Ship movement very slow on Galaxy Nexus

[Cory Trese]

It might be a phone problem, I'm not sure. I don't have a Galaxy Nexus.

I now have a few ICS devices and playing them side-by-side I don't see any degraded performance in ICS.

I have played on devices with the same resolution and screen size as the Galaxy Nexus and they run neck in neck with devices like the Galaxy 2 and Droid X.

I polled a bunch of Galaxy Nexus users this week and heard back from about 10 different people on Twitter, Facebook or via e-mail.

None of them reported any performance issues with the Galaxy Nexus.

ICS is definitely _different_ in terms of how it animates and draws menus -- but that isn't ST, that is just the new ICS Android OS UI system.

[Cory Trese]

Latest update should improve performance dramatically for all ICS devices.

[Fenikso]

Sorry for not posting my experience as I was busy lately.

Thanks Cory for your time trying to work this out. Even when the latest update is better (I especially like changed "density" of the screen), it is still not as good as on the old HTC Desire.

I agree there is something _special_ about the Galaxy Nexus what makes bad performance in the game. However there is something _special_ about Star Traders Elite also, as I have ~100 apps installed of which are ~12 games and I have never seen any performance problem anywhere.

Also note that there are more versions of Galaxy Nexuses with different software, mine is unlocked not branded GSM variant with stock 4.0.4. Other people, especially with branded phones, may not be on 4.0.4 just yet.

As freedomhater noted, Galaxy Nexus players may not notice bad performance if they did not play the game on anything else.

For now I will wait for Android 4.1 update which is coming in about 2 weeks to unlocked Galaxy Nexuses and which should improve performance. Maybe this fixes it. If it does not I will try different ROMs, maybe there is a bug in stock 4.0.4. I did not want to mess with the phone, but hey, it was inevitable ;D.

[Fenikso]

Cory, would it be possible to add an option to "Disable animation of ship flying through sectors"? So that the ship would just jump through the sectors, skipping the animation of flight through the sectors? Hopefully you do understand what I have on mind.

This would elegantly dismiss any performance issues and also speed the game up a lot for hardcore players.

[Cory Trese]

Had two Galaxy Nexus in my hand yesterday -- played them side by side with the HTC EVO LTE, Droid X and EVO 4G (yes, I am a huge phone nerd.)

The exact timing of the ship sector transit was not precisely the same between the different devices. In the shoot out, the EVO LTE was fastest by about 0.09 seconds over the Galaxy Nexus, which was just slightly faster than the Droid X and aboug 0.1 seconds faster than the EVO 4G.

So the frame rate varies by about 20% across those 4 devices which is within the expected variation. I no longer have a working HTC Desire to compare. It is possible that device had above average performance and the Galaxy Nexus seems slow to you.

You seem to feel that the speed difference on your phone is "bad performance" yet I'm unable to replicate on the devices I have tested with (Verizon and Sprint) or from any other feedback from Galaxy Nexus users on Twitter or e-mail.

Cyber Knights RPG has the option "disable movement animation" and I use it when I am in a hurry. I believe a similar option could be added to Star Traders and I will investigate.

Thanks again for your feedback and support!

[Fenikso]

At least three people are seeing this: codewright, freedomhater, and me.
@codewright and freedomhater, any news?

@cory, did any of the Galaxy Nexuses you have tried have Andorid 4.0.4 installed? Verizon and Sprint versions are branded and thus may be behind with the updates AFAIK. I am going to try different ROMs during the week.

I took some time to record comparison between unbranded HTC Desire with stock Android 2.2 and unbranded GSM version of Galaxy Nexus with stock Android 4.0.4 without any tinkering:

Video

However I also did some observations:

1) The Nexus scales its CPU frequency from 350MHz to 1200MHz. During the movement on the star map the game utilizes ~30% of CPU power and stays on 350MHz. So it has no reason to scale up? Is the CPU being bored to death ;D? In the same situation Desire seems to use more and scale the frequency up to keep up.

2) So I tried to force 1.2GHz all the time using Set CPU tool. The game speed improves significantly.

3) I have switched off all "long notifications". This mostly negates slowdowns which I have experienced when notification is appearing.

4) Switching off the backgrounds further improves the speed.

5) This is the most weird: Playing in landscape improves the speed A LOT!

So right now I can get the desired speed on the Nexus by either:
A) Setting CPU frequency to 1.2GHz, disabling backgrounds and disabling long notifications
OR
B) Setting CPU frequency to 1.2GHz, playing in landscape and disabling long notifications

I am not sure if this information is useful at all. Just sharing my experience.

[Jeff Coleman]

Hi all,
Sadly I also have absolutely terrible speed on my new Galaxy Nexus. I have tried stock ICS, Cyanogen Mod 9, as well as Jellybean. I'm not running anything else weird, and Star Traders is the ONLY app or game that runs poorly with the exception of the game A Knight's Dawn which won't load at all.

[Cory Trese]

I'm definitely investigating. Unfortunately, I do not own a Galaxy Nexus (expensive!) but have access to a few devices via a loaner program and friends.

None of the Galaxy Nexus I have tested exhibit the issue shown in the video, and I have received numerous reports of normal or above average Galaxy Nexus performance.

I have submitted support requests to Google and Samsung for assistance with the problem devices.

We're also now setting aside something like 30% of our revenue to buy additional devices like the Galaxy Nexus so we can test and support as much as possible.

It seems, however, that unless I luckily obtain a specific type or variant of the Galaxy Nexus I won't be able to replicate or fix the issue.

Fenikso's post contains some potentially useful information which I have included in my support requests to the vendors of the device and the OS -- perhaps someone will be able to help me.

For my part, I'm continuing to adhere to all best practices from Google, research the issue daily and ask all the Galaxy Nexus users I talk to about ST to give feedback on performance.

*** I am certain that my programming is somehow to blame for the performance on the Galaxy Nexus, in some form of fashion -- I created by hand a large amount of the ST RPG code and if there is something wrong with it, I admit to being guilty of causing it. ***

Hopefully that convinces those of you having poor performance on the Galaxy Nexus that I'm not trying to ignore or discourage you from reporting your problems. I'm taking full accountability for the issue and doing everything I can in the available hours I have for ST to make improvements.

We're currently support 1,431 different devices for Star Traders RPG across 9 different OS versions. We have struggled with some of those device and OS versions in the past but given good feedback and access to test devices we have overcome all of them. I expect the Galaxy Nexus (once we are able to determine root cause) will be no different.

[Cory Trese]

Jul 8, 2012 16:17:24 GMT -5 @Jeff Coleman said:

Hi all,
Sadly I also have absolutely terrible speed on my new Galaxy Nexus. I have tried stock ICS, Cyanogen Mod 9, as well as Jellybean. I'm not running anything else weird, and Star Traders is the ONLY app or game that runs poorly with the exception of the game A Knight's Dawn which won't load at all.

Jeff,

Haven't gotten any e-mails from you? I don't recognize your name. If you have e-mailed me other details, drop me a line so I can connect the post and the details.

You say "terrible speed" is that compared to a previous version of ST on a different device?

Is the speed issue in the Stellar Touch Map (stars and spaceship) or is it in the loading and unloading of various screens?

[freedomhater]

The main speed loss observed by me is the navigation screen. Thus is actually the toasts. If you turn off toasts the frames are good. When toasts occur the screen lags. Easy check is to just try moving with low value set for experience toast notification. Then try with a high value.

Without toasts the game is pretty quick. The thing is, I can play very very fast and the menu popups are notably quicker on gs2. Most players may not notice this.
And the gs2 (running honeycomb or whatever the default us in game) can bring up a menu as fast as I can click it. There is a brief fraction of second delay with jesus. I can't tell if it's ics or nexus. What I can tell you is that it's not just st. the entire os has this problem of slightly delayed menus. My nexus with ics isn't snappy when you rapidly select things out scroll. It's just not snappy like the old. I wish I knew if this is an is thing or a phone thing it a setting issue.


Also as previously mentioned, removing backgrounds helps a lot

[Fenikso]

Good news everyone! With a new OTA update of Android, Jelly Bean 4.1.1, the issue is nearly non-existent and the game is well playable on Galaxy Nexus. Hooray!

Still, if that would be possible, I would very like to have that "disable movement animation" option available.

[grävling]

<loud cheer!>

[Cory Trese]

Makes my day!!!