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Mobil version. Android. IOS

This is a game for roleplayers. We want your ideas how how to build the better game. Post your suggestions here.
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Lothu
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Mobil version. Android. IOS

Post by Lothu »

I would like to see an android and IOS version.Once the Windows 10 version is more stable then it's seems within reach.
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Koi-Wish
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Re: Mobil version. Android. IOS

Post by Koi-Wish »

For me, I would like to see UnderLight moved to Virtual Reality.
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Koi-Spark
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Re: Mobil version. Android. IOS

Post by Koi-Spark »

Lothu wrote:I would like to see an android and IOS version.Once the Windows 10 version is more stable then it's seems within reach.
Umm, no. Not really at all within reach. Not really even closer to being in reach. Doing something like that would require a MAJOR overhaul of pretty much every aspect of the game and code, essentially from the ground up. This is just not a game designed to be mobile-friendly. It's a wonderful thought, but the execution of such a thing is far from practical.
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Koi-Spark
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Re: Mobil version. Android. IOS

Post by Koi-Spark »

Blade wrote:I could take the time to explain what a Remote Desktop is but... I don't feel like it.

Instead I will link you a random iOS app and assume you can figure it out.

GoToMyPC (Remote Desktop) by Citrix
https://appsto.re/us/g-J5y.i
Blade gets 100 cool points for this. Yeah, I've actually used this in the past. TeamViewer also works fantastically for this and I've used it on Android before. I wouldn't recommend trying to do much that requires quick action (like hunting/fighting) but it's pretty decent. Downside is, it's essentially streaming video of your computer screen to your mobile device, plus having to transmit cursor positions and key entries back and forth, so it can eat up a lot of data and there is a bit of a delay so you may have to learn how to walk again. But yeah, this is a "working" alternative if you just must have Underlight on the go.

Thanks, Blade.
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Lothu
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Re: Mobil version. Android. IOS

Post by Lothu »

I can use Citrix to do the same thing a little more stable but infinitely more difficult to se up I am working on an arm to x86 emu. I'll see what it does.
Tary
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Re: Mobil version. Android. IOS

Post by Tary »

I'd love to see an Android/iOS port of the client, that said I will take the time to enumerate some of the difficulties:
  • The entire game client would need to be ported from the crufty C++ its written in now, to Java (Android) or Objective C (iOS) (or Swift, I guess?)
  • Just porting the client code isn't really enough because a physical phone is inherently different from a keyboard/mouse dynamic. So we'd probably need to rethink the entire client usability to be more mobile-friendly.
  • On the topic of the above, you'd probably want to make things a lot easier to type. Also how do you drag things on mobile? I guess you long-press on an item and pull it into your inventory?
  • All art assets need to be updated to fit the resolution/dpi of the multitude of devices that will be supported
  • Communication would the server would also probably need a rethink since, presumably, your IP can change as you move between cellphone towers.
And that's really just a finger-in-the-air, why-is-this-impossible list. The list is probably hundreds of bullet-points long, the least of which is "no unpaid developer will do this for you, because this is a project whose scale and magnitude demands in very-high 6 or 7 figures." Basically the short answer is: no.

What is slightly more realistic, although not in any definition of the word 'realistic' that a normal human would use, is a JavaScript port of the client. With asmJS and emscripten it's not entirely outside the realm of possibility except that emscripten explicitly doesn't support the Win32 API nor does it support DirectDraw calls -- the latter being part of the former. So at the very least the entirety of the UI except for the viewport would need to be redone.

And even then, if you could translate the game to be a web-based client I expect there's a whole host of issues to be tackled like handling the textures and level files: do you make people download them each time? Are they somehow hosted on your PC? But then how could they be, a JavaScript application running in a web browser is locked away from accessing the file system -- it's a security guarantee made by your browser. So technically I guess you could probably store it in the browser local cache or something like that, but figuring out when you needed to update would be hard, and besides if you clear your cache you've got to redownload everything again.

In conclusion: give me $5mm, office space and lots of coffee and I'll get you a proof-of-concept in a year.
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coltdorsey
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Re: Mobil version. Android. IOS

Post by coltdorsey »

I think you're better off starting over and using the Unity engine for any reincarnation or sequel to Underlight. It seems to support cross platform exporting of the game, though I personally have never tried.
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