I recently installed the newest version of ScummVM (v0.8.2) for my WM5-equipped HP Ipaq HX4700. And I noticed three issues that perhaps someone can shed some light on:
1: Sound lag.
In every game there is a slight sound delay, perhaps 1/3 second or so. For every animation where sound is synced (for example the fish jumping out of the water in the DOTT intro) the audio is delayed. It's quite noticable. Any way to change the audio sync?
2: Video refresh.
The video lags quite badly. One can actually see the screen refresh lines. If an entire screen moves there is a very noticable tearing in the image.
3: 1x vs 2x.
If using 0.8.2 with 1x the entire game selection menu and game covers less than 1/4 of the screen estate. If i put it on 1x then it fills the screen, but I can't rotate the image. When doing the same with 0.8.0CVS the 1x worked perfecty in fullscreen (with rotation possible) and with a lot less tearing of the animated images. Seems 0.8.2 and 2x slows down the graphics a lot. I tested to run it at 1x to see if the audio skips because of hardware speed limitation (fullscreen rendering) but the sound delay remained no matter what resolution it was rendered at. I used Adlib emulation for all tests (I don't believe anything else works anyway?). Sound skips happened in every PScummVM version I could find for the PocketPC platform.
3: Quitting.
Some games (like Flight Of The Amazon Queen) doesn't let me quit the game/app. If i tap the icon where the in-game popup comes up nothing happens. Is this anything specific for some games only or is it a bug? If the games themselves doesn't allow it then why not remove the icon for the games affected?
Anyone got any clues for any of this?
Issues on IPAQ HX4700
Moderator: ScummVM Team
First of all, the issues (1) + (2) are related to (3). Also, please note that there is no perfect way to update the screen in wince in order to avoid tearing, one just hopes to do it as quickly as possible and that no-one notices. You have to live with a little bit of tearing and this is more obvious in the vga devices due to the increased screen data.
The 4700 has a vga display. The fact that you ran earlier versions using the 1x filter means that the vga display was not detected correctly, so scummvm ran in a special "qvga-to-vga" emulated mode. This is quite dodgy and is known to produce unexpeted results depending on the device vendor. Actually things should be slower in this case, but lets leave this out for the moment.
Now, newer versions correctly detect the vga display, requesting the use of the 2x filter. It may be that your processor cannot handle the real time stretching routines or it may be a bug in the vga code. Most probably it's the former case, as you experience performance loss all over the place.
Finally (3) must be something overlooked and should be straitforward to fix.
Hopefully, I'll be having a 9-round fight with scummvm this weekend and will be addressing these issues as well.
The 4700 has a vga display. The fact that you ran earlier versions using the 1x filter means that the vga display was not detected correctly, so scummvm ran in a special "qvga-to-vga" emulated mode. This is quite dodgy and is known to produce unexpeted results depending on the device vendor. Actually things should be slower in this case, but lets leave this out for the moment.
Now, newer versions correctly detect the vga display, requesting the use of the 2x filter. It may be that your processor cannot handle the real time stretching routines or it may be a bug in the vga code. Most probably it's the former case, as you experience performance loss all over the place.
Finally (3) must be something overlooked and should be straitforward to fix.
Hopefully, I'll be having a 9-round fight with scummvm this weekend and will be addressing these issues as well.
I downgraded the HX to PocketPC 2003SE and had the same problems. Even if i managed to make the emulator run smoother (with less tearing) the sound skip was still as bad as with heavy screen tearing. So it looks to me there is some kind of late buffering or delay in the audio generation not related to slow display update. But then again I am not that skilled in programming engines like you guys =D
I can live with screen tearing and perhaps there will be a fix in the future. But the sound skip is quite annoying. And it happened on PPC2003SE also. Otherwise the PScummVM is excellent and I am amazed how much it can do on a platform such as PocketPC. So I hope these issues will be fixed in the near future so one can enjoy a perfect game of DOTT or MI2.
If i can help in any way (test unstable versions etc) let me know, I would love PScummVM to run flawlessly on my device =D
I can live with screen tearing and perhaps there will be a fix in the future. But the sound skip is quite annoying. And it happened on PPC2003SE also. Otherwise the PScummVM is excellent and I am amazed how much it can do on a platform such as PocketPC. So I hope these issues will be fixed in the near future so one can enjoy a perfect game of DOTT or MI2.
If i can help in any way (test unstable versions etc) let me know, I would love PScummVM to run flawlessly on my device =D