Jump 1.7: Cloud saves, RetroAchievements, play time, sounds, Trophy Cabinet and a LOT more!

Hello everyone! This is the biggest Jump update yet. I’ve been working on it non-stop for the past few weeks and it’s packed with the two features people have asked me for the most: cloud saves and RetroAchievements. On top of those there’s play time tracking, sounds, start-up screens, a Trophy Cabinet, a big list of carousel improvements and a huge pile of bug fixes.

As always, this much new stuff means there will be bugs I haven’t found yet, so please keep sending bug reports! I read every single one even if I can’t always reply to them all. I’ll be putting out a video going through everything in the next few days on my YouTube channel too and I’ll aim to put out a bug fix patch within the next week once your bug reports come in.

You should be able to update in-app through Settings -> Backup & about -> Check for updates :)

I’ve also attached the apk here and I’ve sent out the apk to anyone who has ever supported this Patreon to make sure nobody gets left behind!

Cloud Saves

This is a big one! Go to Settings -> Cloud saves, sign in with your Google account on your handheld, and Jump will mirror your save and save state folders into a ‘Jump saves’ folder in your Google Drive. RetroArch, DraStic, DuckStation memory cards, PPSSPP, Dolphin, Vita3K, Citra/Azahar, NetherSX2, Flycast, Mupen64Plus FZ and more are all found automatically and you can add any other folder you like. Jump only ever sees the files it put in Drive itself, nothing else in your account.

The goal is simple: play Pokemon on your RP Nova, put it down, pick up your Thor and carry on right where you left off! Here’s how it should work:

• The Cloud Save sync runs when you sign in, when Jump opens, when a game ends or when you press the Game Switcher button. It currently takes around 45 seconds before it uploads so if you instantly switch between handhelds, it won’t quite work properly. I’m really hoping I can make it instant in the future!

• You’ll see a little pulsing cloud icon on the system bar while it’s syncing, so wait for that to stop before you Jump into a game on a handheld you’ve just switched on.

• Every time a save is replaced, the old copy is kept as a backup, both on the handheld and in Google Drive, and you can get them back from the game’s menu under ‘Saves’. Hold a game and choose Saves to see every save and state for that game, where it is (on this device, in Drive, newer here, newer in Drive), which handheld it came from, when it was made, how long that handheld has played the game, and the screenshot for save states. One tap restores an earlier version, and once it’s restored it becomes the main save that all your other handhelds pick up.

• Also, as an extra safety layer, after you first sign in with Google but before the cloud touches anything, Jump zips up every save folder into Jump/backups on your handheld. There’s Back up now and Restore Backup on the Cloud Saves page, and the backups also get uploaded to Drive (two per handheld) so you can restore another handheld’s backup onto this one. The cloud saving is still experimental so hopefully this will act as a safety net!

• If Jump ever can’t tell which copy is the right one (for example a brand new handheld where you’ve played a game for 5 minutes but your other handheld has 50 hours on it), it won’t just guess because it can be hard to distinguish which one is the ‘correct’ one. Instead, it’ll show ‘To decide’ on the Cloud saves page where you can see both copies side by side, with the handheld, the time and the play time for each, and choose which one to keep.

• One potential issue could arise if you have ‘Pokemon Ruby’ on one handheld, ‘Pokémon Ruby’ on another and ‘Pokemon - Ruby Version’ on another. Another potential issue could be if one handheld has RetroArch setup to save states into nested folders and another doesn’t. To try to combat these issues, saves are matched by the game instead of the file path, so it doesn’t matter if one handheld has RetroArch sorting saves into folders per core and another doesn’t, or if the ROM is named slightly differently on each handheld. They should hopefully all match up properly.

• When it comes to cloud saving from other emulation apps, emulators that keep their saves inside Android/data can’t be read by any other app on Android 11+, so you’ll need to change the default save folders on those apps to a custom folder and then you can point Jump to that same folder.

• Also a tip: if you quit to the game switcher or turn your handheld off mid-game, the save is synced but RetroArch’s auto save state isn’t (it only writes that when a game properly closes). Jump handles this for you so you always start from your newest save, but to resume mid-battle on another handheld, close the game properly. The best way is to save in-game, properly close RetroArch and then let Jump come to the front so it can sync after around 45 seconds have passed.

RetroAchievements

Go to Settings -> RetroAchievements and sign in with the same account you use in RetroArch, DuckStation, PPSSPP or Dolphin. Jump will then show you:

• A trophy icon on every game that has achievements. It’s dim when you haven’t unlocked anything yet, coloured once you have, and turns gold when you’ve got them all. You can turn these off in Settings -> Theme -> Marks if you don’t want them.

• Hold a game and choose Achievements to see every achievement with its badge and you can filter by All / Unlocked / Locked. The game’s menu also shows your points and whether the site calls it Beaten or Mastered.

• An Achievements page (a library tab and a card on the Systems tab) listing every game you have with achievements, grouped by system, with your progress bar and points for each. Mastered and beaten games show first. After that it’s alphabetical. In the next update I’ll add an option to sort by most progressed first.

• The Trophy Cabinet! A page of every game you’ve earned something on, with a row of trophies for each achievement you’ve earned. Tap a trophy to see it large with what it was for, its points, whether it was hardcore and when you earned it. Mastered and beaten games sit on their own shelf at the top with a gold or silver trophy.

• Home has an Unlocks row showing your most recent achievements.

• On dual-screen handhelds, the second screen can show the game you’re playing with its achievements live while you play.

• RetroAchievements currently works with cartridge systems, arcade, and now PlayStation, PS2, PSP, GameCube and DS too. Discs need to be cue/bin, iso or img to be hashed properly. Packed formats like chd, rvz and cso are matched by name instead.

• Trimmed GBA ROMs now get recognised (this drove me mad for days)! Lots of GBA sets are trimmed which means the site didn’t properly recognise them. Jump now works out the full dump and matches it properly. On my own set this took the recognised games from 46 to 342!

Play Time

Jump now tracks how long you’ve played each game. Hold a game to see e.g. ‘Played 2h 15m, 7 sessions’ and there’s a new ‘Most played’ page (library tab and Systems tab card) listing all your played games with a bar against your most played game. Your play time also syncs through Drive so you can see how long each of your handhelds has played a game.

Sounds and start-up screens

Jump has sound effects now! A soft tick as you move around, a sound on Back, a cart being inserted or a disc being pulled into its drive when you launch a game, and when you tap a handheld or console’s card on the Systems tab, you’ll hear that machine’s actual start-up sound! Game Boy, GBC, GBA, GameCube, Wii, Wii U, Switch, Mega Drive, 32X, Mega CD, Dreamcast, PlayStation, PS2, Xbox, Xbox 360, the Windows XP start-up for PC and an arcade coin drop are all in there. GBA, DS, 3DS and Switch games launch with their own cart insert sound too (I recorded these myself!). Settings has been renamed to ‘Music & sounds’ with the sounds in their own section: Sounds on/off, volume, start-up sounds and cart/disc sounds switches. And just like the music, you can add your own! Put your own clips in the Jump/sounds folder (there’s a README in there explaining the names) and they’ll play instead of mine. Name a file boot_gba.mp3 for example and it’ll play when you boot a gba game.

The handhelds on the Systems tab also now show their start-up screens by default (the GBA’s rainbow logo, the Game Boy’s Nintendo logo, the Game Gear, Lynx, PSP, WonderSwan, Neo Geo Pocket, Virtual Boy, Pokemon Mini, Supervision and Mega Duck). If you’d set your own screen picture before, you can get the default back from the Screen row in the system’s settings.

Carousel improvements

I put a lot of work into the Carousel view this time:

• The default look is now just the row alone: carts and discs as tall as the page, the browsed game larger in the middle, swelling as it slides into the middle and shrinking on its way out. The old look with the box up top is still there in Settings -> Look -> Carousel.

• The row can show boxes or carts/discs (Settings -> Look -> Carousel -> Pictures)

• Update while swiping: the game name, description and background now follow your finger as you swipe rather than waiting for the row to settle. This is good if you’re using touch to navigate like when using a phone and this can be switched off if you prefer.

• Names under the row can be hidden.

• Up and Down on the row change system. In List view, Left and Right change system.

• I’ve also been fighting with how the carousel settles after a swipe. It now scrolls to whichever game is nearest the middle when you let go. I’m not 100% happy with it yet because it kind of bounces into place so I’ll keep working on it.

Quality of life

• Settings -> Theme now shows one section at a time. The chips at the top start with General, and each view (Grid, Shelf, Tower, Case, Carousel, List) only shows its own options when you pick its chip. This should make it far easier and more obvious to see what each setting actually affects.

• Cards can be removed from the Systems tab. Hold a system’s card and switch off ‘Show on Systems tab’ and it stays on the system bar but comes off the tab. Or do them all at once in Settings -> Library -> Systems -> On the Systems tab.

• The number next to ‘Systems’ now opens a list where you can toggle every card.

• Delete a game from its menu. Hold a game -> Delete. It tells you the size and that there’s no getting it back. Please be careful with this one!

• No Home tab option. Settings -> Home screen -> First tab -> No Home tab makes the bar start on the Systems tab or your first system.

• List only mode. Settings -> Look -> List view -> Shows -> List only gives you just the names running across the whole page, MinUI style.

• The yellow focus ring now follows the shape of the art instead of always being a rectangle! It will morph to a cart’s silhouette, a disc’s circle, a case’s rounded corners etc. It also crossfades when moving between shapes.

• Android games can be kept out of Recent (Settings -> Look -> Home screen -> Android games in Recent).

• A custom system can now say which real system it is, so a Switch folder under a different name gets Switch art, descriptions, spines and the right box shape.

• ROM folders called things like ‘switch games’, ‘snes roms’ or ‘psx-games’ are now read as that system.

• When Jump is your home app, it now sets the system wallpaper to its own background so the app switcher and lock screen match (Settings -> Look -> Home screen -> Wallpaper), and Jump itself no longer shows up in the app switcher where a swipe could close it.

• ARMSX3 from the Play Store is now an option for PS3.

• The Virtual Boy finally has its picture!

Bugs fixed

I’ve done a huge pass over the whole app looking for anything that could crash, freeze or lose a file and fixed a long list of things. The ones you’re most likely to have noticed:

• A crash on the first start after an update if you had a custom system colour set

• Making a second folder inside Jump could crash that page at every start (a Z Fold report)

• RetroArch’s own Select+Start quit could leave Jump ‘not responding’ (this still needs further testing)

• The system bar’s buttons went off the edge when the bar was on the side (another Z Fold report). They now go two per line.

• Going to another tab and back lands on the game you were on rather than the first game

• Find art only offers the kinds of art you have switched on in Settings -> Art (a Thor report)

• Achievements points were only counting hardcore. Softcore points show now too. (Is this REALLY how RetroAchievements name things?!)

• The N64 colourways had a hole in the middle. It’s been fixed and filled in.

• Home could crash listing the same unlock twice

• A collection renamed lost its place on the system bar

• Restored backups didn’t show custom systems until a restart

• Art fetching could leave half-written files behind

• The game switcher’s screenshots had a weird dot pattern over them when CRT shaders were turned on so they have been smoothed out

• Lots of dual screen, play clock, library scanning and settings fixes that I didn’t write down properly!

If you still see a bug from before, please send another bug report through the app. Jump now attaches its last crash to the report too, so even a crash report is really useful to me.

Thank you so much to everyone who keeps using and supporting Jump! Cloud saves and RetroAchievements were the two things I wanted most for my own handhelds and I really hope they make your setup feel seamless too. Please send me your feedback on how the cloud saves work across your devices, that’s the thing I most want to get perfect. Video coming very soon! ❤️