Messages

Yes. Today is the first day that adventuregamestudio.co.uk stopped working and turned into an ad... Goodbye. You will be missed.

Hangouts gives me trouble on my pc for some reason.

CW! The new CJ! Lol. Nice job for all parties involved! Thanks for all your hard work guys.

"Feature freeze policy" is a brilliant idea. Fix the bugs, then for 3.3.1 refactor code some more, 3.3.5 improve portability, 3.4.0 remove limits and add custom resolutions and 3.4.5 new features. Well... that's at least how I would do it. But freezing new features until all bugs are fixed is the best way to go forward.

I have a lot I wanted to add to this, but am at work using a cell phone to type... My suggestion is that we use a bug tracker to track bugs such ad Mantis. When a bug is received, a developer would assign to himself or someone else and work on it. More to follow as soo  as I leave work.

Try deleting the executable file. Actually, make a backup, then delete it and try running it again. The engine may be confusing which to run first maybe?

Nuvarian, your project looks great! It will especially useful to those who love to work with Unity.

However Unity is a lot of cash. Age.seccia.com already is working on an adventure engine using Unity too. Take a look, maybe you can collaborate.

With some of the latest builds from the repository, some of the config options in the manifest require sdk13(android 3.1). Im thinking thats whats going on here... maybe...

I purchased the game to give you some support. Will check it out later.

Just looking at the first post of this thread... AGS 3.3.0 has come a long way. Nice job guys!

Sorry I cant help test the APK's since all my android devices have 4.2 or higher. As for a packaging manager, could you not create a tool in which you could just point it to the AGS compiled game directory, edit the manifest file, sign the package and compile it all by calling command line tools instead of using eclipse? Its a bit of work, but for the time being it might be the best bet for a project like this maybe? I could work on something like that in the coming weeks (I am a bit busy at the moment) if you think that could work Monkey.. I was already thinking of doing something like that. The only reason why I didn't was because of the Expansion file issue with Android. But if you got this all sorted out, I can try and work on something.

Very nice! Thanks for this one.

Wow. Reminds me of murder on the mississippi, an old C64 game...

So there idea of official Android releases of our products isn't going to possible?

I'm guessing I'd have to hire someone to create the APK for me then.

No, it is possible. It is very possible. But its a lot of work and it may even take some time. Basic4ppc and Age.seccia.com have it in their apps and they seem to have done it quite nicely. And I can easily create an APK from scratch for games under 42mb. The problem is if the game gets larger. The .OBB files is an issue. But, as it stands right now, you can easily convert the Android launcher port to keep a game under 42mb within it and play it easily. Again, that is assuming you know how to compile for Android in the first place. If JJS could figure a way to factor in OBB files and create a launcher that launches only one game and if one of our windows developers can integrate a  packaging system in the editor, then the whole thing would be possible and would require fewer updates in the future. Then again, it would just be nice if Google allows one file type to be over the limit. That would solve the issue completely.

Thanks. We've brought this up a few times and we've been told that it's being worked on, that's why I just asked for an update.

Tbe problem with building your APK is that the Android port needs to be re-done a little. And I mean that the interface needs to be reworked to allow that a little. Right now it pulls up a list of games. There would need to be a specialized version of the port that can read the directory where the games files will be stored. Moving on to that issue though... Google only allows up to 50mb for the main file. While several games are under that, there are many that are not. You would need to provide expansion files, which you can have up to 2 expansion files of 2 gb each. While thats nice, it requires a heck of a lot of setup/coding. Obb files in theory are not difficult to create and to code into an app. However, for me anyway, there isn't a lot of documentation that makes using obb files easy. Just so I can explain a little bit about how the OBB expansion files work:

1)For the main APK, you need to sign the file.
2)You need to program into the app to check to see if expansion files exist and if they do:
2b) AGS will need to extract the files into the OBB directory (Which should be done automatically)
2c) AGS would either need to move those extracted files to wherever AGS will load the game from or point the game directory to the OBB directory.
3) You have to get some salt/hash security for the expansion files. So to do that, you would have to:
3b) Upload the android apk and the Expansion files to the google market server and not publish it.
3c) Take down the Salt/Hash code and download location/name.
4) Now, you would have to put some code that would allow access to the OBB file from within AGS. I think this is all done to avoid abusing the system. Whatever.
5) After that you would think you are all set... However, while OBB files should download automatically when you are installing the apps, it doesn't always. Sooooo... You would have to program within AGS to check that the obb files downloaded completely and fully. If they did not, then AGS would have to download it itself. Enter the salt/hash/download name crap.

Now, to integrate this into AGS itself is another issue too. The AGS Editor would have settings and such to take care of that (such as package name, author, etc...). AGS would also have to create the OBB Files itself as well as all they really are are zip files within the obb extension. Thats not the hard part. The hard part is making sure that the developer has the Java SDK and the Android SDK installed properly and with the environment properties set up correctly. The reason for that is so that AGS can package the game files properly into the APK and also so that it can automatically sign the APK for you. That is possible, but its a little extra work I would imagine for whoever is coding the editor. But its doable. Eclipse does it and so does Basic4Android. However, the steps for getting the HASH/Salt/Name from the google server will still be up to the game developer and that can prove to be confusing for a few people.

So it may seem like a simple Shell interface would be needed, but its a lot more complicated than that. While I develop Android Apps, I use Basic4Android and it does not currently support OBB Extensions. If it did, I would be all over making a 3rd party set up system for the APK's. If you all need it urgently, go ahead and post on the Basic4Android forums and request it to be added. Right now the developer does not see a need for it, so maybe if enough ask for it, it will be implemented. I would do this in Java, but I know very very little Java. If someone would want to take a whack at trying to implement this system, here are a few good places to start:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdeveloper.android.com%2Fgoogle%2Fplay%2Fexpansion-files.html&ei=DA39UcP3FpW44AOIu4CgCA&usg=AFQjCNGEPm1MCiQTv-aEKoUJeamBR4eHwQ&sig2=_7uMjtYp_lCPxPTkG7uUcA&bvm=bv.50165853,d.dmg

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&ved=0CDcQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fankitthakkar90.blogspot.com%2F2013%2F01%2Fapk-expansion-files-in-android-with.html&ei=DA39UcP3FpW44AOIu4CgCA&usg=AFQjCNFNm1VserLL-cIzaL7zRcPv7k3ZVg&sig2=E2JdB-it5adb71NmvLB8ZA&bvm=bv.50165853,d.dmg

http://labs.exoa.fr/tutorial-unity-4-apk-splitting-google-play-obb/


http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11715855/steps-to-create-apk-expansion-file

This was my suggestion thread on Basic4Android if someone wants to pipe in and add to the suggestions:
http://www.basic4ppc.com/android/forum/threads/wishlist-lib-obb-and-expansion-pack-downloads.29827/

Hope this info helps.

I saw the whale and I had to download it. Short. Sweet. AWESOME! Good job.

Innovative to say the least! Very nice.

Very nice as usual!!! Thanks CW.

Too bad we cant have a w(eekly)ags competition...

What about a 'Fortnightly AGS'?

I thought that was a writing competition. Never really checked it out, but thats what I thought it was.

I think a theme would really help too. I have a couple of ideas but no real direction. The problem is, people may already have begun planning their games. If it was me, I'd be annoyed if I had to scrap what I already had.

Too bad we cant have a w(eekly)ags competition...