Android game maker?

Alurith · Post by **Alurith** » Fri Nov 13, 2015 4:03 am

I know that there is an experimental player, but was wondering if it would be possible to get a working creator running? I did it with the old 2006 dos build, using dosbox, but it's so...limited, compared to now.

Post by **TMC** » Fri Nov 13, 2015 11:10 am

While Custom can be easily compiled for Android to produce an .apk (and I could upload it for you if you want to try), we've put zero work into making it usable. Actually I've probably never even tried running it. At the minimum, you need a full keyboard attached to your cellphone (using e.g. bluetooth). In that case it might work, though I suspect a couple changes will be needed to where Custom places and looks for files. But is it really practical? The touchscreen will be probably be pretty useless for drawing unless you have a tablet, so you'll be doing everything with the full-size keyboard. But it seems that some people do want to use smart phones as PCs by plugging in monitors, keyboards and mice (e.g. the Ubuntu phone).

Post by **Bob the Hamster** » Fri Nov 13, 2015 1:07 pm

I was thinking about this last night. I am wondering if it can be configured to run in portrait mode with the keyboard always visible. Then the user could install a third-party keyboard like "Hacker's Keyboard" that has arrow keys

That means smaller screen area, but it might work

Foxley · Post by **Foxley** » Fri Nov 13, 2015 7:05 pm

Using a version of CUSTOM w/ Hacker's Keyboard on a tablet would be pretty cool actually. On a phone it'd be... well, a little silly. But I'd definitely use it on a tablet!

Post by **TMC** » Sat Nov 14, 2015 7:25 am

Either portrait or landscape mode might offer a practical aspect ratio on a tablet if our dynamic resolution support is good enough (it still needs heap of work), but wouldn't the keyboard be a bit small in portrait mode? Another problem that the SDL 1.2 Android port pretty heavily abstracts awa the actual screen resolution, so I suspect it doesn't allow dynamic resolution changing if you change from portrait or landscrape or bring up an on-screen keyboard leaving who-knows-howmuch free space on the screen. (We can always work around that ourselves, but it's more work.)

Also, currently the graphics editors only run at 320x200 which will probably be a problem.

Alurith · Post by **Alurith** » Wed Mar 31, 2021 7:01 pm

Mind if I bump this, to ask the same question, 6 years later, instead of starting a new topic?

A lot has changed about the way we use cellphones, over the past 6 years.

Post by **Bob the Hamster** » Wed Mar 31, 2021 7:27 pm

Welcome back!

We haven't worked on the Android port of custom much, so no it isn't available yet, but I do know how I would want it to work.

Ideally I would want a virtual keyboard to hide/show based on landscape/portrait orientation,and I would want the mouse pointer to mimic the realative style used by SCUMMVM on Android (maybe with a toggle to normal absolute touch mode in the sprite editors)

No eta though. I think the SDL2 port is higher priority anyway

Alurith · Post by **Alurith** » Wed Mar 31, 2021 9:43 pm

What does SDL2 bring to the table?