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Greenfoot back
DonaldDuck
DonaldDuck wrote ...

2012/1/5

Greenfoot Mobile App?

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DonaldDuck DonaldDuck

2012/1/5

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Would this ever be possible? Probably not on the iDevices, but maybe Android phones?
davmac davmac

2012/1/5

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The answer is a definite "maybe" :) I assume you want the ability to run your scenarios on the phone, not run Greenfoot itself. Even with this there are some technical challenges to overcome. It is something we are thinking about, but not something we've actually started to work on.
Morran Morran

2012/1/6

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I think Greenfoot is just a library of code in java. And since Android phones run java, the games you make on Greenfoot should work. How to interact with the game may be a problem though. There aren't any touchscreen controllers on Greenfoot like there are for the mouse or keyboard (or Kinect). I think you would either find some simple ones from the internet, that you would then hope mesh with Greenfoot, or you would write your own.
davmac davmac

2012/1/6

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Morran, the problem is that Android phones don't exactly run Java. The virtual machine on Android is called dalvik and it isn't exactly the same as a Java VM, also the runtime library is different (though parts of it are the same). So although the language you use to write Android apps is essentially Java, the full Java library is not available; and Greenfoot uses parts of the Java system libraries that aren't available on Android.
darkmist255 darkmist255

2012/1/6

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Yeah, Android had some legal issues with Oracle didn't they?
davmac davmac

2012/1/6

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Oracle attempted (or is attempting) to sue Google for patent infringement, yes, though in regards to Android support I'm talking from a purely technical perspective (I haven't followed the legal particulars all that closely).
Morran Morran

2012/1/6

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So does that mean that no scenarios could run on an Android (as in, the Java stuff Android omits is absolutely essential), or does that just mean that some nice features of Greenfoot would be gone (as in, mp3 files or jpeg images won't get read)? In other words, how bad is the damage, and how much Greenfoot code would need to be modified to run simple scenarios?
davmac davmac

2012/1/7

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All the graphics, sound and input handling would need to be re-written. Also, the GreenfootImage method setColor(...) takes a java.awt.Color parameter, whereas the java.awt.Color class doesn't exist in Android (getColor, getColorAt are affected); similarly setFont(...) requires a java.awt.Font which doesn't exist on Android. And that's just the stuff I can actually think of right now :)
darkmist255 darkmist255

2012/1/7

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So with trial and error you can probably get some stuff to work, but you won't have as much flexibility.
Royalblue64 Royalblue64

2012/1/7

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It's interesting, I remember I asked about this myself. I wonder if Greenfoot will make an Android-compatible version. That would certainly be nice for all of the game makers with good ideas and limited ways to get them out there.
darkmist255 darkmist255

2012/1/8

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I think if an Android-lover who's great with Java joins the community (and gets to know the staff), we can probably expect a little something :D.
Royalblue64 Royalblue64

2012/1/8

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darkmist255 wrote...
I think if an Android-lover who's great with Java joins the community (and gets to know the staff), we can probably expect a little something :D.
Alright, that's it, I'm teaching my dad Java :P He's working on Android app making, and he's learning how to right now so that he can set up some real apps that could make good money. In the past he has done a lot of coding but the majority is in C/C#/C++ so he doesn't know how to code Java. Maybe I'll get him to know the staff eventually :)
toytttttt toytttttt

2012/1/8

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Why not iPhone? I heard iPhone dosen't support programming languages, but Xcode is java, isn't it?
iau iau

2012/1/8

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Believe me, there's Android lovers in the Greenfoot team already. But don't underestimate the amount of work involved in producing an Android runtime for Greenfoot scenarios. As well as the problems in the scenarios themselves (which Davin talks about above), there's the Greenfoot standalone runtime itself. That's about 170 classes many of which also use Java API features which aren't present in Android. My best estimate is that it's about 6 months to a year of development effort.
davmac davmac

2012/1/8

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I heard iPhone dosen't support programming languages,
If it didn't support any programming languages, there would be no way to write software for it. It supports at least Objective-C, C, C++ and Objective-C++.
but Xcode is java, isn't it?
No, Xcode is an IDE. And, just because you write some code with Xcode doesn't mean it will run on an iPhone.
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