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Documentation update

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Leon Styhre 2024-02-24 23:15:01 +01:00
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FAQ-ANDROID.md
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@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ The Android release specifically is not free, it's a paid app available for purc
## Why is ES-DE not available on the Google Play store?
That is a question for Google. They are have done everything in their power to obstruct the release of ES-DE including constantly rejecting the releases without supplying meaningful explanations why, refusing to respond to tickets and emails and in general being incredibly difficult to deal with. There's a chance that there will be a Play Store release in the future but there's also a chance that it never happens.
That is a question for Google. They are have done everything in their power to obstruct the release of ES-DE including constantly rejecting the releases without supplying meaningful explanations why, refusing to respond to tickets and emails and in general being incredibly difficult to deal with. There's a chance that there will be a Play Store release in the future but there's also a chance that it never happens. You could even argue whether the Play store is going to be relevant for emulation apps in the future. With the crippling restrictions and requirements that Google has put in place this store is starting look quite unfeasible. It doens't matter how big a store is or how many users it has, if it doesn't fulfill the basic role of making it possible to publish your apps and getting paid for your work, then none of that really matters.
## How do I update ES-DE when there is a new release
@ -43,9 +43,19 @@ RetroArch on Android is very unforgiving, if you haven't installed the necessary
## When I launch a game using a standalone emulator, why does it say the game file could not be opened?
Due to the scoped storage permissions in Android many emulators need to be given access to the specific game system directory where you store your ROMs. For example DuckStation would need access to your ROMs/psx directory. Some emulators support the FileProvider API in which case ES-DE will provide the emulator with the necessary access and it therefore does not need to be setup upfront in the emulator. You can see in the [Android documentation](ANDROID.md#emulation-on-android-in-general) which emulators support the FileProvider API.
Due to the scoped storage permissions in Android many emulators need to be given access to the specific game system directory where you store your ROMs. For example DuckStation needs access to your ROMs/psx directory and M64Plus FZ needs access to ROMs/n64. Some emulators support the FileProvider API in which case ES-DE will provide the emulator with the necessary access and it therefore does not need to be setup upfront in the emulator. You can see in the [Android documentation](ANDROID.md#emulation-on-android-in-general) which emulators support the FileProvider API.
Another reason for why it may not work is that the ROMs directories are in the wrong letter case. If you are reusing an old setup from another frontend where the directories are named for instance ROMs/PS2 and ROMs/NES then these will actually get populated inside ES-DE but you won't be able to run any games with some specific emulators. So make sure that your game system directories are in lower case such as ROMs/ps2 and ROMs/nes and it should work fine. If you start with an empty ROMs directory and you let ES-DE generate the game system folders then everything will of course work fine. For this reason it's always recommended to let ES-DE generate your ROMs directory structure.
Another reason for why it may not work is that the ROMs directories are in the wrong letter case. If you are reusing an old setup from another frontend where the directories are named for instance ROMs/PS2 and ROMs/NES then these will actually get populated inside ES-DE but you won't be able to run any games with some specific emulators. So make sure that your game system directories are in lowercase such as ROMs/ps2 and ROMs/nes and it should work fine. After changing a directory from uppercase to lowercase you'll also need to go into the emulator and provide access to the renamed directory. If you start with an empty ROMs directory and you let ES-DE generate the game system folders then all game system directories will be correctly generated in lowercase, so this is the recommended approach.
There seems to be a third situation as well where some emulators apparently keep some residual configuration even after changing the ROM path, which makes game launching fail. In some cases it's been successful to clear the emulator settings completely and then add access to the ROM directory again. The easiest way to do this is to go into the Android Settings app, choose _Apps_, select the emulator you want to clear the settings for, open _Storage & cache_ and select _Clear storage_. Just make sure that the emulator has not placed savestates and similar data on internal storage, as this might otherwise get lost. Following this open the emulator and give access to the correct ROM/game system directory.
## Some emulators fail to launch with "ERROR CODE -1", what does that mean?
This is a general failure mode which could be caused by multiple things. Some emulators react like this when there's a permission issue and they can't access the game file. See the previous question above for how to deal with such permission problems. If you have an Ayn Odin 2 this error will occur for a number of emulators such as Redream and My Boy! due to what seems to be a problem with their Android OS image. See the [Issues with the Ayn Odin 2](ANDROID.md#issues-with-the-ayn-odin-2) section in the Android documentation for more details about the latter.
## Sometimes after I return from a game ES-DE is restarting, did it crash?
No Android may stop applications that are not currently focused if it needs to recover the RAM that those applications were using. This is an integral part of the operating system design, there's really no way to prevent this behavior. ES-DE is a complex application that is more akin to a game engine than a regular Android application, and if you are using a demanding theme with lots of game media it can consume quite a lot of memory. If you are using a device with limited RAM, say 4 GB or so, it's almost unavoidable that ES-DE will get stopped if you are running an emulator that also uses a lot of memory. You could switch to a more lightweight theme though, this sometimes prevents these restarts from occuring.
## What type of Android devices are supported