ghost
commented
8 months ago That SoC is from 2020 and was designed for AIoT systems as well as e-ink tablets. It is barely more powerful than the SoC in basic (not smart) flip phones.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Rockchip-RK3566-Processor-Benchmarks-and-Specs.741611.0.html
With the exception of the Shield TV Pro, I have yet to see an Android box that is comparable to modern smartphones. And not even the Shield TV devices are as powerful as PCs (not even as powerful as basic NUC systems or Surface Tablets).
As for the input issue, are you using a cheap, generic bt keyboard or one from a company with better Android support?
seleuco
Barkuti
Hello,
I've been sparingly testing MAME4droid2024 during the last weeks: an odd 1.4 version I found in Apkpure and the 1.7.4 and 1.8 versions from here, running them in a rooted, fixed and customized Android 11 RK3566 TV box. One of the oddities of the firmware in the single board computer or Android box is that, for some reason, it is impossible to disable the onscreen keyboard; there's a switch meant for that in the popup menu which appears when choosing the default software keyboard with a keyboard switcher app but it doesn't works, so the solution for such a peskyness is to install good ol' Null Keyboard -com.wparam.nullkeyboard- one and/or External Keyboard Helper -com.apedroid.hwkeyboardhelper-. The reason I say this is because the system, instead of referencing the Generic.kcm key character map file when using an external keyboard, it instead uses the Virtual.kcm one. I also had to fix the Generic.kl file, as the retarded ones who are making these boxes have been shipping them with an Enter key bug literally for many many years already. The error is in the line listing key 28 as DPAD_CENTER instead of ENTER; you can check this related article: https://www.novisign.com/blog/tech/x96-tv-box-issue-how-to-fix-it-when-enter-key-interprets-as-q/ (whoever wrote the article didn't realize that the reason it often works as “q” is because it is the default selected key in the Android onscreen keyboard, but this changes as soon as you press or select another key in the onscreen keyboard). This may be a hair off topic, but I had to say it.
Onto the problems report, for the sake of making things clear first I must say that the firmware or operating system of the Android box lacks both the upper drop down menu and notification area so common in smartphones and tablets, just in case this is of importance to understand what I am going to report (it also lacks the recents task switcher, for fuck's sake). Now here's the meat:
With version 1.4 I didn't understand properly how it worked (I came to understand it well more recently), and I was thinking that MAME4droid had issues with input devices because I couldn't remap the gamepad or joystick controls using the graphical user interface menus. I also noticed there was an underlying menu, which I disregarded at first thinking I could do with the graphical user interface menus which must come from some PC version, doesn't it? I don't use MAME since lots of years a go, bear in mind. I had difficulties accessing the underlying menu with a bluetooth keyboard, as MAME4droid didn't respond to the Ctrl + Esc key combination or shortcut which should make it appear, and I couldn't map joystick or gamepad controls with the graphical UI menus because the app wasn't listening and responding to whatever button presses, so all I was getting were the fallback functions (defined in the corresponding kcm file) handled by the system: menu, back, space, delete and etcetera.
I decided I had to customize my keyboard files to solve the above problem, and also went onto the upgrade to version 1.7.4. This version I like it much for having a lot more resolutions to choose including the native one; this improves performance quite a bit, a much needed thing considering the (relatively) low performance of the Android box. With this version I tested the keyboard combos or shortcuts with Shift, Alt or Ctrl; and yes, they work (with a game running I tested Shift + F7 working, LShift + LCtrl + F12 too, and etcetera). However, I still couldn't use the Ctrl + Esc key combo to invoke the menu; I guess this is because MAME4droid is handling Ctrl key combinations by itself, and so the Ctrl + Esc fallback action doesn't works. If you could make this work at least optionally it would be nice, as I don't think MAME has anything mapped to Ctrl + Esc (or does it?). Furthermore I finally discovered that I had to use the underlying app menu of the graphical UI to map the bluetooth mini joystick I am testing it with; thus, I could finally test some games. It seems clear to me that this underlying app menu and related code is the software layer which you are actively developing, isn't it? 😃
Version 1.8 was briefly tested and I promptly “downgraded” back to the 1.7.4 one after noticing THE BUG: it is impossible to invoke the underlying app menu with input devices. When I press my keyboard remapped button which opens the app menu (with scan code directly mapped to MENU), or the menu button in the remote or the button in the joystick which in version 1.7.4 makes the menu appear, all which happens is a back and forth bouncing of focus between the UI window zones. So, this makes the 1.8 version of the app unusable. Check these images:
Having said the above, please fix the reported problems and keep up with this wonderful work you are doing if you will (improvements when mapping joystick or gamepad devices would be very nice).
Best regards, Salvador
P.S.: It's hard not to be judgmental with the lack of performance of the current MAME versions, when 2D arcades from the 90s overall run well but taking most of the available performance of the 1.8 GHz Rockchip 64 bit SoC. 1.8 GHz!!! It may be low power and all of that, but it's a relatively new CPU or SoC and much earlier versions of MAME would run the aforementioned games more fluently with microprocessors 20 years older (Pentium III, Pentium 4, Athlon and Athlon XP). Twenty years older!!! This is not your fault I guess, but I had to say.