Arm v7 Cross-Compile Request

[dinx2582]

So, now that the game has been re-written in C, what are the odds that an Android port could be thrown together?  I suppose that I was thinking more along the lines of a statically-linked library binary that could be run in the terminal, as opposed to an APK package (which I imagine is more complicated not to mention maybe a handful of people even run things using the former method), and while said Market-based package would be amazing, I'm opting to ask about the less time consuming approach instead of one that revolves around the logistics of the Android Marketplace including but not limited to the price of the game vs. the price of most games on there, etc.

I just thought I'd throw this the idea out there because I know I personally would LOVE to be able to play this on my phone.  Sure, it wouldn't work as well on devices without physical keyboards.  Suffice it to say that if the Terry and the rewrite dev (haven't been paying attention, so I don't know who it is!) thought it wouldn't hurt to pull this off, I'm sure many of us would find a great deal of enjoyment in it.

Anyway, no entitlement involved, and I certainly won't hold my breath.  Note to self:  Less babbling!

[PJBottomz]

I agree. VVVVVV needs to be an Android App!

[tremby]

I'd love to play this on my N900... The Flash version runs but unbelievably slowly.

[tremby]

Also, I was under the impression that Android apps have to be written in Android's brand of Java, but I could be wrong.

[dinx2582]

Also, I was under the impression that Android apps have to be written in Android's brand of Java, but I could be wrong.

As far as running code is concerned (like executing a binary from a shell) , it just needs to be compiled for ARM instead of i386/amd64.  When it comes to dealing with installable packages I believe whatever you make needs to be effectively wrapped up in some kind of Java package, but I'm pretty ignorant when it comes that end of things so I could be wrong.

Suffice it to say this if this weren't closed source I would have just cross-compiled it myself, and perhaps load it through bash script using GScript so as not to have to open the terminal every time I wanted to play.  Of course I imagine screen resolutions wouldn't be very functional right off the bat, but one step at a time!

[tremby]

Indeed. Do you think the same binary would work for my N900, or is it a different architecture?
$ uname -a
Linux t900 2.6.28.10-power47 #1 PREEMPT Tue May 3 20:40:52 EEST 2011 armv7l unknown

[dinx2582]

All Android phones use ARM architecture (99% sure of this), although I think some of them are v6 and some are v7, and to be honest I'm not sure what the difference is in terms of compatibility.  In any event, your phone is v7, so whatever works on mine would work on yours as well as the majority of Android phones as far as I know.

[dinx2582]

*ahem* I'd be much obliged if any of the relevant persons could chime in on this, regardless of what the decision would be

Cheers.

[simoroth]

This is certainly do-able. Although we are currently up to our necks in bug fixing, Opengl support and Terry is sorting out the 3ds release.

The main issue is if I just put out a binary it would be dog slow as a lot of the C port is still structured like the original AS3 code. I am untangling it as I go, but it still eats a lot of CPU, even some low end netbooks struggle with it at the moment.

[-Sparky-]

Isn't VVVVVV already an app? There is a topic showing it, a bit redundant, but completely fine.

[BubblegumBalloon]

Isn't VVVVVV already an app? There is a topic showing it, a bit redundant, but completely fine.

Nope its not a proper app, the one you saw was just a workaround I used to get the PC version to run on my phone.

[-Sparky-]

Ooooh, woops, sorry! I didn't know about that part.

[kylemsguy]

All Android phones use ARM architecture (99% sure of this), although I think some of them are v6 and some are v7, and to be honest I'm not sure what the difference is in terms of compatibility.  In any event, your phone is v7, so whatever works on mine would work on yours as well as the majority of Android phones as far as I know.

ARMv6 is more portable, while ARMv7 is faster. Take your pick. I would like an iOS version though 

[singpolyma]

ARMv6 would be more portable (to, example, the reaspberry pi)

I understand the existing code might be slower than it needs to be, but one thing at a time   It runs on my 1.3ghz intel atom system without any trouble.  I imagine the 700mhz processors in many of these systems might chug a bit, but remember ARM is more efficient with resources than x86 too.  I say, throw out a binary and let us test the crap out of it before worrying about preoptomizing

My 2 cents