Android port

[Andrex]

I'll revert fonts size, but bigger buttons will stay (they work and are not ugly, why dumping them?).

If as Eddi said (the GUI items adapt themselves to the font size), then simply enlarging the menu font will automatically create a bigger menu, in which items like Save and Quit can be choosen with precision, not randomly. Ugly buttons are point of view, we can't argue about that.

You can buy the official Transport Tycoon for Android, it costs 7 bucks, and has much better UI.

I first interpreted that as a bad taste joke. If I wanted to play that Locomotion conversion on my tablet, I wouldn't have replied to this topic in the first place. I was trying to have a serious conversation here to help you improve the port.

I can read between the lines that you are not at all interested in fixing the matters at hand, so I'll stop wasting time here posting descriptions, screenshots and optimization suggestions for this port, at least until you change your attitude (most unlikely by now).

[pelya]

If as Eddi said (the GUI items adapt themselves to the font size), then simply enlarging the menu font will automatically create a bigger menu, in which items like Save and Quit can be choosen with precision, not randomly.

That's exactly what I did. Some elements re-scaled to new font size, some did not, the end result is ugly.

You can buy the official Transport Tycoon for Android, it costs 7 bucks, and has much better UI.

I first interpreted that as a bad taste joke. If I wanted to play that Locomotion conversion on my tablet, I wouldn't have replied to this topic in the first place. I was trying to have a serious conversation here to help you improve the port.

Those guys have at least some moral obligation to listen to your suggestions, after taking your money. It looks like they've failed to create the ultimate TTD for Android, oh well. Why didn't they take OpenTTD as their codebase anyway, and sell just the original TTD graphics/sounds, like ID is doing with Quake?

I can read between the lines that you are not at all interested in fixing the matters at hand, so I'll stop wasting time here posting descriptions, screenshots and optimization suggestions for this port, at least until you change your attitude (most unlikely by now).

Modifying UI is unnecessarily hard, and mostly thankless job, and the official OpenTTD devs said they are not interested in supporting mobile devices, so we have what we have. I was planning to improve pop-up menus, when OpenTTD will reach 500k downloads (should happen soon), but I cannot promise you even that.
BTW would you consider controlling mouse cursor with gyroscope? Not the whole screen, just a bit of movement, to help you aim for small buttons. This one is not complicated at all to implement.

[J0anJosep]

Andrex wrote:
I can read between the lines that you are not at all interested in fixing the matters at hand, so I'll stop wasting time here posting descriptions, screenshots and optimization suggestions for this port, at least until you change your attitude (most unlikely by now).

Modifying UI is unnecessarily hard, and mostly thankless job, and the official OpenTTD devs said they are not interested in supporting mobile devices, so we have what we have. I was planning to improve pop-up menus, when OpenTTD will reach 500k downloads (should happen soon), but I cannot promise you even that.
BTW would you consider controlling mouse cursor with gyroscope? Not the whole screen, just a bit of movement, to help you aim for small buttons. This one is not complicated at all to implement.

I am working in GUI sizing and some other issues for 10'' tablets. Quite soon I will release an improved version. Right now there are things that do not work, like using OpenTTD default font (I have fixed it, but haven't released those changes). Another thing I'm working on is about resizing widgets when screen resolution changes (without closing opened windows). You can post suggestions here.

[pelya]

Cool, I'll try to integrate your patches.

[Andrex]

Modifying UI is unnecessarily hard, and mostly thankless job, and the official OpenTTD devs said they are not interested in supporting mobile devices, so we have what we have. I was planning to improve pop-up menus, when OpenTTD will reach 500k downloads (should happen soon), but I cannot promise you even that.
BTW would you consider controlling mouse cursor with gyroscope? Not the whole screen, just a bit of movement, to help you aim for small buttons. This one is not complicated at all to implement.

I agree with the point of the programmer's work being rarely appreciated, but I never used that as a parameter for continue or stop developing anything. I find the development of useful sites/programs a satisfying work on itself, and you can also refer to usage statistics as a thankfullness indicator.

Too bad the OTTD developers are not interested, but I don't blame them, they already have a lot of work to do.

My Iconia B1 tablet is quite basic, and has no gyroscope. Also, the TTD menus are only shown while pressing over them, I don't know how the gyro could help on that matter.

Thanks for your suggestions, I hope you reach 500K downloads soon. You could ask the OTTD developers to kindly mention the Android port and link it on the OTTD site.

[FooBar]

Set the game res to 853x501 and you're good to go. If you use a sharp-tipped stylus the game is surprisingly playable. I've played at least 50 hours on my Galaxy Note 10.1.

[planetmaker]

the official OpenTTD devs said they are not interested in supporting mobile devices, so we have what we have.

Interesting. Do we?

We did say that none of us has a device or time / interest to do that ourselves so far. But we did never say that we don't want to have no support there. On the contrary,. We'll welcome patches - provided they integrate with the codebase in a way they adhere to coding style and especially don't break the other platforms.

[pelya]

the official OpenTTD devs said they are not interested in supporting mobile devices, so we have what we have.

Interesting. Do we?

Well, I've got this impression. Support of small screens is not relevant anymore, but accessing popup menus with two clicks still is. And I have no idea what does 'quick access' mean.

[planetmaker]

the official OpenTTD devs said they are not interested in supporting mobile devices, so we have what we have.

Interesting. Do we?

Well, I've got this impression. Support of small screens is not relevant anymore, but accessing popup menus with two clicks still is. And I have no idea what does 'quick access' mean.

That's posted as feature request. And Rubi describes the situation as-is. And that he has no interest in working on such port or project himself. It's something completely different, if - like for the there mentioned NDS port - someone comes and starts improving things so that it does make things more usable on small devices. For instance the NewGRF config window already has two layouts: one for small(er) and one for wider screens. But it probably would need an even 3rd one for the small devices. But for tablets it might not even need that. Similar the toolbar can wrap already since the NDS port.

[Andrex]

Set the game res to 853x501 and you're good to go. If you use a sharp-tipped stylus the game is surprisingly playable. I've played at least 50 hours on my Galaxy Note 10.1.

You are totally correct! I changed the resolution to 640x400, disabled the big GUI GRF, and loaded all the original TTD GRF files: Everything is now absolutely PERFECT. Thanks!!

[pelya]

Does OpenTTD even support 640x400? When I've checked it last time, most dialogs, such as game optons or online content, had their OK button off the screen, so I cannot use this solution.

[Andrex]

The Android port supports the smallest resolutions you can even imagine. 640x400 keeps the original aspect ratio, and most dialogs fit perfectly. If they don't (like the options dialog) they still have the close button visible at the top. The Online Content dialog is resizable and (seems to) never open itself on a size larger than the screen size.

Now that you mention it, the size of the options dialog es excessively tall, for accomodating useless copyright information, that is not even shown when using the original game GRF files. In other words, the dialog is too large just to hold blank space. (not a porting issue anyway)

Update: Deleting all baseset\open* dirs removed the blank space for copyright information, now the Options dialog fits exactly on 400px height. In other words, copyright information screwed up everyting. Is it really necessary to put it there? Why not use the About dialog?

[Eddi]

the original game was designed for 640x480, almost all dialogs should fit this resolution, otherwise report them to the official bug tracker. this has nothing to do with "mobile ports" whatsoever.

[andedrunkard]

hi chaps, imo- the dev guys for the new TT product have missed a trick, they could have done a similar release using new graphics like zbase.

On my android with only zbase and the vehicle pack (no GUI) loaded the game is 100 times more enjoyable than the 'money spinning' new app (yes i paid for it ) it looks fantastic, sharp, clear and it plays well and it retains the old charm. There are some smaller icons but i will play with the fonts and see if that changes.

Fantastic work on this android port bud, thank you so much. I use it loads when i cant be bothered with my laptop.

fyi - disabling the GUI also meant my speed button worked a bit, but limited by the memory on my galaxy.

[pelya]

the dev guys for the new TT product have missed a trick, they could have done a similar release using new graphics like zbase.

The whole point of TTD Android is selling nostalgia, also they cannot use zbase, because they'll need a written agreement with Zephyris to sell his free graphics set for money.

[planetmaker]

the dev guys for the new TT product have missed a trick, they could have done a similar release using new graphics like zbase.

The whole point of TTD Android is selling nostalgia, also they cannot use zbase, because they'll need a written agreement with Zephyris to sell his free graphics set for money.

They would not - as that's permissible under GPL. But they would need to release their code under the GPL in that case, too . Which would result in the possibility that anyone else could release the same thing for free. Though they couldn't release it in the iOS store. Its conditions are incompatible with GPL.

[pelya]

the dev guys for the new TT product have missed a trick, they could have done a similar release using new graphics like zbase.

The whole point of TTD Android is selling nostalgia, also they cannot use zbase, because they'll need a written agreement with Zephyris to sell his free graphics set for money.

They would not - as that's permissible under GPL. But they would need to release their code under the GPL in that case, too . Which would result in the possibility that anyone else could release the same thing for free. Though they couldn't release it in the iOS store. Its conditions are incompatible with GPL.

Zephyris, as an author of the graphics set, has the right to release it under commercial license, in parallel with GPL, in which case they are not bound by GPL to release their sources. Other question is that he probably won't do that.

[planetmaker]

Zephyris, as an author of the graphics set, has the right to release it under commercial license, in parallel with GPL, in which case they are not bound by GPL to release their sources. Other question is that he probably won't do that.

Of course, yes, he has the right to re-license the 32bpp graphics and many 8bpp taken from OpenGFX included therein. I'm afraid, he has not the right to re-license the code which is based on OpenGFX and includes all the alignments and mask files for both 8bpp and 32bpp and includes also the NewGRF code in the extra baseset which controls the OpenTTD-specific additions, like rivers, canals and alike .

[kamnet]

But the bigger thing is why would Chris Sawyer do all of that when:

a) He already owns all the artwork he needs to release a game
and
b) He believes that the graphics from Locomotion are the "spiritual successor" to those in TTD/TTO?

[pelya]

In a rare show of my engagement with TT community, I'm putting here 1.4.0 pre-release Android build for you to test (yes I care about you, kind of, I think).
It contains a bunch of touchscreen GUI patches from Juanjo, which makes all buttons bigger, and redesign of several dialogs by myself, so they fit the screen.
Also, I've switched to 854x480 default screen resolution, 24bpp color depth and TTF fonts, and fixed Chinese/Japanese/Korean and right-to-left text rendering.
Download it here, and please report all bugs you'll find to this thread.

There were too many changes to put everything into a single patch, like I did previously, so I've created a new OpenTTD-Android repository, you'll still need SDL for Android repo to compile it, or you may grab source tarball here.