Opinions please...

[Vircop]

Hi,

i'm looking for decent opinions on my thoughts regarding Android game development. Basically i started to develop old "retro" games (Lotus Challenge, Outrun Remake and a C64 Emulator to name a few) via B4A.

The C64 emulator was the biggest fun for me, because i grew up developing games for that platform. That was more than 20 years ago. Meanwhile i switched into (technical) management so that hobby programming is more or less to keep me "going" because i enjoy it. Developing for PC or Mac is not really a challenge for me - thanks to the C/C++ compiler options. So basically i enjoy cribbling out maximum of "low end" hardware. That's why i decided i'm gonna learn mobile development.

Honestly i hate XML and Java (that has more to do with the development environment than with the java language...) so i ended up purchasing/donating B4A. I didn't regret this especially not because of the active community here. So big thanks to make that happen!

Now to my actually problem/question. I also develop "fun" projects on iOS via XCODE iOS SDK. There i face a serious problem less: Basically the only thing you have to watch is the screen size (iPhone vs. iPad) and the retina flag.
Performance wise if it runs on iPhone it will run in 99.99% also on iPad. That has to do with the same hardware architecture (at least from the last recent models for the past 5 years)

That looks completly different on Android. My family arrived yesterday for xmas and we talked about my hobby. So i uploaded a couple of "in development" snapshots to their devices. Well what should i say... I'm quite stunned that half of the stuff that works on my Android devices (Samsung Galaxy Note 2) doesn't work for instance on a Lenovo 7" pad. There were huge performance problems in math calculations (i'm using SIN TAN etc. for calculating objects that have to be drawn during road update)

As i said runs on my (fast) devices but doesn't run on anything slower than 1.4Ghz (just my guess)

How on earth i'm supposed to provide that (even for free) in the play store? I mean people with "slow" phones will download that and then complain that it doesn't work. (I know it's free - but still...)

 

[Beja]

sorry, duplicate post

 

[Beja]

Dear Vircop

May be I am not getting something, but I thought it is the system clock frequency that controls software execution speed (and quality), and not vice versa.
After all, what we call (software) is nothing more than a collection of charge values in terms of electronic charges residing in transistors in the system transistor array called memory. system clock pushes and pulls these charges and accordingly logic gates open and close in what we call "program execution"
The quantity of charges (software) we save in these transistors understandably depend on the number of transistors (memory size) and not the clock speed.
that means (to me) software requirement is of memory size and of course the kind of the operating system.
So my suggestion is to check the size of your code and the memory size of the target device.

BTW: you mentioned Lenovo, could you install APK file in a Lenovo device?

 

[mc73]

Lately I deliberately use the cheapest and less powerful devices I can, while developing. (256mb RAM, couldn't find less, 800Mhz CPU). The reason is dual: a) I need cheap devices for some of my apps, and b) I get to optimize my code to run fast on these, assuring the app will run even faster on more powerful devices. So far, so good

 

[sorex]

mc73: I had the same in mind, optimizing things on the low end device(s) is always good.

My niece has one of those Samsung Ch@t phone or whatever it's called.

I guess those are like 320x240 or something.

Now... the portrait mode is actually a landscape one.
How would you deal with that it you have the app limited to either landscape or portrait?

That's another issue to take care of.