[SUGGESTION] Xonotic Android

Here is what makes Xonotic on Android an awesome idea:

1. Android players will be grouped on their own servers, separate from the regular servers. They will play on equal footing, just like any other game for the phone.
2. Gamepad support will lead to a console-alike experience.
3. Advertisement. People will stumble upon Xonotic as a free-to-play shooter on their phone, and then quickly migrate to PC, to get even better at it.
4. Advertisement. A free-to-play game in the Android Market is a huge asset. Even if it sucks.

Has anyone done work on the client or just a build it for Android? It would be great if I could pick something up.

There are a lot of problems with building it on Android. First of the problems is touchscreen controls, and it's mainly one of the greatest reasons, why it isn't possible yet. Because not every person on mobile platforms has gamepads (not even speaking about using it), also it's hard to play on mobile platform with basic PC keyboard, looks absolutely weird. But maybe someday this problem will be resolved. Another kind of problem is to publish game into Google Play. Of course, it has some restrictions, and developer's fee to publish it there.
But idea is awesome, maybe really, someday it will happen to us, and maybe a lot of audience will come here. But for this time, I think, we have an awesome, cozy community for nowadays. We don't know, and can't imagine, which kind of community we get as a result of this actions.

This is already mentioned before.
It would be better to check the things before asking something relevant.

Instead creating a thread, you could talk in this thread about this:
https://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=4392

I paid the developer fee for the Android Market 10 years ago. It was 10 Euros. There are no more fees than that.


Submitting an app has become a lot more tedious and fiddly nowadays. You have to fill out tons of forms and pass tests to make apps save for kids and what not.


Since the massive target audience for games on Android *is* teenage kids, I think we/me should really put some conscious effort into getting the game ready for very low age groups (like disabling gibs/blood and better so even chat). It is not really a difficult thing, but like you pointed out there are other issues to work out as well. And adding this to that .. in the end it becomes a bit too much work to comfortably deal with.


I think really, #3 and #4 of my points are where the magic happens. It doesn't matter so much if the game is actually playable. What we really want first and foremost is to get the name "Xonotic" listed in the Android Market. In my mind, even a makeshift work-in-progress build for Android would be highly desirable.


I am no market researcher, but more than 80%-90% of anything nowadays is done via mobile, not PC. Adults also play games, but kids are the real target audience. They still discover tons of new things in life and make new decisions, which adults mostly do not. A lot of kids don't have their own PC. Even young adults may no longer have PCs and not even notebooks.


Gamepads are very rare on mobile, statistically speaking, because everyone has a phone. It is like everyone has a hammer at home, but when you are serious about home improvement you also have all the other tools. It is the same for people (i.e. teenagers) being serious about gaming. From what I have heard, a lot have gamepads but there is an extreme shortage of free games which support them. That is because free games on Android mostly are barely viable products designed to show ads to kids.


On-screen gamepads are not that different to physical gamepads. You can easily and comfortably play classic games with them, like NES or Doom. It might be true that the entire content in modern FPS games on mobile is specifically designed to accommodate for the poor input method that is the touchscreen, and Xonotic might be an extreme case. But still it is not like it can't be played with a gamepad, be that on-screen or physical. And if everyone is disadvantaged the same way, it doesn't matter anymore.


I think Xonotic on mobile has a lot going for it. Playing DM on a tiny screen is crazy and fun. It is not just some dummy bullshit game to sell you ads.

I think it is most important that we (me?) could pull this off.

This is already mentioned before.
It would be better to check the things before asking something relevant.

Instead creating a thread, you could talk in this thread about this:
https://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=4392

I think the thread is too old and the content is also very mismatching. It is very technical, mostly just about testing a certain build that someone unknown(?) made of the Darkplaces engine, but without Xonotic. Too bad most of the links are dead. This seems to be something entirely different.


If I have something to reply there, I will. It looks like a good lead.