Ship movement very slow on Galaxy Nexus

[Fenikso]

Hi Cory. I have bought a new phone and as you can imagine, first what I have installed is STE. Unfortunately, the map performance is much worse than on my old HTC Desire.

It does not lag or anything, just the drawing is slow, the ship moves very slowly. When I switch the background off, it is better. It kind of hurts on the device with dedicated GPU.

Is there anything doable about it?

I am running stock Android 4.0.4.

Thanks!

[Cory Trese]

We're working on improving support for ICS and all the new devices and tablets.

[Fenikso]

Jun 9, 2012 13:12:09 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

We're working on improving support for ICS and all the new devices and tablets.

Thanks. I am looking forward, as the game is now too slow for me to enjoy. I have noticed that I am used to play very rapidly now and the game just cannot keep up with me ;D.

[Cory Trese]

Don't know much about your device -- my test devices seem OK, so I can't help.

What is the device, version, PRL, etc. You can e-mail me if you don't want to post.

Also, what options you have turned on and off, what other apps you're running concurrently.

For example -- I just helped several people who were running buggy versions of Launcher Pro or SMS Pro that caused ST to crash repeatedly and suffer poor performance.

I have several crash reports as well on Google Play Developer Console for Android 4.x that list other application's as the root cause.

Keeping in mind that ST has no permissions and is a universal (all android versions, sizes and dpis)

[Fenikso]

Jun 18, 2012 19:48:31 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

Don't know much about your device -- my test devices seem OK, so I can't help.

Sorry, I have read your answer as "I know about it and I am working on improvements".


The problem:
Map redrawing is very slow. It slows even more when any game notification appears.
Some of the menus are also slower in my opinion but that may be just feeling.

My device:
Galaxy Nexus
Resolution is 720x1280

ROM: Stock, updated from Google
Android version: 4.0.4
Kernel version: 3.0.8-gda6252b android-build@vpbs1 #1 SMP PREEMPT Pri Apr 13 11:35:09 PDT 2012
Build number: IMM76I

Modifications:
Unlocked bootloader + ROOT access

Concurrently running software:
Light Flow
Apex Launcher (tried without it, did not help)
Easy Downloader Pro (was also running on my old phone)
Widgetsoid
DroidStats (was also running on my old phone)
ClockQ (was also running on my old phone)
MoonPhase (was also running on my old phone)
Meteoservis (was also running on my old phone)
exDialer (was also running on my old phone)

Game settings:
All sounds muted
Disable Zoom Map Depart
Hide Operation Notifications
Long ... Notifications for all
Everything else default

What I have tried:
Full Screen - no change
Disable Menu Background and Disable Map Background - it is better, but I still experience slowdowns when notification appears.

[codewright]

I'm in the same situation as Fenikso: I was enjoying the game very much and recently upgraded from a HTC Desire to the Galaxy Nexus. Now the map performance is too bad to make the game enjoyable.

My nexus is not rooted or unlocked and I am not using any of the apps mentioned by Fenikso. Sound is off, everything else is unmodified. It does not seem to make a difference whether the ship/movement is visible or whether it is off screen. I'll try to uninstall some apps and see if it helps.

I'd appreciate if you could do something about it :-)

[Cory Trese]

I will do my best to find one of these devices ... they're so bloody expensive and I'm doing the best I can with the ones I have

[Cory Trese]

Also kind of sad that the OS changes are making things which previously worked very well (SurfaceView and Toast) work not very well. Thanks Google!

[Fenikso]

I understand it is not an easy task. Thanks a lot for your hard work. If there is anything I can help with - any kind of testing - I will be glad to.

[Cory Trese]

Can you try "Disable All Notifications" and see if that helps at all? Just guessing now ;(

[Fenikso]

Jun 23, 2012 20:50:57 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

Can you try "Disable All Notifications" and see if that helps at all? Just guessing now ;(

It "helps" to the point there are no additional slowdowns when notification appears - as it does not appear anymore. The drawing is still slow as before.

I am no Android developer (yet ) so I have no idea if following thoughts have any validity. Are you drawing the graphics using software rendering or OpenGL? Looking at how big is actually the screen of Galaxy Nexus compared to HTC Desire (~2.5x more pixels) I wonder if the device is capable of animating such a big screen in a realtime using software rendering alone.

[Cory Trese]

OpenGL isn't the same as "hardware accelerated" if that's the question you're asking.

[Cory Trese]

I now have test device that should be a fair comparison to Galaxy device with ICS

[Cory Trese]

Crap!!!

Performance is very good on HTC EVO LTE running ICS.

[freedomhater]

Performance is good on my Galaxy Nexus (ICS), and i never thought twice about it until i played it on my gf's Samsung Galaxy 2 (not ICS).

the ship moves slower in navigation screen and the menus pop up slower in ICS! I never knew the game could run so fast until i tried it on the SG2. Is it a ICS problem or a phone problem? i know this isnt game breaking but i'd absolutely love it if the menus popped up faster like they do on the GS2.

in fact i may revert to non-ICS just for the speed bump in Android menus + speed boost in Star Traders.