Dawn approached stealthily

With the Solstice nearly upon us, I thought I’d post an update on the status of the Android version.

Firstly, to be clear, I’m not going to have a final release ready for Friday. I apologise for any disappointment that generates, but I think it’s for the better.

Over the last two weeks, in between getting everything ready for the release of the game, Website, Documentation, Press Release, and other final flurries, I’ve been trying to get the Android version working. The good news is that it does. I have it completely playable on my Nexus 7. The problem is with a) the sheer number of resolutions that need to be supported, and b) not actually knowing what those resolutions are. I noticed for the first time when I ran the app on my Nexus 7, that the expected 1280×800 became 1280×736-ish because of the Nav Bar. This means that although I have a list of a large number of resolutions to support, I don’t actually know what they really are. Making the resolutions support having to be even more robust than I expected.

This on the whole, it is. However I have been having issues with the landscaping, which I have struggled a little to resolve. This is partly because I don’t fully understand the process not being a 3d programmer, and the landscaping being 3d maths. Landscaping was originally written for 4:3 aspect resolution and I’ve had to tweak it for others. Sadly, Mike would have dealt with this in two shakes of a Skulkrin’s sleep frost.

I’ve nearly resolved the issues, it’s working on most of the test resolutions I’m trying, just a little tweaking to do. But even if I have it finished by tomorrow, there is no way I can release it into the wild without more major testing.

Hopefully what I can do, is make a version available by Friday that can be side loaded onto Android devices for a quick test against as many real devices as possible, with a view to releasing on Google Play the following week if all goes well.