Modified HyperSpin APK for RetroArch - Works with all modern versions (Doesn't work with Android 10+)

[Creezz67]

4 minutes ago, C0ntrA said:

Give me more credit than that...

Bruh...

😎

Got a mini pc on it's way to be added to my home theater and Retro gaming setup for more of that horsepower.

But was thinking of leaving hyperspin on my Shield as I typically only play up to around ps1/DC/saturn games.

Namco racing games would be sick though...

Hmmm.

 

If you are getting a mini PC it would be better to use that for the later stuff.

I have about 200 odd wheels setup on Shield, but hardly ever use it because my PC setup has loads more stuff on it like Switch, XBOX,XBOX 360, PS2 etc

[C0ntrA]

6 hours ago, Creezz67 said:

If you are getting a mini PC it would be better to use that for the later stuff.

I have about 200 odd wheels setup on Shield, but hardly ever use it because my PC setup has loads more stuff on it like Switch, XBOX,XBOX 360, PS2 etc

Yeah that was a thought, for now though, it's going to be for Steam/indie games and of course PC access.

Rather keep Hyperspin on one platform.

For me, Hyperspin = my retro games. I don't have any interest in playing xbox games and such, that's not nostalgic for me as I am 42 years old.

Figured the mini pc should satisfy my "current game" itch (mostly indie because they are retro inspired), and maybe some SFV online etc.

If everything goes right, Nvidia shield will release a couple more generations of it's hardware and I would be already set up while appreciating that those harder to run games would improve

[C0ntrA]

Edited Update:

 

I have been able to get most of my systems working, but Namco systems like Namco System 22 don't want to cooperate with mame or mamearcade or mame2010.

I assume I haven't tried the "correct" core yet?

 

 

 

[C0ntrA]

Alright, so it was an error on my part.

At this point though Creezz67, I do see what you mean about the Nvidia Shield limitations. I figured that arcade games would be mostly smooth experiences, but the later Namco titles seem to struggle. Using Mame4Droid helps a bit, but apparently it will take another couple hardware upgrades/future releases of the Nvidia Shield to handle my entire arcade library. Glad I was able to get it resolved, and thank you for your assistance in this barren wasteland of a forum...:)

[Creezz67]

On 10/25/2021 at 3:40 AM, C0ntrA said:

Edited Update:

 

I have been able to get most of my systems working, but Namco systems like Namco System 22 don't want to cooperate with mame or mamearcade or mame2010.

I assume I haven't tried the "correct" core yet?

 

 

 

I would give up on Namco System 22 personally, it won't work correctly on the shield.

[C0ntrA]

55 minutes ago, Creezz67 said:

I would give up on Namco System 22 personally, it won't work correctly on the shield.

I see that.

Still got my library set up as best I can anyway.

[Creezz67]

16 hours ago, C0ntrA said:

Alright, so it was an error on my part.

At this point though Creezz67, I do see what you mean about the Nvidia Shield limitations. I figured that arcade games would be mostly smooth experiences, but the later Namco titles seem to struggle. Using Mame4Droid helps a bit, but apparently it will take another couple hardware upgrades/future releases of the Nvidia Shield to handle my entire arcade library. Glad I was able to get it resolved, and thank you for your assistance in this barren wasteland of a forum...:)

Yes, people seem to think because 1 game works on an emulator, they will all work.

Unfortunately that is not the case (across every system)

Even the best emulators on Windows like PCSX2 and PPSSPP still don't have anywhere near 100% compatibility.

We can just be thankful that 10's thousand's of games if not 100's thousand's all work perfectly and every day another one is tweaked to work .... and on and on the emulation scene goes  (hopefully) !!

[C0ntrA]

3 hours ago, Creezz67 said:

Yes, people seem to think because 1 game works on an emulator, they will all work.

Unfortunately that is not the case (across every system)

Even the best emulators on Windows like PCSX2 and PPSSPP still don't have anywhere near 100% compatibility.

We can just be thankful that 10's thousand's of games if not 100's thousand's all work perfectly and every day another one is tweaked to work .... and on and on the emulation scene goes  (hopefully) !!

Yeah, I hit the reality wall recently in that regard. Some games just simply won't work even with the correct systemname.ini configurations. It is what it is.

There is another front end that does allow you to select from a list of emulators at the wheel in case that one rom isn't working on the expected core (allowing a higher chance of functionality), I think that is a real nice touch! But for folks like me, with a HUGE list of roms, it's sorta a guessing game of which emulator will run the selected game EVERY TIME since there is no category based on cores like Hyperspin...

But Hyperspin is so dang flashy and attractive that it's a "pick your poison" situation.

[Creezz67]

1 hour ago, C0ntrA said:

Yeah, I hit the reality wall recently in that regard. Some games just simply won't work even with the correct systemname.ini configurations. It is what it is.

There is another front end that does allow you to select from a list of emulators at the wheel in case that one rom isn't working on the expected core (allowing a higher chance of functionality), I think that is a real nice touch! But for folks like me, with a HUGE list of roms, it's sorta a guessing game of which emulator will run the selected game EVERY TIME since there is no category based on cores like Hyperspin...

But Hyperspin is so dang flashy and attractive that it's a "pick your poison" situation.

On windows it's fine because you can just use alternate emulators in RocketLauncher, but for android there is no RL.

The only way around it would be to have 2 wheels for same system and then you can have a different core on each for example.

Not ideal, but any games you really want could then be added.

[C0ntrA]

2 hours ago, Creezz67 said:

On windows it's fine because you can just use alternate emulators in RocketLauncher, but for android there is no RL.

The only way around it would be to have 2 wheels for same system and then you can have a different core on each for example.

Not ideal, but any games you really want could then be added.

Yeah, I have more than a few sets of arcade categories under my wheel. One specifically for Mame4Droid as well. Never the less, each arcade category has at least a couple examples of "non compatibility" with the specific emulator no matter what. Luckily for the most part, switching between the Mame wheel and Mame4Droid wheel, I can play most of my arcade/mame games without issue.

 

[JRK]

Thanks for this thread, and effort to keep Hyperspin living. I recently came across the Bandit's No Clutter release, and have been trying to get it working on my Shield Pro with 8.2.3. The problem I am running into isn't isolated to HS, but really any and all Frontends I've tried.

 

What's happening is, I load whatever Frontend I have and designate games to load in Retroarch (Hyperspin, Launchbox, etc). I choose the game tell it to play, and it loads Retroarch but not the game. It's simply the main screen that shows no core loaded. I have ensured all the cores are downloaded and up to date, but it simply will not launch a game. I've even tried various versions of Retroarch for giggles, but it didn't help. If I go to load content, I can get them to load through RA, but that really defeats the purpose of a frontend.

 

I tried the tip in this thread for editing the exe= location, but yielded the same results. I feel like there is something blocking the full launch command or I'm doing something stupidly wrong.

 

Anyone else run into this and come up with a fix? Driving me nuts over here.

 

Also worth noting, I'm not married to using Hyperspin, I only started with it thanks to the 200gb Bandit release.

[C0ntrA]

I used that package last month, and it was my first experience with HS.

Anyway, it almost sounds to me as if you aren't using the 32 bit version of Retroarch.

If you are using Retroarch Plus, you will have issues with that collection. 

Also, that collection was intended to work with the playstore version of hyperspin, so effectively limited to the playstore version of retroarch (32).

 

Have you downloaded the modded apk from this thread?

[HyperSeeder]

On 10/24/2021 at 4:11 AM, C0ntrA said:

Update.

 

Thankfully your method still works. Just took a bit more knowledge of how to do the editing of ini files.

Still going strong in 2021!

I'm glad everything is still working. I wasn't notified of the messages for some reason l. Yes, this version is still working and configurations are done within the HyperSpin folder as you have already figured out.

MAME works well, but I found out that I rather stick with older roomsets + cores. 

Hopefully the next version of NVIDIA Shield will be backwards compatible with its existing architecture / software. I've heard that NVIDIA is going to shut down Tegra even though Nintendo Switch helped move a lot of NVIDIA hardware. It's too bad as Tegra was / is still the best SoC on Android TV hardware.

[HyperSeeder]

Hi guys,

Just letting you know that I'm aware that HyperSpin isn't working on NVIDIA Shield / Android 11.

While I'm still in the process of debugging the problem(s) with it, for the reasons mentioned in my previous post, it's unlikely that I'll be able to do much about Android 11 support by hacking and reverse engineering the APK. The changes needed to keep the app alive are sophisticated and beyond my abilities as a programmer. In order to make it work with Android 11 someone would need to reverse engineer the native layer of the application and retrofit support for Storage Access Framework and Android 11 compatible API calls + permissions.

As of now, the best advice that I can give to anyone that really needs HyperSpin is to stick with older versions of Android.

If one of the developers with access to the source code decides to put the work to fix the app, my offer to contribute my small "patch" to fix RetroArch compatibility upstream still remains. I wish that I had better news, but unfortunately it looks like this time only the actual development team is in a position to do something about it.

Kind regards,

[thebbandit]

It really breaks my heart when the dev team behind android makes decisions like this that cause everything to break.  The worst part is not being able to stop the OS updates from happening.

I am spoiled from years of backwards compatibility on windows. Every new OS update works just fine with the previous.

I had my update on the screen, knowing it would break it. "This update will apply at 2am"

 

[retrodevil2]

So I don't understand how to use this apk . 

I download and says edit android.ini where is that ? When I open the apk  it says no data folder 

[HyperSeeder]

On 1/24/2022 at 9:37 PM, retrodevil2 said:

So I don't understand how to use this apk . 

I download and says edit android.ini where is that ? When I open the apk  it says no data folder 

Hi retrodevil, you can find many guides on how to configure HyperSpin around the forums.

Keep in mind that currently HS is not working on Android 11+ Devices. Given that the original developer has returned to the forums and confirmed that he's working on a new version of HS able to launch modern versions od RetroArch, for all intents and purposes my hacked APK is on its way to retirement.

I'll keep the download link available to the community until @reznnate publishes the fix, but I would recommend folks that aren't already invested in the HS ecosystem to skip the custom APK and wait for an official release.

[HyperSeeder]

On 12/17/2022 at 10:57 AM, JennyCardoza said:

Can you share a link where I can find guides? Thanks in advance.

Check the posts pinned here: https://hyperspin-fe.com/forums/forum/172-hyperspin-android/
Having said that, apparently there hasn't been much progress on the official app since I've last posted. For now the HS experience on Android isn't great. One needs to either downgrade their device to Android 9 and use a modded APK like mine or use a Beta version that it is still buggy and can't launch a bunch of emulators.
While this particular advice isn't popular around the forums, I would encourage new folk to try other emulation frontends.

HyperSpin for Android may yet make a come back. But if I was new to the HS ecosystem, I wouldn't invest time on the Android version before a new official release with Android 11 + SAF support gets published to Google Play.