2016-02-21 4:36 GMT+01:00 Ryan Joseph <r...@thealchemistguild.com>: > I’m going to attempt to port a game to Android but I have some questions > about potential problems. Now at least I think building a library and loading > using the JNI would be best but using the JVM could be helpful also (the > entire project couldn’t be compiled though). Not sure which way is best or if > they can be mixed perhaps.
In Castle Game Engine the whole Pascal code is compiled into an .so library (for Android+Arm, though we could also target Android+x86). It is then packaged into an apk, with the activity class set to the "NativeActivity" Java class. You can communicate with the Java code using JNI. In the base version, the NativeActivity (part of Android since Android 2.3) already does a lot for you, and you don't even need to touch the "Java side". For more complicated stuff, you need to write some Java code, and communicate with it using JNI. Of course if you use an engine like Castle Game Engine, you get a lot of help with this:) --- most things are already implemented for you, and for adding your own Java extensions we have CastleMessaginig unit and a "component" system for Android projects, https://github.com/castle-engine/castle-engine/wiki/Android-Project-Components-Integrated-with-Castle-Game-Engine . See http://castle-engine.sourceforge.net/engine.php and download the engine and try it:) You can use the stable release 5.2.0, or the (soon to be released as 5.3.0) version from GitHub on https://github.com/castle-engine/castle-engine . We have a lot of documentation, some Android/mobile specific stuff: - http://castle-engine.sourceforge.net/tutorial_mobile.php (tutorial showing how to write cross-platform game code using CGE --- for standalone, Android, iOS, web browser plugin...) - https://github.com/castle-engine/castle-engine/wiki/Android - how to install Android development environment - https://github.com/castle-engine/castle-engine/wiki/Android-Project-Components-Integrated-with-Castle-Game-Engine - extra Android components, e.g. for in-app purchases or analytics. > > 1) All the file I/O in the FPC RTL is not available so what possible work > arounds are there for loading data from files? Actually, all the IO in FPC works perfectly. You can read / write files just like on any other Unix (although you need to declare appropriate permissions in the AndroidManifest.xml first --- READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE , WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE, otherwise access to "/sdcard/..." files will be restricted). For example, config files are just normal files on Android. You only use a special function to get the proper config file location, but this is done for you by CGE, you just use CastleFilesUtils.ApplicationConfig:) The important thing is that your program data (what you put in apk) is *not* stored on disk as normal files. You need to use AssetManager to read it. With some helpers, you can just open an "asset file" as a Pascal TStream, and then read from there. In CGE, you just use URL like "assets:/some_subdirectory/blahblah.png", pass it to any file-reading function and it will read the file "some_subdirectory/blahblah.png" from your data. More info on http://castle-engine.sourceforge.net/tutorial_network.php . > > 2) OpenGL functions are not available so how can I call into the Android > library? Callback wrappers perhaps? You use OpenGL ES for rendering (version 2 or 3, for modern devices). Pascal bindings are available already in FPC, see unit GLES20. Of course engines like CGE give you more comfortable API for rendering, on top of this. > > 3) I use ReadXMLFile from XMLRead but that uses file loading internally so is > there anyway to load XML on Android? As said above --- you can still use these functions to read / write regular files on Android. To read XML in your apk data, you need to get a TStream from AssetManager, and read / write XML using this stream. This works perfectly:) We use XML files in CGE a lot, and we have helpers like URLReadXML that reads TXMLDocument from an URL, and URL can be "file:/..." or "assets:/..." (or even http or others, see the mentioned tutorial about networking:) Regards, Michalis _______________________________________________ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
