Stuffomatic

Here is the second step in the port of Andy's Super Great Park to Android. As a reminder, ASGP is a C++ game I decided to port to Android with the help of the NDK and the freshly released SDL 2. I have described in Part I, how I managed to find, patch, build and compile the dependencies of the game. Now it's time to replace the calls to the old SDL API with calls to the new one.

In this part, I will describe the changes I had to do in the game engine in order to get rid of the old SDL API and to replace it with the new one. The note is organized as a progressive description of the modifications, linked to the commits in GitHub. As you will see, updating the code is quite straightforward and no deep changes are required on it outside the calls to the SDL.

At the end of these modifications, the game still won't run on my phone, actually it won't even compile as I'll still have to replace OpenGL direct mode with GLES equivalent and to integrate with some Android behavior (handling touch events, accessing game's resources…). But this will be the subject of another note. So let's go for the migration!

Note: if you are also migrating from SDL 1.2 to SDL 2, I suggest that you read the migration guide on SDL's wiki.

A few months ago, when people asked if I would port Andy's Super Great Park (ASGP) to Android, I answered that I was reticent, especially due to the fact that the preferred language of the platform is Java (which is not the language of ASGP) but also because the NDK was advertised as "Not the best tool for Android, try not to use it!".

To give a quick overview of the game, ASGP is made of 120K lines of C++ code and relies on several external libraries such as Boost, Claw, SDL, OpenGL, FreeType and Gettext. Also, OpenGL is used in direct mode, which is not available in the GLES version. Clearly, I did not want to spent time trying to bring everything to Android. Also, I did not have any Android device.

Then, during August 2013, I decided to jump into the present (by the time your read this, it should be known as "the past") by buying an Android phone, when suddenly the SDL 2.0 was released with official Android support. Hey! Why not spend a day or two trying to run the game on the phone before deciding to do a complete port or not?

So, I started to look at the NDK, I read SDL's Migration guide and Phil Hassey's blog (Phil, I love your banners by the way), and I started to work. Let me tell you how it went…

After almost one year of hibernation, we decided to come back working on Plee the Bear. As you may know, we had to stop because we did not have enough spare time to spend on this project anymore. The project was too huge and we could not see its completion in a foreseeable future, so we went on a smaller game that we could finish in time: Andy's Super Great Park. As time went by, we thought we should refocus on Plee the Bear and free software, but it is clear that we must work on it in a different way.

We have written every aspect of the game in a single document and estimated the amount of time required for each one. The result is that the game can be done in approximately one year with our current team. I am pretty confident about this estimation, since we have already proven that we can estimate our time accurately with our other developments. So, how will we buy our food and pay our loans during the production?

In order to come back on the game without difficulties and not to stop again in a few weeks or months, we decided to launch a fundraising campaign to support the development. Our goal is to receive enough money to stop subsistence work and invest in gaming and free software.

The platform we have chosen is OpenFunding, which is a young crowdfunding website dedicated to free software. The target of the first call is 1112.79 € (approximately $1455) that will be spent to refresh the game toward more recent quality standards and prepare it for the upcoming work. Then we will propose new content for the game, each time with a new fundraising campaign. Please note that the content of the game is predefined and should receive only little modifications as we progress. Thus the donors will for sure obtain a complete game in a foreseeable future. Moreover, the game will be available under the terms of the GNU GPL 2 licence for the code and CC-by-sa 3 for the resources.

If you are hesitant, please note an important functionality of OpenFunding, which is that you will be able to audit the final product to confirm your donation or to take your money back if the work is not well done. Thus, your investment is relatively risk free.

All that being said, it is time to invite you: give some money, it is free!

Here we go, we have finally made our first complete game: Andy's Super Great Park. It took a lot of effort and we are quite proud of the result. Now that the game is available, we are working to put it on variousportals, like Steam (vote for us!), Indiecity and Indievania, and we are preparing the Ubuntu version.

Check the game's page to watch a video, to see some screenshot and to play the demo,