Android rocks \m/

Subforum for discussion and help with ScummVM's Android port

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mummyVM
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Android rocks \m/

Post by mummyVM »

U know what I wanna ask !!!

I'm willing to help.

A few days old, but what matters:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FJHYqE0RDg
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eriktorbjorn
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Re: Android rocks \m/

Post by eriktorbjorn »

mummyVM wrote:U know what I wanna ask !!!

I'm willing to help.
I thought Android was for writing Java applications.
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doc labyrinth
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Post by doc labyrinth »

the guy in that video sounds kind of like the classic computer voice (ie: steven hawking) .
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Freddo
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Re: Android rocks \m/

Post by Freddo »

eriktorbjorn wrote:I thought Android was for writing Java applications.
That's the impression I got from reading various articles too. However, they are running Quake 1 in that video, so who knows?

After reading stuff like this I'm not overly enthusiastic about Android either. Ads in a phone? No thanks. But it makes sense, cause lets face it, they have to make money on it somehow.
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eriktorbjorn
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Re: Android rocks \m/

Post by eriktorbjorn »

Freddo wrote: That's the impression I got from reading various articles too. However, they are running Quake 1 in that video, so who knows?
I read that Quake 2 was ported to Java. Perhaps someone ported Quake 1 as well?
Tubeliar
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Post by Tubeliar »

Well, it seems that Android is almost here on actual hardware:http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/16/its- ... -next-tue/

The emulator has been around for a while, and people will be able to own real devices running android now too, so I'm figuring people will want to play Scumm games on those! Of course, since it isn't C-based, does the development team have any interest in porting ScummVM to Android? Is perhaps someone else doing a rewrite?
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eriktorbjorn
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Post by eriktorbjorn »

Tubeliar wrote:Of course, since it isn't C-based, does the development team have any interest in porting ScummVM to Android? Is perhaps someone else doing a rewrite?
I doubt any of the ScummVM developers are interested in rewriting ScummVM in a different programming language, if that's what it would take. I can only actually speak for myself, though.

Of course, anyone who wants to give it a try is free to do so. I think it's a silly idea because it would likely be a lot of work to keep it in sync with the official ScummVM, but the option is certainly there. There's even some precedent in the ScummVM-XNA project, but I don't think anything's happened there for well over a year now so I'm not sure if that's an argument for or against.
selmi
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Post by selmi »

android allows to run native code, all video/audio codecs etc. are made like this. i saw somewhere tutorial how to make it work, though it was incomplete and several months ago so i don't remember how it continued....

anyway if this is possible then i can imagine running some hacked version of scummvm there, important part made by scummvm code and user interface and control handling through the java layer

i don't know enough about it to say if its really doable, but i believe that in time someone will find a way. android is actually layer which runs over almost ordinary linux, so i guess someone will find a way hot to use it to its full power
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sev
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Post by sev »

Android is a Java platform by design. I.e. if you will write a native code, then that will be not Android. I have experience with this platform, and this is great, it has some nice ideas, but again, it is all solely Java. If you will talk directly to Linux which lays below, you will loose portability and all features which the platform offers.


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Tubeliar
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Post by Tubeliar »

Just because it CAN be done doesn't mean it should be done. With the official answer being it's java only, we'll take that as a "don't do it unless you want your users to do some serious hacking."
I'm afraid it would come down to a complete rewrite. I might even consider giving it a try if Android were more compatible with Java SE and Java ME. Although rewriting to Java SE would help, it would be quite useless in itself since ScummVM is already available on just about every platform. And for Android or Java ME, it would still require a considerable amount of work to get it ready for these platforms.
Well, it's not the answer i was hoping for, but i guess my original question has been answered...
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SuperDre
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Post by SuperDre »

[quote="Tubeliar"]Although rewriting to Java SE would help, it would be quite useless in itself since ScummVM is already available on just about every platform./quote]

Well, make it JavaBD compatible and you can play it on any blurayplayer..
nafeasonto
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Post by nafeasonto »

So does this mean ScummVM won't be written for Android?
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DrMcCoy
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Post by DrMcCoy »

nafeasonto wrote:So does this mean ScummVM won't be written for Android?
No idea. Depends on when you start, I guess. :P

Again: ScummVM for Android would mean as complete rewrite of ScummVM. A really fricking huge task.
Then after that monumental task has been done, the real works starts: The Java rewrite has to be kept in sync with the normal development branch. Every small change has to be applied to the rewrite as well, and we get an average of ~13.6 SVN commits per day.
nafeasonto
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Post by nafeasonto »

I see, I wish I knew how to write in JAVA and C++. Unfortunately I am a network admin, not a programmer.
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md5
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Post by md5 »

DrMcCoy wrote:
nafeasonto wrote:So does this mean ScummVM won't be written for Android?
No idea. Depends on when you start, I guess. :P

Again: ScummVM for Android would mean as complete rewrite of ScummVM. A really fricking huge task.
Then after that monumental task has been done, the real works starts: The Java rewrite has to be kept in sync with the normal development branch. Every small change has to be applied to the rewrite as well, and we get an average of ~13.6 SVN commits per day.
There has been a patch for a Cibyl port of ScummVM (which actually translates C to Java by its own, thus it's not a complete rewrite), but it's incomplete, non-working and still needs loads of work:
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.p ... tid=418822
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