News:

Simutrans Tools
Know our tools that can help you to create add-ons, install and customize Simutrans.

Simutrans for Android: is it possible?

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

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

c933103

I found a simutrans port on android here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/libsdl-android/files/Simutrans/ , however the apk is 3-years old and seems to have problem in starting new game on my android despite it can load the start menu screen. I contacted the repo's owner and he said "Simutrans is not supported, I only support OpenTTD. Please ask on Simutrans forums, I think they also have newer version for Android available.". So is his comment about the situation correct? And is there such thing on this forum?

Ters

I am not aware that any of us is working on Android stuff. It seems to me to be pretty much just Windows desktop and regular Linux desktop, with some occasional MacOS developers dropping by.

prissi

I have looked once at the Andriod port, but the SDL then did not compile at all. In priciple it shoudl be quite easy for someone who had written at least one Andriod App to compile SImutrans. (It would still need an ARM and x86 version though). I am lacking the time to look into this.

DrPepper

There was an app. And it did work. It was years ago though. Unfortunately it finally became to buggy to use and I ended up getting rid of it. I would love to have it on Android again. No longer shows up in the app store. But I have found openTTD.
Not the same but it probably the closest thing you can get to simutrans.

prissi

#74
In principle it is very simple to make SDL2 compatible android apps, but the build process is totally incompatible with the normal build system on any other platform. Also the storage operations needs some tweaking to use the right pathc. So one needs a simsys_s2_android.cc, and android.mk and someone with enough knowledge to make this work. I have never programmed for mobile, and the divers manifest files and independencies really dulls me. I played around for the last three hours and I got a crptic building error, which may pages say, "Yeah, this happens sometimes. Go install the Android studio on a different comuter usually solves this." Really?

(Ok, error message was: No toolchains found in the NDK toolchains folder for ABI with prefix: mips64el-linux-android) But I was no building that anyway.

Vladki

Some time ago I tried playing openttd on tablet, but it was very weird. The interface is now based on mouse and changing that to touchscreen is imho the most challenging part.

Ters

The most useful target for an Android version of Simutrans would probably be Chromebooks and things like that.

prissi

Simutrans can be played by touchscreen, the functions have been added (i.e. dragging map by left mouse, switch to IME for input). I was playable (the old version in the playstore) The modifier keys are not really needed, most thinks can be achieved without them.

Ters

That the game is technically playable doesn't automatically mean that it is fun to play. I could probably play Simutrans using only my nose to give input, but it would not be the same. I won't even play Simutrans on my laptop without an external mouse, and I seem more comfortable using the touchpad than most, if not all, people I know. A touchscreen might be better than a touchpad. I only have experience from my phone, and find that precision is a bit lacking there as well.