Drastic on windows store

Discuss anything about DraStic here.
Post Reply
Christopher876
Posts:2
Joined:Mon Dec 28, 2015 6:47 pm
Drastic on windows store

Post by Christopher876 » Mon Dec 28, 2015 6:57 pm

I recently bought one of those Windows tablets and quite honestly I prefer it a lot compared to any other tablet that I have used. Mobile operating systems come nothing near this. Bought the Asus Vivotab 8 which is obviously not powerful enough for drastic (but for some reason can run the demanding psp titles on ppsspp and pcsx2 but not desmume/no$gba?). My dilemma here is that I want a ds emulator and I really love using it on my android phone but a tablet environment is a lot more suitable for this. Honestly wouldn't mind paying again for it.

Yes, I know in another thread it has been said that there are free options for the more higher end windows tablets but what about us with the low mid range tablets? I'm sure that there would be a lot of steam for it to thrive as it seems more and more budget windows tablets are being found in the wild. There would be an appeal from the Windows Phone users as well as other Windows 10 PC owners won't aren't as fortunate to have a decent pc to run either of these emulators.

Could you reconsider or consider on this idea of putting it in the windows store?
I will keep up in responding (unlike many other posters it seems) so don't disregard this thread.
Thank you for reading.

Exophase
Posts:1716
Joined:Mon Aug 05, 2013 9:08 pm

Re: Drastic on windows store

Post by Exophase » Tue Dec 29, 2015 10:09 pm

Windows Phone isn't a viable option because of its inability to execute dynamically generated code. That is, unless Microsoft changed this.

While a Windows version is possible, I'm somewhat reluctant to release there because it's effectively an x86-only platform and DraStic isn't that well optimized for x86. And it'd need some work to really get working properly on Windows. That, and I get the feeling it'd need a totally different GUI; neither the Android one nor the one I use on Linux/Pandora is really that familiar or useful for Windows users. I can ask Lordus what he thinks though.

User avatar
huckleberrypie
Posts:442
Joined:Sat May 31, 2014 4:21 am
Contact:

Re: Drastic on windows store

Post by huckleberrypie » Wed Dec 30, 2015 1:59 am

Exophase wrote:Windows Phone isn't a viable option because of its inability to execute dynamically generated code. That is, unless Microsoft changed this.

While a Windows version is possible, I'm somewhat reluctant to release there because it's effectively an x86-only platform and DraStic isn't that well optimized for x86. And it'd need some work to really get working properly on Windows. That, and I get the feeling it'd need a totally different GUI; neither the Android one nor the one I use on Linux/Pandora is really that familiar or useful for Windows users. I can ask Lordus what he thinks though.
Which accounts for why I tend to avoid devices running off Atom SOCs like those from Asus. My brother once suggested me to get a Zenfone but I declined as it's x86. As for the GUI on Windows, it might also call for making it Metro-style too, but that depends on how you guys will pull it off.

Speaking of different architectures, perhaps it would be even more infeasible to do a MIPS port given how practically nobody cares about it other than Ingenic.

Exophase
Posts:1716
Joined:Mon Aug 05, 2013 9:08 pm

Re: Drastic on windows store

Post by Exophase » Wed Dec 30, 2015 2:28 am

The more I look into this.. it honestly isn't that attractive. The ratio of work to audience just doesn't seem very high. Paid emulators on Windows store are lucky to get even a few hundred ratings, so it's probably hard to even break 10,000 installs. That doesn't even account for a lack of phone support.

Probably the biggest reason for this is that most platforms are fairly well supported by free emulators on Windows. I'm pretty confident that we're decently faster than DeSmuME even on x86, but that may not be enough to really matter.

I think I probably would want to either have more x86 optimizations or have an OpenGL renderer available before really thinking about something like this (the software renderer is the least optimized part on x86 right now). On the other hand, if a gaming-focused Windows 10 device like this one takes off I might feel differently.
huckleberrypie wrote:Speaking of different architectures, perhaps it would be even more infeasible to do a MIPS port given how practically nobody cares about it other than Ingenic.
Performing more x86 optimizations is at least a thought that crosses my mind now and again. Supporting MIPS isn't even on my radar. This is despite the the experience I have with ARM->MIPS recompilers (gpSP).

User avatar
huckleberrypie
Posts:442
Joined:Sat May 31, 2014 4:21 am
Contact:

Re: Drastic on windows store

Post by huckleberrypie » Wed Dec 30, 2015 5:09 am

Depends on how marketable Windows is on mobile, or the Modern/Metro API is. And even if Microsoft's pushing for developers to adopt the new API it seems like most studios/software houses are still rooting for Win32 - I doubt that the latter would retire soon and personally I'm not much of a fan of how Modern Windows works either, it just looks too Rube Goldbergian to me unlike oldschool Win32 or perhaps even Android.

Christopher876
Posts:2
Joined:Mon Dec 28, 2015 6:47 pm

Re: Drastic on windows store

Post by Christopher876 » Wed Dec 30, 2015 5:26 am

Great to see that you may consider doing it.
You mentioned it isn't well optimized for x86 and that is true since $gbyou made it, it does run perfectly fine on my Zenfone 2. So it might not be needing too much work?
Emulators not doing so hot on the windows store is definitely true but, is there any way that you could probably get it out to more people so that they can see what your emulator is capable of? It runs way better than no$gba and desmume, I still have some frame drops at times with them on my pc with the AMD FX 6300 cpu (3.5ghz-4.5ghz) while my phone with the Intel 1.8 ghz version of the chip runs that same game flawlessly.

kaikun97
Posts:717
Joined:Thu Dec 26, 2013 11:41 am

Re: Drastic on windows store

Post by kaikun97 » Wed Dec 30, 2015 6:31 am

huckleberrypie wrote:
Exophase wrote:Windows Phone isn't a viable option because of its inability to execute dynamically generated code. That is, unless Microsoft changed this.

While a Windows version is possible, I'm somewhat reluctant to release there because it's effectively an x86-only platform and DraStic isn't that well optimized for x86. And it'd need some work to really get working properly on Windows. That, and I get the feeling it'd need a totally different GUI; neither the Android one nor the one I use on Linux/Pandora is really that familiar or useful for Windows users. I can ask Lordus what he thinks though.
Which accounts for why I tend to avoid devices running off Atom SOCs like those from Asus. My brother once suggested me to get a Zenfone but I declined as it's x86. As for the GUI on Windows, it might also call for making it Metro-style too, but that depends on how you guys will pull it off.

Speaking of different architectures, perhaps it would be even more infeasible to do a MIPS port given how practically nobody cares about it other than Ingenic.
I dont know whos idea it was to think x86 SoCs were ideal for Android devices. Yes Intel Atom has a form of ARM emulation but its not very good and many apps that require an ARM cpu simply dont work or work very badly. I cant see any advantage to this. In fact often when I see bad comments on apps on the play store, its from x86 device users like the Zenfone and Samsung galaxy tab 3 users saying it doesnt work properly or force closes

User avatar
huckleberrypie
Posts:442
Joined:Sat May 31, 2014 4:21 am
Contact:

Re: Drastic on windows store

Post by huckleberrypie » Wed Dec 30, 2015 9:15 am

kaikun97 wrote:I dont know whos idea it was to think x86 SoCs were ideal for Android devices. Yes Intel Atom has a form of ARM emulation but its not very good and many apps that require an ARM cpu simply dont work or work very badly. I cant see any advantage to this. In fact often when I see bad comments on apps on the play store, its from x86 device users like the Zenfone and Samsung galaxy tab 3 users saying it doesnt work properly or force closes
Compounding this is the fact that most people don't seem to care or aren't well-versed at the differences between an ARM and an IA-32/64 processor, not to mention that manufacturers tend to be vague about their device's specs, billing their Galaxy Tab as having a "Quad-Core 1.2GHz Processor" or something along the lines of it; as long as the term "dual-core" or perhaps "octa-core" sounds music to both the salesman and customer's ears, they're golden. Heh, even certain laptops have gone towards that route, as in the case of my mum's Samsung Ativ Book to which the Korean firm even went so far as to masking the APU's origin - it would report as having a generic quad on most utilities apart from CPU-Z and Speccy. :/

Post Reply