Android client

[Solvernia]

Since we have the CoH source code, and phones can run some pretty intense games nowadays, how difficult would it be to compile an ARM-based client that can run on Android? Touch controls of course would be pretty tough (although there IS click-to-move), and gamepads wouldn't work very well, but provided you have a keyboard and mouse, it could in theory work. After all, people can run CoH on something like the Raspberry Pi so why not a modern smartphone or tablet?

Edited April 22, 2021 by Solvernia

[WanderingAries]

Unfortunately, the source has long looked like dinner the second time around (if you know what I mean), so the devs have likely had quite the headache for the years since acquisition of said code. That'll be hurdle 1 as it were. Can the game run on ARM? We've got it running on the Apple M1s just fine using Wine and other stuff that people like Manga know MUCH more about, but from my limited understanding of the platforms, that actually isn't the comparison/path you'd be going anyway. You'd be looking more into some sort of Linux adaptation I'd think. You'd likely need some sort of x86->ARM wrapper for Android that would allow the current semi-stable Linux method to work. TBH, the performance would likely be worse than WinXP with 2 Gb RAM though. Either way, that's a lot of hurdles, so it'd have to be somebody Really into side projects and outside of the actual Dev community until the day that things like the 'Talks' conclude in our favor and actual resources can be legally established.

[Outrider_01]

How thick of a magnifying glass to you expect to use to see text or even the baddy?  Unless you are looking in 1st person view, I don't think its doable.

[Troo]

15 hours ago, Solvernia said:

gamepads wouldn't work very well

 

um.. game pads work awesome. just fyi.

[WanderingAries]

18 hours ago, Outrider_01 said:

How thick of a magnifying glass to you expect to use to see text or even the baddy?  Unless you are looking in 1st person view, I don't think its doable.

 

Definitely This, but I wouldn't mind being able to run it on say the Switch where I can then choose to put in on the TV with a wireless controller. :p

[srmalloy]

17 hours ago, Troo said:

 

um.. game pads work awesome. just fyi.

That's not what I'm finding in ESO, which is clearly based around game controllers and their limited buttonspace -- having only twelve abilities available to use, split between 'front' and 'back' bars, and any toggle power that isn't in both bars switches off when you swap bars -- feels a bit stifling when I play it instead of CoH, where I have trays for the up to thirty powers I use regularly, a fourth tray for common powers used irregularly (Fast Travel, Reveal, Ouro Portal), and a fifth where I put temp powers and non-MM pets (Knight Errant, Sing, Fluffy, the Lore pet(s), etc.).

[Outrider_01]

6 hours ago, WanderingAries said:

 

Definitely This, but I wouldn't mind being able to run it on say the Switch where I can then choose to put in on the TV with a wireless controller. 😛

Thats cheating, back in the day we didn't use no fancy dancy thingma mahjig to cast to another device.  We used punch cards, and happily swapped them out every few minutes!

[WanderingAries]

33 minutes ago, Outrider_01 said:

Thats cheating, back in the day we didn't use no fancy dancy thingma mahjig to cast to another device.  We used punch cards, and happily swapped them out every few minutes!

 

Don't forget that your bugs had 6-8 legs too!🤣

[Solvernia]

On 4/23/2021 at 12:20 AM, Outrider_01 said:

How thick of a magnifying glass to you expect to use to see text or even the baddy?  Unless you are looking in 1st person view, I don't think its doable.

 

I mean, that's not ENTIRELY relevant. People with big phone screens and tablets will be better off. I don't expect it to be entirely PLAYABLE, just functional, like a proof of concept "hey, we did this thing, even though it's useless" idea. I would love to figure out how to port stuff like this to Android.

 

11 hours ago, srmalloy said:

That's not what I'm finding in ESO, which is clearly based around game controllers and their limited buttonspace -- having only twelve abilities available to use, split between 'front' and 'back' bars, and any toggle power that isn't in both bars switches off when you swap bars -- feels a bit stifling when I play it instead of CoH, where I have trays for the up to thirty powers I use regularly, a fourth tray for common powers used irregularly (Fast Travel, Reveal, Ouro Portal), and a fifth where I put temp powers and non-MM pets (Knight Errant, Sing, Fluffy, the Lore pet(s), etc.).

 

I'm wondering if something similar to FF14's cross hotbar could be implemented? Jobs in FF14 have LOADS of abilities, more even than a CoH character, and people play that just fine on controller, albeit with a very special hotbar setup.

 

I'm thinking that you could use those kinds of combo button presses for CoH hotbar. Like, have the first hotbar, which is 10 slots, be bound to... X Y B A, L+X L+Y L+B L+A, and then LB RB? Or something like that. What I'm saying is that through mode shifting you could very easily have access to all your powers on a controller; it would just require a middleman to convert those controller inputs into more easily recognized keyboard buttons (like what the Steam Controller does.)

Edited April 24, 2021 by Solvernia

[Solvernia]

On 4/22/2021 at 10:41 PM, WanderingAries said:

You'd be looking more into some sort of Linux adaptation I'd think. You'd likely need some sort of x86->ARM wrapper for Android that would allow the current semi-stable Linux method to work. TBH, the performance would likely be worse than WinXP with 2 Gb RAM though.

 

Well, currently, there are functional Linux emulators for Android, and that's what sparked the idea for me in the first place. I can run CoH just fine with Wine on 32/64 bit architecture. Could I run CoH on Wine on an ARM architecture, or, better yet, Windows 10 on ARM?

[Faultline]

We already have some of COH rewritten into cross-platform C that will build on anything, but it's an ongoing, low priority process. Porting the client to ARM specifically is not going to make the game run on Android; while COH uses OpenGL, it uses a rather ancient version of it that no mobile phone that I know of supports.

 

If there's an OpenGL guru who wants to tackle rewriting the rendering pipeline into modern OpenGL, definitely get in touch. Even if it doesn't immediately result in an Android client, it's an important step to get there, and it will benefit the desktop client as well.

[Solvernia]

On 4/24/2021 at 7:53 AM, Faultline said:

We already have some of COH rewritten into cross-platform C that will build on anything, but it's an ongoing, low priority process. Porting the client to ARM specifically is not going to make the game run on Android; while COH uses OpenGL, it uses a rather ancient version of it that no mobile phone that I know of supports.

 

If there's an OpenGL guru who wants to tackle rewriting the rendering pipeline into modern OpenGL, definitely get in touch. Even if it doesn't immediately result in an Android client, it's an important step to get there, and it will benefit the desktop client as well.

 

just use vulkan 4head

[arcane]

Please make phone players clearly marked so we know not to team with them, lol.

[WanderingAries]

6 hours ago, arcane said:

Please make phone players clearly marked so we know not to team with them, lol.

 

You'll know by the 100% auto-follow and random attack patterns. That and you'll get to see how well their' V2T auto-correct works. :p

[Sarrate]

7 hours ago, Solvernia said:

just use vulkan 4head

 

I'm assuming this is a joke, but in case it's not, I don't think you quite appreciate how much of a difference there is between Vulkan and OpenGL - especially older versions of OpenGL. Developers need to do a lot more work and handle a lot of situations that the driver used to (like synchronization).

 

There are absolutely benefits for doing so, but it's definitely not easy. Also, Vulkan isn't supported on all platforms (like Apple, without something like MoltenVK to convert Vulkan calls to Metal), let alone older platforms (like Windows XP). Then you'd have to start looking into CoH having multiple rendering pipelines which just increases the work to maintain that much more.

 

Hmm, I do wonder what the last version of OpenGL Windows XP even supported... (I know XP is way past EOL, I only bring it up because I have seen posts from people who still use it. So the decision would need to be made to either maintain support or drop it.)

[VinceBlood]

10 hours ago, Solvernia said:

 

just use vulkan 4head

 

As someone in performance engineering, this made me wince.