GBA.emu - finally a new GBA Emulator - Motorola Droid 3

Just wanted everybody to know, that Robert Bruglia, who also ported Snes9X and other Emulators to Android, released his vba-m port GBA.emu.
As you expect from his emulators, it's running great, and especially with our keyboard, and disabled linear filtering, it's a real pleasure to play GBA games on this emulator.
You can find it in the market: https://play.google.com/store/apps/...sMSwxLDIxMiwiY29tLmV4cGx1c2FscGhhLkdiYUVtdSJd

How does this compare to something like gameboid?
Also are there any playstation emulators than can be used in the background? I have FPse which works good, but whenever I press the home button it closes, and I have to restart from my last save point.

does it have link cable connection emulation?
i've been looking for an app with that function

I don't know, unfortunately. But please consider contacting the developer!

I miss yongzh. his EMUs were top-notch and he was a speedy and proficient developer!

Serk102 said:
How does this compare to something like gameboid?
Also are there any playstation emulators than can be used in the background? I have FPse which works good, but whenever I press the home button it closes, and I have to restart from my last save point.
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+1

The main reason why I first switched to GBA.emu is that Yongzh refuses to develop Gameboid any further, since it was removed from the Android Market back in 2011. Then the main reason is the unbelievably ugly linear filtering that made games look so blurry and ugly.
But there is a new kid on the block, it's name is "My Boy!" and has some benefits over GBA.emu. It's much faster than GBA.emu and needs far less battery. I tested it with Final Fantasy Advance, which is a time intese game. With GBA.emu my battery drained within 3 hours, with My Boy! it lasts at least double the time.
Every emulator is worth buying, because their developers are working hard to get the best performance and compatibility. So I think you should buy My Boy! AND GBA.emu.
To disable linear filtering in My Boy! go to Video settings and change the Backend rendering mode to Canvas instead of OpenGL ES.
EDIT:
I'd like to share the information, which emulators the Android versions are based of:
Gameboid: gpSP
GBA.emu: VBA-M r1097
My Boy!: NO PORT - own development

Rotkaeqpchen said:
The main reason why I first switched to GBA.emu is that Yongzh refuses to develop Gameboid any further, since it was removed from the Android Market back in 2011. Then the main reason is the unbelievably ugly linear filtering that made games look so blurry and ugly.
But there is a new kid on the block, it's name is "My Boy!" and has some benefits over GBA.emu. It's much faster than GBA.emu and needs far less battery. I tested it with Final Fantasy Advance, which is a time intese game. With GBA.emu my battery drained within 3 hours, with My Boy! it lasts at least double the time.
Every emulator is worth buying, because their developers are working hard to get the best performance and compatibility. So I think you should buy My Boy! AND GBA.emu.
To disable linear filtering in My Boy! go to Video settings and change the Backend rendering mode to Canvas instead of OpenGL ES.
EDIT:
I'd like to share the information, which emulators the Android versions are based of:
Gameboid: gpSP
GBA.emu: VBA-M r1097
My Boy!: NO PORT - own development
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Does this emulator support cable link emulation then?

If it supports link cable emulation, the emulator would be quite interesting.

I had a conversation with the developers of "My Boy!" and it seems pretty much impossible to add this feature. But they also claimed that they might get back to that topic in the future.
My conclusion by the way is: MyBoy! offers very high fps even on low-end devices and saves battery the most. I recommend GBA.emu especially for x86 devices, as there is a native version for that platform and it's very fast.

I am currently running My Boy! on my tablet.
But when I stretch out the image and put the app in fullscreen! the image looks blurred.
Is this still the best app in regards to image quality?
(When it comes to GBA of course)

link cable emulation
My boy just released an update for link cable emulation but I'm finding it hard to figure out how to work it. And for that other guy I think the image will always be the same but will be blurrier if it is stretched

Related

SNES emulator on the way?

Apparently, some emulator developers (besides the MAME dev, which is great) are starting to pick up on Open GL and put our GPU to some good use. The Doom port has already done so and runs perfect 3D and the MAME emu. is coming along nicely. Well thats great and all but where is our SNES emulator?! It's coming apparently and it appears to let you search for you own ROMs (an earlier NES emulator stuck you with a very limited and illegal amount of ROMs, lol) Well, enough talk! Here's the link...
http://www.supergnes.com/blog/
(I don't work for these folks. I merely searched for NES/SNES emulators for Android. I thought more would be around now and soon since Open GL was added to 1.5 These folks and future developers deserve some recognition, I believe)
Looks promising! An SNES emulator is exactly what Android needs!
Sounds great hope they make an nes emulator too!
Yeah, I am also looking forward to a NES emulator. I think it will just run better. May be with a 600 mhz processor (and OpenGL plus GPU) we could run SNES/Sega just as fast though...
I appreciate the efforts, but they are a little rough on the eyes without a fit to screen option, since everything is real small. I hope the SDK allows for scaling without killing the frame rate - especially with sound on.
As soon as the MAME emu has scaling- I will donate $20 to it.

I'm new and Have some questions on X1

I plan on buying the X1 when I get my $5500 next week. My most recent phone was the Motorola Rokr E6(Linux Based) and I'm coming from the Motorola Deveploment Community. I've owned a Sony before (W810i) and loved it, so I want to get the X1. I've never used WM before So I hope modding won't be hard to learn. My questions are: Is there Emulaters for the X1 like Nitendo, Super Nitendo, Sega, GBA, N64, and PS1. I had these on my E6 and loved them. Also what about the Doom expansions and Quake expansions as well, I also played these on my E6. Aslo can we overclock the processor and use Swap partions to, Also things I loved about the E6. I looked in the thread for noob questions but 4 pages in it was just people saying how much they don't like noobs posting unneccesary posts and how much they don't like noobs basically so I stopped looking in the thread and decided to post this thread. I aplogize if these questions were posted somewhere else. Thank you for your time and I can't wait to learn WM modding.
All the Emulators are performing like crap (on the MSM720*).
Only (low action) SNES games on Morphgear, like Mario or other lame games (sorry but i hate platforms) where actually able to play on a decent framerate.
Secret of Mana for example was unplayable, unless you like humongous lag. Enabling sound only makes it worse. At the time I actually gave a crap about it, I couldnt stand playing it any longer then 10 minutes, since the qwerty keyboard is not usuable for gaming (in a comfort way, it functions fine in morphgear)
Emulation on WM6.1 is bull****, apart from the PS1 emulator that is, even though the MSM7200 is immensely underpowered for it, seeing that thing on a Snapdragon or OMAP3 chipset (youtube it) is pure awesomeness.
My S.E. M600 did GBA/SEGA Genesis emulation about 4 times as fast, and thats with an 208Mhz ARM9 chip.
Do not buy the X1 if you like playing (console) games.
SomeoneSimple said:
All the Emulators are performing like crap (on the MSM720*).
Only (low action) SNES games on Morphgear, like Mario or other lame games (sorry but i hate platforms) where actually able to play on a decent framerate.
Secret of Mana for example was unplayable, unless you like humongous lag. Enabling sound only makes it worse. At the time I actually gave a crap about it, I couldnt stand playing it any longer then 10 minutes, since the qwerty keyboard is not usuable for gaming (in a comfort way, it functions fine in morphgear)
Emulation on WM6.1 is bull****, apart from the PS1 emulator that is, even though the MSM7200 is immensely underpowered for it, seeing that thing on a Snapdragon or OMAP3 chipset is pure awesomeness.
My S.E. M600 did GBA/SEGA Genesis emulation about 4 times as fast, and thats with an 208Mhz ARM9 chip.
Do not buy the X1 if you like playing (console) games.
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Thanks for the reply, My E6 had a intel PXA270 chipset clocked at 312mhz but with overclocking I could boost it to 528mhz and 620mhz and that vastly improved gaming, Can we do this on the X1?. And what about Doom and Quake.
Welcome to the forums .
1 - Yes. Most will have some lag, but the good thing is there are many to choose from. MorphGear, PicoDrive PocketNES, PocketSNES, etc. The emulator gaming is enjoyable, but will perfect.
You have a choice of hundreds of WinMo games + Java games + PC ports like StarCraft and Diablo, so there are plenty of games.
2 - Yes, you can play them on the X1. Quake is not modified for the WVGA resolution AFAIK, but Quake 3 is playable with a slow framerate. Doom worked only once for me, but I didn't bother to fix it. I just don't find those type of games playable without a mouse...
3 - No overclocking for the X1 so far. There are a couple of programs, but they either do nothing, or start once and then freeze.
Use search, read, learn and feel free to ask questions after that .
@orelsi thanks so much for the info. Sweet we can play Starcraft and Diablo. Dam no overclocking thats a shame. hmm so quake and doom are not made for the 800x400 res, thats okay I bet there is alot of 3d java games for the X1. And yes next time I wll use the search I just really needed to know these answers, and get a chance to talk to some members.
Double post. Mods, please delete it.
I'm glad that I was able to help .
About the games. When I got the X1, I was thinking that I would play games on it all the time. Well... it didn't work out that way lol. Between the browsing, reading rss feeds and books, tweaking options, mp3s, clips, etc. I barely got time for a quick game haha.
All the games are just rusting in the corner.
Nevertheless, when you think how hot StarCraft was back in the day and that now you can carry it in your pocket..... makes you wonder about the future .
Check out this list of games. It can give you a general idea:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=522761
SomeoneSimple said:
All the Emulators are performing like crap (on the MSM720*).
Only (low action) SNES games on Morphgear, like Mario or other lame games (sorry but i hate platforms) where actually able to play on a decent framerate.
Secret of Mana for example was unplayable, unless you like humongous lag. Enabling sound only makes it worse. At the time I actually gave a crap about it, I couldnt stand playing it any longer then 10 minutes, since the qwerty keyboard is not usuable for gaming (in a comfort way, it functions fine in morphgear)
Emulation on WM6.1 is bull****, apart from the PS1 emulator that is, even though the MSM7200 is immensely underpowered for it, seeing that thing on a Snapdragon or OMAP3 chipset (youtube it) is pure awesomeness.
My S.E. M600 did GBA/SEGA Genesis emulation about 4 times as fast, and thats with an 208Mhz ARM9 chip.
Do not buy the X1 if you like playing (console) games.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have been playing Chrono Trigger on Morphgear for months and no problem for me.
And if you can stand the black bar on the side of the screen, quake not being WVGA shouldn't be a problem.
One last thing, What about Swap Partions for the X1?
harveydent said:
Have been playing Chrono Trigger on Morphgear for months and no problem for me.
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Well, I might've took things out of context, but i was REALLY disappointed in the Emulation capabilities of my X1.
I remember completely finishing multiple action-oriented SEGA Genesis games on my S.E. M600i (208mhz ARM9), Sonic&Knuckles (very fast platform), Streets of Rage (beat em up), Vectorman (action, platform), and some mickeymouse game (action/platform). All of these had perfect stereo sound, and i often had a framerate above realtime.
Then you can understand, that when i got my X1 (totally excited about its WAY FASTER CPU) and booted up similar games, i was extremely confused that i had no sound (without screwing my fps even more), terrible framerate and TBH, awefull controlls. That is the reason, why i think the X1, and all similar, underpowered Windows Mobile devices, is a PITA to play emulated games on.
About the swap. We dont have it (AFAIK), and we'll never need it. My percentage of Ram usage is always under 90%, no matter how many apps i open. Mainly this is because of a (IMO retarded) 16MB/32MB Ram per app limit.

Question:Games picture quality

I was playing Raging Thunder 2 last night and it made me want to ask this question or raise this issue to anyone that could have an effect on or shed light on. The graphics on raging thunder 2 as well as a few other games on the nexus are as good if not better than that on the psp. So why then are there only a few decent games with good graphics, and also why not a full psp well working emulator. It seems like the gaming community is growing yet nothing all that great is being produced(no offense, just a statement based on visual display opinion). Just want to get some feedback from people that can give it to me. Thanks.
First of all, let me kill your hopes of the psp emulator (sorry!). Emulators require in excess of 10x the processing power, which is a long ways off. Android is still working on getting all gameboy games to run without skipping frames (last I saw).
As far as the well-developed games go...you have to put a lot of effort into making a game with good graphics. You also need a market for the game to sell. There are a lot of psp games because you can sell them for $40 and get a large amount of people to buy them. Good luck selling pretty much anything for $40 on android. For most people, their phone is not a gaming platform.
That said, I must agree with you on the disappointment on available games. I can understand having poor graphics, but I feel that there should be more games with greater depth and gameplay available.
This is all of course just my opinion. I am sure there is more going on than I said.

Apps that use gpu acceleration?

If you google android gpu acceleration, you'll see numerous threads on other sites of people asking for it and others saying there hardware is smooth enough.
I don't want to discuss the merit of gpu acceleration as I think it's a given. What I'd like to know is a list of apps that do. But also, if these apps can, why isn't it utilized system-wide? Other threads mentioned older hardware could only have one opengl layer, so if your launcher was gpu accelerated, then a game wouldn't launch. I doubt this is the issue now with more recent hardware.
Is there any side project trying to add this to say cyanogen?
Anyway, I know launcher pro is accelerated. The scrolling through applications is like night and day with other launchers. Also the latest Opera is accelerated. It seems like the built-in gallery app is accelerated. I'm not sure about any of the pdf viewers. ezpdf seems the smoothest, but again, it might be just more optimized over other pdf readers.
So is there a list of apps that utilize the gpu? (besides games obviously)
I'm not sure if it's a video driver issue from device to device, but if that's so, how can a small app like launcher pro work accelerated on numerous devices?
sark666 said:
But also, if these apps can, why isn't it utilized system-wide?
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Because a lot of Android phones can't take it.
Other threads mentioned older hardware could only have one opengl layer, so if your launcher was gpu accelerated, then a game wouldn't launch. I doubt this is the issue now with more recent hardware.
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Yeah, but Android's target is a huge range of hardware- some very crappy. Read up on Android's "fragmentation problem."
Is there any side project trying to add this to say cyanogen?
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A composite based GUI is a HUGE project. It is WAY beyond the scope of this community. It is what delayed Windows Vista for so long, and was a huge reason why many people didn't like Vista (as hardware around its launch couldn't handle the interface).
It took the Linux desktop over three years to add a decent composite GUI, and that was with MANY large companies working on it.
Composite based GUIs are VERY VERY difficult to get right. The only reason Apple has it right is from the get go that was the best part of OSX. Apple's engineers somehow got its composite GUI (called Quartz) on old low-MHz PowerPC machines, and that miracle of technology has not been duplicated anywhere else. In fact, that was the competitive advantage that Apple took with it to the phone market once phones were as powerful as old PowerPC machines.
Other OS's that use a GPU accelerated GUI just have to have very strict minimums for hardware. For example, look at the minimums for Window's phones. Any one of those would be high-end in the Android market.
I'm not sure if it's a video driver issue from device to device, but if that's so, how can a small app like launcher pro work accelerated on numerous devices?
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Run Launcher Pro on an older Android device like a Droid 1 and you would be singing a different tune as to how smooth it is. The fact of the matter is that the Android eco-system isn't ready yet....
Hmm, compiz made huge improvements quite rapidly so I don't know about 3 years to get it right. The benefits were immediate; maybe refinements as it went along.
Regardless if it is huge undertaking, google has to address this. I've read articles where they say it's more garbage collecting vs an accelerated gui. Here's a brief but good article on it: http://www.satine.org/archives/2011/01/01/the-care-and-feeding-of-the-android-gpu/
And linux is a good example, the initial beginnings of compiz were a very small group of developers and features were being added very rapidly.
It turns a lot of people off android when they see a sluggish OS, or the appearance of a sluggish OS.
At any rate, my question still stands. you mention older devices needed to being supported. Then how does an app like launcher pro do it? I'm sure it doesn't have custom drivers for all the various gpu's out there? Same with Opera.
And I'd still like a list of (if there is one) of gpu accelerated apps. If the OS doesn't have it, then it would be nice to have it at the app level. Although I see that causing more headaches down the road instead of the OS doing it.
Anyway, google doesn't sound like they are taking this issue seriously. Or dismissing it as not necessary, but I think that's a mistake. On a traditional desktop OS, it's a nice to have but not really necessary, as most things are static. But given the size of the these devices, menus/icons etc are usually moved about cascade and expand etc. Items are dragged and moved etc. All this calls for an interface that maintains a high fps or otherwise it gives the perception of feeling laggy.
Trust me...rewriting Android to do automatic compositing is a huge undertaking. This would be very difficult to do while maintaining compatibility which existing applications. Honeycomb has compositing but it isn't enabled in applications by default because it can break applications with custom drawing. I don't see any reason for us to attempt to implement composting when its already done about as well as anyone can do it in Honeycomb.
sark666 said:
Hmm, compiz made huge improvements quite rapidly so I don't know about 3 years to get it right. The benefits were immediate; maybe refinements as it went along.
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GPU GUI acceleration on the Linux desktop didn't start with Compiz. GPU GUI acceleration started in 2004 when Keith Packard added the composite patch to Xorg. David Reveman began working on XGL and Compiz around that time, and didn't release a workable beta version until 2006.
Yet that beta version relied on XGL, which was basically running the Linux desktop like you would a video game. It wasn't until AIGLX became stabilized in open source and closed source drivers in 2007 that GPU GUI acceleration on the Linux desktop was finished (I am huge Xorg junkie, that is why I know these random facts).
Regardless if it is huge undertaking, google has to address this. I've read articles where they say it's more garbage collecting vs an accelerated gui.
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From what I have heard, Honeycomb supposedly has a GPU accelerated GUI. But we don't know till we can see the code.
It turns a lot of people off android when they see a sluggish OS, or the appearance of a sluggish OS.
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I would say that the sluggishness is only obvious next to iOS- other mobile OSes also lack such abilities. Compared to iOS Android has mostly targeted the lower-end user segment where quality of experience is less important than raw price (hence the many underpowered Android phones).
Eventually due to attrition the baseline will increase in power and old phones will be cut off for new features such as this. I have already heard that Gingerbread runs terrible on a Droid 1, which is barely a two year old phone.
Then how does an app like launcher pro do it?
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Same way games do it- they just run like crap on older phones. Google can't afford to take that approach with the entire OS.
And I'd still like a list of (if there is one) of gpu accelerated apps. If the OS doesn't have it, then it would be nice to have it at the app level.
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Me too.
Anyway, google doesn't sound like they are taking this issue seriously.
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I think that is an accurate assessment. I think Google believes that in time the hardware itself wil cover this inadequacy- it matters less on dual core phones. Its all those poor people that bought early Android phones that have had to suffer the most...
I'm sure it's not trivial, but again standalone apps seemed to have done it. I know OS wide is another issue. But really, honeycomb is really late when it comes to this. It really should have been a 2.x feature. I"m the exact opposite of an apple fan boy, but the first iphone in 2007 had this. That set the bar right there. What 4 years later and google is almost on it? And yes iphone is a fixed device, but still. An abstraction layer should have been worked on so if a device has a gpu it's used, otherwise fallback to software.
And on a side note, It would still be nice to know apps that do implement this now.
sark666 said:
An abstraction layer should have been worked on so if a device has a gpu it's used, otherwise fallback to software.
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I am a huge fan of this stuff (I actually had a blog about composite back in the day) and I can tell you after hacking on many devices and OSes, only ONCE have I seen a decent software-based compositor. OSX. That is it, in the whole world.
In fact, Apple's entire "magic" empire of devices is built on that unique competitive advantage. Part of what has made it work is that composite was there from day one- unlike a Linux, Windows or Android, OSX/iOS has ALWAYS had composite so applications had to work with it.
And it wasn't a painless process. Early OSX versions (until Tiger I think) all had major composite bugs (to the point I am good at spotting them). Part of Apple's advantage is that initially the OSX base was so small that it didn't matter what broke and what didn't.
So essentially it is not a 4 year gap, but is more like a 10 year advantage. All those old PowerPC Mac users paid out the nose to make modern Apple phones the pleasant experience they are.
To me the saving grace of Android is that Google allows developers to replace major parts. So maybe the entire OS will never have real GPU acceleration, but Google doesn't stop the Operas and Launcher Pros of the world to replace essential functions with apps that CAN leverage that ability. That way different parts of the OS get fixed up by those who are best at that part, and those with weaker hardware can do without.
So yeah, a list would be nice.
Well even Windows XP seems to dust Android's best. For example, browsing these very forums on my pathetic netbook is smooth but on NC it is extremely slow unless Opera Mobile is used. Even Honeycomb's browser is slow scrolling these forums. It is pretty mind blowing that in 2011 there would be 2D GUI inadequacies like this.
But the reason is as has been said: there are phones with really poor GPUs running Android. So Google basically set the bar too low in order to probably lower the cost to develop an Android device and now they don't want to break compatibility. Although I don't see why 3.0 couldn't have been more ambitious.
Not Quite A List of Android GPU Apps
GPU Acceleration will be system wide when Ice Cream Sandwich is released. I stumbled upon this thread hoping to find specific apps. I am of the Nvidia Bootcamp, so that influenced me to get a Droid X2. There are some killer apps that work perfect with GPU acceleration. I am rather surprised to find that this thread became a history lesson, much which I knew and Wikipedia could tell me.
I am using a Movie Player on Android called MX Video Player (FREE and Free Codec Download Required). It works extremely well. This app is an excellent example of quality software taking advantage of GPU acceleration, before a system wide implementation. I doubt "MX" will get better when ICS is here.
As for CyanogenMod none that I know of other than the ICS port they are cooking up. Has to do with ICS SDK API 14, that is the framework for it?
When I find more I will add to the list here, that is if I dont forget.
Oh and that snyde XP comment.... Let me know how the android gui and os is when it has had ten years in the limelight, with patches and bug fixes!

Limitations Make you a Better Dev: How to Improve Efficiency and beyond.

Hear me out for a few minutes guys.
Programmers now days are great...right? No... they really are not. Because programmers are making programs/games on extremely powerful machines (if you think about it) and have zero concept of "limits". A game for example, Titan Fall on PC is 50GB's. Why... for the love of all that is good, is this game 50GB's? Why? Because the programmers that made it suck. There are so many games that take up WAY too much space and take WAY too much power to run...
BUT
But this is NOT the programmers fault... They were not trained correctly. Hence my topic point.
Limitations Make you a Better Dev.
What is a limitation? It's something that limits you, like a gallon container can... only hold a gallon. Makes sense right? Well, let's move on the programming. Most programmers now days are making games/programs in what I like to refer to as "Creative Sandbox Mode". They don't really have limitations. They can almost do anything! But this is a problem... let's see an example to illustrate the reason why.
We will use the game "Kerbal Space Program" as our example for this topic. (Fantastic Game BTW) For those who have not seen/heard about it. It is a game where you build space rockets in, for the most part, a very well simulated Solar System. You start from a planet similar to earth. The only difference is the size of everything is scaled down. But just keep in your mind, "You build rockets to go to space".
Now, moving on...
When this game came out at first as early access. It was basically a sandbox, while you had no "God mode", you had access to all the rocket ship parts and they had zero costs. You could build anything, and people made all kinds of nonsense, went to the Mun (Game's name for the planet's moon) and beyond to other planets.
Sounds great right? It was... but then something changed a few years later.
Career and Science Sandbox were added. What is this? Well it's a mode with progression in mind, Career has you earning money through space missions and contracts, and Science Sandbox requires no money... but requires "science" points to acquire new parts.
You start out now...with very limited parts, and the things you are asked to do in the missions seem "impossible" at first.
"You mean I have to get to orbit with ONLY these parts? WHAT? THERE IS NO WAY!..."
Except...it was possible. Suddenly people, while under a great limitation, began to progress. They learned new and better ways and deigns to make more efficient rockets. You advance, and learn and become better. You progress, slowly unlocking more parts...but always being under this limitation wall, it forces you to grow and learn even more.
Now...end game. You've unlocked all the parts. You build the "best rocket" you can muster. Compare it to your "best rocket" while you played in Free Sandbox mode... It's a 1000x better. It can go much further on less fuel, it's less heavy, and it has far more research and science ability that ever before. Smaller rockets can now go beyond the moon and back, where as before, huge ones barely made it into orbit...
What does this mean? Now...with your super efficient skills, you can go EVEN further than ever before, you're able to truly maximize the potential of the parts given to you.
You've become efficient . You've become a better player.
But the KEY here for relation to my topic is... "truly maximized potential"
Now, let's get back to programming. Now that we have an understanding of what my point is. Back in the day, game developers had extreme limits. Hyper tiny storage sizes, extremely low amounts of ram and processing power. You couldn't just do whatever you wanted. The PC wouldn't even run.
Look at games like Super Mario Bros, a classic simple game... But, fast forward to later in the NES's lifespan, look at Megaman. The difference in total quality, and game play, it's a night and day difference. You go from a super basic, jump on enemies, beat the same boss over and over, running through basic one color levels... to a game that has a "level select" and unique and difference bosses, and... TONS of different enemies. You see levels with lots of animations and color! Holy crap! This is amazing! AND WHAT!? YOU GET WEAPONS THAT DO DIFFERENT THINGS!? *mind explodes*
See what happen? NES programmers got better over time, they learned to maximize what the NES could do despite its limits. Games that at the start of its' life that would have been thought impossible... were suddenly happening.
So let's fast forward to today... what do we have? For the most part... our computers today have near limitless abilities. Most computers have over a 1000GB's of storage, over 4GB's of ram (if not over 8GB), and processors that can do millions, if not nearly billions of calculations per second... Vs computers with 32KB's of Ram, 1 MB of storage, and a 10 mhz processor.
So we should be seeing games with extremely outrageous levels of ability and graphics right...? No... we don't. Well, we have a few. And I think the reason is older devs who were used to coding efficiently. They suddenly become god like. But new programmers? They don't understand limitations like older ones do... so they code poorly without knowing it. This is why you have games like Dark Souls 2, which on PC runs at 60fps at 1440p without the SLIGHTEST hint of issues. (Seriously, it's the smoothest PC game I've ever seen). But then games like Arkham Knight, just barely run at all. (if it even starts...) Also... the version of the Dark Souls 2 that contains all the DLC and improvements to the game (SotFs), weighs in at 23 GB's. Whoa... that's so much! ... Well, it's an extremely huge game, most playthroughs will last you at least 50 to 70 hours. There is so much to see in the game, and it's intense. And...then you have Titan Fall. A multiplayer game with a few maps, no singleplayer (at least when I played it), and it's 50GB's? What? Why? Even GTA 5 is 55GB's (ish) and it's an absolutely MASSIVE map, with detail unlike any seen before. And they crammed it into 50GB's? Wow. While Rockstar and From Software have had a few bad ones *cough* GTA IV and Dark Souls 1 on PC *cough*. They still proved in the end, they knew how to properly make a PC game.
Also, for an example of "getting a ton" from very little processing power. Look at the gameboy advance. It had a 16.78 MHz processor... yet look at the outrageous abilities it had. Look at the games, compare them to mobile "games" (Mobile games are trash). Could you honestly recreate The Legend of Zelda: A link to the past run with just 16mhz of power? If someone didn't tell you it was possible, you'd most likely say, "You cannot do that...". But you can, they did. This is highly efficient coding.
Another example is Roller Coaster Tycoon 1 and 2. If you've not played this game series, I advise you ALL to look it up. This game, released in 1999, was coded by one man. And in 1999 (where the average CPU was Pentium 3) this game let's you build Parks, like with roller coasters and rides. This game could have THOUSANDS of guests (People in your park, 1000 to 4000+) , all with different likes and needs (ride types, needs like food or the restroom), with dozens, if not 50 to 100+ rides going on at the same time... and it ran perfectly fine. In fact, when I played it, I never remember it ever slowing down or crashing, not once. Could you build an entire game with 100s of rides and 1000s+ of guests each with their own unique needs, and plus all the other things going on, on a Pentium 3? With ZERO lag and near instant startup?
This is just one of my issues with devs/programmers today. It's not just about games, or graphics in games mind you. It's about programs, applications, media, just everything. Devs today, learn in a near unlimited environment. They don't learn tricks, they don't learn workarounds, they don't learn how to truly maximize what they have because nothing forces them too.
Now, as a big note... I don't want to sit here and sound like I'm saying any devs are dumb, or don't work hard. I don't mean that at all, because it truly isn't their fault. Schools and such today don't teach with limitations, in computer science and in everything else (that's another topic).
They don't force you to make a massive game that fits in a CD (700MB) that runs well, they don't teach you how to truly optimize, they don't teach you how to overcome limitations because they don't challenge you with limitations.
Limitations, force you to get better. I ask that all new and aspiring devs now days, to try to limit yourself... because in the end... you'll become a far better programmer than you thought possible! You created an android app that runs fine on a snapdragon 810? Alright, how about you make that same app run just as well on a phone with a dual core processor and half a GB of ram from 2010. Start with limitations, you'll think... "This is not possible" , but image to yourself that it is the only way... you soon start finding tricks and learn how to overcome the limitations and create an app that works fantastically with very minimal power and resources. Then, with your new found efficiency skills, you'll see a whole new world of possibilities on more powerful chipsets. Just like in the space game, when you are forced to do more with less, you soon found yourself able to go much further than before when you did have more.
Limitation Forced Growth increases your efficiency. This can allow you to make night and day more powerful applications that run with far less power.
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