Can your Tegra 2 handle SL?

[kamikazees]

I asked this question kinda off-topic in another thread (http://www.spacetimestudios.com/showthread.php?33381-Framerate-Drops-During-Battle-on-Motorola-Atrix-further-testing) and no one responded, so I thought I'd give it a proper standalone thread. If you have a device with a Dual Core (or Tegra 2) chip, I'd like to know... can you play Star Legends?

I have a Motorola Atrix with a 1.0 Gz dual core Tegra 2 chip and 1 GB of ram, and the game plays really choppy when there are large enemies or lots of enemies on the screen. It's really strange and does not happen in town. My iPhone 4 and iPad 2 play it just fine in town or battle, but I'd rather play on the Atrix. Hoping to figure out a solution.

EDIT: Highlight link for those interested.

[apoceq]

Man I dont have a Tegra 2 but a TIOMAP4 or whatever comes in the droid bionic...I havent tested it out on SL yet...but PL runs BAD BAD BAD!! Fine in town....but when casting and moving with mobs on the screen its terrible!

[apoceq]

Ok i just played SL, and I get the same choppy performance. UGH. So frustrating...

[StompArtist]

I have an old G-Tablet with Tegra2 chip and it runs great but the tablet has been flashed with a custom ROM (Vegan)

[Growwle]

X2 still lags a bit in SL, but PL runs beautifully since last patch lucky there is nothing for me to do in SL until Sloucho.

[Deathpunch]

The dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon in my HTC Evo 3D handles this game smoothly. No gameplay issues at all. One very minor incident involving text changed to white boxes, but it corrected itself when I snapped the screen cap to report it. Not real sure if that was a CPU issue or something with the Adreno 220 GPU. It wouldn't be the first game I've played that had issues with the GPU. Battleheart would crash until it was updated with support for it.

[WhoIsThis]

An older ARM Cortex A8 CPU can play it fine. The Tegra as a dual core is significantly faster, although the graphics don't represent much of an upgrade over the PowerVR SGX 540.

I suspect that the issue is probably with the Atrix itself. The phone was very buggy on release.

[Growwle]

SL ran fine on my x2 through beta up until combos were added and spell effects were upgraded around the time Numa was released.

[Zaltiar]

I use an asus transformer tegra dual core tablet, games working fine for me, hardly get lags.

[kamikazees]

Thanks to everyone so far for your posts. I keep wondering if it is just my phone, but several other people, like apoceq and Growwle, are reporting the same problems. But then there are others who have the Tegra 2 (like the ASUS eee pad Transformer users) who don't have this problem. Maybe there is something else we all have in common that's not the Tegra 2 but is the problem.

It really sounds like an issue that affected Android users in Alien Oasis several months back, as I found reported in this similar thread (http://www.spacetimestudios.com/showthread.php?13346-Htc-evo-choppy-fps). Unfortunately, I did not see any resolution to that thread and I have similar (although not quite as bad) problems in PL.

This weekend, I rooted and unlocked my phone, wiped everything on it and flashed an entirely new Rom (OS) to the phone. I flashed the Alien Rom v. 4 and theme. My phone is now optimized and superfast, running the Alien/Gingerbread OS.... and Star Legends still kicks it butt. My iPhone 3gs is laughing.

I may try freezing some applications or services next, flashing other roms, over overclocking the CPU. I am running out of ideas though.

[Navygreen]

My tegra 2 chip seems to run PL and SL flawlessly... Of course on a wireless connection if that even makes any difference.

[WhoIsThis]

In theory, we would actually expect the Tegra 2 to be slower on tablets because of higher 1280x800 resolution. This is not the case based off the (subjective) opinions of users.

I do recall that when the Atrix was released in Canada and I played with it in stores, it subjectively felt significantly slower than my Samsung Galaxy S variant, despite having an ARM Cortex A9 processor that is about 30% faster clock for clock (and that isn't even taking into account that the Tegra 2 is dual core).

I recommend trying to flash other ROMs at this point. Motorola does a pretty terrible job of coding to be honest. Samsung isn't too great either. See if there are any AOSP or Cyanogenmod based ROMs out there.

[kamikazees]

I recommend trying to flash other ROMs at this point...
Darn, I was really hoping you wouldn't say that. I am new to flashing and it took me forever to research it enough to where I felt I had minimized my chances of bricking my phone. So far Alien is still running smoothly and quickly. It still has a lot of Motoblur in it, though. Maybe that is my culprit.

There is a Cyan based ROM called CM7 that is in version 3 pre-beta or something. I think there is an AOSP based one called RedPill. I will give those a try and report back.

[WhoIsThis]

Samsung, despite its poor coding of Touchwiz (and I'm talking about the UI here, I'm talking about the underlying stuff), has done a pretty good job of making it easy for geeks to flash ROMs. It seems to be the easiest of the manufacturers to root, unlock the bootloader, and pretty much to do nifty stuff. LG seems to be modder friendly as well.

I don't have that much experience with Motorolas, but from I hear, it is easier to brick your phone. Careful with the HTCs as well (depends on the model and method used). Samsung has done a pretty good job of making their phones "brick resilient". Always remember to use something like Titanium Backup or Nandroid. Plus Motorola's bootloader policy isn't helping.


Edit:
I wouldn't go with anything pre-beta unless you are reasonably sure of its stability and usually pre-betas have something not working (camera, GPS, RIL, etc.). That said, Motorola does such a terrible job of coding that pre-betas are often vastly faster in performance (you'll find them much smoother at times) than anything stock-based. Be sure to check if your ROM is stock based (usually the worse performance although some modders can do things to speed it up), or AOSP (or an AOSP derivative like Cyanogen) based. From personal experience, I have found MIUI ROMs to be less stable, but it will depend on the phone and usually some phones are better supported.

[kamikazees]

....remember to use something like Titanium Backup or Nandroid....Be sure to check if your ROM is stock based (usually the worse performance although some modders can do things to speed it up), or AOSP (or an AOSP derivative like Cyanogen) based.....
All good advice. I've got several backups of the roms at all stages, so my main concern is not losing data, but bricking the phone. I flashed from Alien v.4 to CM7 pre-beta 3 a few hours ago. Wow. It's a Cyan based rom, and there's no trace of Motoblur. I didn't even log into my Motoblur account, and there are no Blur services. It's also incredibly fast (1.1Gz dual core); my phone has benchmarks as high as the Samsung Galaxy S2 now. It's awesome. Of course, Star Legends still has choppy framerates. Smack! :boxing:

What to do... There are two roms left I haven't tried (Atrix just had its bootloader unlocked about a month and a half ago). I'll give RedPill a try. The other one, Ninja, hasn't been updated in awhile and is Blur based. They say it's stable and fast, but I'm not sure I'll bother with it at this point.

The good news is that I really liked the CM7 even though it is still in pre-beta and didn't fix my SL problems. Unless I fall in love with RedPill, I may stick with CM7 when all is said and done. Will report back.

EDIT: RedPill successfully installed... and Star Legends has choppy framerates. So this problem is something no current software changes can fix. It's either a hardware problem (our phones) or a Spacetime issue.

[apoceq]

Devs we need help please. I cant play any maps due to lag..

[WhoIsThis]

All good advice. I've got several backups of the roms at all stages, so my main concern is not losing data, but bricking the phone. I flashed from Alien v.4 to CM7 pre-beta 3 a few hours ago. Wow. It's a Cyan based rom, and there's no trace of Motoblur. I didn't even log into my Motoblur account, and there are no Blur services. It's also incredibly fast (1.1Gz dual core); my phone has benchmarks as high as the Samsung Galaxy S2 now. It's awesome. Of course, Star Legends still has choppy framerates. Smack! :boxing:

What to do... There are two roms left I haven't tried (Atrix just had its bootloader unlocked about a month and a half ago). I'll give RedPill a try. The other one, Ninja, hasn't been updated in awhile and is Blur based. They say it's stable and fast, but I'm not sure I'll bother with it at this point.

The good news is that I really liked the CM7 even though it is still in pre-beta and didn't fix my SL problems. Unless I fall in love with RedPill, I may stick with CM7 when all is said and done. Will report back.

EDIT: RedPill successfully installed... and Star Legends has choppy framerates. So this problem is something no current software changes can fix. It's either a hardware problem (our phones) or a Spacetime issue.

I don't know what tools you are using, but the Tegra 2 is substantially slower than the Galaxy S2's Exynos (both in CPU and GPU), which currently has the fastest SOC for a smartphone on the market and the second fastest GPU (after the SGX 543MP2 on the A5 of the iPad 2). Quadrant, BTW is an incredibly unreliable benchmarking tool.

Cyanogenmod is generally considered the fastest and most stable of the Android derivatives. It's entirely possible that hardware acceleration was not enabled on your phone or is not working 100%. As for which ROM, do be careful about which ROMs. A lot of these custom third party ROMs are coded by well, inexperienced people who are putting together their first ROM.

Pure Speculation below:
It is probably a hardware problem or driver problem then (I'd bet drivers, but I don't know enough on the situation to speculate; drivers would be my guess because the hardware is theoretically powerful enough to run everything smoothly given well optimized drivers and phone software). If it were an STS software problem, we'd expect this problem to manifest itself on a variety of Tegra 2-based and Motorola-based phones. Phones from the same manufacturer or using the same SOC should share some similar parts and code. So far, nobody has posted serious lagging problems on any other Tegra 2 device. In particular, we are interested in other Motorola based Tegra 2 such as the Droid X2 and Photon.

Other thoughts:
I'd keep the Cyanogenmod if I were you, unless there is something not working that you need. Right now I use a beta build of Cyanogenmod on my phone as well. Cyanogen generally is much more responsive and faster. Depending on the device and what you do, it may also extend the battery life. As I mentioned before, manufacturers generally do an awful job of ROM writing. To be honest, it's sad that given the vast disparity of resources, they can be outdone regularly by a bunch of college students.

Personally, now that I have gotten used to Cyanogenmod, I really don't want to go back to a non-supported device. I'm thinking that Cyanogen support with dictate my future phone purchases.
http://www.cyanogenmod.com/devices

As much as I like having the latest and greatest, Cyanogen to me has become something of a make or break. For my next phone, I am strongly leaning in favor of the Nexus Series, even though I prefer (and currently own) a phone with a physical keyboard. The trend seems to be moving away from physical keyboards fast.

[WhoIsThis]

Update:

Apparently Apoceq above has a Droid Bionic.

http://www.spacetimestudios.com/showthread.php?36430-Droid-Bionic-FAIL!-Performance-issues


Seeing that somebody I know has an LG Optimus 2X (also Tegra 2) ran SL smoothly and an above poster noted that the Asus Transformer worked perfectly (although strictly speaking it uses the Tegra 250 T20 vs the Tegra 250 AP20H on phones) was fine, this suggests that there is something with Motorola phones in particular.

I won't draw any conclusions as we need a bigger sample size. Anybody with a Droid 3? A Photon? A Droid X2? How does SL run?

Also of interest is the Xoom which uses the same Tegra 2 as other tablets.








Finally, to anybody reading this, I suspect (again pure speculation here) that there may not be much that STS can do on this end - the problem may originate from Motorola itself unless the root cause of the problem is different than what I suspect it to be (and there is a very high probability that I am wrong, especially because there's very little information to work with here).

[apoceq]

Yes I do have a brand spanking new Bionic...And PL runs absolutley terrible on it...it even LOOKS terrible compared to my samsung galaxy. Someone had mentioned that the screen has something to do with the grainy and pixelated appearance...but if that was the case why does dungeon defenders looks absolutley AMAZING on it??

PS the bionic has a OMAP processor.

[kamikazees]

...So far, nobody has posted serious lagging problems on any other Tegra 2 device. In particular, we are interested in other Motorola based Tegra 2 such as the Droid X2 and Photon.

Flowman and bubble reported having the same problems on the Droid X2 and the Photon, in this thread (http://www.spacetimestudios.com/showthread.php?33381-Framerate-Drops-During-Battle-on-Motorola-Atrix-further-testing).

So maybe now we are speculating that this issue is a Motorola issue? Is there a way to update drivers? What else can I try?

I went back to CM7 yesterday after RedPill did nothing to correct my problem. CM7, as best I can tell, deblurs the phone but the problems still persist in SL.

Oh, and I used CF Bench to test my phone, which with CM7 registers right under the Galaxy S2. I can see the numbers where the Galaxy S2 does score a little bit higher, but it's funny to see that my phone is now 2 categories above the stock Motorola Atrix. Not sure how accurate that is, but I can tell subjectively that it is way faster than the stock ever was.

And thanks for your input, WhoIsThis. I am very new to Android (2 months) but am already a huge fan. Not so much of Motorola...

EDIT: And thanks to everyone else for posting too and keeping this feedback clean, simple and factual for the devs. Well, maybe not so simple once I started modding my phone, but hey, we're looking for a solution!

[apoceq]

Well I know my Samsung could barely handle DD online with graphics way low. Today i've been playing online with graphics on full high with my bionic with no lag what so ever. i know it's two seperate games but still though...I dont think it has anything to do with the hardware of the phone. It's in the game code...Im almost certain.

I just went to play SL again, and it said it wasnt installed..I just installed it again yesterday...well during reinstall I get an insufficient memory error yet again...knowing dang good and well i have PLENTY of memory on my phone....wth?

[WhoIsThis]

@Apoceq:

What Samsung phone are you using? I myself am using a variant of the Galaxy S.

The fact that you have an OMAP, the OMAP 4430 and that other Tegra 2 phones heavily suggests that this problem, as I speculated earlier, is a Motorola problem.

I don't know, but the pixelated appearance could be due to the pentile displays. All 960x540 displays by Motorola are pentile, and the implementation is significantly worse than the Samsung Amoleds.

http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/95735-what-pentile-screens-mean-for-the-droid-bionic-and-other-phones

I think you mentioned you could consider returning the phone within the 30 day window? I don't know if smooth PL or SL operations are that important to you, but it is an option that is worth serious consideration if you can.

For now I recommend that, anybody else reading this should, if they play STS games a lot, consider alternatives to the newest generation of Motorola phones. Given that we have seen performance issues on multiple devices with no indication that the problem can be fixed nor any understanding of the nature of what causes it, getting a Motorola to play PL or SL for now would be ... inadvisable.







@kamikazees

Cyanogenmod is based off AOSP. None of that MotoBlur stuff, which I must emphasize again has been so poorly implemented that it takes away from the experience. I note that in the XDA forums, there is an official update that is capable of bricking your phone, which is quite uncommon (there was an instance of this happening with the global i9000 and one of the HTCs; can't recall which). Unrelated, but I recommend that you try Launcher Pro or GO Launcher.

There is no way to update the drivers because Motorola hasn't released any new ones. Remember, all custom ROMs are based off of the source that Motorola has (including AOSP ones). Please do remember that I am purely speculating off of what I have been told and it's entirely possible that I am completely wrong about what the nature of the problem is. However, theoretically, both PL and SL should be able to run flawlessly given the hardware on both Motorola phones. Because I have so limited information, I hypothesized earlier that it may be beyond STS. Alternatively, a fix could be viable from STS. I don't have enough information.

Another alternative explanation that I do speculate is that Motorola may have deviated from the AOSP code to the point where things like this happen. For the most part, the Apple fanboy posts about "fragmentation" are largely posts by ignorant fanboys seeking to justify their purchase and to flame others into thinking that their phones are superior, but this may be one of the few cases where "fragmentation" coul have been the cause. Once again, this is speculation and should not be taken at face value. In order for this to be proven or disproven, somebody with significant technical expertise in Android ROM coding would have to take a look at the full source code and compare.

Finally, the Galaxy S2 has been known to crash Pocket Legends, but it is super smooth when it works and is reportedly fixable with a custom ROM. STS claims that they will be working on this one. This is a crash, not a performance hit and is probably unrelated.

[WhoIsThis]

Other than all of this, I lack the expertise and experience with Motorola phones to be able to draw any other conclusions. I think that somebody with more expertise than I will have to step in.

For anybody interested though (and this is strictly based off of my experiences; a troll will no doubt rip all of this apart):

Motorola Android Phones:
Pros
+ Screens appear to be well calibrated in terms of color accuracy (at least on the older models; I haven't checked the latest models)
+ Battery life is generally superior to other Android manufacturers
+ Sound on some models is generally better than competitors (speakers are anyways for a cell phone)


Neutral
Build quality (sucks on some models, decent on others)
When bootloader is unlocked, there is usually plenty of development (or should I say if)
Decent signal reception appears to be one of the best (except on buggy phones); usually RIM and Nokia phones are top here

Cons
- Software appears to be poorly coded; often phones seem slower than last generation's hardware despite having a better CPU
- Bootloader locked (very hostile to modders and amplifies the first con)
- Unrelated somewhat; but the Xoom is probably the worst of the tablets made by major Android manufacturers software wise
- Generally don't have the fastest hardware
- Latest generation of phones have qHD pentile screens that for text viewing, quite frankly, suck (not great for outdoors either)
- Bad cameras on phones (in general)

And last, but not least

- Does not run PL or SL well it would seem



Anybody wishing to purchase a Motorola phone needs to weigh these advantages and disadvantages carefully.

[apoceq]

I just know that Dungeon defenders looks PERFECT on the Bionic....even better than my Samsung Fascinate...Why would PL look WORSE on my bionic than it did on my fascinate?

[Growwle]

DROID x2, stock android 2.3.3

Disabled GPS and all background location, uninstalled all bloatware that was not locked, moved all movable files to SD:

Latest PL build runs beautifully, SL still lags in Numa and any large fights, multiple engineers make it worse for some reason, must be effects.

[kamikazees]

There is no way to update the drivers because Motorola hasn't released any new ones...


For now I recommend that, anybody else reading this should, if they play STS games a lot, consider alternatives to the newest generation of Motorola phones. Given that we have seen performance issues on multiple devices with no indication that the problem can be fixed nor any understanding of the nature of what causes it, getting a Motorola to play PL or SL for now would be ... inadvisable.

Darn. A little part of my is crying inside because I am out of ideas.

[WhoIsThis]

DROID x2, stock android 2.3.3

Disabled GPS and all background location, uninstalled all bloatware that was not locked, moved all movable files to SD:

Latest PL build runs beautifully, SL still lags in Numa and any large fights, multiple engineers make it worse for some reason, must be effects.

Interesting. So certain Motorola phones are fine.



Darn. A little part of my is crying inside because I am out of ideas.

Basically, unless Motorola improves their software (or unless the problem can be fixed by STS), you're stuck.

When did this start happening? Was it always like this?

[Growwle]

Latest SL patch seems to have fixed the problem, no frame rate loss in Slouch O on x2 :D

[Growwle]

Serious, try disabling email push, gps and all background silliness to free up cpu time, also get a class 6 SD card and move everything you can out of memory to SD, helps some.

[WhoIsThis]

@Growwle
Judging by the posts above, it seems that kamikazees has already tried that, along with a fresh install of the majority of ROMs (the only thing not attempted is a class 6 microSD and I doubtful that it is the problem as I use a class 2 without issues). Either way, it would appear that the Droid X2 is unaffected, assuming Growwle's phone is representative of others.

@kamikazees

After looking at XDA's site, I must conclude that compared to other phones, the choices of ROMs is a bit more limited. This may have been because of Motorola's bootloader choices.

I gotta say, I'm out of ideas here. I don't even know what the problem is. We can conclude that some Motorola phones are affected and that nothing that we can do appears to rectify the problem.

[apoceq]

SL runs just a tad bit better in sloucho than PL does in Nuris...but not much. It's pretty unbearable when all the spell effects kick in, especially with Combos and what not...

[kamikazees]

Serious, try disabling email push, gps and all background silliness to free up cpu time, also get a class 6 SD card and move everything you can out of memory to SD, helps some.

Thanks, Growwle, I've tried all that and I do own a class 6 SD card.


SL runs just a tad bit better in sloucho than PL does in Nuris...but not much.
The areas with less and/or smaller enemies do run better; oh, and if no one casts anything. :uncomfortableness:

@WhoIsThis

These issues have been ongoing since I first played, when open Beta went to Android. IIRC there were a few days between some updates when it ran smoothly right before general release, but sadly, those did not last.

[Growwle]

SL runs just a tad bit better in sloucho than PL does in Nuris...but not much. It's pretty unbearable when all the spell effects kick in, especially with Combos and what not...

I personally believe that the combos and enhanced spell effects that were introduced before Numa really made this problem more noticeable. I see that since the last patch the combo and spell effects don't seem to be displayed as long and that may be the reason for the improvement.

[apoceq]

TTT, devs could we at least get the ability to remove spell effects? =/

[Growwle]

Ping was horribly spiky today over 3G. Still playing with same settings I had yesterday when it was running beautifully, probably my carrier, but websites load nice and fast still (to be fair they are cached).

[apoceq]

Serious, try disabling email push, gps and all background silliness to free up cpu time, also get a class 6 SD card and move everything you can out of memory to SD, helps some.

I actually use a Class 10 micro SD card...Not the one that came with the phone, No background data...and over 500 MB FREE memory upon startup...The game is barely playable with more than one engineer in the group. All the AE spells and what not turn it into a slide show.

[Growwle]

I spoke too soon saying that my graphics problems were solved. Last night I ran the third map in Slouch O with a full group and the graphics got choppy when the combos were flying. The spell effects seem to be bringing the Tegra 2 to it's knees. I theorize (Devs correct me if I am wrong) that the Legends game engines do not support parallel processing and only use one of the Tegra's cores. I need to check the white papers for the Tegra 2, but most likely, each of the cores only have access to half of the total VRAM / cache available, where the single core ARM chips in other phones have access to much more video RAM. If this is the case, then this problem may only be fixed by buying lots of stims and soloing :(

[apoceq]

Can we at least get a response from the Devs on this? Sam posted in my other thread about my issues in PL but that's it. I'm not the only one with this problem and with more Dual Core processors hitting the market every week this is going to be a MAJOR issue!

[Growwle]

Yeah, I hope that this is something that can be patched, since I got this phone based on the promise of great performance and so far, I am a bit underwhelmed and starting to regret not getting the iPhone 4 instead.

[apoceq]

I will never own a I-phone, I dont care how bad my motorola is :)

[Growwle]

I have used nothing but Motorola phones for the last five or so years and have had few problems. I just see how well games run on my aging iPad one and wonder if the iPhone runs that well also.

[apoceq]

Just keeping this at the top so we might get lucky and get a response..

[Growwle]

Lol, there are many similar threads with no response, but to me it seems like this is a hardware limitation and not Spacetime's fault. Many pc games have been optimized for dual cores though, and that is assuming that SL does not make use of multi-threading.

[kamikazees]

I will never own a I-phone, I dont care how bad my motorola is :)
Haha! I briefly thought about going back to my 3gs, but I decided to try and root/unlock/flash other roms instead. Risking a bricked Android is better than eating a poisoned Apple!

But keep in mind that it might not be Tegra 2 so much as a Motorola problem. We don't know, but it sure seems like lots of the Motorolas have these issues, while some Tegra 2s don't.

[Growwle]

I will never own a I-phone, I dont care how bad my motorola is :)
Haha! I briefly thought about going back to my 3gs, but I decided to try and root/unlock/flash other roms instead. Risking a bricked Android is better than eating a poisoned Apple!

But keep in mind that it might not be Tegra 2 so much as a Motorola problem. We don't know, but it sure seems like lots of the Motorolas have these issues, while some Tegra 2s don't.

I thought some if the posts in this thread were about Samsungs as well? I have been reading up on the Tegra 2 and it does indeed split the cache between cores, so each core individually may be less powerful than some older single-core ARMs out there. Optimizing the software for multithreading would help, but I am an amateur programmer at best and do not know how hard it would be to add that.

[apoceq]

My samsung galaxy S FLIEs....my new moto does not =/

Not sure how well the new S2 does though..

[Growwle]

Latest patch is still about the same. Games runs perfect solo, or with one or two party members, but full groups and the graphics stutter. It is definitely caused by ability and combo effects.

[apoceq]

Yep, still about the same here =/

[peacemaster]

Asus Transformer has no problems at all. I compared it to my ipad2 before I sold it (didn't like it) and it pretty much ran the same. On the other hand, stuff like changing zones seemed faster on the transformer but never actually bothered to properly test it.

[Growwle]

Well, I will assume that this is a hardware limitation since there has been no response from the Devs. I guess I will choose a more "Legends" friendly phone when it is time to upgrade.

[kamikazees]

...On the other hand, stuff like changing zones seemed faster on the transformer but never actually bothered to properly test it.
That's the funny part for me too. My Atrix loads the zones about 2x faster than my iPhone, but my iPhone can actually play them once they're loaded!

[Growwle]

Well, I am giving up on SL for now, the choppy graphics are too frustrating and when the graphics run smoothly, I still go through stims so fast, my character is broke. PL runs perfectly, so I will stick with that until I can get another phone....Well, maybe I will check in every update to see if there is any improvement.

[Growwle]

Sam, anyone from Spacetime, does Star Legends support multithreading, or does it only use one core (has this even been tested)? I am dying to validate my theory that my graphics issues are due to the relatively low amount of cache and ram available per core in the Tegra 2. If all that is regulated by the Android OS, then I guess nothing can really be done in SL.

[apoceq]

TTT, help us Sam :(

[Growwle]

Yes please respond, I would prefer to find a solution rather than not play for a year until I can upgrade my phone.

[apoceq]

Oh well, World Of Midgard is coming out soon for android, Thank god :)

[Growwle]

Oh well, World Of Midgard is coming out soon for android, Thank god :)

I still love STS games, I just want SL to run like it did pre-numa.

[apoceq]

Me too but I doubt this issue will get fixed though...And I dont want to get rid of my phone just because this game will not run on it. I do have alot of time and money invested in their games though. All we can do is keep our fingers crissed at this point. With more and more dual core phones hitting the markey every week..Im curious to see how many other people make posts regarding the issues we are having.

I did try something different earlier that made the problem WORSE....I moved the game from SD card to phone...it was horrid.

[Growwle]

Me too but I doubt this issue will get fixed though...And I dont want to get rid of my phone just because this game will not run on it. I do have alot of time and money invested in their games though. All we can do is keep our fingers crissed at this point. With more and more dual core phones hitting the markey every week..Im curious to see how many other people make posts regarding the issues we are having.

I did try something different earlier that made the problem WORSE....I moved the game from SD card to phone...it was horrid.

Yeah, that is because it is taking up space in memory.

[Growwle]

Interesting, cleared cache, completely uninstalled SL and re-downloaded client, seems to run as well as PL right now, was in a small group though, will wait to declare it fixed until, I run completely through slouch o a few times.

[apoceq]

Small groups are usually ok yeah...I spoke to sam in chat and they are aware of the issues...they just dont know whats causing them yet.

[Growwle]

That is promising at least. In PL I run the swamp, or skeller returns which has many more mobs on the screen at once than SL and I have no problems at all unless I get a lag spike due to bad reception, or incoming call.

[WhoIsThis]

I said this before, but I will say it again. It may very well be beyond the ability of STS to fix this, especially if this is a Motorola issue. Still, I would like to see some investigation.

[Growwle]

Found an old thread from the Vcast beta, where Justg suggests turning up battery saver to keep the Tegra cool. As much as I will hate giving up graphics quality (the whole reason I chose this phone), it will be nice to have the game playable.

[Growwle]

Tried it, frame rates seem more even, but the game just feels laggy overall with the battery saver slider a about 1/4 from left. Guess it is better than the unplayable random frame rate drops when playing at full blast.

[apoceq]

Same performance with mine at 1/4 Growwle..

[Growwle]

I am going to see how low-quality works when I get a chance.

[Growwle]

Low quality seems to make the game run better since the spell effects are not as detailed.

[Growwle]

Switched back to full blast today and game ran like a dream no idea what if anything was changed. Did Wasted map with 3 ops and an engineer. Now I just need better luck, so I might get greens or better from director DROID.

[MitchRapp]

XOOM here - no lag no crashes I love love love it. Would be cool to have a 10.1" display options (some buttons look way too big... I'd want them much smaller and have most of my screen ddevoted to the nice graphics :p)

[apoceq]

Low quality just slows the whole game down for me. So frustrating..

[nickle182]

So I've been reading all this feedback for this thread so here's my input.

I currency have a Moto Photon and has the same issues with SL lagging quite a bit when in large fights do do all the abilities and weapons. Since I'm a Moto Dev, I've realized a few things actually. the Tegra 2 processors in the atrix and photon are identical. One core is specifically used for your battery life, basic/some OS functions/services. The second core is used for all your multimedia, gaming etc. Do to the coding from Motorola, I believe STS is having a difficult time trying to get the game so flawlessly work more then 90% of the time because of how these phones are optimized One way of fixing the issue is obviously waiting for Motorola to come out with an update (yet again) to make better use of the cores. Only con to this though would be battery life might be suffering a loss. If you look at many other manufacturers, the battery life isn't the greatest compared to some Motorola phones (besides Apple). So in the end, its just whether if Motorola will do that or if STS will figure out a way to optimize the game. Also a huge asset would also take the GPU into consideration which if Motorola were to update the coding, they should give off some of the load off of the processor to the GPU. I did do a benchmark test on where I recorded the CPU usage and GPU usage while playing this game. and the GPU is maybe running at 50%, while the CPU is running about 80%-90%

[Growwle]

Interesting, this supports my theory that SL is only using the assets from one core, which is essentially less "powerful" than a single core phone such as a DROID 2 or HTC Thunderbolt. Lol, I got conned by slick marketing when I bought my x2, I thought dual cores would mean that apps could support multithreading, but if one core is constantly relegated to background tasks, that is kind of a waste.

[Growwle]

Well, I am done complaining, for three days in a row now, the game has run acceptably well, so I am satisfied. Hope issues get worked out for other phones.

[kamikazees]

Thanks so much for your input, nickel! It doesn't make me optimistic but I'm glad to at least know what is probably going on.

[nickle182]

no problem. if anyone has any other questions I could possibly try helping out.

[Drzak]

I have a Galaxy S2. Have had it since release in UK. PL ran great for a few weeks but then started to crash at random times when in combat. Same now for SL. Lucky if I can get 5-10 mins before crashed out. Shame, hope it can be fixed somehow but no high hopes.

[Gunfu]

I asked this question kinda off-topic in another thread (http://www.spacetimestudios.com/showthread.php?33381-Framerate-Drops-During-Battle-on-Motorola-Atrix-further-testing) and no one responded, so I thought I'd give it a proper standalone thread. If you have a device with a Dual Core (or Tegra 2) chip, I'd like to know... can you play Star Legends?

I have a Motorola Atrix with a 1.0 Gz dual core Tegra 2 chip and 1 GB of ram, and the game plays really choppy when there are large enemies or lots of enemies on the screen. It's really strange and does not happen in town. My iPhone 4 and iPad 2 play it just fine in town or battle, but I'd rather play on the Atrix. Hoping to figure out a solution.

EDIT: Highlight link for those interested.
I have an atrix as well. Mine does everything you've described to a 't'. Best thing we can do is get rid of the craporola and
get a tablet, or a htc inspire.

[Growwle]

Was searching the web and found that setting Flash to "on demand" or "disabled" greatly increases performance on x2s and atrix. Makes sense, since my phone seems to work well at times and poorly at other times. I never noticed, but now that I think about it, the game seemed to run better when I played just after rebooting and before I opened my browser. Might be worth trying.


http://androidforums.com/motorola-droid-x2/343982-flash-clash-heat-lag-culprit-appears-flash-update.html

[Growwle]

Helps, but not totally, SL still lags in a full group

[kamikazees]

Thanks for the flash idea, but it had no effect for me. I went ahead and uninstalled flash altogether, and rebooted the phone. no difference.

[Growwle]

Thanks for the flash idea, but it had no effect for me. I went ahead and uninstalled flash altogether, and rebooted the phone. no difference.

Yeah, I still get lag once in a while, some of it is my carrier, because I get less lag in some cities than others. The flash thing is right about the heat though, my phone runs noticeably cooler even when gaming. I am still going with an HTC when it is upgrade time.

[WhoIsThis]

Interesting, this supports my theory that SL is only using the assets from one core, which is essentially less "powerful" than a single core phone such as a DROID 2 or HTC Thunderbolt. Lol, I got conned by slick marketing when I bought my x2, I thought dual cores would mean that apps could support multithreading, but if one core is constantly relegated to background tasks, that is kind of a waste.

That is incorrect. A single core of an Nvidia Tegra 2 series CPU should be able to outperform a similarly clocked A8 by about 30% due to the out of order (versus in order) instructions of the A9 CPUs. The dual cores theoretically at least should have around 2.5-3x the power of the single cores, but currently Android can't take advantage of dual cores. Supposed to come with Ice Cream.


Flash will probably not have an effect (or at least one that is appreciable) for SL. It may however increase the speed of web browsing. At least, it should not if the phone was coded reasonably well. I'm not sure how much resources flash takes, but it shouldn't be excessive. You can use a take killer and kill pretty much everything except the core components, but judging by what people are saying here, it will probably not make an appreciable difference.

[Growwle]

That is incorrect. A single core of an Nvidia Tegra 2 series CPU should be able to outperform a similarly clocked A8 by about 30% due to the out of order (versus in order) instructions of the A9 CPUs. The dual cores theoretically at least should have around 2.5-3x the power of the single cores, but currently Android can't take advantage of dual cores. Supposed to come with Ice Cream.


Flash will probably not have an effect (or at least one that is appreciable) for SL. It may however increase the speed of web browsing. At least, it should not if the phone was coded reasonably well. I'm not sure how much resources flash takes, but it shouldn't be excessive. You can use a take killer and kill pretty much everything except the core components, but judging by what people are saying here, it will probably not make an appreciable difference.

Well, whether it is the hardware, firmware or software, we are at the mercy of the coders.

[nickle182]

your problem usually lies with the overlay that samsung put on there on top of the android os. if you haven't already, I would root your phone put in a customer kernal and rom. See if this helps any.

[nickle182]

That is incorrect. A single core of an Nvidia Tegra 2 series CPU should be able to outperform a similarly clocked A8 by about 30% due to the out of order (versus in order) instructions of the A9 CPUs. The dual cores theoretically at least should have around 2.5-3x the power of the single cores, but currently Android can't take advantage of dual cores. Supposed to come with Ice Cream.


Flash will probably not have an effect (or at least one that is appreciable) for SL. It may however increase the speed of web browsing. At least, it should not if the phone was coded reasonably well. I'm not sure how much resources flash takes, but it shouldn't be excessive. You can use a take killer and kill pretty much everything except the core components, but judging by what people are saying here, it will probably not make an appreciable difference.

Well, whether it is the hardware, firmware or software, we are at the mercy of the coders.




And unfortunately Ill have to agree with you Growwle lol. One thing I haven't asked is have you guys who own a Motorola phone with the Tegra 2 have your phone rooted? And if so, if you put a custom kernal and rom?

[Growwle]

And unfortunately Ill have to agree with you Growwle lol. One thing I haven't asked is have you guys who own a Motorola phone with the Tegra 2 have your phone rooted? And if so, if you put a custom kernal and rom?

I believe a few of the posters have rooted their phones. I personally haven't because I have read that Gingerbreak messes with the alarm and I rely on that too much.

[WhoIsThis]

And unfortunately Ill have to agree with you Growwle lol. One thing I haven't asked is have you guys who own a Motorola phone with the Tegra 2 have your phone rooted? And if so, if you put a custom kernal and rom?

To begin with, you have clearly not read this thread or you would have already known the answer.

The second is, on what premise do you your agreement with Growwle on? Here is the formal whitepaper for the ARM Cortex A9 series:
http://www.arm.com/files/pdf/ARMCortexA-9Processors.pdf

And here are the specifications for the Tegra 2 series:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/tegra-2.html

Finally, here are the benchmarks for the LG Optimus 2X, which has the same Tegra 2:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4144/lg-optimus-2x-nvidia-tegra-2-review-the-first-dual-core-smartphone/8

[Growwle]

I admit that I posted in frustration after only briefly researching the specs of the Tegra 2 processor. As far as Android not supporting dual core, that was allegedly supposed to be added in the 2.3.3 update (x2 at least). If full dual core support is not added until a future Android version, then that will suck because I will have a processor which was not fully utilized and will be outdated by the time it is. I guess this is the price of early adoption.

I personally would like to see less debate here and more brainstorming on possible solutions / workarounds.

[Growwle]

For what it is worth, my performance issues seem completely random, it seems like the time of day I play and my geographical location make more of a difference than changes I make to my phone / game. Setting Flash to "on demand"or did in fact makeshift my phone run cooler even when the browser is not in use (this indicates that Flash seems to be using cpu resources long after the browser is closed). I need to benchmark my 3g connection in the areas I play most, to see if that is part of my problem, this would be more constructive than the speculating that I have been doing.

[nickle182]

For what it is worth, my performance issues seem completely random, it seems like the time of day I play and my geographical location make more of a difference than changes I make to my phone / game. Setting Flash to "on demand"or did in fact makeshift my phone run cooler even when the browser is not in use (this indicates that Flash seems to be using cpu resources long after the browser is closed). I need to benchmark my 3g connection in the areas I play most, to see if that is part of my problem, this would be more constructive than the speculating that I have been doing.






Only thing is when I do play the game, I usually play on my Wi-Fi network an it still lags during large amounts of enemies and effects. So I would doubt it has to do with the 3g/4g network. At least fro what I've experienced. I did however notice a much better game play when I rooted my phone with a custom kernel and rom which is overclocked to 1.4ghz. Weird how there's a dual core in my photon yet i still need to do all this stuff to make this specific game run properly. I really hope that STS will figure out a way to figure this out or Motorola coming out with some sort of update possibly for the system or drivers depending where the problem lies.

[Growwle]

Yeah, I am just grasping at straws I really have no idea what the problem is.

[Gunfu]

Heads up atrix users. I read most of this thread. But Motorola just released an update for the atrix. From 2.2 to 2.3
gingerbread. Just grabbed it have yet to install. I can only hope.. Will check this thread later today. Good luck!

*Sorry for extended delay writing this. The update has made star legends playable! It's more alot more choppy even with low pings, especially so when skills are spammed. Turning off high quality, adjusting battery saver improves performance slightly. With the latency problems most people experience, plus phones like mine that have extra issues, game play still tests my patience but not like before. ;)

[Growwle]

The info STS server stability update really evened out my ping. And the flash 11 update came out, I don't know if that fixed anything, but the game runs better than ever now. Still don't know what fixed my graphics stutter.

[apoceq]

Im running 2.3.4 Still no difference in game play..


I admit that I posted in frustration after only briefly researching the specs of the Tegra 2 processor. As far as Android not supporting dual core, that was allegedly supposed to be added in the 2.3.3 update (x2 at least). If full dual core support is not added until a future Android version, then that will suck because I will have a processor which was not fully utilized and will be outdated by the time it is. I guess this is the price of early adoption.

I personally would like to see less debate here and more brainstorming on possible solutions / workarounds.

[apoceq]

p.s. still no official reply from teh devs..

[Gunfu]

p.s. still no official reply from teh devs..

Very few STS developers, and they're really busy. I'm certain we are already on the to do list.
+1 Sam & Flip for doing their best