Android port

[Gig]

Do you mean, instead of a classic "yellow dot" option, I should see a cardboard icon in the main screen? I can't find it.

Also, I still have those problems connecting with servers.

Baseoa/pak7-android.pk3 is dated July 2015... maybe Google Play did not update the application correctly?

[Gig]

Uhm... trying to install the update on a second phone... this one, for some unknown reason, had downloaded 437 MB from Google Play. About this, the two phones swapped their behaviors than what they did for August 2015 update (http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=4577.msg52818#msg52818 - http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=4577.msg52836#msg52836): I mean that back then, Phone1 did a big download and Phone2 did a small one... this time, Phone1 did a small download and Phone2 did a big one.  
Now, on Phone2 I can see the "cardboard" option in the GUI (lower left corner of main screen), and it actually splits the screen in two if enabled. And can connect to servers.
Then, it's really Google Play which did NOT update correctly the game on Phone1. Who knows how many people are experiencing the same issue?


Spending some words about Google Play Games instead...
I have Google Play Games app installed, but I never used it. Launching it asks to create a Public Google+ Profile, which is something I'm not interested into... I don't like social networks a lot, I don't like other people know which game I am playing, when and how... As an example, I never played a Facebook game.
However, it is possible to close that screen ("cancel") without creating the Google+ Profile.... and then, it asks for which Google Account to use for Google Play Games. I can guess it should be safe enough, however for the moment I declined also this (by pushing "back" physical button, as there is no "cancel" button in this second screen), and the app exited.

Currently, the only app using Google Play Games I have installed is "Angry Birds Transformers"... each time I launch the game, the "Google Play - Create Google+ Public Profile" screen appears, and so i "Cancel" it... then the "Select account for Google Play Games" screen appears.... up to some months ago, it included a "cancel" button too, but after some update, now one has to use "back" physical button to continue to the game without logging in with any account (which is something I would define as "trying to trick the user" like Microsoft is making it unintuitive/difficult to avoid the "upgrade to Windows 10" when you are searching for updates in Windows 7). So, for the moment, the game is saved only on my device and not backed up to the cloud... however, I lost interest in the game (they are many months they do not add a new stage to play, they are still the same stages. And the game is stil buggy...), and will probably not reinstall it anyway when I will perform an hard reset on the phone. I don't know what would change in the game, by using either a standard Google Account or a Google+ Public Profile. I'm not even sure if accessing with a google account would actually keep my existing "local" progresses or I would have to start from scratch...

As you can see, at first impact Google Play Games is something which appears a little too much invasive for my taste. So, having "Create Google+ Public Profile/Select account for Google Play Games" pop up everytime one would launch OpenArena, would be really annoying. IMHO, it should be clear since the description that the "Google Play Games"  access would be optional, and it should show its popups only if the user enables an option for it in game settings, not automatically.
And would Google Play Games access be required only for HOSTS or also for CLIENTS wanting to play on those GPG host servers?

About the "not possible to host an internet server in IPv4", do you mean because one would probably use it wifi instead of 3g, and this would be behind a NAT, which would need to be appositely configured on router/firewall to work, right?

But, how well would work servers hosted by a cell phone over a wireless connection? Maybe in that case, the server browser shoud have a way to tell apart those "temporary" server from real servers?
By the way, about servers... the link for who wants to run an Android OA server you have in the Google App description brings to a .tar.gz, so I can guess it's meant for setting up a Linux OA server, right? Not Windows, not Android (however, for Android clients), right? Maybe this may be stated more clearly in the description.

[pelya]

Yes, the .tar.gz archive contains a dedicated server with game data, it also has a Windows executable though. Also, I'm the only one hosting dedicated Android servers currently, so let's forget about this option for now.

Yes, I'm talking about NAT, even if your internet provider gives you a public IP address you will probably also have a WiFi router with NAT, and most users won't know how to forward ports.

Google Play Games provide you Google servers to play games between clients behind NAT. Both server and client must enable it to play. The ping could be big or small, but it will still be lower then playing on a server in Ukraine from US.
Google' own guidelines tell to stop bothering user with a login screen if it was declined several times. Most games wil always ask you on start. I think in OA I'll bring up Play Games screen only when you're creating a public server, or trying to connect to a server which uses Play Games, and the regular IPv4 connection fails.
Google was rambling a lot lately how they won't even show login screen if the user logged in successfully the last time, I don't know how will that work if you don't have Google+ account. Some games require both Google+ and Play Games, maybe that's what Angry Birds tried to do.

3G actually has an advantage in US, because three biggest US mobile operators provide you IPv6 by default.

I've tried installing an old version and updating it through Google Play, and it worked okay, except that it did not delete the .obb data file that Google Play downloaded, and now the game takes 900 Mb instead of 400.

[Gig]

I've tried installing an old version and updating it through Google Play, and it worked okay, except that it did not delete the .obb data file that Google Play downloaded, and now the game takes 900 Mb instead of 400.

But how to fix a "broken" update as it happened to my phone1? Do I have do uninstall/reinstall? Wait for next update? Or could the initial launcher program detect an incorrect version of pak7 and replace it?

[pelya]

Simply uninstall and reinstall. Or clear app data.

[Gig]

I just uninstalled and reinstalled. This wiped out my game settings. For some reason, after downloading the game from google play, it also downloaded the pk3 files from the SDL launch menu...

VR mode works, apparently also in firstperson mode.

By the way, do you have some idea about the reason why lately the "awaiting gamestate" can last A LOT, when trying to connect to a server?

[pelya]

That's because the servers will typically start a new round and switch to a new map when you connect. When they have only bots, they end up in the game-over menu for most of the time for some reason. If there were more human players you wouldn't see it that often.

[Gig]

Hi! I installed the update (version 0.8.8.32).
On my phone1, again it looks like Google Play did not update pak7-android.pk3 correctly: when playing, I still often spawn looking at walls, and the cgame.qvm is dated 13/03/2016.

On my phone2, it has been updated correcly (cgame.qvm is dated 20/03/2016). There, it looks like in firstperson I do not spawn facing a wall anymore. However, sometimes I spawn looking down (not completely down), for some unknown reason. It looks like it happens in both "tap to shoot" and "shoot button" modes (I haven't tried in other modes).

On phone1, the game data files seem to be installed in the "real" sd card (/storage/extSdCard/Adnroid/data/ws.openarena.sdl/files/baseoa), while on phone2, game data seems to be installed in a "virtual" sd card named /storage/sdcard0 (/storage/sdcard0/Android/data/ws.openarena.sdl/files/baseoa), while the physical sdcard seems identified as /storage/sdcard1 there. I did not use "Move to sd" on any of the two phones.

[pelya]

I've fixed that other bug with wrong aiming after spawning in first-person mode.

The game selects the SD card which has more free space, during it's first start.

You can now start public online servers from the game. This will hopefully decrease reliance on my own dedicated servers for playing online, also there are still no dedicated servers for Android version in US, where the most players are.

I could not be assed to use Google Play services (also they are closed-source), so I've rolled out my own half-baked UDP hole punching solution, using my home server as a packet relay for initiating connection. So if you have symmetric NAT and no IPv6, or when I have internet outage at home, you cannot host online server and cannot join servers started by other players.

You can also change in-game brightness/gamma, independently from your Android screen brightness, I've bumped default r_gamma to 1.5 for new installations, because the game always was too dark, at least on my phone. This was the easiest fix, I've just enabled the slider in UI, and Q3 engine already supports software gamma.

[Gig]

Before I update, is there there some kind of log/debug I can activate, to check in case it would not update the pk3 correctly again?

[pelya]

You can run 'adb logcat > log.txt' on your PC. ADB itool s available from http://developer.android.com

[Gig]

You can run 'adb logcat > log.txt' on your PC. ADB itool s available from http://developer.android.com

This stuff?
https://developer.android.com/studio/command-line/adb.html

Do you mean the steps I have to follow are:
- download (1187 MB) and install Android Studio on my PC
- enable "debug usb" mode on the phone and connect the phone to the PC
- enter somewhere in the PC (OS command prompt? Or does Android Studio have its own command console?) the command 'adb logcat > log.txt'
- download OpenArena update from Google Play
- check the log file on PC, and send it to you if necessary.
Right?

It looks like there are some Google Play apps (e.g. SysLog) to read logcat, but unfortunately it looks like they need root.  

[pelya]

Roughly yes. You only need to download SDK installer and platform-tools package, Google has been marketing their new shiny Android Studio lately so they hid the link to the old installer somewhere. You can also download ADB for Windows from any random site on the internet.

On Ubuntu or Debian, you just do like 'sudo apt-get install android-tools-adb'.

You cannot capture logs via an app since Android 4.0 or 4.1, for security reasons.

[Gig]

Okay, I downloaded the ADB Kit (adb.exe) from http://adbshell.com/downloads (525 KB).

I ran the command and updated the game on the phone from Google Play. It took some time to download "additional file" for OpenArena, however it did not report any error.
Then I opened OpenArena (the SDL launching screen briefly mentioned "no need to download") and exited it.

Brightness slider in OA GUI (which should have been enabled by your latest update) is still unavailable.
If I check in /storage/extSdCard/Android/data/ws.openarena.sdl/files/baseoa, pak7-android.pk3 last modify date does not seem to be changed. Also the .qvm files inside it seem to be dated back to March.
/storage/emulated/0/Android/data/ws.openarena.sdl/files folder seem to be empty.
/storage/emulated/legacy/Android/data/ws.openarena.sdl/files folder seem to be empty.
/storage/sdcard0/Android/data/ws.openarena.sdl/files folder seem to be empty.
It does exist a file named /storage/emulated/0/Android/obb/ws.openarena.sdl/files/main.8828.ws.openarena.sdl.obb which is 0 KB and is dated today.

According to Android Application infos, OpenArena is version 0.8.8.33, ad uses:
- Total 444 MB
- Applications 15,58 MB (where are they?)
- SD Card applications 0,0 B
- Data 20,00 KB
- SD Card data 429 MB

Plus 20,00 KB cache.
"Move to SD Card" button is available.

The phone (which is the one I mentioned as "phone1" in this previous post) is a Galaxy S4 running Android 5.0.1 (latest official Samsung firmware).

Can I send you my adb log file to the email address you specified in Google Play page?
Near to the end of the log, it looks like something interesting could be

Code:

 SS_ART_lib [I]: permission is absent: /data/app/ws.openarena.sd-1/base.apk

and later

Code:

Java.io.FileNotFoundException: /data/app/ws.openarena.sdl-1: open failed: EISDIR (Is a directory)

[pelya]

Please send me the log. The app should always update pak7-android.pk3, that's something not normal.
You can always uninstall and reinstall it, if you get tired of update issues.

[Gig]

Please send me the log. The app should always update pak7-android.pk3, that's something not normal.
You can always uninstall and reinstall it, if you get tired of update issues.

Email sent.  
I already uninstalled and reinstalled the game at least once, but the update issue returned at the following update. Uninstalling and reinstalling 450 MB each time to get an updated 600 KB pak7-android.pk3 file is a bit uncomfortable.
Also, who knows how many people may have the same problem, but do not notice or do not notify? Google play does not mention any error, and reports the version of the app as the current one.

[pelya]

Thanks for the logs. I've found the bug - my code did not clear files from external SD card during upgrade. I've tested it on my own phone after freeing some space on SD card, and the bug was there.
I've fixed it and pushed another update, so looks like you'll get another 450 Mb to download, sorry about that.

I am using Google Play 'expansion file' to store OA data, and Google Play downloads that expansion file as often as it desires. On some phones it does not download it, on other phones it always does.
Google docs tell that you cannot touch that expansion file, however OA extracts it's data from there, and trims the file to 100 bytes to save space, that probably explains why it is always re-downloaded. I did not come up with a better way yet - downloading this file from external server on the first run made a lot of complaints from users, who don't have stable WiFi or install the game then try to play in in a subway or on a bus with no internet access.
At least the data won't be stored on your internal storage after it was trimmed.

OA was also accepted for Android TV distribution, I don't remember if I told that already. Android TV is pretty much like OUYA, but slightly less miserable, maybe it will not die so soon. And they still require borders around screen edges, so your app will work okay on shitty TVs which cover sides of the screen with plastic. I don't think you can buy such TVs for 10 years already. And you can disable that border in SDL options, but you need to know where to look.

[Gig]

I didn't know about OUYA having large debts and being acquired by another company past July. I was about asking if the OUYA version had those respawn problems you fixed lately and so if we had to try to contact Gamesboro to tell him to update OA OUYA edition with your fixes...

I do not know much about Android TV. Does it just use Google Play or has it got another market?

About the new update, I will try it in the next days, and will let you know the result.

[pelya]

Yes, Android TV uses Google Play, however Google employees manually review and approve each app before you can install it, so it must be above certain quality guidelines. They did it the 'Apple way' for Android TV, to battle the onslaught of poor quality apps you see everyday on Google Play, and I think it's okay, since Android TV is a totally new platform, and most of the time you must modify your app to look okay on the big screen.
They also require several usability features, such as pressing Back key shall always go back to the previous dialog, and close the app if you hit Back several times.
In most games (OA included) Escape/Back key just opens and closes game menu, but does not exit the game. So, now you can quickly close OA on Android by hitting Back 5 times in a row, from the game or any submenu, it may not be very convenient on phones, where you can hit that key accidentally, but eh, it feels more comfortable to me on my Samsung phone, when I can hit Back instead of pushing down that big physical Home button.
All in all, I've re-used OUYA code, and I only had to make yet another icon and background graphics of different size, because they could not re-use that 512x512 icon they already require from you on Google Play, lazy bums.

[Gig]

Downloaded, and it looks like it works, this time!  

It downloaded the whole package again, but if I understood correctly, the alternative would require wasting 450 MB more of space on the device, right? Or maybe another alternative could be having OA accessing data in the downloaded file directly, without exploding its content to the storage? But I can guess that would prevent users from accessing game folders to manually manage them... Uhm, it looks there is no optimal solution...

Changing brightness slider now works, but (unlike what happens on PC, IIRC), it looks like the change isn't immediately effective, but requires a vid_restart, right? Then, I can guess it would be good to make the "accept" button appear if you modify it (like it happens when changing graphics options such as Asinotropy. But attention, currently, modifying options under "graphics" and then pressing "back" does UNDO the changes, unlike what happens changing options under "display").

PS: I accidentally ended up in this "QVR" app Google Play page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.drbeef.qvr
It is is a port of Quake 1/Darkplaces engine for cardboard... and I noticed this line in its features:

* Command line params using a text file - create a text file in the QVR directory called commandline.txt and populate with any command line params you may wish to use

Sounds like a nice idea, isn't it?
UPDATE: I see your SDL launch options already allow to specify command line parameters, and that those parameters are also stored for the next time you lauch the app, so everything should be already ok that way... except the fact that it doesn't seem to work: I tried to add +map wrackdm17 there, but the game just brought me to the main screen as usual. Did I do something wrong?

PPS: Do you have a web page with the changelog of each version? Just for curiosity...

PPPS: I tried to switch off/on Change Device configuration --> Video Settings --> TV borders (was enabled by default) and it looks like nothing changed, the HUD still takes the whole screen as usual. Does the option have effect on Android TV only?

[pelya]

Works fine for me yeah it's poorly documented.
TV borders setting has no effect orln regular phones and tablets.
The alternative to 450 Mb updates would be to switch back to downloading data from sourceforge server when the app is launched first time. I prefer to have it on Google Play though, because if the download fails, it's Google fault and not the app fault from the user perspective.
There's no comprehensible changelog, the best I can do is Git commit logs: https://github.com/pelya/openarena-engine/commits/master

[Gig]

Works fine for me yeah it's poorly documented.
TV borders setting has no effect orln regular phones and tablets.

Uhm... what's that "oa" before "+map" in your screenshot?

About tv borders, what about adding "(Android TV only)" or similar to option text?

[pelya]

'oa' is parameter $0, which is ignored by almost all programs.

[Gig]

Okay, I finally got the command line options working, looking at your screenshot again. What seems to be needed:
1) type one random word ("oa" but also "test" or anything else) before actual parameters
2) place every single word in a separate line, with carriage return between them (I haven't tested with more complex commands yet, e.g. those which require " to mark start and ending of a long cvar value)
Example:

oa
+map
wrackdm17

We can't pretend people to GUESS a such thing without any hint...

[pelya]

I agree. I'll make it work the usual way, with spaces, for the first line of input.
If you want parameters with spaces inside,  like +set 'cvar value', you will have to do it multiline way, like

+set
cvar balue

because I'm not adding '' and "" and env vars substitution to my homegrown arguments splitter code.
I'l  add text like 'use new line to separate arguments' to the dialog title. Can you think of a better help text, which won't be too long?