Topic: AGS engine Android port

[davros]

heres a new one - do you think it might be in the port, or more likely the game?

im having some consistent issues with my hero name in qfg2:
- on import of my qfg1vga character, the name was replaced by nonsense symbols
- i fixed it up and started game, checked my name was correct no problems - but then on save/restore its gone to the 'copyright symbol'!

this has later impact on completing the game, as you cant type in the symbol when answering questions on your characters name, meaning you fail a test
 
is this reproduceable? thoughts on a suspect, game or port? all other stats seem to save ok, its just the name

thanks as always

[JJS]

It is a port problem and it seems related to a recent change in the script interpreter. We will look into it.

if you still want the logs id appreciate a pointer for how to best compile for you?

If you are asking how to get them to me, you can just mail them to jjs@jjs.at. Maybe I am not correctly understanding the question though.

[davros]

Thanks, what app or process should I use to collect crash logs?
(It's been pretty stable recently though )

[Crimson Wizard]

im having some consistent issues with my hero name in qfg2:
- on import of my qfg1vga character, the name was replaced by nonsense symbols
- i fixed it up and started game, checked my name was correct no problems - but then on save/restore its gone to the 'copyright symbol'!

I pushed a new commit which should resolve this issue. Sorry for inconvenience!

[JJS]

I uploaded new daily builds.

[davros]

:thumbs up: does the trick, thank you

[ArmyMage]

Btw, this application worked fine, on my Samsung Galaxy Player 4.0.

Thanks for letting me use it :op~

[AGD2]

I was just playing around with the latest Android build from the daily builds page. I was running King's Quest 3 Redux on a Samsung Galaxy tablet running Android 3.2 (Honeycomb). I noticed a few little quirks that didn't seem to exist in previous builds:

1) If you go into the wizard's bedroom and open the cupboard on the right OR the drawers on the left, a full-screen close-up of the area in question appears on-screen with black borders surrounding it. However, some room objects, such as the wizard's chamberpot and the cupboard doors get drawn in front of the black background. Seems to be a Z-order baseline glitch.

2) I'm not sure if it always worked this way, but I noticed when loading the AGS app on Android 3.2, the menu button on the tablet's lower graphic bar just disappears. This happens in both the AGS games list and when running a game. Unfortunately, it means there's no way to bring up the on-screen keyboard or other F keys associated with that menu.

3) An old bug I reported, is that if you have Swype installed (which lets you drag your fingers across the keys to input words, rather than tapping one key at a time in the traditional way, then AGS simply doesn't recognize any keystrokes at all. It doesn't make any difference whether they keys are swyped or tapped individually - if you have the Swype keyboard active, keystrokes just won't register and the textbox remains blank. Changing back to the default Samsung keyboard is the only way to get it working again.

Also, I was just curious if any headway was ever made on implementing gestures which could be programmed to accomplish certain in-game actions? (Would be very handy for fast-paced, real-time battle actions) or if the keyboard could somehow be made to auto-appear when an AGS textbox field is tapped on.

[Joseph DiPerla]

Having some trouble getting "The Journey Down" To run on AGS for Android with the latest build. Seems it cant find an AGS Datafile, but the game works on windows and I have done the exact same thing with this game as I have with the others. Any thoughts?

[Joseph DiPerla]

Scratch that. I just tried your latest Daily from yesterday and it solved the issue. The game fully works. Awesome as always JJS and crew!

[.M.M.]

Would it be possible to have buttons in the application, which would return ASCII key code (they would trigger on_key_press function)? For example, having a D-Pad that would act as WASD on the keyboard. I know it sounds like a nonsense for Adventure Game Studio, but this engine is great for making RPGs as well, and the lack of multi-touch controls is the only thing that makes it impossible to port real-time RPG from AGS to Android.

[Crimson Wizard]

I guess engine needs virtual keyboard remap feature that would translate any keycode from system to virtual key for the game. The mapping could be then set up in game configuration file.

[piperhcombs]

Speaking of keyboards, I can't bring up the keyboard on my Android tablet.

 I have a Google Nexus 7 tablet (with Jellybean), and I have the game Primordia running on the Android AGS Engine. According to one of the resolved suggestions on your old bug tracker, you've implemented the ability to invoke the onscreen keyboard on the Android by holding on the Menu button (and I'm assuming swiping up, since simply tapping would quit the app). However, this does not work on my Nexus. Holding on the menu button just brings up the ability to swipe up to the the Google Plus/Voice feature that the Nexus defaults to on that action. On your old bug tracker, it looks like there is an unresolved bug report that reports a similar issue on the Kindle Fire. Without the ability to bring up the keyboard, I can't save the game as anything other than the AutoSave already available in the list (good thing it's there or I wouldn't be able to save at all).

[JJS]

The engine invokes the standard system keyboard which should be configurable somewhere in the system settings. From what I can tell it won't work (no input is sent to the game) for swype or voice input, only with a standard keyboard. Other than that, I honestly don't know why the keyboard doesn't show on the Kindle Fire and I have no such device to test either.

[AGD2]

Been testing out the latest version and I've got a few updates and new reports:

1) The KQ3 Redux issue I reported in my previous post above (about the baseline issues and z-order messing up) are not actually due to this at all. Sorry! The actual problem -- and you're aware of this already -- is that I was running the game with the "Hardware" renderer and when opening the closet/drawer in the wizard's bedroom, an ambient tint is set to make the game background look a bit darker. The "Hardware" and "Hardware (Pixel Perfect)" settings cannot handle tints, which is why it was making the screen black with non-transparent rectangles where room objects were. The "Software" renderer works fine, though.

2) When running Al Emmo I get this crash on startup, which has only started happening since AGS_2013-01-17_19-21-51.apk:

in "GlobalScript.asc", line 263
Error: FileWriteInt: invalid file handle; file not previously opened or has been closed.

The FileWriteInt line in question is in the game_start() function.

3) An odd glitch that I noticed. I have "use custom preferences" checked for KQ3. For some reason, when I turn the phone sideways, the "use custom preferences" box suddenly shows as unchecked and all the other options revert to the 'default' state. If I then turn the phone upright again, all the checkboxes reappear. I can keep turning the phone sideways and upright and the options keep changing back and forth.

The opposite happens for another game which does not have "use custom preferences" checked. If I turn the phone sideways, then all the buttons do become checked and vice versa.

In the general/Global Preferences, I do have custom settings and checkboxes ticked. So maybe the individual game settings are getting confused and displaying those when turned sideways and upright?


Also, I can confirm that the "not being able to access the keyboard" issue persists with the Kindle Fire and Samsung Galaxy tablet. But the reason why seems different on both:

Samsung Galaxy tablet:
Some of these tablets don't actually have a physical "menu" or "back" button. Instead, they display virtual "menu" and "back" buttons that sit on a persistently-visible toolbar at the bottom/top of the screen while the game (or any other app) runs. In this case, the "menu" button is visible when you run the AGS app (i.e. where you can can see the games list), but it instantly disappears from the toolbar as soon as you actually run a game. The "back" button remains visible the entire time, however.

Kindle Fire:
Below is a shot of KQ1 running on the Kindle Fire:



Note that the only "button" visible is a virtual upward pointing arrow,located on a toolbar beneath the game window. Tapping this upward arrow button makes the virtual "back" and "menu" buttons appear on the toolbar. Tapping the "menu" button makes the "Keys" and "Exit Game" options appear, as expected. But long-pressing it doesn't make the on-screen keyboard appear. Likewise, tapping the "back" button acts like hitting the ESC key, but long-pressing it doesn't make the "Exit Game" prompt appear.

[Crimson Wizard]

Interesting, I seem to be unable to run Al Emmo's Demo on our engine, probably because the executable is not a common AGS game, but modified to display "Register" reminder.
I hope full game has not this peculiarity?

E: Oh, well, the game looks good, so I will perhaps buy it and check .

[AGD2]

If you have the full version and it doesn't work on Android, let me know and I can send you a game .exe without the DRM.

[Crimson Wizard]

Ok, I was able to reproduce this with a test game, at least got similar error.
The file handle used for writing is global variable, right?


@JJS: I think we should change the old-style FileOpen function to return the integer handle instead pointer, like it did before (and still does, just with different pointer type). Currently it works for stack (local vars) because interpreter stack makes distinction for "object" types, but global variables do not (they are not supposed to store pointers anyway, just managed memory handles). Besides, FileOpen is declared with "int" return value in the editor, which means script writer may then treat it as int in all aspects, like storing in array of ints or struct, making things even worse for 64-bit builds.
Why it worked before but not anymore - because of the type distinction I added for function return values. In pre-january builds it was tossed around as pure integer (which still was pretty dangerous for 64-bit linux builds), and now the script API return values are structs, which store basic types and pointer separately.

[Crimson Wizard]

JJS, can you, please, make a new Android build? I made some changes to how file functions work in script. I think that should fix this issue in Al Emmo.

[JJS]

Done, new daily builds are now available.

They also include the possibility to open/close the keyboard from the menu. Maybe this works on the Kindle Fire.