[ICEknight]

Jaseman, on 29 November 2011 - 08:08 PM, said:

Why are people playing this and not gameboid with a sonic advance rom? To save a few dollars?

To try and document this official release.

[Skyler]

Could the poor performance be due to the fact that a Japanese app is being run on (I'm assuming) hacked US/other phones? I don't have an Android, so I'm no expert on the matter.

(Here's hoping for an iPhone port)

[Granville]

Jaseman, on 29 November 2011 - 08:08 PM, said:

Why are people playing this and not gameboid with a sonic advance rom? To save a few dollars?

Me personally for curiosity's sake. And you don't save anything here, Gameboid has been free for quite some time after the developer got kicked off the Market. It's now hosted at SlideMe and doesn't cost anything anymore. The Lite version never cost anything anyways though.

LOst, on 29 November 2011 - 08:21 PM, said:

When you have confirmed Ice Mountain's BG and water effects being the same as GBA, that will be the main reason this game seems to be running so slow. There is no hardware for doing those effects (as those were using true SNES/GBA techniques), and it is extremely impressive to emulate them in software, even if the result is slow.

I wouldn't say it's impressive considering Gameboid already emulates it at full speed with no problems whatsoever (in what I assume is software). The speed issue seems to be related to WHICH phone you use. Others report no slowdown at all, despite not necessarily using faster phones than my own. My overclocked Fascinate is one of the faster single core phones out there and can even play games like Shadowgun well with a little tweaking. And yet I'm getting slowdown.

Skyler, on 29 November 2011 - 08:33 PM, said:

Could the poor performance be due to the fact that a Japanese app is being run on (I'm assuming) hacked US/other phones? I don't have an Android, so I'm no expert on the matter.

(Here's hoping for an iPhone port)

Being hacked wouldn't make any difference, but the type of phone apparently does. Speed varies between phones from what it seems. Likely the game wasn't intended for the type of hardware in certain popular US phones (like the Galaxy S series for example).

[ICEknight]

Granville, on 29 November 2011 - 09:33 PM, said:

Others report no slowdown at all

Those others might want to check the speed they're getting against a GBA emulator, just in case it's not really running full speed.

[SpeedStarTMQ]

I like the how they made changes to the music. They didn't have the rights to use the Sonic 1 & 2 music so they took some initiative- I like that.

Having said that, I don't actually like the changes themselves- it defiles the original game, and the midi tracks sound odd.

This post has been edited by SpeedStarTMQ: 30 November 2011 - 03:25 AM

[W.A.C.]

Can someone upload some of the music for the Android version? I don't have an Android phone so I can't play this.

[LOst]

Granville, on 29 November 2011 - 09:33 PM, said:

LOst, on 29 November 2011 - 08:21 PM, said:

When you have confirmed Ice Mountain's BG and water effects being the same as GBA, that will be the main reason this game seems to be running so slow. There is no hardware for doing those effects (as those were using true SNES/GBA techniques), and it is extremely impressive to emulate them in software, even if the result is slow.

I wouldn't say it's impressive considering Gameboid already emulates it at full speed with no problems whatsoever (in what I assume is software). The speed issue seems to be related to WHICH phone you use. Others report no slowdown at all, despite not necessarily using faster phones than my own. My overclocked Fascinate is one of the faster single core phones out there and can even play games like Shadowgun well with a little tweaking. And yet I'm getting slowdown.

Okay, put the slowdown aside. I didn't know about the emulator and it being faster. The impressive part is the fact that the game does all the raster effects without emulation. Emulation is cheating in a way. That's why I like ports, and why this thread is so interesting. If it was just an emulation, I wouldn't reply to this thread at all.

An example of impressive game port is Sonic & Knuckles Collection for the PC, which manages to just the amount of work needed to display the game, even when the effects were totally depending on hardware that the PC doesn't have. That game can't show the water surface effect properly though, because of limited number of palette entries and with no hardware HBlank.

So please, if anyone can record a video of the game playing the Ice Mountain, as it depends so much on SNES/GBA hardware techniques, it would be fun to see if they failed somewhere because of limitations, or if they were super skilled and pulled it all off.

[JaxTH]

W.A.C., on 30 November 2011 - 07:19 AM, said:

Can someone upload some of the music for the Android version? I don't have an Android phone so I can't play this.

Rika Chou, on 27 November 2011 - 05:53 PM, said:

Lanzer, on 27 November 2011 - 05:40 PM, said:

Can anybody get a music rip? I would like to hear those new tracks that SEGA replaced.

Should this port be worth wiki-ing?

Tanks, on 27 November 2011 - 12:05 PM, said:

evilhamwizard, on 27 November 2011 - 11:36 AM, said:

Cool, they're using what I guess are the original MIDIs in this port. They did the same thing for the mobile phone port too.

For those who have no need to download the APK. http://www.mediafire...18j3ykjli724qq2

EDIT: Wait... Sonic 4... Is that you? Check BGM 49 and 50 and tell me I am not nuts...

[Travelsonic]

Skyler, on 29 November 2011 - 08:33 PM, said:

Could the poor performance be due to the fact that a Japanese app is being run on (I'm assuming) hacked US/other phones? I don't have an Android, so I'm no expert on the matter.

Well, not exactly - performance could be how it was coded, the computer system architecture, or something else I can't think of.

[Maxd]

Just finished a runthrough with Sonic on my Dell Streak 5 - no slowdown, graphics were fine. I noticed that Sonic jumps higher over objects in this port. The best way to try this is speedrunning a zone from the GBA version then a runthrough on the phone. the most noticeable example is after defeating a boss when the capsule falls. In Sonic Advance, you had to jump on the capsule then on the button. In the port, you can simply jump up to the button, a height previously not reachable. I plan on writing an extensive list of changes in the following days. Stay tuned.

[MDave]

Seems to be running at a capped 15 or 20 FPS to me, never goes higher or lower. If we could figure out where the cap is and remove it (or change it to 60), should be much better to play. The only thing this port has over the GBA original is a nice higher resolution title screen, and touch friendly menus. Otherwise, sticking with the 60fps I get with the GBA emulated version.

[Sploit]

I still use my N-Gage as my phone, so I have Sonic N and Sonic Advance on the GBA...so I find it funny that all these years later the latest phones are now getting that game again.
...just installed this version on my mother's Samsung Galaxy Mini....got the lag that other people mention, plus I don't like the touch controls too much.

This post has been edited by Sploit: 30 November 2011 - 07:59 PM

[E-122-Psi]

Maxd, on 30 November 2011 - 01:42 PM, said:

Just finished a runthrough with Sonic on my Dell Streak 5 - no slowdown, graphics were fine. I noticed that Sonic jumps higher over objects in this port. The best way to try this is speedrunning a zone from the GBA version then a runthrough on the phone. the most noticeable example is after defeating a boss when the capsule falls. In Sonic Advance, you had to jump on the capsule then on the button. In the port, you can simply jump up to the button, a height previously not reachable. I plan on writing an extensive list of changes in the following days. Stay tuned.

Wonder if this is a change made to all characters or Sonic specific. If the latter it might be considered an improvement. Sonic always seemed a bit of the dud of the bunch in the game. He didn't even have his insta shield in this game, while Tails and Knuckles got even MORE abilities like floating on water.

[Vinchenz]

E-122-Psi, on 30 November 2011 - 08:35 PM, said:

Sonic always seemed a bit of the dud of the bunch in the game. He didn't even have his insta shield in this game, while Tails and Knuckles got even MORE abilities like floating on water.

He's got his insta-shield it just sucks really badly.

[ICEknight]

I've played this port a little more today, and it seems to me that some stuff was modified for the forced FPS cap.

Sonic, the rings and other stuff seem to have their animations adjusted so none of their frames get lost with the low FPS, and even the normal shield had its graphics changed because the on-off translucency wouldn't look right.


So whoever said it was running at 60FPS (as the wiki currently says), please check again.

This post has been edited by ICEknight: 30 November 2011 - 09:09 PM