Android: stop nudging SurfaceView into a recreate cycle during Vulkan init

[Copilot]

Cold-launching the APK left users on a black screen while native_crash.log filled with repeated VeldridException: Swapchain surface lost and Sentry first-chance dumps — the renderer was never coming up at all, just looping the framework's recovery path forever.

Root cause

OsuGameActivity.OnCreate opened with a runtime orientation write, before base.OnCreate:

protected override void OnCreate(Bundle? savedInstanceState)
{
    RequestedOrientation = ScreenOrientation.Landscape;
    ...
    base.OnCreate(savedInstanceState); // SDL constructs the SurfaceView in here

Three things make this fatal:

• Redundant. The [Activity(... ScreenOrientation = ScreenOrientation.Landscape ...)] attribute already creates the activity in landscape from the first frame.
• Documented as harmful further down in the same method (the phone branch deliberately skips runtime re-assignment because "a redundant RequestedOrientation write can still nudge the SurfaceView into a recreate cycle on some OEMs while the SDL draw thread is mid-Vulkan-init").
• Worst possible timing. Issuing it before base.OnCreate queues the request for delivery during initial SurfaceView setup — exactly the window in which VeldridDevice is polling SurfaceHandle and about to call vkCreateAndroidSurfaceKHR. The poll either times out (constructor throws, renderer dead) or hands a stale handle to the Vulkan driver (SIGSEGV on the Draw thread). Either path gives the user an indefinite black screen, and the framework's per-frame retry plus our FirstChanceException hook produce the observed log flood.

The framework side (winnerspiros/osu-framework PRs #14, #16, #17 — surface-handle poll, transient surface-lost recovery in SwapBuffers/Resize, re-snapshot before vkCreateAndroidSurfaceKHR) is already shipped in ppy.osu.Framework 2026.422.1, which is what this repo references. That recovery only helps if the surface is allowed to settle; this PR removes what was preventing it.

Changes

• osu.Android/OsuGameActivity.cs — drop the redundant RequestedOrientation = Landscape assignment at the top of OnCreate. Replace with a comment so the regression cannot quietly come back, cross-referencing the existing phone-branch invariant lower in the same method.

No other behaviour change; ScreenOrientation is still used by the [Activity] attribute and by the tablet/phone branch that runs after the SurfaceView is established.

---

Summary by Gitar

• ANR Prevention:
  • Implemented lastRequestedOrientation caching in OsuGameAndroid to avoid redundant binder IPC calls during orientation updates.
• Diagnostics Throttle:
  • Added global and per-exception caps to CrashDiagnostics to prevent log floods and disk I/O stalls during FirstChanceException loops.
  • Optimized FirstChanceException logging by skipping external storage writes to prevent blocking the Draw thread.

_{This will update automatically on new commits.}

[gitar-bot]

Important

You are using the Gitar free plan. Upgrade to unlock code review, CI analysis, auto-apply, custom automations, and more.

_Gitar

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR hardens Android startup and diagnostics to avoid Vulkan/SurfaceView thrash on cold launch (black screen / repeated surface-lost recovery), and reduces the operational impact of exception loops during renderer bring-up.

Changes:

• Remove the early RequestedOrientation assignment from OsuGameActivity.OnCreate() to avoid triggering SurfaceView recreation during SDL/Vulkan initialisation.
• Add a cached “last requested orientation” guard in OsuGameAndroid to avoid redundant setRequestedOrientation calls.
• Throttle FirstChanceException crash-diagnostic writes (global + per-stack caps) and avoid external-storage writes on first-chance exceptions to reduce draw-thread stalls and log floods.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 3 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated 4 comments.

File	Description
osu.Android/OsuGameAndroid.cs	Adds cached orientation tracking to skip redundant orientation updates.
osu.Android/OsuGameActivity.cs	Removes early runtime orientation assignment and documents why it must not be reintroduced.
osu.Android/CrashDiagnostics.cs	Adds caps/throttling for first-chance exception dumps and changes first-chance write targets to reduce I/O overhead.

---

💡 Add Copilot custom instructions for smarter, more guided reviews. Learn how to get started.

[Copilot]

PR description says the only behavioral change is removing the early RequestedOrientation write in OsuGameActivity.OnCreate, but this PR also adds orientation-update caching here and changes crash-diagnostics throttling. Please align the PR description/scope with the actual changes (or split into separate PRs) so reviewers and release notes don't miss these behavioral changes.

[Copilot]

The class-level documentation says managed-exception dumps are written to both internal and external storage "in real time", but the new first-chance path deliberately skips external writes. Update the docs near this new throttling/capping logic to reflect that first-chance exceptions are internal-only and only mirrored to external on next startup.

[Copilot]

Const field naming here (first_chance_global_cap, per_key_cap_*) is inconsistent with the rest of the file (CRASH_LOG_NAME, SENTINEL_NAME) and typical C# conventions. Renaming these constants to match the existing style (e.g., FIRST_CHANCE_GLOBAL_CAP / FirstChanceGlobalCap) would keep the file consistent and improve readability.

Suggested change

	private const int first_chance_global_cap = 50;
	// Per-unique-stack cap. Higher (10) for true fatal kinds caught via
	// FirstChanceException-fallback or AppDomain.UnhandledException; lower (3)
	// for first-chance noise where seeing the first few occurrences is enough
	// to diagnose and the rest are pure log bloat.
	private const int per_key_cap_default = 10;
	private const int per_key_cap_first_chance = 3;
	private const int FIRST_CHANCE_GLOBAL_CAP = 50;
	// Per-unique-stack cap. Higher (10) for true fatal kinds caught via
	// FirstChanceException-fallback or AppDomain.UnhandledException; lower (3)
	// for first-chance noise where seeing the first few occurrences is enough
	// to diagnose and the rest are pure log bloat.
	private const int PER_KEY_CAP_DEFAULT = 10;
	private const int PER_KEY_CAP_FIRST_CHANCE = 3;

[Copilot]

lastRequestedOrientation is updated before the UI-thread RequestedOrientation assignment actually succeeds. If setRequestedOrientation throws (you already catch exceptions), this leaves the cache in a state that will permanently short-circuit future retries even though the activity orientation was never updated. Consider only updating lastRequestedOrientation after a successful assignment on the UI thread (or resetting it in the catch path).