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Anamir

iPad/iPhone port request

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Hi, can any of u experts in Mac OS port a version of this client to iPhone or iPad.. maybe sell it in Apple store or put it in Cydia for jailbroken devices .. thanks.

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Sure. Let's see ... the Apple iPhone developer program is $100. A base model iPad is $499. Thankfully I already have a Mac to do the programming, otherwise that would be another couple hundred dollars.

 

Seeing how I am unemployed/self-employed/stay-at-home dad, I should have plenty of time.

 

Okay, so maybe my reply is a bit sarcastic. I have supported the OS X builds for about 5 years now. I have been thinking of doing the port, but since I do not have an iPad, I have not moved to fast. The iPhone port would be not practical (think of how small the text would be or how much it would fill up the screen), unless a top-down version was made (something I chatted with Entropy about once).

 

Care to donate to the cause? There is a Paypal donate link at the bottom of my website: http://www.0ctane.net/EL/el.html

Care to send me an iPad?

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I am experienced also with OSX/iPhone programming, but I think there is lot of gameplay-related issues yet so porting wouldn't to be easy (maybe for iPad there are better chances but the game itself is not designed for being used on multitouch displays).

Edited by csiga

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I am experienced also with OSX/iPhone programming, but I think there is lot of gameplay-related issues yet so porting wouldn't to be easy (maybe for iPad there are better chances but the game itself is not designed for being used on multitouch displays).

I have been chatting with Entropy some more. Maybe we can get a little EL iPhone/iPad development team together. Still, buying an iPad is a pretty hefty investment when there is no monetary return. Ahh, FOSS.

 

Yes, there are many issues. SDL and OpenGL ES are the two I am most concerned with. I don't see multitouch being to great an obstacle since much of EL is point-and-click actions. Implementing multitouch on top of EL's input scheme might be interesting.

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Well.. just forgive my ignorance about all those inconvenient.. i just thought it would be nice to have this port. Never thought anyone would be so offended by a request. I apologize for that.

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Well.. just forgive my ignorance about all those inconvenient.. i just thought it would be nice to have this port. Never thought anyone would be so offended by a request. I apologize for that.

Yes, if I had an iPad, I would like to play EL on it. I finally got to play with one at BestBuy today. I am not offended by the request. I am just trying to point out that it is not a trivial investment of time or money for little other than a "thanks". That being said, I am still investigating the possibility of a port. I already have SDL running under the iPhone/iPad simulator.

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I have been interested in this possibility as well. I was thinking of getting an iPhone and seeing what all I could do with it. I hear the iPhone uses OS-X which is a slimmed down version of Mac OS-X. I also got the impression that you might be able to run debian packages on an iPhone, but I suspect this might be after hacking the phone's software. My problem is that I Do Not have a mac and probably won't unless I get that little cube thing for sitting next to my tv. Unless I do, I would need to telnet or ssh into a mac somewhere or send someone instructions or something.

 

If we overcome the OpenGL ES limitations or at least define what those limitations are, it would probably help quite a bit to porting this to a number of different things. Hopefully, we will at least be able to use Poor Man settings.

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I have been interested in this possibility as well. I was thinking of getting an iPhone and seeing what all I could do with it. I hear the iPhone uses OS-X which is a slimmed down version of Mac OS-X. I also got the impression that you might be able to run debian packages on an iPhone, but I suspect this might be after hacking the phone's software. My problem is that I Do Not have a mac and probably won't unless I get that little cube thing for sitting next to my tv. Unless I do, I would need to telnet or ssh into a mac somewhere or send someone instructions or something.

 

If we overcome the OpenGL ES limitations or at least define what those limitations are, it would probably help quite a bit to porting this to a number of different things. Hopefully, we will at least be able to use Poor Man settings.

 

Here are some thoughts related this port:

- the iPhone applications can use a limited memory segment while running, its around 12 megabytes of allocated memory as maximum

- iPhone and iPad both uses powerVR GPU, OpenGL ES is just a layer above that. If you wants to get performance and low memory consumption, especially on the limited iphone, all of the textures and models should be converted to a hardware friendly compressed format, since the graphics card using the shared memory we will have lot of problems with the textures

- OpenGL ES now support shaders but they are very different than the ones what the EL client using

- sdl-image and sdl are partially ported to, but sdl-net is not, also if you are using sdl, all the acceleraor, gestures and multitouch events still unhandled

- only players jailbreaked their iphone/ipad can benefit from a port, because Apple wouldn't accept to put the client to AppStore (unless its based on their frameworks provided - porting can be done with making a wrapper for the corresponding API functions to emulate SDL API)

- a simple client using the server protocol would be better instead of porting, but in long term its hard to keep track the changes with the official EL client

- for audio, fortunately OpenAL is supported

- stream based network traffic only valid via wifi in most of the countries (the 3G providers filtering almost everything in the path of communication)

Edited by csiga

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I must say, I recently purchased an iPod touch and I am really amazed by the 3d graphics and games that are available on it, and with the speed that they respond. I keep looking at all these different games, but I keep looking for one exactly like EL but it's not there :D

 

With features like pinch zooming in and out, I think the smaller features such as chat would not be much of a problem to see, although from my understanding it might be easier to do the top down approach.

 

I think in the long run though it would be very benificial to the EL brick economy, imaging buying some rosts or a thermal serp with your iTunes card - it would make it a lot easier for some people to be able to spend the RL $ on shop items available in game.

 

I do see how it would require an initial investment for development, but the market available I think would make it worth the effort, and hands down it would beat any of the current games available for the iPod/iPad.

 

That being said, I just reached 100 days smoke free, but am moving into a nicer house so haven't been on much, but I should be back and hopefully making some contributions in the very near future :devlish:

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