[Archive 2014] June 2nd 2014

[lou]

This marks the first time I have been able to run the game on a smart phone. It took some tweaking and code adjustments, namely using Gradle which helps ease the deployment to other devices. In the end it now runs and looks great on the android devices.

This is just the early stages, but it's a good step and from now on everything I code, I can instantly test on my actual phone. I want to thank LibGDX which has made this VERY possible for someone like me, who has never worked with android devices before. I did do some work with JavaME, but that as well all know, is pretty much obsolete. I also want to thank Eclipse as it's one of the best IDE's in my opinion, especially with the Android Development plugin, which allows the use of android emulators as well as a way to actively test on a live phone. Lastly I want to thank Android for allowing developers to freely and easily develop and deploy applications for their OS.

Now the biggest issue with programming for a phone is that the resolution changes with each phone. Also, since this is being worked on using a laptop, even though the screen is bigger dimensionally, the resolution is actually smaller than that of today's modern smart phones. That is, smaller screen but more pixels per inch. The official test phone for this project will be the Samsung Galaxy S4. I figured I could use this update to go over the technical specs of this specific phone, to get a better understanding of the platform.


Samsung Galaxy S4

• Device Height 136.6 mm (5.38 in)

• Device Width 69.8 mm (2.75 in)

• Screen Size 5 in (130 mm)

• Display 1920x1080px (441 ppi) Full HD Super AMOLED

• CPU 1.9 GHz quad-core Krait 300 (LTE versions)

• GPU IT tri-core PowerVR SGX 544 GPU

• Memory 2 GB LPDDR3 RAM

• OS Android 4.4.2 “KitKat”

This is by no means a “minimum requirements” thing. The game will still run fine on similar, and even somewhat older phones. I plan to test as best I can the various popular phones, but my focus for the time being is to get it working on this device above to the best of my ability.