[Ohrrpgce] Android port

[James Paige]

On Fri, Jun 07, 2013 at 09:52:21PM +1200, Ralph Versteegen wrote:
> On 7 June 2013 04:18, Simon Bradley <neworiginal at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 4:44 PM, James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Thu, Jun 06, 2013 at 04:16:32PM +0100, Simon Bradley wrote:
> >> >    On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 3:22 PM, James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com>
> >> >    wrote:
> >> >
> >> >      On Thu, Jun 06, 2013 at 01:28:10PM +1200, Ralph Versteegen wrote:
> >> >      > On 6 June 2013 02:19, James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com>
> >> > wrote:
> >> >      >
> >> >      > > For people who don't have their own domain name, we can provide
> >> > a
> >> >      > > namespace like com.hamsterrepublic.ohrrpgce.games.gamename but
> >> > I
> >> >      would
> >> >      > > also like to allow people to specify their own namespaces, so
> >> > for
> >> >      your
> >> >      > > own game, tmc, you might choose to use
> >> >      > > com.castleparadox.tmc.foresttemple or maybe Mogri would want to
> >> > use
> >> >      > > com.slimesalad.phantomtactics or Harlock might use
> >> >      > > org.crithit.spellshard
> >> >      >
> >> >      > Is there any point to allowing customisation of namespace? I
> >> > think it
> >> >      > just has to be unique, eg a com.hamsterrepublic.ohrrpgce.games.
> >> >      > prefix.
> >> >      > I see that the Android documentation says "To avoid conflicts
> >> > with
> >> >      > other developers, you should use Internet domain ownership as the
> >> >      > basis for your package names (in reverse)."
> >> >
> >> >      Well, from a making-things-work perspective, no, there is no point
> >> > to
> >> >      allowing people to specify their own namespaces, but from the
> >> >      perspective of people signing their own games and uploading them to
> >> > the
> >> >      google play store, I would like to give people that option,
> >> > especially
> >> >      for people who are going to sell their games rather than post them
> >> > as
> >> >      free apps.
> >> >
> >> >      Someone can still sell their game with a name in the
> >> >      com.hamsterrepublic.ohrrpgce.games.* namespace, but by doing so the
> >> > are
> >> >      trusting me as the owner of that domain to behave honorably about
> >> > it :)
> >> >
> >> >    The simplest way would presumably be to make the ohrrpgce a library
> >> >    project and wrap it with the new namespace, I think:
> >> >
> >> >    package com.newnamespace.myrpg;
> >> >
> >> >    public class MainActivity extends com.ohrrpgce.games.OHRActivity
> >> >
> >> >    etc.
> >> >
> >> >    I believe that would work. That seems to be how these examples I am
> >> >    looking at are set up.
> >> >
> >> >    (I am actually working on an Android project right now for my day
> >> > job, but
> >> >    it's been a while and I'm a bit rusty. And someone else has already
> >> >    written it; I'm just changing it.)
> >> >
> >> >    Cheers,
> >> >    Simon
> >>
> >> Hmm... If that is the only way to change the namespace, then it sounds
> >> like having the Android SDK installed and recompiling the project would
> >> be required. Maybe it isn't worth it if it is that much trouble?
> >>
> >> Even though I want people to be able to customize the namespace of their
> >> game, I guess that should be a low-priority goal :)
> 
> Don't forget that while allowing the user to select the namespace is
> low-priority, packaged .apks still need to have unique namespaces,
> otherwise Android will consider them all as the same program.

Oh, yeah, good point. That is really important. And I guess the 
difficulty of doing com.hamsterrepublic.ohrrpgce.games.gamename is no 
different than com.mydomain.gamename so to prevent games from 
overwriting each other, I guess we will have to solve that problem no 
matter what :P

> > Ah, yes. Maybe not ideal. It might be possible to change it with something
> > like proguard instead, in the compiled version.
> 
> There's an additional problem. It turns out that in addition to all
> the Java code, lots of the C code in the SDL port requires the
> namespace to be compiled in too. I have no idea how JNI works, but it
> appears that Java code like...
> 
> package com.hamsterrepublic.ohrrpgce.game;
> class AudioThread
> {
>     private native int nativeAudioInitJavaCallbacks();
> 
> requires an implemention provided by a C function named
> Java_com_hamsterrepublic_ohrrpgce_game_AudioThread_nativeAudioInitJavaCallbacks!
> 
> However perhaps by using Simon's library suggestion we can use a
> separate namespace for all of the code compiled into the .so files,
> leaving just the xml metadata and compiled Java files to worry about.
>
> In order to edit the namespace in compiled Java code we would have to
> modify .dex files (targetting .class files instead would mean still
> having to convert them to .dex and requiring the NDK). Looking around
> a bit I see there are a couple projects like smali/baksmali
> (https://code.google.com/p/smali) for disassembling/reassembling a dex
> file.  It sounds a whole lot simpler to just set up a web server which
> compiles the required java source files with desired on request :)
> 
> Unless creating a single trivial java module which includes everything
> else is enough; in that case smali/baksmali could be practical, or
> even a small edit to the right offset in the file...