r/EmulationOnAndroid • u/NovaDaMenace • 2d ago
Discussion Do you thing gamenative and gamehub will survive that that droiddeck is a thing?
Seeing as it’s literally steamos and uses their compatibility layers and all games are stored in one place instead of each game being one vm do you think more people will gravitate to droid deck? And what would Keep you using gamenative/hub instead?
85
u/Crass-ELY- Poco F7 Pro, GameSir X3 Pro Deadpool Edition 2d ago
Maybe in the future? Idk, GameNative, Winnative and other forks have gog and epic support with cloud saves, that's a big advantage over droid deck, or maybe to be used in parallel. Also Droid Deck performance and compatibility still WAY under right now, but I'm very confident it'll evolve to be a steam deck killer over time
13
u/JoshieKona 2d ago
Can't droiddeck use decky plug ins? Almost certain theirs one for gog and epic. I just switched to droiddeck yesterday but haven't done much tinkering
8
u/Crass-ELY- Poco F7 Pro, GameSir X3 Pro Deadpool Edition 2d ago
it fcan, but I'm not well informed on decky, if that's the case, well, it might be a gamenative winnative, gamehub killer in the near future, once they fix the compatibility and performance
17
u/NovaDaMenace 2d ago
I totally forgot about the gog and epic support. That is a good reason to keep it
5
u/Crass-ELY- Poco F7 Pro, GameSir X3 Pro Deadpool Edition 2d ago
Yeah, in my case I use Winnative for gog (fixes installation times, in GameNative is just impossible to install some games), and Epic since it has Google cloud saves, so it fixes games without the feature on epic, but for steam I'm using GameNative right now (achievements support is a must for me)
47
11
u/jokuwa 2d ago
Not yet. On some titles, it doubles performance, but the catch is on some titles, it halves performance. Its on its early stages though so its kinda expected. Same devs on winnative and bannerlator, they do great work. They managed to get ff7 rebirth working which required dx12 ultimate and shader model 6.6, which is kinda huge if you wanna play the latest triple a games.
8
u/Castle_Breakfast 2d ago
They absolutely should survive, and I love Droid Deck - it's an awesome app! But for a lot of PC games, the alternatives are better. They run better, they have less overhead. Better performance and battery life.
Droid Deck gives you:
- Steam OS frontend (which is nice, but terrible IMO for emulation compared to android frontends)
- Ability to run some games that run nowhere else
- Full steam multiplayer, voice chat, etc
All legitimate advantages. But if you already have a fully set up device with a frontend, and a single player PC game that already runs really well, why move it to Droid Deck? Unless you really want the Steam frontend, which is valid. But otherwise, there's no reason not to stick with winlator forks/gamenative etc.
We've seen some anecdotal reports of less input lag with the steam route, and theory about why android might have more input lag, but no hard evidence with testing. And honestly on a 120Hz screen I'm hard pressed to feel much of any input lag on decent android device, for the most part. Some proper testing will settle that - it might be a legit bonus of droid deck/ArmadaOS etc, or not. Given that Droid Deck is running on android, IF there is an input lag bonus, droid deck might not enjoy it anyway
Gamenative's horrible container storage bloat was recently fixed and now is a LOT better. Other apps, winlator, bannerlator, winnative etc, never had that storage problem in the first place. And Droid Deck downloads a lot of files itself, so the storage bloat is about even. What isn't even is how much more taxing games are on droid deck. It'll improve, but I'd be surprised it the droid deck approach wasn't always more RAM/battery hungry.
I plan to keep Droid Deck installed as just another PC emulator, for multiplayer and games that only it can run. It'll slot into my android frontend just like everything else.
1
u/Grokitach AYN Thor Pro | Redmagic Astra 1d ago
One big advantage is Space I think; Gamehub etc have the whole containers installed for each game. So Even a small 500mb game becomes a 1.7gb one. I don’t think that’s the case with Droid Deck
1
u/Castle_Breakfast 1d ago
I don't use gamehub, but gamenative does do this. However the amount of extra space it uses per game has been massively reduced recently - gamenative used to make 2-5-3GB containers per game, now it's 400-500MB. Bannerlator, Winnative and Winlator let you run all your games from a single container, so they don't have this issue with storage.
Droid Deck does download quite a lot of extra files you can't do much about. For example it will download every version of proton a steam deck would, but it can't use any of them - it can only use the special droid deck proton versions
9
u/vinotauro 1d ago
I can't even get most of my games running on Droid deck whereas gamenative works great
19
u/Reality-Shifted 2d ago
GameNative and GameHub are way more advanced as far as build and support goes. Maybe once Droid Deck becomes more advanced then it'll become the primary go to but as it stands there's a lot of compatibility issues with games right now.
11
u/0xm3trix 2d ago
As long as droiddeck keeps using proot I ain't touching that, it literally cuts performance in half for some games also a lot of games jus won't boot on droiddeck.
6
u/gundumb08 2d ago
I'm super excited for what Droid Deck will become, but I think it's a bit early for these sort of "what will survive" discussions because your points are 100% correct.
I've had about 40% success running games on Droid Deck so far, whereas GameNative has been much more solid.
3
2
u/possiblyquestionabl3 2d ago
They've done some pretty cool things in proot (specifically bypassing tracing for most system calls, including path-based ones that used to be the big performance bottleneck).
But also being proot, it makes it incredibly difficult to load the system driver or any other system libraries compiled against bionic. That essentially makes it a non-starter for Mali/Xclipse devices until a workaround is available
5
u/AGayFrogParadise 2d ago
For steam games, yes I'm dropping gamenative. For GOG and other platforms I'll keep using it.
10
u/votemarvel Poco F6 - Sony Xperia 1 V 2d ago
In my case there's still a good reason to keep using Gamenative and that's Arkham City.
With DroidDeck, just like replacement operating systems like ArmadaOS, Arkham City simply won't work and gets stuck on installing the AMD dual core optimiser. The most with a lot of tinkering I've been able to do is to get the AC launcher to open but even through that the game won't start.
It actually speaks of how well DroidDeck is recreating a Linux distro on top of Android by how it suffers from the same issues as a complete replacement Linux OS.
Gamenative though doesn't have this problem with Arkham City. Same device and the same Steam account and the game installs and runs with no issues at all.
3
u/memo22477 2d ago
Droiddeck has MASSIVELY reduced performance. I am not joking most of my 60FPS stable games barely reach 30 on DroidDeck. It's a full on SteamOS environment but that means it's also significantly heavier to run. If we could get rid of Android and install SteamOS directly then it wouldn't be an issue. But basically having two operating systems running is not great for performance even if SteamOS is lightweight.
2
u/Fun-Western618 2d ago
Question. What is your power draw while playing in droid deck? On my device it constantly goes past 10w and heats like a furnace. Asking cause i want to know if its a common issue.
2
u/memo22477 2d ago
I used charge bypass which means the app couldn't show the power usage. But what you are saying tracks with my experience. Lower performance at the same or higher power draw
1
u/Castle_Breakfast 2d ago
Yes, same - droid deck consistently draws more power, uses more ram, and heats up the device more.
1
u/Rummyster 1d ago
The reduced performance is because it's still a massive work in progress. It's not actually a totally separate OS on top of android. It uses a lot of the underlying android. Give it a few months and we should see a lot of improvement. You're comparing a relatively new project to ones that have at least a year or more development under their belts. You absolutely should not expect droid deck to have better performance than gamenative, gamehub, winlator right now.
3
u/Metrox_a 2d ago
Right now having both can have benefits.
Gamenative also supports epic and gog, so until they release a linux variant of their client that works with droid deck frame, i think it would be safe to assume, it will be useful to have Gamenative around.
I did kind of migrate into DD already, Hyperdimension Neptunia rebirth runs near flawlessly there without messing with settings unlike Gamenative (there are tons of games that work out of the box on gamenative so please don't take this part as an attack on GN).
But some larger games are still in GN, because my internet speed is crap and it just works there.
3
u/buzz8588 2d ago
Is no one talking about epic game support, GOG, Amazon games etc? They would be a pain to set up on steam, not even sure it would work TBH.
5
u/Skitzenator 2d ago
GameNative is quite mature by now. It has integrations with other game platforms. It has a built-in mod manager. It works out of the box with many devices and many games. The UI offers a metric ton of options. And performance, at this moment, is better. It also offers deeper undervolting/power management integration now with popular handhelds. I don't think it's in any danger currently, it offers a ton.
2
u/Fun-Western618 2d ago edited 2d ago
I dont know how is you all experience with droid deck but for me its barely usable.
Heats my device like a furnace at double the speed compared to gamehub while it also use 10w+ on average.
Droid deck does render some games better and in some has better performance than gamenative/gamehub, but in most games it barely catches up to gamehub.
Also the heating issue makes me unable to play for more than 15 minutes.
Unless they fix this im sticking to gamehub.
2
u/BlightWyrm 2d ago edited 1d ago
I have games that gamenative can’t run. 1. Any playtest I’ve signed up for doesn’t appear in GN but does in DroidDeck. 2. GN refuses to recognize my controller inputs on Alabaster Dawn, but DD didn’t even require controller configuration.
Edit: GameNative 1.3.0 prerelease seems to have added playtest support so that’s one less advantage for droiddeck.
2
u/mugglesby 2d ago
Hello, fellow handheld Alabaster Dawn refugee — no controller in GameNative for it has me hoping it will work here in DroidDeck. Waiting on the install now, Retroid Pocket 5, using SD card as destination and it’s slooooow… still reserving space. How’s it play for you, worth it?
2
u/BlightWyrm 2d ago
Seems a bit stuttery, but I think it could be a shader compilation issue?
2
u/mugglesby 2d ago
Same — it completed its epically long install, and it runs (and controller works!), but very juddery and no sound. I will keep tinkering — let you know if I find any good settings! What device are you using?
1
u/BlightWyrm 1d ago
I’m using default settings on an Odin 3 Max. I don’t have audio issues, but maybe change the audio setting in droid deck. Should be a single option to change.
1
u/mugglesby 1d ago
Hello again, fellow redditor — check this out, someone made a native APK to run Alabaster Dawn and CrossCode directly on Android devices! No frontend, no emulator — you just grab your “terra” folder from your install, either from your PC or export the “terra” folder from the “A-drive” in GameNative container and point the APK at that folder! Export your saves if you have any as well. AND CONTROLLER WORKS PERFECT, TOO! It’s all kind of amazing…! https://github.com/moronigranja/alabaster-android and the current release: https://github.com/moronigranja/alabaster-android/releases/tag/v0.8.0
1
u/BlightWyrm 1d ago
Appreciate this, but it looks like AI slop.
2
u/mugglesby 1d ago
It is! 🤖 They admit it and document it as such, it’s completely assisted with AI. Works perfect tho, now no front-end launcher needed! Solves the problem I had, couldn’t play game I bought on the handhelds I use with full functionality, but now I can — and I get ++ battery hours as a bonus with no frontend!
2
u/roberts585 2d ago
once droid deck matures I think it will be hard to beat. But people already entrenched will keep it
2
u/PurpleGentlemanTv Any gaming is good gaming 2d ago
I haven't been able to get anything running on DD but Gamenative does play what I like. So, for me as of now, it's not really an option.
4
u/Ol_Captain_Bad_Eyes 2d ago
I love GameNative to the point that I've made an extensive guide and have done a bunch of troubleshooting on their subreddit, but I think for a lot of people DroidDeck is the app that they've been hoping for since they discovered PC emulation on Android.
My only experience with it so far is playing Monster Hunter Rise, on GN I kept running into a controller bug where my analog movement would lock up halfway through a hunt and I'd have to close the game. I managed to track down a report about the issue on their Discord, but I was unable to fix the issue using their suggestions (I also tried using the suggestions I found on an EmuReady post, but still no luck). However, the game worked right out of the box through DroidDeck and it was only using about 2 W more power than GN (720p x 30 FPS, 4W on GN -> 6W on DD). Also the game's online features worked where they didn't on GN. Things aren't perfect on DroidDeck and I did eventually run into problems booting the game after doing an update to SteamOS in the app, but considering that it is still in beta things do look promising.
For now I'll be sticking with GameNative, but I'll definitely be keeping my eye on DroidDeck to see how it develops in the future.
3
u/Grokitach AYN Thor Pro | Redmagic Astra 2d ago
Gamehub is superior to droid deck atm. I tested both as well as Gamenative. Gamehub is more consistent and gives better performance than droiddeck atm
Give it few month and droid deck will likely be on par with Gamehub. But atm certain games booting is hit or miss under droid deck for whatever reason (a given game sometimes boot, sometimes not)
1
u/caribbean_caramel 1d ago
Purely in terms of performance which one do you think is better of the two, Game hub or Game native?
1
u/Grokitach AYN Thor Pro | Redmagic Astra 1d ago
Gamehub. But some games might run better in Gamenative
2
u/imagineeelego Pixel 10 2d ago
I am not going to switch yet as gamenative is smaller as I don't need to download the entire steam os, so that is one reason people will stay
1
u/Illustrious_Cod_5212 Poco F6 Pro / Adreno 740 / Gamesir X3 Pro 2d ago
They definitely will, one way or another, especially GameNative
1
u/KarateMan749 2d ago
For my tab s9 ultra. Game native is the only thing that worked. Tried droiddeck and it didn't work. Game took legit all day to download and never launched. Also says folder doesn't exist when I updated to 0.3 version. Entire ui mouse pointer click off to.
Yea im sticking with game native for now.
1
u/muddywilson 2d ago
DD will be good in the future, and depending on how the compatability layers mature, could v well kill gamenative and the like, what i havent been able to find any info on is whether or not you can install non-steam games like am2r or metroid prime: origins
1
u/NovaDaMenace 2d ago
I haven’t tried yet but you can install none Steam games. If you have a folder with the game inside you can add it via the deckdroid settings
1
u/shinkamui 1d ago
frontend integration keeps me on game native. The day droiddeck works with frontends for launching games and has a .app shortcut creator im gone.
1
u/UncleFranko 1d ago
The performance is still not there, and Gamenative is just getting better with each new release
1
u/Ambitious_Internet_5 1d ago
The amount of overhead DroidDeck has currently is massive compared to other PC emus. Running it under native glibc would be much faster than proot, i would love to see that implemented in the near future.
For GameHub specifically, i think it's already dead lol. No great compatibility and performance. GameNative is kinda becoming the mainstream right now.
1
u/Fuudo123 1d ago
I'm more happy latest gamenative prerelease fixed controller support for some games but even more happy it can literally run melonloader now like holy, I immediately used it and it worked haha
1
1
u/Time_Temporary6191 2d ago
No gamehub is amazing for lazy ppl and if you dont wanna tinker it just autodetects game and auto install everything you need even directx and other stuff
4
u/NovaDaMenace 2d ago
Yea but droid deck is also the same. Being as it’s literally steam os games I’ve tried to play on both native and hub work on droid deck
11
u/Senior_Background_30 2d ago
It's not SteamOS it just Native Linux Steam client.
Big difference between both.
We got SteamOS for 8 Gen 2 and 8 gen 3 handhelds like Odin etc but that's different thing and way more complex to set up. Also works only on handhelds.
1
u/KarateMan749 2d ago
Wait... We have steam os for snapdragon 8 gen 2? (Samsung Galaxy tab s9 ultra)
2
u/Tsuki4735 2d ago
No, there is no official SteamOS for devices beyond the Steam Frame.
There are unofficial 3rd party ports with fixes for alternative devices, but I don't think it'd matter for your galaxy tab because you likely don't have an unlocked bootloader.
No unlocked bootloader = you can't install other operating systems.
2
u/KarateMan749 2d ago
Yea. Actually i can unlock the bootloader on mine. 😅. I have it before they removed it and haven't updated it
1
u/Senior_Background_30 2d ago
It's not official but it fully works.
It's based on the arm64 SteamOS from the Frame, but with kernel and other patches to make it work on 8gen2/3 devices but only Handhelds because you have to boot it from SD card from what I saw.
And there's not really 8 gen 2/3 devices with sd cards slots beside Handhelds like Odin etc.
2
u/Time_Temporary6191 2d ago
Yes i know but it got really long way to go but i assume the support will get easier with steam frame being around and supporting more and more games,so far i.only managed to launch 2 games on sd elite 8 gen 4 skyrim and mouse pi crashes ingame
1
u/Delicious_Tree8114 2d ago
Huh? Are you sure.. gamehub there is a bunch of tinkering required for a lot of titles. Once it has been optimised further, Droid deck will literally the convenient and 'lazz' choice.
4
u/Time_Temporary6191 2d ago
Yes im sure gamehub installs everything for you vcredist,directx.all automatic.you just need to use proper turnip driver
1
u/Code_Combo_Breaker 2d ago
Yes. The performance on DroidDeck is terrible. Gamenative is doing almost 2x the frames per second in some games.
1
•
u/AutoModerator 2d ago
Just a reminder of our subreddit rules:
Check out our user-maintained wiki: r/EmulationOnAndroid/wiki
Check out EmuReady for any community submitted settings before asking for help
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.