NVidia Shield

RetroArch Android devices
#117

You guys do an amazing job, without Retroarch I wouldn’t of even picked up a Shield. Every core I’ve tried so far has run at full speed with beautiful sound with no latency issues so far, knock on wood. I can’t try the DS yet as I don’t have any physical copies, but everything else has run perfectly. Thanks for all your hard work Libretro, I’m still hunting for an inexpensive Xperia Play to donate to the project so I can give back in some small way.

As for the Shield itself, I’m mostly pleased with it. Build quality is apparently excellent and the unit is very solid. I don’t love the small size of the screen relative to the bezel size, it looks a bit silly and is wasted real estate. I can’t help but envy the Archos Gamepad and Wikipad for the larger screens on some level, even if they are using inferior hardware. The unit is also heavy but manageable at roughly 20 ounces, which is up is about twice a PS Vita or 3 times more than an Xperia Play. The speakers are very loud and reasonably clear, but I find it lacks low end. There is also no physical menu button which is a huge problem for some programs, like making it impossible to save in ScummVM. I also find the R1 and L1 buttons to be uncomfortably small. But I’m nitpicking; the Shield is a very cool device for anyone and a marvelous device for emulation enthusiasts. This must trump the Pandora as the ultimate handheld emulation console. If you love Retroarch on your phone then you’ll love it even more on the Shield.

#118

Could somebody test tekken tag with mame4droid .139? I got it running on my note but it is a slideshow. If it is playable, I will have to buy the shield. Thanks in advance.

#119

That game is not going to run on MAME 0.78.

And the reason it’s a slideshow apart from the Note not being all that powerful is because that is what you get with more recent versions of MAME - which is why I went back all the way to a MAME version from 2003.

#120

That game is not going to run on MAME 0.78.

And the reason it’s a slideshow apart from the Note not being all that powerful is because that is what you get with more recent versions of MAME - which is why I went back all the way to a MAME version from 2003.[/quote]

harrylung2004, i don’t know how is powerfull the shield ,but you can trust Squarepusher when he said the newers mame releases are very slower .

in the past , i had port mame 0.139 for libretro to see how it was slower . the result is that in my old low android phone (htc desire S) and even with an old game like tetris it’s was very slower than with mame0.78

ex : for tetris i get 40 fps with 0.139 and fullspeed with mame 0.78 for mk2 i get 20 fps wtih 0.139 and 42 fps with mame 0.78 1941 i get 34fps with 0.139 and 54 fps with mame 0.78

#121

i bet the shield can run mame 139 fine…can you ask squarepusher to try your 139 core with it?

#122

The author of mame4droid has already said he can run pretty much all 2D games in mame including all the Mortal Kombat games, Killer Instinct 2, and NBA Maximum Hangtime…all at 100% full speed on v0.139. Check out the thread at MAMEWorld.

#123

Guess we can do a more recent version of MAME then too - but I will still keep MAME 0.78 for slower devices. RetroArch and libretro are about maximum portability and about keeping everybody happy - not just those on overpowered devices.

#124

BTW - I just read this on MAME World from RBelmont:

http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Number=312125&page=&view=&sb=5&o=&fpart=1&vc=1

Maybe, yes, no, no. Shield is a great leap forward for ARM, but in x86 PC terms it’s about a high-end Pentium III or original AMD Athlon.

I’m sorry, I hold a lot of respect for RBelmont and still do, but I have to say something about this - this is laughably wrong - in fact it’s so shockingly wrong I am shocked it even comes out of the mouth of a guy that I hold in such high regard Even a PS3 single-core (one of the absolute worst pieces of crap that can be had in microprocessor terms - in-order execution, LHS stalls of 500ms, terrible IPC) can compete with a Pentium 4 2.4GHz PC as has been confirmed in RetroArch tests. A Shield is way beyond that - beyond even a Core 1 laptop and more into Core 2 Duo laptop territory.

These kind of uneducated performance guesses can be prevented by just running a project like libretro/RetroArch and being able to test the same code on a wide range of platforms - I can objectively, 100% accurately state performance figures because of the fact that every libretro port can be made to run on every RetroArch frontend that has been made for all these consoles/OSes - and the amount of “platform overhead” that exists between RetroArch ports is so minimal that it might as well not exist.

No way in hell can a high-end Pentium III or original AMD Athlon run every non-coprocessor game with bsnes/higan performance core at fullspeed like the Shield does. Note - that is v0.92 for you - that already is massively slower than previous versions because of 30bit color and other design issues that really set performance back a good 6 to 16 percent.

He can already test this for himself really - just download RetroArch Android, run it on your Shield, run bsnes/higan performance core. See how every non-coprocessor game is fullspeed. Now try getting that out of a Pentium 3. Good luck - you will need it because it just ain’t happening.

#125

Good to keep 2 versions of mame , i 'm happy that i can still play tetris,pbobble,tatsujin,wardner… on my old phone :slight_smile: but true it’s good also if we have another version for pc or recent devices.

Im sure squarepusher don’t need me to test it :slight_smile: ( and if eventually he needs , he know who ask )

BTW im not releasing here the library , because my port was quick and bad and then i m not ready to release the source code for now , and no source code = no binary …

BTW it not very hard/long to port it to libretro , the longer is to clean code and do it in the good manner ( no quick & bad like me due to my incompetence in C++ ) .

#126

7rtype - go ahead and release your source though on a repo - I’ll be glad to whip it into shape - so don’t worry about the initial quality.

I’m pretty stoked for a newer MAME version so the quicker we can get to the stage of something working the better.

#127

Ok ,so i will push it in on my git later , i’m not @home and don’t have access to the source code for now, only the core on my phone :slight_smile:

edit : done , it’s on my git , so let’s go ahead …

#128

Yeah, already forked it but can’t get it to compile on x86_64.

It would have really helped if you had made the initial commit the original MAME source instead of it having your changes already merged - guess I need to run it through a directory diff.

You did use the untouched MAME sources right instead of that Android fork? That would make me feel a bit better about it.

#129

Yes i start it with the original mame 0.139 src. ( but with mess src merged) and yes not ideal to start with my change in the initial commit :frowning:

in fact , i just push this one just in case of someone want to test it on the shield ( because it’s very slow on my old htc)

If you have time and not pressed ,i ll delete this one tomorrow and start a new one with original and then only after apply commit .it will be more logic and simple , and give me chance to redone some bad stuff in a more proper way!

for x86_64 , i don’t know as i compile it on my 64 bit system with my 32 bit chroot .

#130

If you have time and not pressed ,i ll delete this one tomorrow and start a new one with original and then only after apply commit .it will be more logic and simple , and give me chance to redone some bad stuff in a more proper way!

OK, go ahead. Do whatever you think is best.

I’ll try with my fork seeing whatever I can piece together on my end and whether or not I can quickly run it on Shield.

#131

I’ve redone the repository , start with http://www.mamedev.org/downloader.php?file=releases/mame0139s.zip for the first commit and then commit and apply the minimal hack to done it works with libretro .

I thinks you should start from this one instead of the old one

it’s not finish and perfect , but for now I’ve successfully build for pc linux & android and tested some games on my devices.

But it’s really slow on my android phone & tablet , only pc is fine. So i really want to know how it run on the Shield :slight_smile:

#132

Cool. I’ll check it out.

#133

Hello and thanks for your work :wink:

Do you know if it’s possible to add an option to set the sound buffer to reduce the audio latency because the Shield has a terrible audio lag…

#134

Compared to other Android devices, Shield already has a “low audio latency” (yeah, believe that …). I don’t think we are using the real low-latency interface in 4.2, but iirc only the most recent nexus devices actually support that.

#135

Implemented buffer size querying for Android 4.2 and up today - it will then determine the audio latency to request based on that.

I tested it on Shield - it was a marked improvement for every core except N64 (but that is probably hamstrung by other external factors I believe). Anyway, Shield should now default to 1024 buffer size and 32ms requested latency - so at least cut in half compared to what it was before.

#136

Great ! So you have a better latency now on retroarch ? You will post it on the store ? (or maybe an apk to test ?) Thanks for your work.