I wanted to make an account and post this here in hopes of helping the next person who also has a Pocophone F1, and is having trouble getting this game to run properly.
I spent a lot of time over the weekend trying to get this game to run, and finding solutions to problems I encountered. Lots of things that I researched were on various different sites, and I wanted to make a single thread people can refer to. I hope this saves people some time and frustration!
1. No matter what, I could not get this game to run at 60 FPS. Whether I used OpenGL or Vulkan, the game would tend to run at around 53 FPS. This means the game did not run at full speed, and the music sounded bad. I decided to play the PAL (European) version of the game instead, which runs at 50 FPS. Therefore, the game generally runs at full speed. I have not seen many people talk about this, but I think this is really important!
2. I thought "unknown opcode" errors completely crashed games, but you can continue playing even if you encounter them. I remember seeing these errors during the boat intro.
3. The emulator will crash or freeze after you talk to Professor Frankly and he opens the gate at the beginning of the game. My solution was to add BBoxEnable = True in /internal storage/dolphin-emu/Config/GFX.ini
This only worked for the Vulkan backend. I do not want to use Vulkan because parts with framerate drops (Pipe transitions, paper transformations, areas with lots of water) were notably worse with Vulkan while they ran at or around full speed with OpenGL.
I also did not want to use Vulkan because it would cause Dolphin to crash if I switched apps, while OpenGL did not have this issue.
I stumbled across this older version of Dolphin:
https://dolphin-emu.org/download/dev/c2a...3fd4dbe05/
Note the change description:
Android/OGL: fix bounding box for OpenGL-ES
When I used this older version, Dolphin did not crash after Professor Frankly opened the gate while I was using OpenGL.
Looking at the actual code:
Old version:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dolphi...ingBox.cpp
Master:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dolphi...ingBox.cpp
We see that Master has
The older version does not have this check. Maybe the emulator is crashing because BBox is not officially supported by the backend.
4. Do not even bother trying to use save states. If you try to load a save state and try to save afterwards, you will get an error saying the memory card inserted does not match the one inserted when the game started. I recommend just keeping save states disabled completely.
5.I recommend unlocking your bootloader, rooting your phone, and installing a custom kernel that allows you to overclock the GPU. I used this kernel:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/poco-f1...y-t4004339
Use a kernel manager like SmartPack to change your GPU's max frequency. In my case, the max option was 835 MHz.
You can not overclock the CPU on this phone. Don't waste your time. Even if a kernel says it will allow it, it won't actually work.
This is all stuff I learned after painstakingly going around researching how to get this darned game to run. I hope this proves helpful!
I spent a lot of time over the weekend trying to get this game to run, and finding solutions to problems I encountered. Lots of things that I researched were on various different sites, and I wanted to make a single thread people can refer to. I hope this saves people some time and frustration!
1. No matter what, I could not get this game to run at 60 FPS. Whether I used OpenGL or Vulkan, the game would tend to run at around 53 FPS. This means the game did not run at full speed, and the music sounded bad. I decided to play the PAL (European) version of the game instead, which runs at 50 FPS. Therefore, the game generally runs at full speed. I have not seen many people talk about this, but I think this is really important!
2. I thought "unknown opcode" errors completely crashed games, but you can continue playing even if you encounter them. I remember seeing these errors during the boat intro.
3. The emulator will crash or freeze after you talk to Professor Frankly and he opens the gate at the beginning of the game. My solution was to add BBoxEnable = True in /internal storage/dolphin-emu/Config/GFX.ini
This only worked for the Vulkan backend. I do not want to use Vulkan because parts with framerate drops (Pipe transitions, paper transformations, areas with lots of water) were notably worse with Vulkan while they ran at or around full speed with OpenGL.
I also did not want to use Vulkan because it would cause Dolphin to crash if I switched apps, while OpenGL did not have this issue.
I stumbled across this older version of Dolphin:
https://dolphin-emu.org/download/dev/c2a...3fd4dbe05/
Note the change description:
Android/OGL: fix bounding box for OpenGL-ES
When I used this older version, Dolphin did not crash after Professor Frankly opened the gate while I was using OpenGL.
Looking at the actual code:
Old version:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dolphi...ingBox.cpp
Master:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dolphi...ingBox.cpp
We see that Master has
Code:
if (!g_ActiveConfig.backend_info.bSupportsBBox)
return 0;
The older version does not have this check. Maybe the emulator is crashing because BBox is not officially supported by the backend.
4. Do not even bother trying to use save states. If you try to load a save state and try to save afterwards, you will get an error saying the memory card inserted does not match the one inserted when the game started. I recommend just keeping save states disabled completely.
5.I recommend unlocking your bootloader, rooting your phone, and installing a custom kernel that allows you to overclock the GPU. I used this kernel:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/poco-f1...y-t4004339
Use a kernel manager like SmartPack to change your GPU's max frequency. In my case, the max option was 835 MHz.
You can not overclock the CPU on this phone. Don't waste your time. Even if a kernel says it will allow it, it won't actually work.
This is all stuff I learned after painstakingly going around researching how to get this darned game to run. I hope this proves helpful!