Weird Pause Issue

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helloeveryone
Posts:4
Joined:Sun Jun 11, 2017 11:29 pm
Weird Pause Issue

Post by helloeveryone » Sun Jun 11, 2017 11:37 pm

Hello everyone.

I just downloaded Drastic on a new device that is running Android 7 and it has a Snapdragon 625. My previous device had a Snapdragon 800 and played Drastic flawlessly even with heavy shaders.

Now, when I play it on my new device, I get a weird pause every time the game loads a new graphic or scene. It's very annoying because the music stops for a second and then plays again. I don't think it's a problem with the processor as everything runs smooth until a new scene pops up and then 2 second pause and then back to normal again.

For example, when I'm playing Phoenix Wright, when a character says objection and the graphic is about to load, the whole games pauses for a second. Another issue is in Pokemon HeartGold, every time I enter a new house or building, the music once again pauses for a second and then the game loads fine. I feel like it's some kind of rendering or loading issue.

I tried this with very light shaders to see if it was some kind of lag, and it still happens. I tried with the 16bit option on, and it still happens. Can anyone help me figure out why this is happening?

Thank you.

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

Re: Weird Pause Issue

Post by Exophase » Mon Jun 12, 2017 1:29 am

It could be due to storage speed. Are you loading from an external SD card?

Something you can try is using ROMs that are compressed, and unchecking the option "Enable uncompress to file". But this might cause larger games to not load correctly at all.

helloeveryone
Posts:4
Joined:Sun Jun 11, 2017 11:29 pm

Re: Weird Pause Issue

Post by helloeveryone » Mon Jun 12, 2017 9:39 am

Exophase wrote:It could be due to storage speed. Are you loading from an external SD card?

Something you can try is using ROMs that are compressed, and unchecking the option "Enable uncompress to file". But this might cause larger games to not load correctly at all.
Yes I'm loading the game from an external SD card. But it's the same one I was using on my Snapdragon 800 device that I transferred over. I actually checked over my older device and set the options and settings to be the exact same because the pause was bothering me.

I tried the "Enable uncompress to file" option and I'm still getting the pauses. Every time something new loads up, it happens. The strange thing is, it only happens ONCE per play. For example, when I play Pokemon and I go into a the item list/pokemon list or a new place, it will pause once, but when I go back to it again to reproduce it, it doesn't happen. If I switch to a different game and then come back to it, it happens in the beginning again.

At the moment, the only thing that's different about the two, other than the hardware, is that I'm running Nougat (Android 7.0) while my older device was running KitKat (Android 4.4).

helloeveryone
Posts:4
Joined:Sun Jun 11, 2017 11:29 pm

Re: Weird Pause Issue

Post by helloeveryone » Wed Jun 14, 2017 1:25 am

So any idea as to how to solve this issue? I love using Drastic to play DS games, but the constant random pauses are killing my experience.

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

Re: Weird Pause Issue

Post by kaikun97 » Wed Jun 14, 2017 5:53 am

helloeveryone wrote:So any idea as to how to solve this issue? I love using Drastic to play DS games, but the constant random pauses are killing my experience.
Not having uncompress to file is supposed to prevent the pauses as the ROM is loaded into RAM instead. But if that still doesn't work, your only option may be to move the ROM to the internal storage of the phone (which is faster) or to buy a faster MicroSD card such as a Class 10 speed one.

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

Re: Weird Pause Issue

Post by Exophase » Wed Jun 14, 2017 11:53 am

helloeveryone wrote:I tried the "Enable uncompress to file" option and I'm still getting the pauses.
Did you try it with the option enabled or disabled? I was suggesting to try with it disabled.

helloeveryone
Posts:4
Joined:Sun Jun 11, 2017 11:29 pm

Re: Weird Pause Issue

Post by helloeveryone » Wed Jun 14, 2017 11:51 pm

Hello everyone. I was able to fix the issue! It seems like the issue was either the SD card reader on my new device or just the way SD card is read in Nougat (Android 7.0) which prevented the games to load quick enough. Strangely, the same SD card worked on my previous device with Kitkat (Android 4.4.2), but it seems to lag with my new device. Anyway, I moved all my games to the internal storage and the pause disappeared!

Also, the SD card I'm using is UHS-1 which is equivalent to Class 10, so there should be no problem speed wise. It's a problem either with my actual device SD card reader or Nougat. I'm thinking it's the latter mainly because I heard that the newer android versions interpret SD cards differently from older ones? Not 100% sure which one, but I guess I will just store the games in my internal from now on as that seemed to have solved all my issue. Thank you for all the help!

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

Re: Weird Pause Issue

Post by kaikun97 » Mon Jun 19, 2017 9:47 am

helloeveryone wrote:Hello everyone. I was able to fix the issue! It seems like the issue was either the SD card reader on my new device or just the way SD card is read in Nougat (Android 7.0) which prevented the games to load quick enough. Strangely, the same SD card worked on my previous device with Kitkat (Android 4.4.2), but it seems to lag with my new device. Anyway, I moved all my games to the internal storage and the pause disappeared!

Also, the SD card I'm using is UHS-1 which is equivalent to Class 10, so there should be no problem speed wise. It's a problem either with my actual device SD card reader or Nougat. I'm thinking it's the latter mainly because I heard that the newer android versions interpret SD cards differently from older ones? Not 100% sure which one, but I guess I will just store the games in my internal from now on as that seemed to have solved all my issue. Thank you for all the help!
The filesystem could also be a factor, if its larger than 32GB it's likely using exFAT and I don't know how Android manages that filesystem format.

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