, according to Wikipedia anyways, so it's definitely sufficiently powerful.
- I'm actually on Android 4.1.2 and 4.4.4 (Cyanogenmod), because 4.2 breaks Bluetooth support for Wii remotes, a big turnoff for me, so right now, using 4.1.2 Jellybean.

Would it help to somehow send screenshots and report them on the official DraStic forums? I registered there today so it'd make it easier for me to post bug reports I think I'll test some more DS ROMs just to see what's going on, I know there's an app called Greenify that can make apps go to sleep, but not sure if there's anything hogging resources or not.

Dumb question for you randomizer, but do you have a DS flashcart? I can't help but feel that all your DS issues would be solved by that alone

Nope, no money to afford one at the moment, no DS either, my brother has a 3DS, but, well, it's his lol

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

N
ope, no money to afford one at the moment, no DS either, my brother has a 3DS, but, well, it's his lol

I know how you feel with the no money thing. Sucks... It'd be simple to pick up a Lite for cheap, but a good flashcart like the DSTWO is hard to come by now that they are out of production.

 

[the_randomizer]

I know how you feel with the no money thing. Sucks... It'd be simple to pick up a Lite for cheap, but a good flashcart like the DSTWO is hard to come by now that they are out of production.

There are other flashcards that are still good, I don't need the extra processing power, really. Won't be for a while I'm afraid, but Exophase is speaking to me about what I can do to speed up the emulation speed. The hardware isn't the issue, it could be a variety of settings, and to just do what I can. He's an awesome dude

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

There are other flashcards that are still good, I don't need the extra processing power, really. Won't be for a while I'm afraid, but Exophase is speaking to me about what I can do to speed up the emulation speed. The hardware isn't the issue, it could be a variety of settings, and to just do what I can. He's an awesome dude

Yeah, he seems to be . Not every day an emulator programmer goes out of his way to diagnose the issues of a single user. It's pleasantly refreshing

 

[the_randomizer]

Yeah, he seems to be . Not every day an emulator programmer goes out of his way to diagnose the issues of a single user. It's pleasantly refreshing

I've a lot of respect for people like him, and hopefully, as versions are beta tested, it gets even better. I mean, Final Fantasy IV seemed to run flawlessly, so judging from that, it seems most games should run fine

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

I've a lot of respect for people like him, and hopefully, as versions are beta tested, it gets even better. I mean, Final Fantasy IV seemed to run flawlessly, so judging from that, it seems most games should run fine

Good to see that your issues are on the way to being solved

 

[the_randomizer]

Good to see that your issues are on the way to being solved

That's the hope anyways, that Cortex A9 Tegra 3 chip is definitely powerful enough, but there are some underlying things or potentialities causing this

 

[sarkwalvein]

I will NOT use Android Lollipop because 4.2+ breaks all Wii remote support, period.

I would also recommend you against "updating" to Lollipop. It is a buggy PoS.
I have a Nexus 4, and DraStic worked great in Kitkat.
It still works good in Lollipop actually, but everything else is so fkd'up.
The phone drops sound during phone calls randomly, it resets sometimes just when you want to use the camera... Ah, fuck Lollipop.

 

[the_randomizer]

I would also recommend you against "updating" to Lollipop. It is a buggy PoS.
I have a Nexus 4, and DraStic worked great in Kitkat.
It still works good in Lollipop actually, but everything else is so fkd'up.
The phone drops sound during phone calls randomly, it resets sometimes just when you want to use the camera... Ah, fuck Lollipop.

The developer has gracious taken the time to give me advice on what I can do to help performance with the 30-min demo And yeah, sounds like a POS lol.

 

[Exophase]

My Nexus 4 has been unstable in Lollipop too I'll find it randomly off during the day sometimes, probably because it crashed..

-The only Bluetooth I have enabled is for the Wii classic controller because frankly, I don't like touchscreen controls all that much, I'm weird that way Unless I got a Power MOGA controller, I mean, I'd rather not give it up.
-I did enable 16-bit textures, I really didn't notice too much texture quality degradation so it's a non-issue in all honesty.
-Latency is already set to high, no audio issues with that thankfully.
-Oh right, yeah, didn't actually think about that CPU power-saving mode actually, heh, but I will download CPU-Z. The CPU is a ARM Cortex-A9 Nvidia Tegra 3 T30L 1.2 GHz quad-core (1.3 GHz single-core mode) 1MB L2 cache, according to Wikipedia anyways, so it's definitely sufficiently powerful.
- I'm actually on Android 4.1.2 and 4.4.4 (Cyanogenmod), because 4.2 breaks Bluetooth support for Wii remotes, a big turnoff for me, so right now, using 4.1.2 Jellybean.

Okay, just to confirm, did you try the highest latency setting possible? The one that's "very high." And can you try disabling bluetooth just to rule out that the possibility?

It might also be a good idea to try some other games, although I doubt it's that specific to this one.

 

[the_randomizer]

My Nexus 4 has been unstable in Lollipop too I'll find it randomly off during the day sometimes, probably because it crashed..



Okay, just to confirm, did you try the highest latency setting possible? The one that's "very high." And can you try disabling bluetooth just to rule out that the possibility?

It might also be a good idea to try some other games, although I doubt it's that specific to this one.

One, I can't turn of bluetooth permanently as I need it to use my Wii remote. And for the record, I actually did have it off when I tested the demo, I was using touchscreen controls *shudder*. Very high? Hmm, need to look for sure, I don't think so, maybe it was just on "high". Final Fantasy IV seemed to run perfectly, and that too is in 3D, which is weird. Maybe I'm shit out of luck, damned to never being able to play DS games on my Nexus 7

 

[TemplarGR]

If the emulator doesn't work like it's supposed to we do give refunds. It's not supposed to need to be online to do the license check any more than the first time you run it - if it persistently needs to be online something is wrong with the license verification on the device. But if the license verification isn't working like it's supposed to we'll give you a refund if you ask for one. So if Jayro wants a refund he can feel free to request it by e-mail or PM me, just provide the order number.

Most cases where someone asks for a refund result in them getting one. The only time we deny them is when they're for petty reasons like "I used to use this emulator a lot but don't feel like it anymore" or "9/10 of the games I regularly play work great but this one doesn't" or because of missing features that it's clearly documented to not have.

My experience with the Demo was exactly the same. I tried New Super Mario Bros to test it on a 4 core Cortex A9 1.6ghz, 2gb RAM, Mali 400mp4 533mhz gpu, and it was unplayable.

PS: I ''ll try to test again because i don't remember exactly how it performed, just that i was disappointed.

 

[the_randomizer]

My experience with the Demo was exactly the same. I tried New Super Mario Bros to test it on a 4 core Cortex A9 1.6ghz, 2gb RAM, Mali 400mp4 533mhz gpu, and it was unplayable.

And yet Final Fantasy IV DS ran perfectly fine, full speed, no stuttering and minimal frameskip. Check his other posts, the emulator itself isn't at fault, but rather, there's either something hogging the resources, power-saving features are enabled, bad configuration or all the above. Exophase knows what he's talking about and can give a refund if need be. Please read the rest of the thread where he and I talked back and forth.

 

[Jayro]

I can confirm that DraStic runs nearly flawlessly on my Nvidia SHIELD Portable, in terms of emulation accuracy and speed. Minor audio skips in Pokemon gen 5 games, hardly noticeable, and doesn't affect gameplay in the slightest.

Exophase, do you think adding a higher-resolution internal rendering engine would be doable in the near future? There are Desmume forks that offer this for x86 and x64, dramatically improving the 3D graphics of DS games. And I'm not worried about a refund, I support your hard work.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Then what the hell is going on with mine? I downloaded the official demo, ran Dragon Quest VI, ran like shit on a frameskip of 4, tried 1, and off, audio became choppy . Surely, my tablet must be cursed to never run DS at full speed. This really sucks. Android version? Emulator version? 2012/2013 model? Not going past 4.1.2 because of Wii remote support breaking in future OS updates FYI..

Close to giving up, very very close. Why? Because this isn't looking good. People are saying it runs fine, but, are they even running 3D DS games?

2012 model, and either Android 4.1.2 or 4.2.0. I haven't used the N7 in a while but I used DraStic a bit on it when it first came out. I think I tried some 3D games on it, I mostly played 999 though.