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Simutrans for Android: is it possible?

Started by Tontarelli, December 20, 2010, 02:10:05 PM

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AP

Quote from: Fabio on December 31, 2012, 02:46:16 PM
It could send back to the server some basic commands (e.g. Add a vehicle to a line cloning existing ones) which would executed if possible or ignored.
I suppose there are two sides to an app for server games - one as a remote viewer (which I think is a valid proposition by itself, even without a minimap) and the other allowing remote interaction with the server game (possibly being a more complex undertaking?).

jamespetts

Quote from: AP on December 31, 2012, 05:05:41 PM
I suppose there are two sides to an app for server games - one as a remote viewer (which I think is a valid proposition by itself, even without a minimap) and the other allowing remote interaction with the server game (possibly being a more complex undertaking?).

Yes, allowing remote interaction would be a very useful thing, in fact, for players to undertake management tasks without having to be beside a full-blown desktop client. This might well be a fairly complicated undertaking, but it ought not be beyond the pale in principle. The issue is whether there are enough skilled Simutrans programmers ready to implement this feature, I think, rather than whether it is feasible in principle, and that will depend in part, but not entirely, on whether enough people think that it is worthwhile.

As for the map, I wonder whether it would be possible for the server to generate some sort of simplified version of the game map, showing just land and water areas, town hall locations and town names, and for the statistics to be able to identify stations by co-ordinate such that they might then be shown on a simplified version of the map based on that just described to give people something of a graphical representation of the game world without all the computationally intensive detail required for the full game. It would be useful to get some idea, for example, of where a rival has built, or where graphically on the map that problems on one's own network have occurred.
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prissi

The computer intensive operation is not the display of the map. Most expensive are the connections and moving stuff around. Ironically, also the minimap is the most compute intense display, as it shows most of the map ;)

Fabio

But calculating a mini map, maybe even with different displays, every month and caching it to be retrieved by query and not calculated on demand would impose a small overhead to the server processing.

sdog

#39
There's a new version of an android up in the google play store. Developer is TMN Trend Media Network.

Edit:
just noticed this is the wrong android thread.

Bricktop

 did You make it?
it looks kinda suspicious.

IgorEliezer

Quote from: Bricktop on March 07, 2013, 11:17:06 PMit looks kinda suspicious.
And why does it look suspicious?

EDIT:

Topic renamed from "Android" to "Simutrans for Android: is it possible?".

Bricktop

I tried that tmn group version and:
Its kinda unplayable, looks ugly, and actually doesnt fit the tablet screen. (even with the tablet option selected), the on screen controls doesnt do nothing other than obscuring the view. Also there is a giant ad bar.

Only positive at the moment : the porting is possible.

sdog

i tested it too today, the only thing i was able to click were the ad banners. Nothing else worked.

ӔO

There was something odd about the cursor accuracy, but once it loaded the starting map, I could easily tell my TF101 was not up to the task.
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Lmallet

I managed to get past the language selection screen on my Galaxy S3, but the cursor control is so bad I quit without managing to start a game.

Yona-TYT


Quote from: Lmallet on March 10, 2013, 04:26:02 AM
I managed to get past the language selection screen on my Galaxy S3, but the cursor control is so bad I quit without managing to start a game.
Woe that recognize that "simutrans" was originally designed to run on a desktop PC.
I am surprised that can open in the  Galaxy S3 :o

Lmallet

Quote from: Yona-TYT on March 10, 2013, 01:06:45 PM
Woe that recognize that "simutrans" was originally designed to run on a desktop PC.
I am surprised that can open in the  Galaxy S3 :o
I recall Prissi saying a few times that Simutrans should run on either a 486 or an early Pentium (that was a while back).  With a dual-core 1.5GHz CPU and 1.5GB of RAM, I think the S3 is powerful enough.

The real problem is the screen size and the button layout.  On one hand the developer of the Android version seems to have used some sort of emulator/virtual machine to make it work, and the built-in controls are not the greatest.  On the other hand Simutrans has a lot of small buttons, which is ok on a PC but not on a smartphone.  I tried openTTD on my S3 as well and it is suprisingly quite playable, mostly due to a better implementation on the Android side, but also the button layout makes it easier to hit them on the small screen.

prissi

Simutrans with not too large maps should run on a 600 MHz arm qithout troubles.

Simutrans can easily scale up the buttons. The problems are the dialoge, which are not completely dynamical (only a few of them are). On the other hand openTTD had awful scrolling (on Android) and required a lot of modifier keys (while simutrans could be used with only left mouse button and some scrolling support).

Alasdair Green

Hi,

I've just got an Acer D270, and thinking of changing it to Android, would Simutrans run on this? It's a conventional netbook, so no touchscreen play issues.

Thanks,

Isaac Eiland-Hall

No current release on Android, I'm afraid.

Yona-TYT


I hope someday we can play from an Android device


It would be very nice ....... Regards ;)

Ters

Some of you Android users just have to figure out how.

prissi

There is a simutrans (obsolete version) for Android, which is absolutely unsuable with a touchscreen. It may work with the mouse tough. Unfourtunetaly most ports did not distributed the source code and hence violated the Artistic Licence of Simutrans. Thus I have to note google whenever I find them.

Yona-TYT


seems those from Open-TTD you they won us in this





It has an Android version
Google Play https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.openttd.sdl&hl=es_419

prissi

There is also a simutrans version, with is as unplayable as the OpenTTD version.

Yona-TYT

GUI patch Theme can improve that, is not it?

kierongreen

Potentially it could. It would also need somone with a tablet with a bit of time to port Simutrans.


Ters

Considering how imprecise touch devices are, I have a hard time imaging that this could really be playable unless the touch screen is 20 inches or more. It's hard to hit the right place even when using a touch pad, where my finger doesn't obscure where I'm pointing and the cursor has a more well-defined hot spot than my finger.

kierongreen

With a larger button theme and a reasonable size pakset I don't think placing the cursor would be a huge issue. Of course using pak32 is probably asking for trouble...

Markohs

The UI has to be changed a lot, it's a first step, but there's a need to change the tools mechanics, all the dialogs, maybe even using the android dialogs to replace some of the simutrans one. It's doable ofc, but needs a team of people expert and with experience in mobile app design. Also some game mechanics might need a change.

Whould be nice if we had the inner simutrans code decoupled and modularized even more, in a plugin fashion, so we could just use the minimum simutrans code and replace some parts with touch-designed components.

Ters

Bigger GUI means less room fot the world. Increasing the tile size makes it easier to hit a tile, but harder to see where that tile is in relation to everything else. One would have to zoom or pan a lot, and build in tiny steps. That would certainly ruin the appeal for me. But there are as many ways to enjoy the game as there as Simutrans players it seems.

kierongreen

Well all the gui stuff is in that subdirectory, and all the interaction is dealt with in simwerkz already isn't it?


Edit:
And yes, I prefer a smaller gui which is why I'm keen that any theme code allows this as well as a more touch friendly large button gui.

Chukwudi

This is old topic, the S6 is easy powerful enough. But few apps handle(truly show off)it's 3d capability (I've found one, Tapet, and that just scream.) It's octacore, and very fast.. 8)  and real time professional audio. 

Ters

Quote from: Chukwudi on January 10, 2016, 03:06:03 AM
This is old topic, the S6 is easy powerful enough. But few apps handle(truly show off)it's 3d capability (I've found one, Tapet, and that just scream.) It's octacore, and very fast.. 8)  and real time professional audio. 

Simutrans isn't 3D, so its 3D capability doesn't matter to us. When it comes to porting Simutrans to another platform, it requires a display with a medium resolution at medium DPI (exact values depend on pak set size and GUI theme), a CPU and system bus capable of updating that display at 12 FPS (GPU isn't used), a mouse with two at least one button, and a keyboard with Shift and Ctrl buttons. And for music, it needs MIDI support. Pretty much everything but PCs fail hard at meeting these requirements. In fact, even some PCs are getting troubles with the first two requirements.

Vladki

I think the touchscreen combined with high DPI is the showstopper. Did anybody try to play simutrans using touchscreen? (e.g. on windows 8/10)

jamespetts

I think that the (Standard) developers have been looking into this issue (with the touchscreen) for a while; I know that there have been some interface changes, and further changes to the graphics are planned to deal with high-dpi displays.
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Ters

Only the GUI themes have materialized, so we are still just scratching the surface.

prissi

You can scale up all menus independently. The only thing not finished is the proper support of larger font sizes.