Renewed focus on iOS port?

[kamnet]

Somebody noted on Reddit that the buggy, unsupported and unlicensed version of OpenTTD on the iOS store is now gone. In light of the pending release of OpenTTD 14, i think now would be the best time to start finding somebody to develop and support a real iOS release.

I plan to try to port the OpenTTD to iOS and publish it on App Store. It will be free to download but I may display some ads to get some money to support the maintenance and the App Store account fee. Will this be allowed ? Do you support me to do this? Please give your opinions.

It's been a few years since HiTTd has been around these parts, and I've already reached out to them via e-mail to see if they're interested. We had this discussion in 2019 that ultimately went nowhere.

As I'm sure things have not changed with Apple's licensing to get onto the iOS store. In 2019 I suggested we support a sideloaded app, which a few users shot down as not being realistic. Five years later, it's more realistic than ever, and in fact it is going to be the most straight-forward way to support it. Sideloading no longer requires jailbreaking or an additional computer, and there are several online stores we can promote while working on a solution to get onto the iOS store.

But, we can't do that unless we have several individuals who we can get on-board to provide development and support and have them working with the rest of the devs to keep it updated. And we need to develop a solid core of individuals. As we've seen with Pelya and the Android port, it's quite easy for something to disrupt development. And as recently seen with the xz utils crisis, if we don't have a trusted team of individuals who can review the code and ensure the safety of the community, it's possible for a rogue individual to potentially due some craptastic stuff.

[2TallTyler]

Now would be a great time for somebody to volunteer, yes.

Finding somebody for unpaid open-source work is a bit harder than hiring for a job. Ultimately, someone has to step forward.

[jfs]

A possible project could be to integrate the UI changes for the Android port to make the game touch-friendly, and somehow keep both the original and the touch-friendly UI available at the same time, so the game can be toggled between them. That would mean the touch UI would also be available in WASM builds, and that way the game might eventually be playable as a browser-based app on all mobile platforms.

[pelya]

There's an Apple-approved 3-rd party iOS app store now. No jailbreak required, just tapping through a hundred of warning dialogs, and it's limited to EU (WTF US, muster up some more FREEDOM)

It seems like it can legally distribute GPL-licensed apps.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/first-third- ... -in-europe

Since OpenTTD Android port uses SDL2 now, compiling the same touchscreen version for iOS is pretty straightforward.

The biggest roadblock is that the mobile port needs a developer with tiny little phone and fat greasy fingers like me, because iPhones are still the only mainstream phones with small screen size. Version 13 of the Android port was an UI disaster, version 14 solved many tiny UI problems, however the main toolbars are way too small. The optimal UI size is 10 buttons stacked vertically, and right now toolbars have 16 tiny little buttons. I also would like to comment about upstream devs re-implementing the same big button UI that was already done in the Android version, but we have an UI size slider now instead of an UI size selection dropdown. I don't particularly care if upstream devs do the same work twice, what I care about is that we need to replace my UI changes with the upstream code, in a way that won't break it too much.

Anyway, right now I can only grumble in forum posts, I still don't have any free time for OpenTTD development, and I consider it a miracle how fast we got version 14 released to Play Store.

[pelya]

That would mean the touch UI would also be available in WASM builds, and that way the game might eventually be playable as a browser-based app on all mobile platforms.

Behold my WASM port of my Android port. Yes, it can run on iPad with a reasonable speed, I've tested! Even pinch-zoom works. That old iPad crashed the browser after like 15 minutes of gameplay, because it only had 1 Gb RAM (lolwut Apple). Saving the game simply downloads .sav file with your web browser.

Compiling it is pretty straightforward, just run the magical build script™

https://pelya.github.io/openttd-touch-webapp