Sil and Angband variants available on Android

[Pete Mack]

Not a chance. IPhone and WinPhone require jailbreaking to install from outside the store.

[takkaria]

Pretty sure it is, and that it was me that stole it

Well, I'm stealing your credit

[takkaria]

Brilliant. Thank you so much!

There is one oddity in that when an enemy notices you, the background doesn't clear until the next turn instead of when you get the message, but that is minor.

Yeah, that's weird. From a brief look I couldn't see what's causing it.

You're welcome I'm hoping to get an 'Android-enhanced' version of 4.0.5 out sometime soon, with greater integration between the frontend and the game than the original angdroid ports did. Will pick out any bits that might be useful for Sil from that, though the difference in code between the two is quite large!

[Psi]

You're welcome I'm hoping to get an 'Android-enhanced' version of 4.0.5 out sometime soon, with greater integration between the frontend and the game than the original angdroid ports did. Will pick out any bits that might be useful for Sil from that, though the difference in code between the two is quite large!

That will be fantastic - thanks!

Obviously you'll have your own wishlist for this, but if I may throw in a few thoughts from my limited exposure to playing Sil on Android...

- with the zoom functionality I expected to be able to take advantage of the higher resolution and screen size on modern devices. However on Sil at least, it just puts the screen in the top left corner and does not resize the main window to take advantage of all that screen real estate!

- Sil itself has had its command set rationalised so that you can do most things through a small number of key presses. eg ',' interacts with the floor tile (eg pick up an item, go down the stairs) 'u' will use an item in the appropriate way. Therefore having more 'non-keyboard' ways of assigning these functions would help. I'd suggest either gestures or overlaid buttons that can be user-assigned would help a lot. At the moment we just have volume controls and tapping the centre of the screen assignable.

[Psi]

- with the zoom functionality I expected to be able to take advantage of the higher resolution and screen size on modern devices. However on Sil at least, it just puts the screen in the top left corner and does not resize the main window to take advantage of all that screen real estate!

Well that is harder than I'd hoped. I went through the java bits updating it to base the columns and rows on the font and screen size only to find that angdroid.c is written with the assumption of an 80x24 screen. That I'm afraid is beyond me at this point.

[takkaria]

Well that is harder than I'd hoped. I went through the java bits updating it to base the columns and rows on the font and screen size only to find that angdroid.c is written with the assumption of an 80x24 screen. That I'm afraid is beyond me at this point.

Yeah, annoying isn't it? I spent a while trying to make the terminal resize dynamically to fill up the display at the current font size and I couldn't get it working. I think it will require a ton more communication between the C code and Java than there is at present. I'm trying to work out how to do that but not getting super far.

[t4nk]

Yeah, annoying isn't it? I spent a while trying to make the terminal resize dynamically to fill up the display at the current font size and I couldn't get it working. I think it will require a ton more communication between the C code and Java than there is at present. I'm trying to work out how to do that but not getting super far.

Well, in "real" curses (I don't know how familiar you're with it?) LINES and COLS (currently macros in angdroid's curses.h) are variables. There is also event KEY_RESIZE, which tells the client that the window size changed. You can probably check window size in (Java's) getch(), and, if it changed, update LINES and COLS and return KEY_RESIZE? The angdroid.c would then just call Term_resize(LINES, COLS)/do_cmd_redraw()...
(sorry if I'm misunderstanding the problem - I don't have Android!)

[takkaria]

Well, in "real" curses (I don't know how familiar you're with it?) LINES and COLS (currently macros in angdroid's curses.h) are variables. There is also event KEY_RESIZE, which tells the client that the window size changed. You can probably check window size in (Java's) getch(), and, if it changed, update LINES and COLS and return KEY_RESIZE? The angdroid.c would then just call Term_resize(LINES, COLS)/do_cmd_redraw()...
(sorry if I'm misunderstanding the problem - I don't have Android!)

Ah, I should have thought of doing it the 'curses way'; I implemented it slightly differently and more longwindedly. The problem I'm having now is in the Java portion of the resizing/redisplay code; the just isn't/wasn't structured to allow the terminal size to change, and I'm learning Java and Android as I go so I don't know how to do it better. Will get there in the end, I'm sure