messing with the android sdk

[ninogenio]

hey guys,

i don't know if anyone here has played about with eclipse/android sdk but for the past 2/3 weeks i have been toying with it. at first i hated the eclipse interface the whole layout is a bit of a mess and the emulators are well.... a bit pants for me.

but as soon as i got the layout sorted too something i like and figured out live debugging with my phone/tablet things just started too come together.

then i decided too port mine and combatkings little webgl javascript raycaster over and add a little menu with multiple levels etc. i ran into a huge amount of problems with all the different screen sizes that come with android devices and then i had too deal with the fact tablets have status bars at the bottom of the screen and my fov changing from device too device, it was a bit arghh

eventually i settled for clamping the device's screen into 16:9 and give our raycaster just over half of what ever the screen res the app is run on and give the rest too the hud. this just left the fov scaling which i eventually settled on the same calcs that were used in borderlands 2.

i have been able too test on 3 different phones and a 10.1 tab2. so far everything seems too work and scale really nicely. but i can't be sure it will work on most devices so if anyone wants too try this out let me know how it works and on which device it was tested.

all java source/resource and xml files are in here.

too just install, the jimmymcpac.apk file is is the bin folder.

cheers guys!

[hellfire]

Nice one, Nino!

I also had a quick look at android development recently but decided to go the NDK route.
This way I can stay in my comfort zone, keep using C++/QtCreator and don't have to get used to another IDE.

[Jim]

Had a go with the Android SDK a few times.  Eclipse is still nowhere near as good as it should be.  The UI editor is a bit useless too - I think I would always code my UI in something scale agnostic like GL.  Debugging on real targets is pretty good. I'm like Hellfire, I find it really hard to get any joy out of coding in Java.
Jim

[ninogenio]

cheers guys!

native versus java was something that i really pondered over a lot in the beginning.

i am the same as you guys.. my natural style is c/c++ all the way. i love pointers and low level access too everything.

however when looking around i kept seeing advise too always use the sdk. especially if you are going too be using lots of os specific features.

how do you guys find coding around the android os when coding natively, is it a relativly easy process.

imho java isn't too bad. im only just starting too get my head around the abstract nature of it. the whole activity manager just felt strange at first. but it does have some lovely features the intent stuff is cool and it just about has a library for anything and everything imaginable on tap.

probably in the last week or so, i seem too be coding lots of things pretty easily.

the biggest thing i really miss is being in full control of memory management and my good old pointers

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int blah = *this->that->theother;


[relsoft]

I just set all game related calculations on a virtual screensize like 800x480 and let my viewport scaler do its job of scaling and correcting aspect ratios.