Traveller Apps for Android?
- Thread starter Allensh
- Start date
Time, effort and lack of ability to recover costs, which requires negotiating rights with MM. A poll will find the talent is on this board, but you will have to wait for the talent to find spare hobby time to invest, which is scarce in the face of lots of opportunities to get paid by writing other apps.
Difficulties in getting affordable solutions working by hobbyist programmers...
I can do some basic utilities in LiveCode, for example, but I've not been able to get livecode to generate an Android App successfully.
And, as a hobbyist, Eclipse is just a pain.
And then, there's the issue of code signing. Getting the app out there requires it be signed.
thalassogen
SOC-12
You might want to look at T5 Gun Maker (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.jochenLinnemann.gunMaker) and Word Generator Pro (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.jochenLinnemann.wordGeneratorPro). The last one will be able to generate words based on custom languages that you create using the project's web page (http://heldenhaufen.de/Wg/Generator/CreateLanguage).
The portable code for other T5 apps and even MgT SRD-based apps already exists and only needs wrapping into Android activities:
http://heldenhaufen.de/T5
http://heldenhaufen.de/Tx/
If you want to sponsor the creation of specific apps I will listen to your suggestions!
The portable code for other T5 apps and even MgT SRD-based apps already exists and only needs wrapping into Android activities:
http://heldenhaufen.de/T5
http://heldenhaufen.de/Tx/
If you want to sponsor the creation of specific apps I will listen to your suggestions!
This.
Writing a simple script to automate the world generation system is trivial. It's doable in an afternoon. An app to automate the character generation system with no user input is a little more complex because there's more fixed data and branching to deal with. Say a few days. With configurable user options implemented throughout I'd say would take a few weeks full time, double that to polish it up to commercial level.
A ship design app implementing Book 5 or the Mongoose system is a major undertaking. That would take many months of work, and more months to get it to pro standard. That's why there is currently only one in the whole history of Traveller - HGS. I probably spent the equivalent of 9 months of full time work on StarBase, over a period of over 5 years. A big chunk of that was only possible because I was secconded to a client for 9 months to nurse-maid a system through decommissioning and had very little to do, so I spent a fair chunk of that time working on StarBase.
Fully interactive desktop class applications are hard work. To do one on a part-time hobby basis, you have to be prepared to stick at it for years, and devote serious time on a regular basis to get it done. This is why the hobby is full of simple generator/display scripts but the number of fully interactive desktop design apps can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.
From what I can tell about T5 the maker system seems a lot simpler than the old vehicle and ship design sequences. Those might be reasonably approachable projects.
Simon Hibbs
I recommend using Python, PyQt, and Eclipse with PyDev to do programming for computers. Maybe use something like Kivy for programming for phones. Program development is much quicker than using Java or C or anything else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzfhUIa4naY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzfhUIa4naY
Python support on Android is pretty poor. It's 3rd party, and while it runs, it's particularly slow. (Ever run an emulator or interpreter within an emulator?) Python suffers most from being interpreted, rather than truly compiled. This allows for some slick additions, but also limits operational speed.
Android itself is a virtual machine running on top of a linux kernel, and thus an emulated environment. Stable as hell, but not particularly fast. And this gets compounded when running interpreters or emulators.
We're talking about chargens, shipgens, worldgens, mapgens, tradegens, starportgens which are instant.
aramis,
What web browser should I be using to view your http://aramis.hostman.us website?
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Look into Phonegap. It has some flaws/detractors, but for most simple Traveller apps the points are pretty mute (eg: speed, not using phone UI conventions- but that may have changed by now). The advantage it brings is you write the app once and it can be uploaded to a variety of mobile operating systems, including Android and IoS. Ideal for a hobby project to get wide reach for the least effort and repetition (plus you don't have to learn new languages and frameworks for every mobile os).
You may get a better result by writing a dedicated Android app, but quite frankly the community would be happy just getting basic stuff that works (and ideally without having to buy a new phone!).
You may get a better result by writing a dedicated Android app, but quite frankly the community would be happy just getting basic stuff that works (and ideally without having to buy a new phone!).
Thats the core idea behind Phonegap. Plus some wizzy stuff to access common phone functionality, file storage, camera, etc.
It's tested under Chrome primarily.
And having tried running even basic Python code under the SL4A environment, they cease being instant. It's bad. Worse, it's a very old python version.
It's actually quite easy to code in Livecode; it's very hypercard like. The problem was a particular set of versions didn't recognize a valid android development folder. I've been able to generate (but haven't tested) some android stuff under livecode.
I'm playing with Pythonista on my iPad a lot at the moment. It's not exactly fast, but if you keep your expectations realistic it seems like it can do useful stuff. I have the basics of a scrolling hex grid map viewer working, but suspect it'll grind to a stuttery halt when I add worlds and symbols to it. I'm thinking about some ways to optimise that, such as maybe rendering map tiles to PNG for display, and using an invisible layer of hexes as touch targets just for interactivity. It makes for a lot more work and complexity than just drawing directly on the UI view though. Still not sure if it'll be workable but it'll be fun trying.
For basic generator or design apps like HGS, no problem at all. Even on a first generation retina iPad, which is perhaps a little under-powered to drive the display. There are a few apps out on the App Store written using Pythonista already.
Simon Hibbs
EDIT - Sorry, just relaised this is specifically an Android thread. I wasn't realy concious of that when I wrote the above and was thinking in terms of Python/tablets in general.
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Enoff
SOC-13
minivmac and hypercard
I had played around last year about this time with minivmac, a mac emulator that allows you to run the old mac os7 on many other platforms. Here is a picture where I am running it on my windows 7 laptop and a cheap chinese android tablet I have. Funny how minivmac is able to run on android but not ipad, at least the 1st gen ipad that I have. I am running hypercard on both platforms.
Here is a hypercard stack of the Megatraveller Character Generator made god knows how long ago, running on both machines.
Here is a close up of a page in the stack to generate a Zhodani Navy character. I could do several postings with pictures how the stack works and how you can choose to generate all kinds of characters, even batch generate multiple ones outputted to a text file.
When I first started to play around with minivmac last year, things were sort of stuck in the virtual mac. I had no way of importing or exporting things between the virtual machine and its host machine. Since then I've found all kinds of cool little programs that allow me to do this plus copy and past between the clipboard of the two machines.
Here I copy and pasted the several Zhodani Navy characters I batched in the stack right from the minimac machine to my web browser for this posting.
Pretty crazy
I had played around last year about this time with minivmac, a mac emulator that allows you to run the old mac os7 on many other platforms. Here is a picture where I am running it on my windows 7 laptop and a cheap chinese android tablet I have. Funny how minivmac is able to run on android but not ipad, at least the 1st gen ipad that I have. I am running hypercard on both platforms.
Here is a hypercard stack of the Megatraveller Character Generator made god knows how long ago, running on both machines.
Here is a close up of a page in the stack to generate a Zhodani Navy character. I could do several postings with pictures how the stack works and how you can choose to generate all kinds of characters, even batch generate multiple ones outputted to a text file.
When I first started to play around with minivmac last year, things were sort of stuck in the virtual mac. I had no way of importing or exporting things between the virtual machine and its host machine. Since then I've found all kinds of cool little programs that allow me to do this plus copy and past between the clipboard of the two machines.
Here I copy and pasted the several Zhodani Navy characters I batched in the stack right from the minimac machine to my web browser for this posting.
Pretty crazy
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Pretty crazy
I have stacks of old greenbar print copies and 8" floppies of my Classic Traveller characters somewhere. Yes, it can be crazy when compared to now.
Xamarin works
I wrote chargen code in Delphi and C++ about 20 years ago. Xamarin forms gets one a twofer with support for both iOS and Android. Windoze and Mac follows easy from that with the business logic shared by all formats. What's deterred me over the years was the continued changes in the game that would require large rewrites to support each release and the tight hold Marc holds on licensing. Just one old coders 2 bits.
I wrote chargen code in Delphi and C++ about 20 years ago. Xamarin forms gets one a twofer with support for both iOS and Android. Windoze and Mac follows easy from that with the business logic shared by all formats. What's deterred me over the years was the continued changes in the game that would require large rewrites to support each release and the tight hold Marc holds on licensing. Just one old coders 2 bits.
