Bounding Box slowdown in Paper Mario TTYD?

[Kitocco]

Greetings. I am new to this form, but I've done some looking around before going on to post here. I just don't see as much reporting on the Android performance issues of this game.
I am trying to play Paper Mario: the Thousand-Year Door , on my Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (got it a month ago - I'm finally getting into mobile gaming!).
512GB Snapdragon variant, so specs (to my knowledge) are:

Dolphin Dev Builds used: 5.0-16380 & 5.0-16391 (from Dolphin site, used when I saw them & as available by days)
Model: SM-S908U
Qualcomm SM8450 Snapdragon 8 Gen 1
Octa-core CPU
Adreno 730 GPU
12GB RAM, 512GB storage

Vulkan backend, default resolution

usually on idle, my phone runs with 5GB of RAM free.
So far, the game runs well, especially with my 8bitdo SN30 Pro+ (though when I try mapping the C-Stick it just registers as Axis 11+ when I move my right stick Up, Down, and Right, & Axis 14+ for the Left direction).
Though I quickly noticed slowdown whenever Mario goes down a pipe, activates & using his airplane form... basically when some paper-y stuff happens in-game. Though, I don't recall it when using the sideways shimmy on the R button.
I was somewhat willing to look past it & just appreciate the work done towards accuracy... until I had beaten the first boss, and gotten to the first Bowser intermission, where the game slows down to the 10s of frames (11-15fps) right after Bowser closes in on the view in his clown-ship.

I have tried a variety of options - Enabling MMU, Enabling/Disabling Bounding Box (since I heard it also happens on Nvidia PC GPUs), I'm compiling shaders before game start- and trying to select some things that were boldened out to me in options while it was running, like Defer EFB Copes to RAM, Ignore Format Changes, and still no results. Even worse, I believe after my first time encountering this issue, whenever Bowser leaves the castle, leaving a hole in the wall, the wall is visually bugged. (Screenshot included)

   

I've attached my logs as well in case that will help. Would it be ok if I also attached my save file so someone can easily replicate on their Android?

I doubt there's really a fix at this point, though I thought it was worth bringing this up. Maybe, like I've read, its an issue with Android GPU drivers. Hopefully there is a fix or this can get worked on.

[mbc07]

Turn off MMU, most games don't need it (the ones who needs it will enable the setting automatically) and it will bring performance down. For the graphical glitches, keep Bounding Box enabled as it's an requirement for the Paper Mario games, if you disable it you'll encounter all sorts of graphical issues and even softlocks under some circumstances. Disabling "Store EFB Copies to Texture Only" should fix the glitch shown on the screenshot but will likely make the game slower too.

For the performance issues, it might not be avoidable at the moment (especially on Android). Bounding Box isn't exactly cheap to emulate (it gets exponentially worse at higher internal resolutions), but you can try switching from Vulkan to OpenGL (or vice-versa) if you haven't already, to see what performs best on your phone...

[Kitocco]

(05-08-2022, 04:10 PM)mbc07 Wrote: Turn off MMU, most games don't need it (the ones who needs it will enable the setting automatically) and it will bring performance down. For the graphical glitches, keep Bounding Box enabled as it's an requirement for the Paper Mario games, if you disable it you'll encounter all sorts of graphical issues and even softlocks under some circumstances. Disabling "Store EFB Copies to Texture Only" should fix the glitch shown on the screenshot but will likely make the game slower too.

For the performance issues, it might not be avoidable at the moment (especially on Android). Bounding Box isn't exactly cheap to emulate (it gets exponentially worse at higher internal resolutions), but you can try switching from Vulkan to OpenGL (or vice-versa) if you haven't already, to see what performs best on your phone...

I see. Understood, thank you! Though I am surprised you were able to see the screenshot, I couldn't see any image inserted into my post or any of my attachments on my end of the end forum post
Though I did turn off that EFB setting, and the glitch did still happen. I think at this point I'll chalk it up to Asynchronous or sole Ubershaders issue (though I think it still happened, even when on Safest or when I set texture accuracy to high), or just a matter of "I just launched the game as compared to when I played for a day & beat Hooktail in the same session." Also switching to OpenGL didn't do much, either.

Well, if it's fine to bring up another issue while I'm here and to not make another thread... any tips on getting my SN30 Pro± be able to use all axes on the right stick? I can't scroll through Gamebox SP messages due to my current issue of only Axis 11+ and Axis 14+ being recognized when I try to map it. I've tried mapping it in Dinput mode and switching it back, and I've also tried manually editing the Dolphin.ini file with the negative Axis values and importing it within the app from the exported .Zip file with the edited .ini file. Neither gave any results.

I don't have this issue with Duckstation, which just recognizes each stick inputs by X and Y axes, and the old 8bitdo Android app (the one with the white icon that seems to have been taken off the Play Store) also reports that the right stick is reporting accurate positions of the stick.
The only solution I have found in my searching that doesn't involve giving up analog triggers and rumble is turning on Bluetooth gabeldorsche stack in developer settings, which is not there (I assume it was an experimental feature for Android 11, which is what I found it for going off the reddit post), and also disabling "split screen or swipe twice gestures" in Accessibility settings, which I also can't find in any touch accessibility categories or settings or in home search. 

I've seen multiple other posts of people having the same issue, down to the same axes reportings going as back as 2020. What can be done?

[mbc07]

(05-09-2022, 08:23 AM)Kitocco Wrote: [...] Though I am surprised you were able to see the screenshot, I couldn't see any image inserted into my post or any of my attachments on my end of the end forum post

To fight spam, new user accounts must have their posts individually approved by a moderator before they show up, same thing with the attachments. Our forum software doesn't communicate that "awaiting moderation" state too well to normal users (only to moderators), so it can be confusing. Once you reach a certain post count, those restrictions will be automatically lifted from your account and whatever you post/attach will show up immediately.

(05-09-2022, 08:23 AM)Kitocco Wrote: [...] any tips on getting my SN30 Pro± be able to use all axes on the right stick?

Can't help you much in that area, all I know is that input handling on the Android port is a bit rough at the moment as it uses a separate (and outdated) code path in relation to the main PC/Mac ports ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(other Android users might be able to help you, though...)