Potential speed improvement?

[jonesto95]

I initially came here to ask about the button layout, but I figured that out.

Now I have another, somewhat impatient question:

I understand this app is still in alpha, but are there plans to increase the performance in the emulator? I have an N64 emulator and it runs quick, but once I jump to Gamecube it lags like crazy [edit: Samsung Galaxy Tab 4, that might be important]. This may be because, again, you're in alpha, but I'm just wondering.

Nonetheless, great job with what you're doing! Being the only gamecube and wii emulator, you open the door to a bunch of newer games, and I'm excited for a "stable" release!

[JMC47]

So you're saying a GameCube emulator should run just as fast as an N64 emulator? I'm exaggerating, of course, but you have to understand that there's a huge leap between those two consoles. You'll have a better chance of hardware getting much better than the emulator magically gaining performance. It will get a bit faster, but I don't think it'll turn a device running a game at half speed into one that runs it full speed.

[jonesto95]

No no no, not at all! I understand that GameCube is more powerful than N64, but I didn't expect to go from smooth play (N64) to a near-freeze (gcn). I was expecting kind of "choppy" gameplay at the worst. But, again, the app is still in alpha right now, so expecting anything mind-blowing is a bit premature, I believe. Maybe this is where my Tab draws the line, idk.

[KHg8m3r]

Are you using the version from the Google Play store, or the latest dev build?

[jonesto95]

Google Play, I didn't even know there was a separate development build. I'm assuming it's better than the Play version, yes?

[KHg8m3r]

Yes they're faster and have more compatibility.
But, a mobile phone has pretty low CPU speeds. Don't expect fullspeed from most games that aren't lightweight
Here is the buildbot: https://buildbot.dolphin-emu.org/builders/release-android

Click on the number (for example #74), and then on the right-hand side under Steps and Logfiles, click on "dolphin-master-4.0-2198.apk" That will start the download

[jonesto95]

Im not running a mobile phone, Im on a tablet. I believe it even has a quad-core processor iirc.
But I turned my tablet into sleep.mode while the emulator was running, and now I cant get back in...

Do any of you have Android expertise as to how to force-shutdown a tablet? Or any safer alternative that can open my tablet back up?

[KHg8m3r]

Android mobile phone/tablet = same thing, just a different screen size

Hold down the power/lock button until something pops up to turn it off.



Also, Dolphin is a dual-core program, so it will only use 2 cores of that quad-core you have, just fyi.

[jonesto95]

Lol, ok. Bummer. I saw that two-core option, yeah, the extras won't do any good.

The dev build is slightly better, got up to about 1 fps on the intro movie XD

Which begs the question: if you guys know it'll be slow on Android, why are you still working on it? I don't mean to squash your feelings, I honestly hope you continue in the hopes that it will come through, but if you have low expectations (as stated in the Play store description), why go through with this?

[KHg8m3r]

They're building a framework so that when future devices are faster, Dolphin will run the games at near fullspeed when they're released. The upcoming Nvidia K1 will run games pretty darn fast, though