Forge Android App

[KrazyTheFox]

I must say, having M:tG on my phone is utterly fantastic. Amazing work, Dan!

[drdev]

So as an update, everything is basically ready to go, except that I just discovered a huge performance issue related to font generation that can actually crash Forge on Android phones. I don't feel comfortable releasing anything until I resolve that issue, so stay tuned.

Meanwhile, Krazy, any progress on a publish script for Maven?

EDIT: I think I've got the font issue fixed now. Now I just need to set things up so the assets get downloaded when first running after installing or updating.

[goonjamin]

It might be too soon to ask but what do you think the minimum specs would be for an android tablet that could play forge enjoyably?

[drdev]

I expect any phone or tablet made in the last few years should have no trouble with it, but until I release it and people start installing and trying it out, I won't know for sure. I've logged memory usage at runtime at under 250MB if that helps any, and the performance is good on my Galaxy S4 phone.

[KrazyTheFox]

If it helps, I'm running a Galaxy S4 (which is running Cyanogenmod 11/Android 4.4.2) as well and I'm also using high-res images downloaded from mtgimage. So far it runs very well.

[drdev]

Alright, it took a lot longer than expected, but I finally finished refactoring the font code to prevent the crashes and dramatically improve the performance of zoom. Part of this was moving all the font generation logic to startup while the splash screen is still visible. I also set it up so .fnt and .png files that are created from the .ttf font files for each skin are cached for each allowed font size so each startup after the first is faster.

Now that this is finally done, I can add the assets downloading logic, perform some quick UI testing on my tablet, and then it will be time to release the Alpha.

Thanks for your patience.
-Dan

[drdev]

I decided to forego the assets downloading support for right now and just include instructions for downloading it manually. I'll still add it in the near future.

With that, the first Alpha release is officially out!!! Check out http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=14534 for installation instructions if you haven't already.

[tonetisd]

Crash reports can't be copied to the clipboard nor using "save" neither "report" buttons. I also tried copying regularly the text with no luck.

[drdev]

Crash reports can't be copied to the clipboard nor using "save" neither "report" buttons. I also tried copying regularly the text with no luck.

Yeah, I mentioned on the missing features list that clipboard support isn't working yet. It's weird because it works when running the desktop emulator. It's something I need to investigate.

[Agetian]

Ok, I'll soon be trying to investigate the "hang at 96%" issue that I have on one of my tablets. However, I'm new to Android development so if possible I'd like to have some pointers. In particular...

1. Is it possible to do Android coding with NetBeans or do I have to use Eclipse? I do all Forge coding in NetBeans and, to be honest, I like this IDE much more than Eclipse, so if possible, I'd like to avoid switching over to Eclipse. However, if it's unavoidable, I'm ready to install Eclipse if need be.

2. Which development tools do I need to grab for Android, and are there Linux versions of the said tools available? (since all my PCs run Linux). Is there any particular online guide about how to get everything I need to compile and debug the Android project installed and set up? (in particular, I'd need the "adb" tool used for Android debugging, I guess).

Thank you very much in advance for help! Feel free to send me a PM if you'd like not to pollute the thread with this particular aspect of discussion.

P.S. Great job so far on the Android version of Forge! Thanks a ton to both drdev and KrazyTheFox!

- Agetian

[friarsol]

Alright, so the Android App just decided to download 40 megs worth of data on a startup, which isn't acceptable when I'm not on wireless without a prompt considering that's 20% of my total monthly data plan. I've definitely run things before, so why is it downloading all this data?

[drdev]

Alright, so the Android App just decided to download 40 megs worth of data on a startup, which isn't acceptable when I'm not on wireless without a prompt considering that's 20% of my total monthly data plan. I've definitely run things before, so why is it downloading all this data?

It needs to re-download the updated resources files any time you install an update, since the res/ folder isn't packaged with the .apk.

I'd recommend just being connected to a wireless network when you first run after installing an update if you're worried about data usage. Note that other than that, this app doesn't use data at all unless you use the content downloaders.

[friarsol]

A prompt to download would still be nice, since it only happens once per update and would prevent people not realizing from costing them money.

[drdev]

A prompt to download would still be nice, since it only happens once per update and would prevent people not realizing from costing them money.

I can work something like that in. I was already planning to add an update check with a prompt giving the user the choice to update or not. It would also give the ability to more gracefully handle the case of not having an internet connection.

[KrazyTheFox]

Libgdx released progressive jpg support about a month ago, which would fix all those card image problems. Latest version is 1.2.0, but doesn't appear to have hit the central repository yet. I just noticed that we're using 0.9.9 for the app; is there any specific reason for this?