Topic: AGS engine Android port

[cianty]

I have the Android SDK and the eclipse plugin installed on my notebook, guess it's time to experiment a bit with it. Requiring the Android SDK for an AGS apk sounds fine to me.

I'd love to include an android settings panel in my game...

[uswin]

How about a plugin to enable the players to configure the android.cfg in-game?

Uswin, I tried to reproduce the crash and I can't unfortunately. I tried it on a HTC Desire S where everything ran smoothly. I will send you a version that logs more debug output if that is ok for you?

Let me try that mate,
I don't have any idea too as of why the game crash using the apk from AGS_2011-12-29_15-16-10.apk - AGS_2012-01-05_21-40-39.apk, the game will quickly crash as soon as it is launched.

Thanks a lot, cheers

[Snarky]

I've been testing the port on my HTC Desire Z, and it's very cool!

I'm not sure I've quite figured out the UI yet (I'm having a hard time clicking, and can't say whether right-clicking works), and in the latest build (AGS_2012-01-17_18-49-50.apk) Blackwell Deception crashes back to the desktop directly on load (it worked in the version posted in the first post). Nor is it clear to me how to bring up the keyboard. It would be great to have an application menu you could bring up with the menu button (which is a hard key on my phone, anyway).

Oh, and in a game-in-production I'm working on, the font outline doesn't always line up correctly with the text (using LucasFanFont/LFFOutline.ttf).

Other than that, it seems to work great!

[Joe]

I tried this and it's so amazing!!  GJ

Report:
I don't know if this is a bug or just something no one cares of... but wouldn't it be nicer if the cursor was placed exactly where I put my finger instead of having to drag it?? I'd really prefer this 1st option because every android game works like that...

Joe.

[Trapezoid]

I like the drag cursor. It helps to not have your finger blocking what you're trying to click on, and AGS games are designed for a real mouse (which you drag), not a cursor that can teleport all over the place.

[cianty]

Definately preferring the "drag" cursor. It is way more convenient a way to move the cursor about. I wouldn't want having to move my hand all across the whole screen of my nexus.

[pcj]

Maybe make it an option.

[JJS]

I will make it an option.

Also I will get rid of reading acsetup.cfg. The only two relevant options are the translation and "smooth scaled sprites", which I will include into the option menu.

[David_OSU]

I've been testing the latest build (1/17/2012) on an Acer Iconia A500 running Android 3.2.1.  Here's the results so far:

Working:  Apprentice 1, Apprentice 2, Ben There Dan That, Space Quest IV.5, The Oracle

Not Working:  Infinity String, King's Quest I, Quest for Glory II

With the games that are working, I have had some random crashes, or the sound gets messed up at some point and stays that way.

Infinity String loads, and gets to the "Press the Spacebar" screen, but won't continue.  I even tried a USB keyboard, but it seems to ignore keyboard input.

King's Quest and Quest for Glory both load, show the disclaimer screen, then start loading some more, and crash back to the desktop.  I have no clue what is happening there.

When it does work, this app is awesome on a tablet.  Please keep working on it JJS. 

[JJS]

There does seem to be a problem with theora video playback on nVidia Tegra devices (like yours and uswin's). The crashes in the Sierra remakes occur most probably when the intro logo video is supposed to be played. I guess I have to find a way to make the use of advanced CPU feature optional.

I just tried The Infinity String and I can confirm that the space key is not properly detected. In general keyboard input via hardware keyboard or via software (press the MENU button) should work.

Thanks for the reports!

[uswin]

There does seem to be a problem with theora video playback on nVidia Tegra devices (like yours and uswin's). The crashes in the Sierra remakes occur most probably when the intro logo video is supposed to be played. I guess I have to find a way to make the use of advanced CPU feature optional.

I just tried The Infinity String and I can confirm that the space key is not properly detected. In general keyboard input via hardware keyboard or via software (press the MENU button) should work.

Thanks for the reports!

Hi JJS, thanks a lot, it seem that after I installed the latest apk AGS_2012-01-17_18-49-50.apk the issue is gone.

It seem that I have a corrupt game data (My bad), because after I recopied my game into the ags folder again, the game run smoothly and I could not reproduce the crash bug anymore, and guess what,

THE THEORA video can run smoothly on my device Sony Ericcsson Xperia Neo V (I unchecked the setting "DROP FRAME IF NECESSARY" to OFF. Horray for that !!! 

So it now basically my game almost run perfectly on my device. Haven't try this through yet but I found a bug,

If you interrupt the game by minimizing it, when you go back to AGS, the game will reload instead of back to last state. unlike in previous apk version.

Conclusion, so far this is really neat friend, almost come close. Brilliant JOB !

Will report if I found something. 

[David_OSU]

THE THEORA video can run smoothly on my device Sony Ericcsson Xperia Neo V (I unchecked the setting "DROP FRAME IF NECESSARY" to OFF. Horray for that !!! 

FYI, I tried changing this setting to OFF, and the Theora video is still crashing on the Iconia A500.

[David_OSU]

I just tried The Infinity String and I can confirm that the space key is not properly detected. In general keyboard input via hardware keyboard or via software (press the MENU button) should work.

I tried Stargate Adventure, and it has the same problem (not detecting spacebar).  Same author, same problem.  I think Sektor 13 is doing something odd.

A Tale of Two Kingdoms is working fine on the Iconia A500.

[JJS]

Uswin, you write that the Theora crash is gone on your Sony Ericcsson Xperia Neo V. But I remember that the original crash occurred on a LG P990 Optimus 2X. Can you confirm that the crash is also gone on that device? The logcat I have shows a SIGILL exception which means that an illegal instruction was fed to the processor.

The "framedrop" option cannot really have influence on the crash btw (at least not in a way that I can imagine).

[JJS]

New daily: http://jjs.at/daily

- Fixed font outline drawing
- acsetup.cfg file is now always ignored
- Translation and "smooth character scaling" is now configurable through the UI
- Prevented accidental mouse movements while performing the two finger rightclick
- Same source now compiles for PSP, Android, Windows and Linux
- Exit menu only shown when holding the back button for a bit and releasing, but ESC key functionality not yet working


e: Oops. Didn't realize I would doublepost, sorry.

[cianty]

Yay! *downloading*

[Trapezoid]

I managed to get my 256-color test game working. A problem I noticed right away: Right clicking causes two right clicks. One when you put down your second finger, another when you release.

[Mati256]

Thank you very much! I will try this new version in the following days.
Its really mazing how much you can do, and you say you don't really have any knowledge about programming on Android.
My goal for this year is learning Java and Android (and finish an AGS game).

[uswin]

Uswin, you write that the Theora crash is gone on your Sony Ericcsson Xperia Neo V. But I remember that the original crash occurred on a LG P990 Optimus 2X. Can you confirm that the crash is also gone on that device? The logcat I have shows a SIGILL exception which means that an illegal instruction was fed to the processor.

The "framedrop" option cannot really have influence on the crash btw (at least not in a way that I can imagine).

Hi JJS, yes, I confirm that the Theora video still crash in LGP990 Optimus 2X, in Neo V it is working fine. Here are the newest log that I had, you might want to check it out again.

Device:
http://www.hostfile.nl/files/vhk9ifecsn/1445/device.txt

Log
http://www.hostfile.nl/files/6en722ymff/1446/logcat.txt

Video of Crash:
http://www.hostfile.nl/movies/6pbd92c3gp/125/ags_theora_crash.avi

BTW, I want to suggest regarding stretch to screen function,
If possible, make stretch function into 3 option
Option 1. Original size. (already implemented)
Option 2. Fit to Screen (correct ratio). (already implemented)
Option 3. Stretch to screen (without correct ratio). (Stretch game to the maximum screen available without correct ration).

Regarding newest version of APK,
it seem that if the game is using a lot of heavy function such as fade in fade out (I use this a lot to pop up the Speak GUI), the game performance might get slow down a bit, the fade in fade out effect come out a bit slower sometimes (Not always).
My game is 640x400 with a lot of color image as bg room (the photo taken using HDR tech).

Regarding sound,
I confirm that the music and sfx still got stuttering on my game even after turning of the Multi-thread sound function. This issue doesn't occur on other AGS game that I tried so far, for example Purgatorio, Lost in the nightmare, Airwave, Donna. this multi-thread seem working on other AGS games.

So the problem could be from my game itself, maybe I haven't optimized the code yet or something, I have no idea either. but my game doesn't stuttering in windows after using your Windows Fix, kudos for that.

So for now, my only solution for android now is using WAV as audio files, as this will not stutter the audio at all in android.

Thanks a lot. Will inform if there is anything. Cheers

[JJS]

Regarding the sound stuttering and slow fading, did you try one of the hardware renderers (in the options menu)? It sounds like updating the screen and decompressing the audio is simply too much work for your CPU.

And thanks for the confirmation and logs.


Also: New daily. Should fix the mouse issues.


EDIT:
Regarding the theora crash: Uswin or David_OSU, does anyone of you have a rooted device? If so, can you post the output of the command "cat /proc/cpuinfo" in a terminal emulator? I guess you can also open the file in a text editor/viewer. Somehow I suspect that the Tegra 2 lies about its available features.

EDIT 2:
Maybe this new daily fixes the theora problem on Tegra CPUs: http://jjs.at/daily/AGS_2012-01-24_19-04-16.apk
But it is a stab in the dark. I will post the source later because my local repository got out of sync with the online one and I have to fiddle around with it some more to make it usable again :.