The 1.15.x release process

The 1.15.x release series has been out now for a couple of weeks, including some point-releases. These have been made mostly as direct response to crash reports but also for some other fixes. Time to summarize!

  • Overall crash rate is down by about 20% from previous releases
  • It took three point-releases to get there though! A few new crashes emerged in this release, but I also fixed some old ones while at it.
  • People seem generally happy with the release, but there have been some negative reviews coming in, mostly about slowdown on older devices, control mapping problems, and even about how the new icon is ugly.

Thus, a fourth point-release is rolling out about now, 1.15.4, with the following changes:

  • Some optimizations to claw back most of the lost performance
  • The Android device resolution / HW scaler setting will be back
  • Fixes for running things directly out of the Downloads folder using the Load button on newer Android versions
  • Fixes for some control mapping problems
  • On devices that don't understand the new icon format, use the old icon instead of an ugly auto-generated one.
  • Fix loader bug triggered by WWE 2009, preventing it from starting
  • Tilt control gets back a lost setting (inverse deadzone, or "low end radius")
  • A couple of updates to compat.ini.

Hopefully this will be enough to avoid a fifth!

While looking at performance to eliminate some regressions, I found plenty of additional room for improvements, and I have a bunch of good changes pending. Mostly though, these will need serious testing so I cannot merge them until after we're done with the main series of 1.15.x releases, to keep things simple. But expect serious performance improvements on old devices in 1.16!

Anyway, enjoy!