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Guild Software announces port to Google Android(tm), Nvidia Tegra

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Jun 10, 2010 incarnate link
You can read the press release here, and before you post questions, read the special FAQ page I made to cover the basics.

If you like, you can also help by voting for the slashdot article.

FYI, this is what we're demoing at E3.
Jun 10, 2010 CrazySpence link
Impressive
Jun 10, 2010 slime73 link
O________O
Jun 10, 2010 toshiro link
Great Scott!
Jun 10, 2010 FiReMaGe link
Nice work. Now I know what to try on a capable android device.
Jun 10, 2010 mr_spuck link
haha

so.. how well does the game play with a touchscreen?
Jun 10, 2010 Whytee link
looking forward to seeing it ported to iPhone.
Jun 10, 2010 Whistler link
Excellent - great job getting VO and NAOS out there.
Jun 10, 2010 Dr. Lecter link
And I can run this on my iPad when exactly?
Jun 10, 2010 Strat link
Wow! Awesome. It looks like the Acer Aspire One D250 and the Hardkernel ODROID-T are the only devices that run Android OS at the required resolution so far. I'm assuming more devices will be released with the required resolution and this new Tegra processor?
Jun 10, 2010 roguelazer link
O_o
Jun 10, 2010 momerath42 link
Yea, Strat; as far as I know all Tegra2 devices are still in development. We're using devkits from NVidia.

Thanks for the pointers; I wasn't aware of either of those devices. AFAIK, you can't build for x86 w/ the current android NDK (The Acer is x86; you could compile the whole android system, and even VO as a part of it- but not as a simple, installable app (which would currently have to be pure java)). We'll have to look at the ODROID; the claims about the hardware make it sound feasible, except for the suspiciously low resolution.

At any rate, by the time we actually release the Android port into the wild, there will obviously be at least one option for compatible hardware, and probably several (though possibly only those based on Tegra2).
Jun 10, 2010 mdaniel link
iPhone 4 and iPad should have sufficient resolution to port this to, no?
Jun 10, 2010 Strat link
The iPad; yes. The iPhone 4; almost, but not quite. The iPad is 1024×768 and the iPhone 4 is 960x640. The current resolution requirement for VO is 1024x600 or better. The devs addressed the iPhone/iPad question in their FAQ.

Why not the iPad?! I just bought one..

Answering that question is pretty involved. We're not ruling out future support for other mobile platforms, including devices like the iPhone or iPad. Porting a resource-intensive PC game to a mobile platform has a lot of challenges that are different from developing a brand-new app specifically for mobile use. To some extent, porting our title to any mobile device was going to be an "experiment". We felt more comfortable experimenting with Android™ and Nvidia® for a variety of reasons that I'll leave out for the sake of brevity.

Long story short, if the Android™ build proves to be a good idea, we may eventually do an iPad version as well. Much of the work we've done for Android™ (OpenGL ES support, for instance) will make it much easier to port to the iPad.
Jun 10, 2010 CrazySpence link
It makes sense to work all the kinks out on an open platform where you can ask the community and creators of the kit for help without being beaten down by an NDA.

I love the iOS devices but given Guilds resources I would have gone this way first as well before risking the random judgment of the Apple review process
Jun 10, 2010 Dr. Lecter link
Too bad Apple has the far superior hardware, available right now, for this specific application.
Jun 10, 2010 momerath42 link
The port isn't ready to release right now, and we're not even confident that the PowerVR hardware in the iPad is up to the task. Then, of course, there are several rather significant non-technical aspects of the iOS platform that could hugely complicate things for us, or even negate months of work.
Jun 10, 2010 diqrtvpe link
Hmm, it looks like the Entourage Edge has sufficient resolution, as well. It's a dualbook that runs Android (though it is not currently plugged into the whole Marketplace, something that they're working on, I believe). I don't know whether it's got enough power for the task, it's got Marvell's ARMADA PXA168, for whatever that's worth. I've gotta say, it would be fun to be able to read papers and play VO side-by-side on the device!
Jun 10, 2010 momerath42 link
That chip apparently only supports OpenGL-ES 1.x. We'll probably never support <2.0. The two standards are very different, and even a lot of 2.0-generation chips aren't/won't-be capable of decent 3d at >800x600.
Jun 10, 2010 mr_spuck link
I tried the game on an eight year old laptop with sis650 graphics recently. With almost everything disabled the game ran at playable fps.

Those powervr things can't be any worse than that. It has a relatively beefy cpu though.. maybe that would make a difference.