The old iPhone port thread

General feedback and discussion of the game.

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KylePoole
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Re: Wesnoth for iPhone out now!

Post by KylePoole »

Hey shadowmaster, great to meet you! As you might know, the iPhone port does not support downloading user-made addons, because I must manually optimize several things such as portrait and story image sizes, pre-cache the wml, etc. So the plan is to introduce the user-made content in each update, and I chose "Invasion from the Unknown" because it is one of the most popular campaigns. I think you are being too hard on yourself, it is consistently voted as people's favorite campaign! :D I will double-check that I am using the latest version, and although I don't think any changes will be made to the campaign, the project page for the port is at http://wesnoth.kylepoole.com
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Yojimbo252
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Re: Wesnoth for iPhone out now!

Post by Yojimbo252 »

Those update notes look awesome Kyle. Really looking forward to it.
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yufra
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Re: Wesnoth for iPhone out now!

Post by yufra »

Kyle, have you thought about releasing a free version of the iPhone port with a single campaign? I think that this would help garner broader appeal outside of the current Wesnoth community, as people frequently want to test out a game before buying the full thing. The Tale of Two Brothers campaign would be a good one to ship for free. I would like a chance to test how the game works on the iPhone before buying it, even though I know I enjoy the Wesnoth gameplay. Cheers!
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Re: Wesnoth for iPhone out now!

Post by barefootguru »

Hi Kyle,

Good to hear work continues and an update is on the way—it should address my concerns about speed and crashes.

I do have an issue with Wesnoth phoning home on startup: both from a privacy standpoint and I'm on a prepaid plan—so pay for network traffic by the byte.

Wonder if future plans could include giving the game more of a native feel for the iPhone rather than a port. e.g.: the buttons are small and fiddly, and scrollbars shouldn't be needed—should be able to scroll the whole page.

The other niggle is the current game state isn't saved when hitting the home button.

Cheers
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KylePoole
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Re: Wesnoth for iPhone out now!

Post by KylePoole »

A free version with one campaign has already been approved, but I delayed the release until the next update due to the performance issues...

The "phone home" is for application usage statistics and crash report sending, to the flurry.com service. It is pretty common in iPhone apps, and the data size is extremely small. Of course no identifiable information is sent, not even your device ID. Just stats like how long you play, what device you are using, country, etc. I didn't realize it would generate a connection prompt or anything like that on iPhone (I have a touch), I thought it would just fail silently if there is no network. Please confirm....

I do plan to make the UI more iPhoney in the future, however it is tricky to overhaul the lowlevel gui code, so this is slated for a future release.

The next version does have autosave when you hit the home button or the game is interrupted by a phone call.
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TreizeCouleurs
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Re: Wesnoth for iPhone out now!

Post by TreizeCouleurs »

Umm, maybe I'm a little out of the loop here, but can I ask how this relates to the GPL?

Aren't you essentially profiting off the artwork+code+music+design that others have generously donated in their own time? So when I submit a music track that I've spent countless weeks working on to benefit the community, completely at no cost to anyone else but myself, why do you see money from this? What about those that have developed those awesome little sprites and portraits? What about those that have spent countless hours developing code?

Sure you've put the effort in to create a port, but would you even have *anything* to port without everyone else's generous contributions? Why do you, and Apple, get to reap money from something that I, and many other people have generously donated in our free time on the assumed knowledge that it would stay free.

People submit material, and add to Wesnoth because it's something they enjoy, and they like to give something to the community. Isn't this like really kicking all that in the gut? It's nice to know that someone else is making a dime off my hard work.

I'm sorry if there's something I'm not getting here, but as per my current understanding, I find this infinitely insulting.
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Re: Wesnoth for iPhone out now!

Post by Dave »

TreizeCouleurs wrote:Umm, maybe I'm a little out of the loop here, but can I ask how this relates to the GPL?
The port complies with the terms of the GPL. The GPL enables people to charge money for distribution. It requires that the source code is made available, among other things, and this has been done.

I have always been happy for people to profit from Wesnoth as long as they do so within the terms of the GPL. In fact I think it is a good thing that people are able to make money out of a GPLed game. If I didn't want to allow things like this, I would have chosen a different license for Wesnoth.

David
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TreizeCouleurs
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Re: Wesnoth for iPhone out now!

Post by TreizeCouleurs »

How can you even apply GPL to art or music, how can one supply a "source" for say a music track. These are not being submitted at the moment, isn't this in violation of the GPL? Something is very amiss here. Wouldn't a CC type license be much more appropriate?

Besides my angry rant, credit where credit is due, and I atleast commend the dev for pouring money back into the main Wesnoth development. Running servers and what not ain't exactly cheap.
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Re: Wesnoth for iPhone out now!

Post by Dave »

TreizeCouleurs wrote:How can you even apply GPL to art or music, how can one supply a "source" for say a music track. These are not being submitted at the moment, isn't this in violation of the GPL? Something is very amiss here. Wouldn't a CC type license be much more appropriate?
Well, none of these questions are really relevant to the iPhone port at all. The iPhone port treats art and music the same way as any other Wesnoth distribution medium.

If you want to discuss the application of the GPL to art and music, I suggest opening a new thread. This topic has already been discussed plenty though, you could do a search on it.

David
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barefootguru
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Re: Wesnoth for iPhone out now!

Post by barefootguru »

KylePoole wrote:The "phone home" is for application usage statistics and crash report sending, to the flurry.com service. It is pretty common in iPhone apps, and the data size is extremely small. Of course no identifiable information is sent, not even your device ID. Just stats like how long you play, what device you are using, country, etc. I didn't realize it would generate a connection prompt or anything like that on iPhone (I have a touch), I thought it would just fail silently if there is no network. Please confirm....
If WiFi is on the data is sent over that. If not it's sent over the cell network. I'm hopping in & out of apps all day, I don't want to be charged every time I do so. The desktop version of Wesnoth has an option to collect stats, maybe this should too?
The next version does have autosave when you hit the home button or the game is interrupted by a phone call.
Cool.
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Yojimbo252
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Re: Wesnoth for iPhone out now!

Post by Yojimbo252 »

Just wondering what the status was on the update? Has it been submitted to apple yet?
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Iris
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Re: Wesnoth for iPhone out now!

Post by Iris »

KylePoole wrote:I will double-check that I am using the latest version, and although I don't think any changes will be made to the campaign, the project page for the port is at http://wesnoth.kylepoole.com
At least the version in your repository there seems to be 1.14.0 (based on the contents of /trunk/res/data/campaigns/Invasion_from_the_Unknown/dist/VERSION) while my last official release is 1.14.2.

Fortunately 1.14.0 does contain the most important text revisions. Later versions contain graphic updates, a new portrait from kitty for an enemy boss, some changes in the story content and animation fixes. There is also a series of patches in wesnoth-umc-dev's SVN which fix several unit types that were never intended to be affected by plague, although I have not made a new release yet out of laziness. :P
Last edited by Iris on December 3rd, 2009, 8:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Author of the unofficial UtBS sequels Invasion from the Unknown and After the Storm.
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JemDaddyO
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Re: Wesnoth for iPhone out now!

Post by JemDaddyO »

KylePoole wrote:So the plan is to introduce the user-made content in each update, and I chose "Invasion from the Unknown" because it is one of the most popular campaigns.
This is good news. I would love to see somebody develop a campaign tailored to the iPhone (read: quick playing and more horizontal than vertical maps).

Based on what somebody said about Northern Rebirth being extremely slow even on a PC, I think the campaigns that are known to be slow should be avoided.

Also, if you can't make the whole unit recall screen scrollable, can you at least change the size of the scroll arrows? They are impossibly tiny and the bottom arrow is right above "Disband Unit" which makes me paranoid. I've been playing through Northern Rebirth and getting tons of units which makes the list extremely hard to navigate.

Also, I know there is an option to turn off the saving of the scenario replay. Does this help performance or just prevent a file from being written out? It would seem that capturing the data about the actions taken would take up processor and memory and an option to reduce that might help a good deal. Does anyone know?
Last edited by JemDaddyO on December 3rd, 2009, 11:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Aethaeryn
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Re: Wesnoth for iPhone out now!

Post by Aethaeryn »

barefootguru wrote:If WiFi is on the data is sent over that. If not it's sent over the cell network. I'm hopping in & out of apps all day, I don't want to be charged every time I do so. The desktop version of Wesnoth has an option to collect stats, maybe this should too?
Probably the most fitting compromise would be to have it send data by default (most people won't mind), but have an option to turn it off (some people do obviously mind).
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nazgul42
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Re: Wesnoth for iPhone out now!

Post by nazgul42 »

Aethaeryn wrote:
barefootguru wrote:If WiFi is on the data is sent over that. If not it's sent over the cell network. I'm hopping in & out of apps all day, I don't want to be charged every time I do so. The desktop version of Wesnoth has an option to collect stats, maybe this should too?
Probably the most fitting compromise would be to have it send data by default (most people won't mind), but have an option to turn it off (some people do obviously mind).
Or, you could have it only send the usage data if it is on a WiFi network.
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