Messages

What is the difference between the GIT version and the dailies versions and what version should I get?

Get the daily build, it is most up to date and also includes the relevant fix for Gemini Rue. I only now decided to also build "developer" versions of the PSP engine, so there is nothing about it on the website yet.

Jinx1337, I will investigate this further.

When I try to play either (a) The book the box or the key or (b) the new Ben Jordan 8 demo. An error message appears saying that Error: agsflashlight.prx is an old incompatible version. On any ags port I have tried.

Should be fixed in the newest version. You can get it here: http://jjs.at/daily

Jinx1337, do you have the sound cache enabled? This is done with setting "cache_size = x" in the "sound" category of "psp.cfg", with x being bigger than 0. Standard is 10.

Has jjs fixed flashlight.prx yet? Just wondering.

What is broken about it?

You can find the current Android build here: http://jjs.at/daily/

I also have a bugtracker now: http://jjs.at/tracker/

Actually I thought that I could iron out a few more issues before going sort of public, but I cannot sit on this forever .

At this point, I'd also like to thank AGD2 for his support!

This is most likely a bug that was introduced with a backward compatibility fix. It should work again in this version based on the latest changes in the GIT repository: http://jjs.at/temp/AGS_Runtime_for_PSP_3.21_git.zip

The recent commits are a bit less refined than usual since they were an effort to repair my local repository that got corrupted. I just did another commit though that should fix building of the native libraries.

To compile you need the NDK version 6! http://dl.google.com/android/ndk/android-ndk-r6-linux-x86.tar.bz2
The newer versions of the NDK (6b or 7) will error out while linking the native libraries.
Also the cygwin version of the NDK will not work to build the libraries.

I put the NDK under /opt/android-ndk-r6, but no script should depend on that I think.

These have to be exported:

export NDK_ROOT=/opt/android-ndk-r6
export PATH=$PATH:$NDK_ROOT/toolchains/arm-linux-androideabi-4.4.3/prebuilt/linux-x86/bin


The scripts in the Android/buildlibs/armeabi* directory should automatically download, patch and install the required libraries. Some of them have depencies on each other.
A safe order should be: png, freetype, ogg, tremor, theora-svn, allegro, dumb.
The difference between theora and theora-svn is that the latter is version 1.2 alpha which will make use of ARM assembler instructions to speed up decoding.

The library autotools scripts have their own dependencies that I don't know off hand. What is certainly needed is autotools, cmake and subversion.


Once all libraries are built for armeabi and armeabi-v7a, you can build the AGS engine library. This is done with the NDK build tool "ndk-build":

/opt/android-ndk-r6/ndk-build NDK_PROJECT_PATH=<full path up to here>/Android/app/

NDK_PROJECT_PATH has to point to the root of the application directory.


The native libraries are automatically recognized by the SDK build system. So just running the application in Eclipse will put them into the APK.


Please note that the native libraries for armeabi are actually built with an arm-v6 target to enable the optimizations in libtheora. This means that the application will not run in the emulator.


Btw, this is not dead or anything  . I am at the moment working on speeding up rendering, so stay tuned.

Unfortunately you cannot simply tell Android to return you the sdcard mount point. The path the system returns on calling getExternalStorageDirectory() is only the "primary" mass storage device, whatever the device thinks that is.

Another version: http://jjs.at/temp/AGS_3.apk

This should have a working mouse. Don't be surprised if it feels a bit "loose" (for lack of a better word), this is because the touch events are only processed with 10 Hz as not to waste too much CPU on it. Might be worth increasing it for faster devices though.

I also enabled frameskip for theora in this version.

And it contains binaries for ARM7 CPUs, so potentially this is much faster on newer hardware. At least I hope it is without recompiling all libraries, not sure about that though. Please let me know if you see a performance difference. A good test case should be something like the main menu of Beacon which stresses the CPU a lot.

AGD2, I would certainly like to check the game if you can upload it.

The way I consume the touch events seems to only work on my phone.  :'( I am working on it though.


At the moment I am targeting Android 1.6 and that doesn't support multitouch, but I will see if backwards compatibility can be assured while still using features of newer versions if available.

Ogg videos being choppy is somewhat expected since there is no hardware acceleration at all for the video, not even optimized assembler code. Everything is done in C. Also videos are being played without framedrop. This is necessary for slow devices because they will always lag behind and therefore skip rendering all frames (happened on the PSP). This could be made optional though.

Al Emmo is a 2.72 game? I suppose this is a bug in the backwards compatibility code, but I cannot tell without checking it out myself (and I don't have the game). It is most likely not Android specific, though it should be noted that overall I haven't really tested highres games because the PSP port didn't support them.

As for midi music, it works the same as on the PSP port:
- Download this file: http://www.eglebbk.dds.nl/program/download/digmid.dat
- Rename it as "patches.dat"
- Place the file in the "ags" directory on the SD card
- Midi should play

I know about the wrong outline bug. It happens on all games that use a certain Lucasarts style template (like Murder in a Wheel). Seriously, I have no idea what causes it but it occurs on both the PSP and Android. I also tried different versions of Freetype, but I cannot get rid of that strange effect. It doesn't even make any sense since the font itself is drawn correctly. Just the outline is wrong as if the font spacing was dependent on the screen position. Weird, really.

Hopefully this fixes the white screen bug: http://jjs.at/temp/AGS_2.apk

I think I found the problem with the white screen and I will post an updated version later (in a couple of hours). Thanks for all the feedback!

Overall, the input method has to be refined and is open to discussion. Such a mode could certainly be implemented. Also it has to be decided how to do a mouse "drag" with held down left mouse button.

[EDIT:]

Ok, as I cannot reproduce the problem it might take a bit of time to get this sorted out. But it will work eventually 

First of all: have they finally released an Android port of Allegro? This is too good to be true

Actually I did the port myself, a patch to allegro 4.4.2 is in the source repository.

Also, my test game, which was compiled with V2.6SP1, didn't show up. Is it because my game is 8-bit and the engine does not support 8-bit modes?

I actually tried the PSP version some time earlier out of curiosity and it also didn't recognise my game, but since I just tested it with an emulator (I don't own a PSP, and never will) this cannot be any indication.

EDIT: I just put another 8-bit test game compiled with V3.21 and it was recognised (also white screen though), so it shouldn't be a colour depth. Maybe it has difficulties recognising V2.6SP1 games.

Can you post a link to the non-working game? I would like to check it out. Trilby Notes is an 8 bit game compiled with 2.62 and works, so it might be a file format difference that I didn't account for.

Ok, it works on my hero but not on my sensation but the mouse movement doesnt work very well. The track ball seems to move the mouse a tiny bit and click the left button every time you move it.

dragging the mouse doesnt work at all.

Trackball movement is something I couldn't figure out. The ball on my G1 seems to be pretty much useless because it needs about a full turn to register any movement. Dragging the mouse should work though.

My game doesn't load for some reason. I get a script error about some import called menu? Then when i try to quit I end up having to force close. btw I got a Sidekick 4g

I am aware of this problem and will try to correct it.

Ok, thanks. I have a lead, obviously something rotten is going on with garbage collection and the sound buffer. I only get errors in the emulator though and not on my phone  . Will investigate this further, sorry for the trouble.

Edit: Is this any better? http://jjs.at/temp/AGS_1.apk

I see. The white screen could be a problem with creating the screen texture (drawing is done via OpenGL). Does the white area fill the whole screen or does it change size when turning the phone?

e: Maybe not relevant because this might be a more fundamental problem, but basically all games I tried run on my phone. This includes e.g. all Ben Jordan titles.

Despite i find this ultra-amazing, my android phone doesn't. Xperia 10 mini.

Hmm, so what happens? Does it not install or not run?

Maybe I should add that for non-market apps to work, you have toggle some setting in the system options (allow installation from "unknown sources").

The minimum Android version this runs on is 1.6 and I have only run it on my T-Mobile G1 (HTC Dream) which is probably a very low performance device nowadays. Overall games run way worse on it than on the PSP which is mostly due to lack of an FPU I guess.

[DOWNLOADS AND OTHER LINKS]

Here is the initial version of an engine port to Android. It is based on the PSP port, so it also shares some features:

- Support for AGS data files version 2.50 - 3.21 UPDATE: now supports up to 3.4.0-P2
- Plugin support including AGSBlend and open-source recreations of the Snow/Rain and Flashlight plugin
- All color depths and screen resolutions

The mouse cursor is moved by dragging, a left click is done by a quick touch and a right click by touching with two fingers. You can bring up the software keyboard with the MENU button.

I chose the namespace as "com.bigbluecup.android". The reason was that I want to avoid the situation of the ScummVm project, where another private namespace was initially used and is still kept to avoid breaking updates through the market. Still, this is open to discussion. For now, the application is also not on the market (would be too early in development anyway).

Games must be placed on the SD card root in the "ags" directory. Each game needs its own subdirectory (like in the PSP port). The data file is automatically detected within the folder.

Native libraries are included for all Android platforms (armeabi, armeabi-v7, x86).

I am no expert in Android development so I would appreciate any feedback. 


DOWNLOADS AND OTHER LINKS

[Crimson Wizard's EDIT] Because JJS has long abandoned development, his builds are very much outdated. You can still use them to run games made with AGS 3.2.1 and earlier, but you won't be able to use them to run newest game created with newest versions of AGS.
Since 3.4.0-p2 release there will be Android APK download link along other downloads provided in respected forum threads. Check "AGS Engine & Editor Releases" forum section.
Current release:
-===    http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/releases/finals/AGS-3.4.0-P2/Android.3.4.0.14.APK.zip   ===-

Old JJS's daily builds (circa 2013 and earlier):
http://jjs.at/daily/

Source here: https://github.com/adventuregamestudio

For usage instructions see here:
https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags/blob/master/Android/README.md

Please also post feature requests and bugs there.

There is a Let's Play of the Chzo games by Yathzee with creators commentary here: http://lparchive.org/The-Chzo-Mythos/

As for non-adventure games Let's Plays, I can recommend anything from The Dark Id: http://lparchive.org/author/The%20Dark%20Id#results , especially Clock Tower 3 and FF7: Dirge of Cerberus. Also Limbo of the Lost.

E: Also regarding the Darkseed LPs by slowbeef, he is currently riffing with Diabetus on Darkseed 1+2 Longplays here: http://www.youtube.com/user/retsupurae

New release: R7!

This one brings mainly backwards compatibility fixes:
- Talk animations are fixed for Sierra style speech because they now default to speed 5 instead of using the respective global var.
- Narrator text is now displayed after a fade out in ATOTK. Seems like 2.x always does a fade-in if a message box is displayed.
- Fixed various wrong character loops in Murder in a Wheel caused by different FaceLocation() logic in the 3.x engine.
- Fixed Ben Jordan looking the wrong direction after entering a room. This was caused by the 3.x engine not setting the new char coordinates immediately after a room change request so that the FaceLocation() call would operate on the old location.
- Fixed Ben Jordan being chained to the ceiling in the game show scene. E: Fixed that again, it was also caused by the FaceLocation() logic.
- Fixed invisible mouse cursor in certain dialogs. The 2.x engine implicitly makes the cursor visible when starting a dialog, the 3.x one doesn't.
- Fixed the game show not ending in BJ5. This was caused by a bug in my old style dialog script interpreter that caused the StopDialog() function to not work.

Also a flashlight plugin workalike was added.

Download and source link as always in the OP.

Enjoy!

Jeez... can we please remain on topic and stop the trolling  :

It was a perfectly legit question imho. Unfortunately I don't have a PS3, so I will not make any effort in that direction. But I am sure it would not be all that hard since porting Allegro doesn't seem to be very difficult as it can do all drawing in software and you only have to blit the final image to the screen. What remains is audio and input which should be straightforward.

Indiana Jones, the original 3 Alone in the Dark games, Gemini Rue - those had really great combat systems.

In my opinion the combat in AitD is truly horrible because the only winning strategy is stunlocking the enemy. So whoever lands the first hit wins unless he runs out of ammo. This is caused by long recovery animations when hit and a very noticable delay between pressing the trigger and actually firing.