Can't deploy to Android 5

Nanites

Hi,

I'm trying to get my project running on a Samsung Galaxy S4 running Android 5.0.1 (Snapdragon 600, Adreno 320, 2 GB RAM)

After I could not get it to work I tried it with just a new project that has a single Button without script. Even that does not work, I get a black screen and after a minute or so the Android "Test1 isn't responding, Wait/Close" message.

From what I read, the min Andoid version for Godot is 4.4 (API Level 19), so it should work? Are there any further requirenments to a phone?

Nanites

Something I forgot, if I export my main project I can hear the background music beeing played, but the screen is also black and Android times it out after a while.

If I add this to the otherwise empty project with the one Button:

func _process(_delta):
	print("test")

it will print "test" 3 times and thats it...

Calinou

Did you switch to the GLES2 rendering backend in the Project Settings (Rendering > Quality > Driver > Driver Name)? On old Android devices, GLES3 isn't guaranteed to work.

Nanites

I tried both GLES2 and GLES3, with the exact same result.

My main project is GLES2 however.

cybereality

Did you check the API levels in the export options? There are also different ways to export Android APK and AAB and AAB is only supported on newer devices.

Nanites

I can't find an API Level setting in export options, where is it?

I'm exporting to APK, and it does run with the Android Studio Emulator with 5.0 (at least with an x86 image, for some reason it never starts with am arm image and just times out) which should mean it can run on Android 5 in general - it just doesn't want to run on that device...

cybereality

Well Android uses ARM, so if it doesn't run in the emulator that should be a clue there is a problem. You can choose a different architecture, I think there are two options.

Nanites

No, the emulator itself doesnt run - even with no app loaded. It gets stuck on the splash screen when I try to run an arm image and after 5min Android Studio times it out with an error message. x86 images are fine.

I'm currently googling possible causes but no luck so far.

cybereality

I could try to run the emulator here, maybe tomorrow if I have time. I have a ton of test phones, but nothing that old. I might have an S7 or S8 in a box somewhere, but I think that is the oldest.

Nanites

I also have an S7, and it runs fine on it - I wanted to use the S4 to test how well the game will run on old hardware that is still supported. Actually bought it for that reason alone...

When I export to apk and use Android Studio to deploy to the S4, I at least get to see the Godot splash screen, but nothing further happens. Looks like it never loads the main scene...

Nanites

Solved it! :)

I downloaded the IAP demo from the repository, and it worked. So I went through the project setting looking what is different, and the only difference was that my project had the Default Environment set to "default_env.tres", which I think is default for new projects. As soon I removed it, I could deploy the project.

I put the default environment back and started experimenting with it, turned out its the procedural sky preventing it from running. The same happens when I add a WorldEnvironment with Background Mode "Sky", just a freshly generated procedural sky with no setting change breaks it.

Now I wonder if this is a bug or some limitation of the OpenGL implementation or something else?

cybereality

Sounds like a bug.

Nanites

Posted a bug report on Github.

This is actually a bit scary, as basically even an empty default 2D project will already cause this issue (since "default_env.tres" is included as standard) and while the S4 sure is very old, it was a very popular phone back then, so you'd think this would have been noticed earlier. Who knows what bugs there are that only happen with rather rare phones?

Now there is probably only so much point supporting those really really old ones, but I wanted to go back as far as possible, after all there are still millions of those phones beeing used according to the Android API distribution Google shows...

cybereality

Yes, that is my I have like 15 or 20 test phones to play with. But I don't have anything that old.

Calinou

For reference, this is actually a known issue: https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/26924

Now there is probably only so much point supporting those really really old ones, but I wanted to go back as far as possible, after all there are still millions of those phones beeing used according to the Android API distribution Google shows...

Remember that as a device grows older, the likelihood that it is used to play (demanding) mobile games lowers. Old devices are generally mostly used for phone calls, web browsing and other "serious" use cases. Conversely, recent high-end devices are more likely to be used for high-end mobile gaming.

cybereality

Also, users with such old phones would probably be quicker to accept a software failure as their fault (for having an old phone) rather than a bug on the developer side. I mean, if you buy the latest $1,000 iPhone and the game doesn't work, then sure complain. But if you have a dinosaur phone that hasn't gotten a security update in years, and probably can't even run most apps, then that is on you.

Nanites

This is sure the case, but since my game is not really demanding - beeing a 2D "minimal" puzzle game - I thought it might be worth making sure it runs on as many phones as possible.

I also guess if you have such an old phone and still want to play some games, you options are very limited as most of them won't run, as you said.

So far my game does run on the S4 but the performance is not great, dispite the game beeing so simple. But the phone is almost 9 years old so I guess that is not surprising. At least it now runs at all which was my goal.

Nanites

Actually some numbers on that: I made a benchmark of sorts and let it run on my PC and some phones (I really need to get some different brand ones):

PC (3800X, 1080ti, 32GB 3600 RAM): 0.12s Galaxy S20 FE: 0.18s Galaxy S7: 0.55s Galaxy S4: 3.74s

While I find it impressive that the game runs only 50% slower on a phone with a 5W SoC then on a CPU and GPU that are in the 300W range somewhere, I'm surprised how poorly the S4 performs. The benchmarks I could find from back in the day suggest that it should be in general close to half as fast as the S7, but it only gets 15% of its speed.

Actually, is there a way to use a more advanced profiler then Godots build-in one on Android? I'd like to know what exactly is the bottleneck here, maybe its something minor I can fix easily to allow it to run on ancient phones too...

Calinou

Actually, is there a way to use a more advanced profiler then Godots build-in one on Android?

Android Studio has dedicated profiling tools available (that work with any app that allows debugging), but these are more complicated to set up compared to Godot's built-in profiler.

Nanites

Is there a tutorial on those available somewhere? I've briefly tried that before but Android Studio complains that there are no Debug Symbols found in my app.