GemRB app on Play Store seeks adoption

[pelya]

◀ Android port of GemRB on Google Play store seeks a new loving owner, preferably this one ▶

 

The app has an awesome rating of 4.25 ★★★★✮ stars, 65000 installs, and 6000 active users, but was rather neglected lately - it's currently unpublished, still on version 0.7.0, and fails to start on Android KitKat and Lollipop, which can be fixed simply by recompiling it with the latest version of SDL for Android.

 

New owner must be caring, have good reputation in this community, and have a Google Play developer account.

 

If you wish to adopt this app, please send me your Google Play dev account email, and your Google Wallet transaction ID, from $25 you've paid to register an account.

 

Adopting this app bears certain risk of the app being suspended from Google Play, because of similarity to the official app, and repeated app suspension might lead to termination of your developer account.

 

Google can suspend it even for the app screenshots being similar to the official app, so you might have to replace them with fanart.

This happened to one of my apps recently, which was an Amiga emulator, and it happened because of one screenshot of one ancient Amiga game, which got re-released on Android.

[lynx]

Hey, nice of you to pop in. We transitioned to SDL2, which among other things also supports android and ios natively by now. Somewhat experimental GL and GLES renderers were added by Beholder last year and we're slowly working on making performance better.

 

The main problem is that we lack android people. The build is almost automated (android/), but even getting people to just produce apks has proven difficult.

 

Screenshots could be replaced with some from iwd2 or pst.

[pelya]

Okay, good to know. I did not hear from Beholder for like 2 years, I suspect he might have got a life.

 

Did you implement your own data downloader for BG2 demo and other data files?

 

Also, how much do you think Beamdog releases impacted relevantness of GemRB? I think they'll release Planescape Torment in a year or two.

[lynx]

Yes, he's busier now, but recently popped back in for a bit. Highly unpredictable.

 

There is currently no data downloader or preconfiguration dialog (just a tiny autoconfig+extractor in android/GemRB.java). Ios has its own, but the long term plan is to reimplement it, so we can use the same thing for both if possible (unlikely). The limit to one process is a real bummer there.

 

BD is working on a midquel (taking place between bg1 and bg2). I doubt they'd ever tackle pst or iwd2, since it would require a lot of engine work, even if they manage to get approval. Not really viable.

In the end, I think the net effect for us is positive, especially since ees revived the wider community. But they'll stop being maintained someday too and we'll be without any competition again.