Comments on: Porting Galcon using the Android NDK

By: Pieter Greyling

Pieter Greyling — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 15:19:58 +0000

BTW, I have posted a link to this article on the LinkedIn group
“Android Invasion : Resistance Is Futile” at
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=3277587

By: Pieter

Pieter — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:47:17 +0000

Correction, I meant to say, “But this does NOT deter me from investing development time on the Android platform.”

By: Pieter

Pieter — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:40:21 +0000

Great work and great game! Thanks for the day-by-day technical write-up. It is nice to see such willingness to share real knowledge and experience.

Sadly, I too cannot purchase via the Android market in my country and bought Galcon for the PC ages ago, so I am still playing the game on Windows.

On the reverse side, I am also a programmer so not being able to sell Android software on the Market from where I live is a downer. But this does deter me from investing development time on the Android platform.

Keep up the good work Phil!

By: Zel

Zel — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 15:14:00 +0000

Nice to publish this experience feedback, it might be very usefull for other developpers.
By the way, I’ve been waiting for Galcon for android for a long time!
Exciting time! Thanks

By: Jomskylark

Jomskylark — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 03:52:46 +0000

@PhilHassey Regardless, it seems like a triumph to port it to a whole new platform in a couple weeks.

By: Frode

Frode — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 08:12:30 +0000

Regarding the Market issue, the only way around it currently is to include your own registration/activation system and distribute the apk directly. There are products that do this already (I own a few), but it obviously means more work for you.

I really don’t get Google on this. There is zero technological issue in us paying for apps. Speculation is they want to allow paying via the phone bill, but that seems a weak excuse to lock out entire countries for years.

By: Jon Sangster

Jon Sangster — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:43:29 +0000

I bought this game for the PC and iPhone so far, and now I can’t wait to buy it for my Nexus One!

By: philhassey

philhassey — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 15:55:12 +0000

@digdog22 – yes, Android users will be able to play against iPhone users!

@Jomskylark – I don’t know. I’m not really done yet, since I’m doing beta testing and bug fixing before I release it. So there’s still a few days of work to be done, plus the post-release port work, so it’s really a pretty big job to do a port no matter how you look at it.

@Frode – hmmm, I don’t know if there is anything I can do about that But I do hope the Android store gains greater availability.

@nza – I didn’t port the whole game to Java, but I did have to write a bit of Java code to interact with the system (Audio, video, etc).

By: nza

nza — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 11:03:53 +0000

Fantastic news, I wish more iPhone devs would consider writing/porting for both platforms. I am attempting to learn Java and will read all the above advice with thanks

By: Frode

Frode — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 10:02:29 +0000

It’s a pity Google can’t seem to get their act together and open the Android Market up everywhere. Many countries, mine included, does not have access to anything but free apps in the Market. Based on the Android development entries, it seems there will be no way to purchase Galcon outside of the market, thus I won’t be able to get it.