Hyperspin no longer works with the last Nvidia Shield Update

[moondefer]

Can we have some news on an update for android 11 and compatibility with retroarch plus and retroarch 32 please ?

Thanks for all

[fred33]

28 minutes ago, moondefer said:

Can we have some news on an update for android 11 and compatibility with retroarch plus and retroarch 32 please ?

Thanks for all

Same for me 😉 thanks

[sanchezmike01]

On 1/23/2022 at 9:06 AM, piddypoo said:

Ok, I bit the bullet and did the downgrade. Success!

Just a few observations:

What drove me to it was that the update also broke trackball/mouse support in mame4droid (with the Atgames Gamer Pro, probably with a regular mouse too).

Oem unlock didn't take 2 hours - the entire process was actually under 3 minutes once I connected to the Shield properly.

I used Win10 Powershell (so you need to add .\ before the fastboot commands)

I used the crappy 2.0 USB A to A cable that came with the Gamer Pro and a regular old keyboard (I did have to plug and unplug them a few times to get it actually connect).

I think the entire process is just finiky and less dependent on what cables or keyboards you're using.

How do u get the trackball to work without the pointer appearing on the shield?

[dcalamusa]

What's the update on the hyperspin fix to work on Android 11 for the nvidea shield?

Thanks for any info.

[Wally3381]

On 1/24/2022 at 12:06 AM, piddypoo said:

Ok, I bit the bullet and did the downgrade. Success!

Just a few observations:

What drove me to it was that the update also broke trackball/mouse support in mame4droid (with the Atgames Gamer Pro, probably with a regular mouse too).

Oem unlock didn't take 2 hours - the entire process was actually under 3 minutes once I connected to the Shield properly.

I used Win10 Powershell (so you need to add .\ before the fastboot commands)

I used the crappy 2.0 USB A to A cable that came with the Gamer Pro and a regular old keyboard (I did have to plug and unplug them a few times to get it actually connect).

I think the entire process is just finiky and less dependent on what cables or keyboards you're using.

Hi there, have you got a link I can follow in English to do the downgrade please? Preferably a video link. Cheers 👍

[piddypoo]

On 3/4/2022 at 7:36 PM, sanchezmike01 said:

How do u get the trackball to work without the pointer appearing on the shield?

The pointer shows if you're just navigating the Shield's OS, but it disappears in the emulators... I'm still using mame4all. If you go into settings (P1 button calls it up for me) you need to click the box for Nvidia mouse support to get the trackball working. Hope that helps?

[piddypoo]

4 hours ago, Wally3381 said:

Hi there, have you got a link I can follow in English to do the downgrade please? Preferably a video link. Cheers 👍

I think the video went members only now (YouTuber: Ginger Gaming Mentor Nvidia Shield TV Pro 2019 Boot Loop Repair (Recovery Image) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc4m2Hfd4HY    Try this one: https://youtu.be/9yHvOotwRjw or here https://techunwrapped.com/nvidia-shield-tv-how-to-downgrade-back-to-version-8-2-3/

Honestly, I think I just got lucky, it took a few tries to get it to start.

 

 

[Wally3381]

Yeah I’m not having much luck either but I appreciate your help anyways. I even brought a new Shield Pro I didn’t realize you had to be connected to the internet straight from the box then it just updates to the latest version anyway 😩

[Gap2NinjaFlip]

Man, hyperspin for android is the reason why I bought the Nvidia Shield in the first place back in 2017. I took so much time and effort learning how customize and craft my own arcade experience. I learned how to swap out backgrounds, tweaking .ini files, hell I even created my own intros for it.  

 

There is nothing like the Hyperspin and the Nvidia Shield experience once you have everything up in running the way you like it. With that said, I hope an update is in the works. 

 

[thefunkygibbon]

is there any update on the progress of a working android 11 build, please?  

I've got a few weeks until i go on holiday and I need to decide between my shield, a pi4 or my switch as being the device i take to be used for retrogaming/media.   shield is the preferable option. 

[Creezz67]

21 hours ago, thefunkygibbon said:

is there any update on the progress of a working android 11 build, please?  

I've got a few weeks until i go on holiday and I need to decide between my shield, a pi4 or my switch as being the device i take to be used for retrogaming/media.   shield is the preferable option. 

Start packing you Pi4 !

Hyperspin is currently dead on the operating table and by the looks of it, Reznnate cannot figure out how to fix it, or more likely he seen all the negativity on these forums about how long it was taking that he just though screw it !

[thefunkygibbon]

3 hours ago, Creezz67 said:

Start packing you Pi4 !

Hyperspin is currently dead on the operating table and by the looks of it, Reznnate cannot figure out how to fix it, or more likely he seen all the negativity on these forums about how long it was taking that he just though screw it !

yeah,  that's what I'm going to do. 

and yes, I agree.  the guy effectively abandons the whole project for over 10 years, comes back and out of the blue mentions about fixing the android version (no mention of the main windows version).  I mean that's great that he's come back and seemingly willing to help.  But then he's not even logged into his own forums again since shortly after posting that.  🤷‍♂️

Given how popular retrogaming is, I'm bamboozled as to why there are not other front ends out there which do similar things. 

[HyperSeeder]

TL;DR: This is not a trivial update. Give the developer some space and let him have his saying when it's time to say something to the end users.

----

Hi folks,

Give it some time. I'm not saying this to get one's hopes up. And I stand by my advice that there are other perfectly functional, well maintained front ends to choose from.

Having said that, we need to contextualise the changes and understand why it may take a while, even for the original developer to be able to make things happen.

The truth is that the initial port of HS to NVIDIA Shield required a somewhat different (although complementary) skill set to the one needed to make it all work with Android 11 restrictions. Plus honestly, it's not "fun" work to do.

The initial port was mostly about emulating flash and being able to get custom themes to render correctly in a totally different OS and hardware architecture than the Windows x86-64 version. I have zero insights about the native side of the project, but I assume that it's written in a very low level programming language (possible even mixed with some Assembly). I would also assume that the development team was working close to NVIDIA to make it all happen. On top of the low level layer there's a very thin layer of Java / Android code that bootstraps the low level layer and enables a few user interactions + launching Android emulators. My point being: The original port was mostly a low level development effort.

The Android 11 update is a somewhat different effort. Google has sandboxed Android apps and made some things very difficult for developers. They have provided several high level (as in, Java / Kotlin Android) APIs to access storage, and they have severely restricted how HS can interact with the file system (as well as what files it can interact with). The "new" Android APIs requires manual user interactions for stuff that wasn't necessary before. Retrofitting Android's high level storage API requirements in HS and making it play well with the native layer is not so easy. One still needs to be well versed with low level development and HS internals to make it happen. But there's also a lot of high level - Android specific - knowledge required. I can only guess, but I would assume a lot of messing around with badly documented (and possibly not so well thought out) integration between Android high level APIs and the low level layer where the API calls need to happen.

And then, even if the author makes it happen, there's alway the possibility of further consequences to the end user given the changes to storage scope. I'm talking about possible having to change some previously hard coded paths (e.g., configuration files, resources, etc) and even the way that HS has to interact with some emulators. The sort of change that a lot of users will complain about, changes that may require guides to be rewritten, etc.

What I'm trying to say is: The changes required to make HS work on Android 11 aren't a piece of cake for the developer. It requires some familiarity with modern Android development, as well as a lot of familiarity with HS internals and some non trivial modifications to make HS conform with the new "sandboxed" reality of Android applications.

Give the developer some time and let him come back and say what he has to say when it's time to say it.

Disclaimer: I'm not an authoritative source for any of this stuff. I'm just a guy that reversed engineered and hacked the Java / Android layer of HS a year or so ago. Everything that I just said may not be accurate, as it's based on nothing but speculation, my own experience as a developer and an unimpressive 3 LOCs patch to make HS work with modern versions of Retroarch (I have zero dealings with the dev team and the person that ported HS to Android).

 

[mike2307881]

Took the plunge and rolled back my firmware. Was a pain but got through it and all working again. I learned a lesson here to read about updates first before installing them.  

[pedropicapiedra]

On 4/2/2022 at 1:50 PM, HyperSeeder said:

TL;DR: This is not a trivial update. Give the developer some space and let him have his saying when it's time to say something to the end users.

----

Hi folks,

Give it some time. I'm not saying this to get one's hopes up. And I stand by my advice that there are other perfectly functional, well maintained front ends to choose from.

Having said that, we need to contextualise the changes and understand why it may take a while, even for the original developer to be able to make things happen.

The truth is that the initial port of HS to NVIDIA Shield required a somewhat different (although complementary) skill set to the one needed to make it all work with Android 11 restrictions. Plus honestly, it's not "fun" work to do.

The initial port was mostly about emulating flash and being able to get custom themes to render correctly in a totally different OS and hardware architecture than the Windows x86-64 version. I have zero insights about the native side of the project, but I assume that it's written in a very low level programming language (possible even mixed with some Assembly). I would also assume that the development team was working close to NVIDIA to make it all happen. On top of the low level layer there's a very thin layer of Java / Android code that bootstraps the low level layer and enables a few user interactions + launching Android emulators. My point being: The original port was mostly a low level development effort.

The Android 11 update is a somewhat different effort. Google has sandboxed Android apps and made some things very difficult for developers. They have provided several high level (as in, Java / Kotlin Android) APIs to access storage, and they have severely restricted how HS can interact with the file system (as well as what files it can interact with). The "new" Android APIs requires manual user interactions for stuff that wasn't necessary before. Retrofitting Android's high level storage API requirements in HS and making it play well with the native layer is not so easy. One still needs to be well versed with low level development and HS internals to make it happen. But there's also a lot of high level - Android specific - knowledge required. I can only guess, but I would assume a lot of messing around with badly documented (and possibly not so well thought out) integration between Android high level APIs and the low level layer where the API calls need to happen.

And then, even if the author makes it happen, there's alway the possibility of further consequences to the end user given the changes to storage scope. I'm talking about possible having to change some previously hard coded paths (e.g., configuration files, resources, etc) and even the way that HS has to interact with some emulators. The sort of change that a lot of users will complain about, changes that may require guides to be rewritten, etc.

What I'm trying to say is: The changes required to make HS work on Android 11 aren't a piece of cake for the developer. It requires some familiarity with modern Android development, as well as a lot of familiarity with HS internals and some non trivial modifications to make HS conform with the new "sandboxed" reality of Android applications.

Give the developer some time and let him come back and say what he has to say when it's time to say it.

Disclaimer: I'm not an authoritative source for any of this stuff. I'm just a guy that reversed engineered and hacked the Java / Android layer of HS a year or so ago. Everything that I just said may not be accurate, as it's based on nothing but speculation, my own experience as a developer and an unimpressive 3 LOCs patch to make HS work with modern versions of Retroarch (I have zero dealings with the dev team and the person that ported HS to Android).

 

You're a good guy I've seen how you offered your help with this issue but you were almost ignore as far as I know.
Everything you told is true, about what the update involves and the hard work behind, and about it's not a fun work.
But that doesn't justify no messages in 4 months after the post "I will try to work in a quick update, 2-3 weeks", he could be dead, who knows?

[moondefer]

Some news from developer please ?

Thanks for all

[St0mp3r]

On 1/16/2022 at 2:04 PM, reznnate said:

Sorry the app was broken.  I'm working on a quick update to fix compatibility.   It's been years since I've looked at this so I'm running into various build/env issues and I don't have an ETA.     It should be easy but I've already spent more hours than I expected.     I'm expecting an update in 2-3 weeks, but that's not a promise since I'm uncertain about the fixes required yet.     While I'm at it, I intend to fix the issue raised with Retroarch as well.

Cheers!

Not to sound rude, but that post of yours has not aged well. Here we are in May and still having the issue of Hyperspin not working with Android 11. What’s the deal here? Can you please show some love to your hyperspin brothers and sisters and work to put an updated hyperspin app that will work in the google play store please? I know we all have lives outside of this hobby but you would really be doing us a lot of good and a big favor. 

[HyperSeeder]

We are now past the 6 months mark.

I'm not saying this to put pressure on the Developer, but we need to prepare ourselves for the possibility that HS for Android may become abandonware.

@reznnate, is there any chance that the source code for the Android version could be released under an open source license? Or would it compromise IP / Copyright from the Hyperspin Dev team and potentially Nvidia? If the code can be made open source there's a chance that it would spark enough interest to attract external contributors able to help. I fully understand if it's not possible, but would appreciate your input regardless of outcome.

Kind regards,

[Wiz9]

It was exciting to see all the posts and videos across many platforms regarding Hyperspin and its ability to run on the Nvidia Shield.... I downloaded the 180GB Bandit File and ordered the mini usb Flash Drive (coming this PM) for it to reside on. Now it seems I saw every post except the ones that explain its no longer compatible with the latest Android that Nvidia pushed out...... and nothing is on the Horizon for an updated version of Hyperspin.

Allow me to add to the cries in the wilderness that hope those who are the developer geniuses that coded it that there are many still out here that would greatly appreciate your efforts to bring it up to date and working.

Cheers! 

 

[CHIPPOSHIVA]

Hi, I'm moving on, hyperspin was the best so far.

I tried everyhting, arc, reset, dig and launchbox i even pay for the last two...

None of these is approching hyperspin, none .. 

So much work done to make the perfect HDD for me, so much time.. And the worst i can't delete all i've done and i will keep hoping that somebody will do something one day. i'm ready to learn how to and work on it if somebody can leak the code source.

So sad...

[CHIPPOSHIVA]

28 weeks later...

[sanchezmike01]

My best guess is you can learn how to make a theme like hyperspin for launchbox....

[CHIPPOSHIVA]

4 hours ago, sanchezmike01 said:

My best guess is you can learn how to make a theme like hyperspin for launchbox....

That's what i was thinking too, but the infrastructure is so different, to do this some changes need to be implemented in apk directly not just xml tweaks.

Honestly i think it will be more simple to adress the android 11 hyperspin port than change everything in launchbox.

Nobody here can help ? It's sad to let hyperspin dies like that.

[CHIPPOSHIVA]

I would pay for it and i think i'm not alone... in the dark.

[mikty]

A paid version on playstore to support the developper would be an idea.