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fellow android gamers, think before you buy

funkybuddafunkybudda Member Posts: 6
edited December 2013 in Android (Archive)
hello all,

please consider this before you spend your money, to make a purchase after over a year of delay a hand the (edit) they have fed us is really telling them that "hey, it's ok to make the android gaming community wait, we will always start the iOS version first and delay the android version."

I rather not see a BG3 on android than giving money to these guys.

Post edited by Cuv on

Comments

  • solodsolod Member Posts: 58
    Funkybudda...it's a game. There definitely are more worthy things to get angry about. I Agree with moorkook, go play Avadon or Tales of Illyria on your tablet until it comes out.
  • davemodavemo Member Posts: 147
    Why do people take their platform so seriously such that releasing late on Android is a personal affront? Is there anyone who doesn't know that big game titles usually release first on iOS?

    The developers need to make payroll. That means prioritizing what is most likely to sell. When the iOS port turned out really buggy, they were forced to continue to dedicate resources to making it acceptable for those who already purchased the product.

    Sometimes things don't turn out the way you would like. Learn to manage your frustration instead of villainizing people.
  • davemodavemo Member Posts: 147
    Btw, I buy more games these days on Android than on iOS (Humble Bundle!), so I am not an iPad user trolling.

    I expect that if I got BGEE for my device (Nexus 7) it would be buggy. Device is already buggy.
  • DrLunarDrLunar Member Posts: 1
    Low sales of the Android version isn't going to signal to developers that they should make Android a higher priority in the future. Quite the opposite. It would only reinforce the idea that iOS is where the money is.
  • MrDaaarkMrDaaark Member Posts: 7

    hello all,

    please consider this before you spend your money, to make a purchase after over a year of delay a hand the (edit) they have fed us is really telling them that "hey, it's ok to make the android gaming community wait, we will always start the iOS version first and delay the android version."

    I rather not see a BG3 on android than giving money to these guys.

    Programming on iOS is a breeze and fairly straightforward. There is one current version of iOS, and everyone's hardware is the same.

    Programming anything on Android is a nightmare for several reasons.

    Every version is Android is unique because every vendor takes the original source code and makes their own version of it. A name like 'Android 4.3' is meaningless, because they are all different, vendor specific forks of Android 4.3. So everyone is running a version of the OS that is an island onto itself that has it's own unique bugs and quirks.

    A lot of little things that should have been standardized since the first release of the OS, even simple things, like a standard system font and theme you could rely on, did not exist until Android 4. An app author has no clue what things will look like on any pre 4.0 device, and lots of people are stuck on old android versions, because their vendor hasn't made an update available. This means that every vendor has their own solutions to these problems, and how your apps looks or behaves on any random device is anyone's guess.

    There are different processor types being used. They are completely different and techniques that works on one may not be very efficient on others. This often leads to multiple builds having to be created and maintained.

    The graphics chips are very different. They have different performance profiles, different drivers (which can't be updated, they are a part of the OS, which is locked at whatever your vendor provided) each with their own bugs, and at times, vastly different characteristics.

    The programming environment and the way the OS handles memory aren't optimized for high performance games. The workaround (converting game to a C-library callable from Java) is clunky, time consuming and stupid.

    Android is a worst case scenario for a programmer because you don't have the info you need, you can't control anything, and often can't see or understand or reproduce a reported bug unless you actually have that specific device that it is occurring on. Every week more android devices come out that all have their own bugs, features and quirks. Fixing a bug on one device will break it on many others.

    This is the reason that Android has a lack of quality software, and Android versions of major apps are way behind on features and functionality compared to the versions running on other OSes.

    ****Don't blame the Android Baldur's Gate team for the above. They have their work cut out for them.***
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