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OpenGL ES support, and a game that behaves like a phone app
Switch port next week.
New icon soon, with a new mascot.
OpenGL ES renderer (experimental)
Some phones report Vulkan support but ship a driver too broken to start the game. Those devices couldn't play DriftDroid at all. There's now an OpenGL ES renderer for them. If Vulkan isn't available, Automatic switches to it by itself, and you can also pick it by hand from Graphics... on the launcher screen.
Warning
This is experimental. It's slower than Vulkan by design: OpenGL only lets one thread talk to the GPU, so shaders compile while you play, multithreaded graphics is unavailable, and nothing is cached between launches. There's also a known intermittent crash on some Adreno GPUs when selecting a cup. If Vulkan works on your device, leave the setting on Automatic.
If the game wouldn't launch for you before, try this release and tell us whether it works, and on which phone. We need reports from real devices to finish this.
It behaves like a phone app now
- Backgrounding the game pauses it. It no longer fast-forwards through everything it missed, so you won't come back to find the race ran without you.
- Your music keeps playing. The game mutes its own music while another app is playing audio, then brings it back, without taking audio focus away from your music app.
- The Back button opens settings. That's also the way in if you've hidden the gear button, which you can now do.
- Custom home-screen icon. "App icon..." on the launcher screen makes a home-screen shortcut from any picture in your gallery, and you can switch it back to the normal icon any time. The launcher icon itself is now properly rounded.
- Aspect ratio changes apply immediately instead of at the next race.
Controls
- Double-tap A to hold acceleration (#4). A single tap releases it. Toggle it in settings.
- Controller remaps now save correctly across relaunches (#5). (not correctly tested).
- Touch controls no longer drift out of position, and your screen's aspect ratio is detected automatically.
Performance
- Graphics commands can be decoded on a second CPU core. "Multithreaded graphics (experimental)" in settings.
- The Vulkan shader cache now persists, so later launches skip most shader compilation.
- Faster CPU paths throughout.
- New setting: lower resolution when the phone gets hot. Off by default. Turn it on if you'd rather trade sharpness for steadier frame rates during long sessions.
Fixes
- The renderer choice from the launcher is no longer overwritten at every launch.
- "Fix missing characters (some Adreno GPUs)" for characters and objects rendering invisible or stretched (#6). It's applied automatically on OpenGL ES, where the same shader crashes the driver outright.
- A toggle to hide the "shaders compiling" message (#5).
- The app now reports its real version number.
- Upstream fixes: z-fighting, the sleep timer, the Item Rain crash, and ISFS_ReadDir.
Installing
Download the APK below and install it over your existing copy. Your saves and settings are kept. Requires Android 10 or newer on a 64-bit ARM device. You still need your own legally dumped PAL RMCP01 Mario Kart Wii disc. Nothing here contains or downloads Nintendo data.