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Question about platforms

k8eycatk8eycat Member Posts: 21
in Android (Archive)
Does anyone know which tablets to expect BGEE on? Who can I ask? I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1. Should I look forward to this game or not?

Comments

  • smartroadsmartroad Member Posts: 47
    At the moment no one seems to know what the requirments are. I am hoping the lowly TF101 from Asus will be supported cause thats the one i have!!
  • AristilliusAristillius Member Posts: 873
    I think tf101 will work, they are making ipad1 compatible...
  • k8eycatk8eycat Member Posts: 21
    Looks like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 is not being supported, at least not right away. Don't know why, or what is, beyond the Nexus 7, but that's how it looks for now for Samsung.
  • hazmatzakhazmatzak Member Posts: 9
    For development on fixed but complete hardware like tablets, "supported" likely means actually having one so that they can (a) test it before ship and (b) try to reproduce reported bugs after. But you're welcome to try on something else.

    With PC hardware it's not practical to have even a tiny percentage of available combos, so the abstraction is higher and the expectations are lower. But of course it still mostly works for most people.
  • k8eycatk8eycat Member Posts: 21
    Maybe due to lawsuits between Apple and Samsung they aren't allowed to support Samsung devices if they wanted to support Apple.
  • k8eycatk8eycat Member Posts: 21
    By 'they' I mean Overhaul/Beamdog. There's probably something in the contract that says Android is okay, so long as Samsung isn't included.
  • AristilliusAristillius Member Posts: 873
    k8eycat said:

    Looks like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 is not being supported, at least not right away. Don't know why, or what is, beyond the Nexus 7, but that's how it looks for now for Samsung.

    How do you know this @k8eycat?

  • k8eycatk8eycat Member Posts: 21
    I emailed Overhaul. They said they weren't supporting it right away, but they might look into it.
  • smartroadsmartroad Member Posts: 47
    I don't see how a lawsuit between the owners of the devices would stop development of the game on one device. There are hundreds of apps and games that are supported on both platforms. I can't see that Apple would be that interested in what is a small backwater game for enthusiasts. It is more likely that there are technical issues rather than legal.
  • k8eycatk8eycat Member Posts: 21
    smartroad said:

    I don't see how a lawsuit between the owners of the devices would stop development of the game on one device. There are hundreds of apps and games that are supported on both platforms. I can't see that Apple would be that interested in what is a small backwater game for enthusiasts. It is more likely that there are technical issues rather than legal.

    I hope you're right. I was starting to feel paranoid, since another game I wanted came out for ipad and android--just not samsung. Even Bard's Tale didn't work at first, they updated later on to include better support for the Galaxy Tab 2.

    I thought Samsung was competetive in the tablet market. I didn't realise that developers found it to be obscure and not worth working with. Their market share must be a lot farther down than I thought.
  • cmk24cmk24 Member Posts: 605
    Based on a twitter post a few weeks back they are having problems getting it to run on tablets with non-tegra chipsets. Since the Galaxy Tab 2 has an intel CPU it will not be supported right away.
  • smartroadsmartroad Member Posts: 47
    k8eycat said:


    I hope you're right. I was starting to feel paranoid, since another game I wanted came out for ipad and android--just not samsung. Even Bard's Tale didn't work at first, they updated later on to include better support for the Galaxy Tab 2.

    I wonder if it is more to do with the graphics being used by Samsung rather than the CPU? Does Google need to come up with a "DirectX" type API for Android? Would that make it easier to program for? Then the device manufacturers just need the driver for their graphics and the programmers just program for that API rather then worrying about the underlying hardware.
  • cmk24cmk24 Member Posts: 605
    From what I understand about tablets (admittedly not much, so i might be wrong about this) is they don't have a dedicated graphics processor, so all graphics are computed using the CPU, so a graphics issue is a CPU issue.

    Google does have an OpenGL API for android, and at the moment I think tegra chipsets have better drivers then the intel ones. I am sure the Galaxy Tab 2 is powerful enough to run the game, but the drivers are not optimized to do it. It is like how the windows drivers for intel GPUs are having problems running BG:EE but the open source linux drivers can run the game just fine on the same hardware.
  • smartroadsmartroad Member Posts: 47
    Most, if not all, tablets have GPUs. The Terga2 and 3 have combined CPU/GPU SoC (they use a GeForce unsurprisingly!). ARM have Mali GPU with up to 8 GPU cores.

    It's interesting that there are problems with Intel chip sets on the desktop version and a tablet that runs Intel...
  • Allen63Allen63 Member Posts: 53
    Intel is known for great CPUs, poor graphics hardware, and worse graphics drivers -- that they usually don't fix (amazingly bad customer support in this day and age). Intel stuff is for web surfing, office tasks, and watching streaming video -- games are a "craps shoot".

    On the other hand, nVidia makes Tegra -- and graphics (particularly gaming graphics) is their major selling point. Tegra is in ASUS Transformer 10" tablets and in the ASUS manufactured Google Nexus 7 -- but not Nexus 10 (though the 10 has a good non-Intel chip that did very well in limited gaming tests).
  • k8eycatk8eycat Member Posts: 21
    Huh. Then I probably would have been better off before my Acer Iconia bricked. I hope they'll let me try it and not block me from buying it. My Samsung is pretty good for gaming so far.
  • KubusKubus Member Posts: 15
    edited December 2012
    cmk24 said:

    Since the Galaxy Tab 2 has an intel CPU it will not be supported right away.

    There are no Android tablets with Intel CPUs on the market. All of the current devices are ARM-architectures, not x86 or x64. Intel does not have an own line of the the former type.
    smartroad said:

    ARM have Mali GPU with up to 8 GPU cores.

    ARM is an architecture, not a product line or a manufacturer. You are talking about Samsung's Exynos. And there is no octa-core out yet. Why do you even write something when you obviously got no clue on the subject?
    smartroad said:

    It's interesting that there are problems with Intel chip sets on the desktop version and a tablet that runs Intel...

    Read above.

    The range of hardware they have to support on Android is kinda high. I think they learnt their lesson from the launch of Windows version and try to make it work for everybody without issues, that's whats pushing the release further away.
  • k8eycatk8eycat Member Posts: 21
    I imagine they're probably going to support the top five most popular Android tablets and then trickle out a few more if they find they make enough money on the first few. My guess would be Nexus, Asus, Microsoft, Kindle... Hmm. That's only four. What else?
  • KubusKubus Member Posts: 15
    k8eycat said:

    I imagine they're probably going to support the top five most popular Android tablets and then trickle out a few more if they find they make enough money on the first few. My guess would be Nexus, Asus, Microsoft, Kindle... Hmm. That's only four. What else?

    Asus is the manufacturer for the Nexus 7, so down to three. Microsoft does not produce Android tablets, down to two. And Amazon isn't "real" Android, so basically Beamdog is working for Asus now :D
    Dunno, Acer? Or maybe they get the Exynos problems sorted soon.
  • k8eycatk8eycat Member Posts: 21
    Well, they say they're working on Tegra-based Android systems. So let's see... Asus, Nexus, Acer. Those are all I know with Tegra-based systems. There must be more, though.

    They say they want to eventually sell it through the Amazon App store, so that *might* re-include Kindle. :)

    So why bother saying it's coming out for Android when they could have just said it's exclusively for Tegra machines? Android is a pretty diverse market. They get a lot of people's hopes up by using the inclusive "Andoid" name.
  • cmk24cmk24 Member Posts: 605
    k8eycat said:


    So why bother saying it's coming out for Android when they could have just said it's exclusively for Tegra machines? Android is a pretty diverse market. They get a lot of people's hopes up by using the inclusive "Andoid" name.

    I think they said Android because in the end they want to support all devices, but to start with they are focusing on Tegra-based systems. Once the bugs are worked out they will expand the support.
  • k8eycatk8eycat Member Posts: 21
    One can hope they will expand their support, but something cynical in me says they won't bother. But I suppose it would be in their best interests to try, as that might be a better business model and lead them to more work if they can show they can work out issues for a lot of systems.
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