DraStic 2.1.6

[Joe34]

I restarted my phone, put the latency on high and seems to be running smoothly now. Thanks guys. Keep up the good work.

[awk]

Really like the roboto font, icons and microphone button in that last version!

Would you consider that PIE-like menu button now that it's getting a bit crowded?

Also would still love a notification to jump in and out of the emulator!

And finally, any plans for a Gingerbread-compatible Xperia play sticks recognition?

Keep up the good work!

[Lordus]

Really like the roboto font, icons and microphone button in that last version!

Would you consider that PIE-like menu button now that it's getting a bit crowded?

Also would still love a notification to jump in and out of the emulator!

And finally, any plans for a Gingerbread-compatible Xperia play sticks recognition?

Keep up the good work!

I am working on a new UI, including an overhauled fast access menu, but it will take some time.
Until then any changes are only hotfixes to the current UI.
I will look into support for the Xperia Play touch controls when i find the time as well.

[awk]

Great!

It's amazing to see how far the emulator has come in one month only, especially seeing as it was close to perfect when it came out!

[Ego_Bizarro]

*shrug* I find the menu great as it is; I'd put the work into other stuff. But hey, it's your baby

[JePP]

Really like the roboto font, icons and microphone button in that last version!

Would you consider that PIE-like menu button now that it's getting a bit crowded?

Also would still love a notification to jump in and out of the emulator!

And finally, any plans for a Gingerbread-compatible Xperia play sticks recognition?

Keep up the good work!

I am working on a new UI, including an overhauled fast access menu, but it will take some time.
Until then any changes are only hotfixes to the current UI.
I will look into support for the Xperia Play touch controls when i find the time as well.

Will the UI ever be (back)ported on the Pandora? If there's one thing missing from DraSTic on the Openpandora it's the nice UI treat that Android'lers are getting

[Exophase]

Will the UI ever be (back)ported on the Pandora? If there's one thing missing from DraSTic on the Openpandora it's the nice UI treat that Android'lers are getting

The thing is, all of the Android stuff - including the GUI - is done by Lordus, while I do the emulator core. But as far as the Pandora version's concerned, I do everything (including the GUI). Lordus would have to port his code to Pandora, which is probably not that easy since it'll have a lot of Android-specific stuff in it and probably Java.

While I agree that the Android GUI looks a lot nicer and has some nice features Pandora's doesn't, it also isn't totally the right fit - all of the on-screen control stuff makes no sense (or I hope no one wants that on Pandora). Also, we can't freely do all the scaling options there, the only asynchronous scaling we can easily do there is 1x + ?? because there's only one hardware scaler. Anything else would have a speed hit. There are also some options that are exposed in the Pandora version but not the Android one because we don't want to confuse people - if you haven't noticed I trust the Pandora people with a LOT more technical information and generally they've been way more savvy (compare the changelogs sometime, Pandora one gets the real explanation while the Android one gets the generic version ) Finally, while I do see some value in adding touch to the Pandora one at some point, I like that it was designed first and foremost to be controlled with a gamepad + keyboard. And there are some little touches like pressing shift + M in-game to go straight to the next game in the menu.

Ultimately since the Pandora version is free I probably feel a little more justified in doing the kind of menu that I want and enjoy most (also because I use the PC and Pandora versions way more than the phone one ;p) rather than what's in by popular demand, but if you or anyone else has any suggestions for ways to make it nicer I do try to listen.

[awk]

Ha, the different changelog is excellent.

I think you have it right by expecting different things of Android users; while they tend to like tech stuff too, typically I prefer simple emulators like n64oid to the complexity of MupenAE. I would be ready to go through millions of settings on a computer, like I used to in project64 or ePSXe, but the way I use the emulator on the phone has something to do with quick use and multitasking, and I generally like a simple setup that works for everything.

*shrug* I find the menu great as it is; I'd put the work into other stuff. But hey, it's your baby

About the menus, while I agree they're good and functional, the amount of people asking about things that are actually already a feature shows that they could still improve! (also the rest of the emulator is already so so good that it's not like the priority is playability, which is already close to perfect).

For example I've noticed in the option that the choice to use radio buttons or ticked boxes seems to be mainly random: 3 radios and they're horizontal, more and they're vertical.

It would make more sense for example for radio box choices to be always vertical but for the speed limit choice to be a drop down menu/pop up selector. Tick boxes on android are usually on the right of the text, or aren't even displayed and just change the string on the button (think "enable" becomes "disable" etc) Same with the sliders for the regions, you tend to click on them accidentally as you scroll.
Also, those "?" buttons look a bit wonky and could be replaced with a subtext that enriches the description of the settings in a few words.

I'm not saying those are important and should be fixed now or even ever, but they contribute to a feeling of familiarity and professionalism in the app. But also mainly they help people make the most use of the emulator while forgetting it's not the real thing! I'm willing to bet for example that if layouts was embedded in the settings instead of being weirdly accessible through the pause menu (with a subtext saying "change screen and buttons layout") lots more people would find it and less people would ask about landscape vs portrait, or how to move the buttons.

[JePP]

Will the UI ever be (back)ported on the Pandora? If there's one thing missing from DraSTic on the Openpandora it's the nice UI treat that Android'lers are getting

The thing is, all of the Android stuff - including the GUI - is done by Lordus, while I do the emulator core. But as far as the Pandora version's concerned, I do everything (including the GUI). Lordus would have to port his code to Pandora, which is probably not that easy since it'll have a lot of Android-specific stuff in it and probably Java.

While I agree that the Android GUI looks a lot nicer and has some nice features Pandora's doesn't, it also isn't totally the right fit - all of the on-screen control stuff makes no sense (or I hope no one wants that on Pandora). Also, we can't freely do all the scaling options there, the only asynchronous scaling we can easily do there is 1x + ?? because there's only one hardware scaler. Anything else would have a speed hit. There are also some options that are exposed in the Pandora version but not the Android one because we don't want to confuse people - if you haven't noticed I trust the Pandora people with a LOT more technical information and generally they've been way more savvy (compare the changelogs sometime, Pandora one gets the real explanation while the Android one gets the generic version ) Finally, while I do see some value in adding touch to the Pandora one at some point, I like that it was designed first and foremost to be controlled with a gamepad + keyboard. And there are some little touches like pressing shift + M in-game to go straight to the next game in the menu.

Ultimately since the Pandora version is free I probably feel a little more justified in doing the kind of menu that I want and enjoy most (also because I use the PC and Pandora versions way more than the phone one ;p) rather than what's in by popular demand, but if you or anyone else has any suggestions for ways to make it nicer I do try to listen.

Haha yeah I definitely noticed the differences in the changelog
Let me be clear that I wasn't hoping for the touch interface to be ported over - of course that doesn't make a good deal of sense on the Pandora as it's made to be controlled via the gamepad keys / keyboard. It is just that I feel that the Pandora UI looks too "basic" and - more importantly - the letters in the menu are really quite small and therefore not necessarily easy to read for everyone (myself excluded though). Of course the "basic" look itself isn't a big deal, but for example for show-off purposes one would wish for a more "sexy" look as in the Android port - or at least more readable . Also for a very sexy look, may I recommend: gameplay freezes but is still viewable in the background with the menu in the foreground But of course I'm just throwing an idea around here. I remember some other emulator had this (was it picodrive maybe?). Features-wise, I guess we're not missing much... only ability to set all keys and hotkeys to anywhere on the keyboard would be a really neat addition (plus: turbofire modes as in gpsp. Too much text in Pokemon!), those are about the only things that come to mind. I agree that scaling options are optimal already.

On another note, are the key shortcuts listed somewhere? I had never heard before about the Shift+M function, for example! I also just found out that when Drastic crashes with garbled and then black screen (happens in Pokemon Black after using the Season Change cheat codes once in a while, plus it makes the game delete the .sav as it thinks the save is corrupt when resetting the game, yet emulator savestates still work - so, a bug report here!) , its possible to quite the program back to desktop without a hard reset by switching the power flick (hibernation), going back and then xfce closes Drastic - neat! I ended up hard resetting before always...

Thanks and keep it up!

[Infinitelyblank]

I have an update on my Advance Wars woes!

I tried playing the game again with different screen settings and had interesting results:

Default dual screen: no crashes
One large screen with smaller secondary screen: no crashes
Single screen: crash within the first minute.

It appears that unless both screens are being rendered the emulator becomes less stable, which is a bit annoying since one of the screens on Dual Strike is effectively useless filler, but if I resize it to the smallest possible size I'm basically playing single screen anyway

P. S. I should note that I signed up for the beta release recently to see if that world fix it, but my version of drastic is still 2.1.6a so I think I'm still on the current stable release anyway.