Qt on Android

A category for whatever! Can be Mudlet-related or offtopic.
Caled
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Re: Qt on Android

Post by Caled »

I think there are two main reasons why someone that already MUDs will want to mud on a tablet. One is obvious - because their tablet has become their main and most mobile computer. Not for work or other intensive tasks, but for leisure time. That might not hold true for those with gaming rigs, but for those of us that have found a tablet to be comfortable, going back to a desktop or even laptop, seems a chore.

The other reason is the (theoretical) fun involved in touchscreen GUI driven combat.

What sucks though, is that in order to justify the cost of a win 8 tablet, it needs to replace my laptop. Which means $1000 for something that is only going to be "ok" at being a pc. It will also be pretty heavy for a tablet.

A shame when $2-300 can net me a tegra 3 android tablet which does have the processing power for mudlet, if only it could be compiled for it.

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Vadi
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Re: Qt on Android

Post by Vadi »

Install Ubuntu on your Android? That's a thing now: http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android

It's not "compiled" though. It's more like "designed and a ton of work put into making it work on a completely different OS platform", unfortunately enough. Would be easier for you, as a user, to install the OS that best suits your tablet needs...

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KaVir
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Re: Qt on Android

Post by KaVir »

Silvine wrote:A problem with a graphical interface raises its ugly head when you come to creating a trigger. The GUI user is totally unaware of the telnet feed and it can be a very painful experience trying to explain to someone who neither knows or cares what it is, how to make a trigger that works. This can cause great frustration and ultimately cause many to just give up, and if you can't trigger then you are beat before you start.
I don't see why a GUI would make it any more difficult to create a trigger. If anything, a GUI can make the process easier, as you can make the interface more user-friendly.

However I also don't view it as a big deal. If players are forced to create triggers before they can play the mud, then that is the real problem - a badly designed game. A GUI can make the mud more accessable, but it can't fix a broken or sloppy design.

Silvine
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Re: Qt on Android

Post by Silvine »

Well as an example
Say you wanted to trigger of a tell
Silvine tells you, 'hello'
The GUI will most likely transform this into a tabbed chat window looking something like
Silvine: hello
So the GUI user would trigger on
Silvine: hello
But should trigger on
Silvine tells you, 'hello'
And trying to explain the position of the , ' etc to someone when everything you tell them gets transformed can be annoying to say the least especially if you throw a wildcard into the mix.
This is a trivial example but one you will meet time and time again. Of course you could design it out but you could do anything with enough time and money.

It's not about making a trigger to be able to play a mud it's about simplifying it and getting more from the game. You can play from telnet directly so why does mudlet etc exist?

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KaVir
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Re: Qt on Android

Post by KaVir »

Silvine wrote:Well as an example
Say you wanted to trigger of a tell
Silvine tells you, 'hello'
The GUI will most likely transform this into a tabbed chat window looking something like
Silvine: hello
So the GUI user would trigger on
Silvine: hello
But should trigger on
Silvine tells you, 'hello'
And trying to explain the position of the , ' etc to someone when everything you tell them gets transformed can be annoying to say the least especially if you throw a wildcard into the mix.
This is a trivial example but one you will meet time and time again. Of course you could design it out but you could do anything with enough time and money.
A GUI may or may not do something like that. Mine doesn't, and I certainly wouldn't want to add it for a smartphone client, the screen is far too small to start splitting messages off into another window.

However it's also not something that's necessary to play, and not something newbies need to care about when they're starting out. It's the sort of customisation players do once they're more experienced with the game.

If you want to make it easier for players to write triggers, then explaining it in-game is really not the best way, you'd be better off providing instructions on the website.

There are two main ways for some data (such as chat messages) to be displayed in a separate window. The first is by using pattern-matching, in which case the message will appear in both the main text window and the separate window - this means you can write your own triggers normally, just by capturing data from the text window. The second approach is by sending the data OOB, in which case it won't appear in the text window at all - but that is actually easier to handle with triggers, particularly in Mudlet.

And at the end of the day, if the player finds it easier they can still disable the GUI when writing their triggers. That doesn't mean you shouldn't bother creating a GUI at all though.
Silvine wrote:It's not about making a trigger to be able to play a mud it's about simplifying it and getting more from the game.
And a well-designed GUI does exactly that.
Silvine wrote:You can play from telnet directly so why does mudlet etc exist?
You can survive by drinking only water, so why does beer exist?

And yeah, not everyone likes beer, but that doesn't mean it's not worth brewing!

Silvine
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Re: Qt on Android

Post by Silvine »

I was just describing how the one you quoted works.
I think we are agreed then, design it out.
Good luck with your GUI

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KaVir
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Re: Qt on Android

Post by KaVir »

I linked to the Bedlam client because it's a real example of the sort of GUI a smartphone can offer. When it comes to the networking side of it, I strongly disagree with plamzi's approach, and have told him so on several occasions. I consider it archiac, he's chosen to completely ignore a number of advances made by modern mud clients.

And I've already got a Mudlet GUI, what I was discussing here was creating one for a smartphone as well - but I don't know of any public clients capable of doing that yet (although the next version of BlowTorch may do).

Silvine
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Re: Qt on Android

Post by Silvine »

I know you have a GUI already, I followed the posts at the time they were written.

Caled
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Re: Qt on Android

Post by Caled »

Vadi wrote:Install Ubuntu on your Android? That's a thing now: http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android

It's not "compiled" though. It's more like "designed and a ton of work put into making it work on a completely different OS platform", unfortunately enough. Would be easier for you, as a user, to install the OS that best suits your tablet needs...
Ubuntu for Android is slick. There is even an installer for nexus 7, though it is only meant for developers.

Correct me if I am wrong, but even with Ubuntu running on an ARM device, Mudlet will still not work, as it too will need to be compiled for ARM, which ought to be possible with the Qt project, but may not depending on the dependencies and version of qt that mudlet prefers?

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Vadi
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Re: Qt on Android

Post by Vadi »

I have not investigated this - it is something along those lines - but my gut feeling is that it would be very certainly possible. Ubuntu by default compiles it's software for armel and armf (sp?) architectures, and while the builds didn't finish, when I looked at them, they got quite far. Think it got stuck on some yajl issue which might or might not be fixable easily.

edit: or maybe Chris already got it working? Wikipedia says Nook Color uses an ARM cpu... either way, I'm quite certain all software we've got will work on an ARM.

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