Porting Crawl to the Tablets


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Dungeon Dilettante

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Joined: Saturday, 21st May 2011, 03:05

Post Saturday, 21st May 2011, 03:14

Porting Crawl to the Tablets

I was wondering if there was any project to port DCSS to tablet (Android/iOS)? ( Not sure if this is the right place to post this) If not would it be possible to start one? I know you can access webTiles from tablet browsers, but I think with the 0.8 interface upgrades its reasonably possible to play crawl with pure touchscreen and/or not absolutely require a keyboard to access features.

When i say port to tablet I mean make an overlay to make touchscreens able to operate a standalone DCSS (i.e not webtiles via a browser.)
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Dungeon Master

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Post Saturday, 21st May 2011, 07:15

Re: Porting Crawl to the Tablets

I have it as a long term goal, but haven't started real coding on it. Actually, the 0.8 interface upgrades you're talking about are the first step toward this goal. The second one will still take place in the form of improvements to the tiles version (better map mode, better mouse support,...).
When you ask if it's possible to start one, are you volunteering or telling me to get to work? ;)
<+Grunt> You dereference an invalid pointer! Ouch! That really hurt! The game dies...

Dungeon Dilettante

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Joined: Saturday, 21st May 2011, 03:05

Post Sunday, 22nd May 2011, 00:17

Re: Porting Crawl to the Tablets

Volunteering actually :D. Looking at the tiles version there are a few definitive changes needed to the actual UI to make tablet enabled play possible. I'm willing to work on it but I was wondering how much support there was from a) the dev team and b) the community. If the Devs are into this I might start spawning wiki and related posts to make progress towards this. I envision making a purely UI overlay that should allow versioning of the actual game without significant modifications to the touch overlay. I haven't looked in depth at the code so i have to see whats what. So dev team? Can I do this :?:

Also I'm also interested in general dev, pretty good coder but terrible player XD so I figured I'd help with something non-balance related.

Cheers
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Dungeon Master

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Post Sunday, 22nd May 2011, 09:18

Re: Porting Crawl to the Tablets

Well, then you definitely have my full support. Go ahead, you can create wiki pages about designing the interface, or which menus are lacking mouse support for example. I'm not sure about an UI overlay. Integrating the code would make it easier to maintain I think. Platform specific stuff can use ANDROID or IOS pre processor variables, and touchscreen code use TOUCHSCREEN.
Thanks!
<+Grunt> You dereference an invalid pointer! Ouch! That really hurt! The game dies...
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Lair Larrikin

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Post Sunday, 22nd May 2011, 18:05

Re: Porting Crawl to the Tablets

A crawl version for Tablets/smartphones (with android or iOS) should have a friendly interface... Like... only the necessary things to play... arrow keys (with diagonals), auto explore key, itens, etc.. only, because a full QWERTY digital pad just takes 40% of the screen..
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Dungeon Master

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Post Sunday, 22nd May 2011, 19:27

Re: Porting Crawl to the Tablets

Pumpking wrote:A crawl version for Tablets/smartphones (with android or iOS) should have a friendly interface... Like... only the necessary things to play... arrow keys (with diagonals), auto explore key, itens, etc.. only, because a full QWERTY digital pad just takes 40% of the screen..

Of course. You can already play crawl only with the mouse. There's still a few place where the keyboard is needed and we will need to fix that. The idea is to have a full touchscreen interface, otherwise it's not worth it.
<+Grunt> You dereference an invalid pointer! Ouch! That really hurt! The game dies...

Dungeon Dilettante

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Post Monday, 23rd May 2011, 00:55

Re: Porting Crawl to the Tablets

Ideally I want to make minimal changes to the core code and create a touch screen interpreter that converts actions on the overlay/screen to key sequences for the game. Ideally the code should allow direct commands and i think it does considering how good remapping keys in the game is. I think there will have to be MAJOR changes in order to give a tablet enabled version able to do macros/char dumps. The end result ideally is a offline/online crawl app that will all connection to an account on a server and spectating if wanted, as well as messaging.

Where should i start creating this in the wiki (in terms of namespace)? Also for anyone interested in joining this effort post here.
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Dungeon Master

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Post Monday, 23rd May 2011, 07:57

Re: Porting Crawl to the Tablets

rejuxst wrote:Ideally I want to make minimal changes to the core code

Why?

rejuxst wrote:and create a touch screen interpreter that converts actions on the overlay/screen to key sequences for the game.

That's no good. You might be able to make something playable, but it would be buggy and impossible to maintain. A bit like how nettiles was.

rejuxst wrote:The end result ideally is a offline/online crawl app that will all connection to an account on a server and spectating if wanted, as well as messaging.

I've missed a step here. Client/server is a whole different topic, it has nothing to do with implementing a touchscreen interface and porting crawl to android and iOS. Or are you thinking of making a touchscreen overlay for webtiles?
<+Grunt> You dereference an invalid pointer! Ouch! That really hurt! The game dies...

Dungeon Dilettante

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Post Monday, 23rd May 2011, 12:13

Re: Porting Crawl to the Tablets

galehar wrote:I've missed a step here. Client/server is a whole different topic, it has nothing to do with implementing a touchscreen interface and porting crawl to android and iOS. Or are you thinking of making a touchscreen overlay for webtiles?


Thats more of an ideal goal. I don't know enough about CAO I play largely offline. First thing first get an offline version for tiles.

While there will probably need to be interface changes, I want to think of those as goals that should be general improvement to crawl UI not hacked together solutions to the tablet versions of the game. Hopefully updates to the core game should require little to no changes specific to the tablet versions.

Anyway this is all thoughts in space time to dive into the code. :D

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