Hello fellow Ubporters,
I'm the developer of the aquarium simulation "Sakawochi" that I published on the Open Store today.
Sakawochi is a real-time aquarium simulation, similar to a Tamagotchi where you need to regularly take care of your fish to keep them alive. You can also buy decoration for the Tank to make it more pleasing visually.

In this thread I'd like to collect your feedback on the game.
Does it run well on your device? Are there any issues or spelling mistakes?
I'm also eager to read your suggestions for new features.

Hey guys.
I have been looking around the internet but couldn't find anything about the recent state of convergence mode.
There is a video on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwBf75bHgkE) from mid 2016 where Marius showed the FP2 connect to a monitor via ethercast dongle. Strangely it is hard to find any information about this feature.
So I have 3 questions:

• Is the convergence mode currently in a "usable" state?
• According to (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/DisplayCasting) there are only 2 Miracast dongles that are known to work. Is this article still up to date?
• What is the priority for the convergence mode in on the roadmap?

I really enjoy your QA videos. It is nice to see the faces behind such a project like Ubuntu Touch.
You are doing really awesome work.

@advocatux said in Sakawochi development thread:

• Are you going to release a xenial version?

Of cause, but I haven't yet switched to xenial yet. So I wouldn't be able to test the game myself. I tried to switch to Xenial via the UBPorts installer but I'm affected by this bug.

• Are you going to open source your app at some point in the future?

To be honest I haven't thought about which license to use until I had to pick one when I uploaded the game to Open Store. But yes I'd really like it to make it open source some time in the future.
Unfortunately GDevelop5 (the game engine I'm using) saves the whole project inside a single json file which makes it pretty inconvenient for more than one developer to work on it. Splitting the project into single files is on the roadmap but I think it will take some time until it gets done. (GD5 is still in beta currently)

• How can we translate your app to other languages. Now it seems is only in English, French, and German.

I could create a sheet or json template and upload it here. But adding a language currently is a lot of manual work. If there is demand I could rewrite the localization logic to read json files for additional languages.

• When you say «You can also buy decoration for the Tank», are you talking about virtual money only or about real cash too?

It's just virtual money. You earn it by buying young fish, nursing it until it grows up and selling it for a higher price.
I'm not a fan of in App purchases for virtual currency or Ads that break the players privacy.

I intend to publish the game for Linux, OSX, Windows and Android on Itchio and Gamejolt on a pay what you want basis next weekend (if I find the time).

GDevelop5

(Beta56 at the time of writing)
Website: https://gdevelop-app.com/
License: MIT
Language: JavaScript, Visual code blocks
Games made with GDevelop: Ovi, Sakawochi

GDevelop is a full fledged MIT licensed HTML5 Game Engine that uses Pixi.js under the hood. The gamelogic can be created with logic blocks (no coding skills necessary) and JavaScript.

Limitations

• I couldn't get the acceleration/motion sensors working. But this might as well be an issue with the rights management of Ubuntu Touch (adding "sensors" to the apparmor file didn't work)

Main Features:

• Scene editor
• Animations
• Physics system
• Pathfinding
• Integrated sprite editor
• Integrated sound generator
• Predefined behaviours (Jump’n Run, Top down movement, Drag’n Drop, etc.)
• Export targets: Web, Desktop(Windows, Linux, MacOS via Electron), Android (via Cordova), Ubuntu Touch (via Clickable HTML template)

Step by step guide:

GDevelop5

• Create your game project
• Choose “Export” in the file menu
  
  Choose “Local folder” and hit Export
  

Clickable

• Install “clickable” (see installation instructions on the Wiki )
• Create an empty directory for your click package
• cd into the directory and run clickable create in the terminal to generate an empty project.
• In the menu choose [4] html – HTML App and fill in name, description, license etc.
  
• In the generated project folder delete everything inside the www folder
• Copy the whole content of the folder where you exported your game from GDevelop5 into the now empty www folder.
• Run clickable build in the terminal
• Run clickable click-build to generate the click package
• You can find the generated click package inside the folder named build.
• Optional: Run clickable review to check if the package is valid
• You can now install the click package on your phone via UT Tweak tool
  for testing via the "Hamburger menu" in the top left and "System" settings.
  
• When you are satisfied with the game upload it to OpenStore

This thread is mend for discussions about Game Engines that support Ubuntu Touch, presented in the sister thread called:
List of Game Engines supporting Ubuntu Touch

If you have any questions concerning one of the engines, feel free to ask about them here.

I have been prett lazy lately, but please don't tell anyone ok?
I promise to get a new version out in the coming weeks.
The seahorses were nearly finished when I started my "break". ^^
Nice to read, that at least one person is still playing it.

@matteo said in Sakawochi development thread:

I tried to install your game on my BQ Aquaris E5 Vivid version but it doesn't seem to work. What I see once launched is a white window, where from time to time I can have a quick glance at the game environment, rotating the phone screen, but then suddenly it disappears again flashing several time and bringing back the white window.

Hi matteo, thank you for your kind words.
Unfortunately I don't really know how to fix this since I can't reproduce the bug on my FP2.
With a little luck the new QTWebengine based browser that will be included with Xenial fixes this. (But I haven't yet build a package for Xenial)
Sakawochi is an HTML5 App that runs offline in the browser.
If someone with a deeper knowledge of the system/browser App knows if there are any log files that might hold some information on this I'd be very thankful.

@advocatux said in Sakawochi development thread:

You can add a donate button in your app too.

Good idea, that should be easy to implement.

I think you can include all the gettext stuff to generate the necessary files for translation inside your app but I can't explain you the how-to (sorry). In the OpenStore group or in the App Devs group someone can help you with that.

I found a javascript version for gettext on Github but I'd rather include it into GDevelop than just my App. Need to see how much efford that would be. The json approach would be faster to implement I think.

BTW I'm interested in translating your app to Spanish mainly, but I'm sure other translators will be interested as well.

Cool, I'll let you know when I finished the localization logic.
This is very much appreciated.

Thank you for your offered help. I'll let you know when I'm ready to publish the translation files but It will take some time. Looks like I need a dedicated credits page
I might have found a solution for the flickering issue, I'll create a test build later this week.
What do you think about the pace of the game? Do you think the fish grow fast enough? When feeding them about 2x per day it should take between 2 and 3 weeks for them to grow to their maximum size.
Again, thank you very much for your feedback

This Thread aims to make it a little easier for game developers to find the right tools for creating games that run on Ubuntu Touch.

If you have already uploaded a game to Open Store or you just found an Engine or Framework that works, please post it here in this thread with the following Information:

• Name of the Engine/Game-Framework
• Link to its website
• Screen shot of the IDE (if applicable)
• Short description (License, programming languages, most notable features)
• Step by step walk through on how to compile a game and turn it into a click package.

Please note that this thread is for presenting Game Engines only. If you have any questions, please ask them in the discussion thread here:
https://forums.ubports.com/topic/1973/list-of-game-engines-supporting-ubuntu-touch-discussion

Cocos2dx / Cocos Creator

Website: http://www.cocos2d-x.org/creator
License: Cocos2dx: MIT / Cocos Creator: Proprietary
Language: JavaScript, TypeScript, CoffeeScript
Games made with Cocos2dx: several but not for Ubuntu Touch

The Cocos Creator IDE uses Cocos2d-html5 under the hood. The engine is widely used in the industry and has lots of features.

Limitations

• At the time of writing there is no official Linux version of Cocos Creator but since it is an electron App the community member "sercand" was able to port it over by extracting the application from the Mac version. The electron version offered for download (1.9.0) is a little outdated by now but it should be possible to "repackage" a newer version of Cocos Creator too)

Main Features:

• Scene editor
• Animations
• Particles
• Tiled Map support
• Physics system
• User interface components and Visual UI designer

Step by step guide:

Cocos Creator

Unfortunately Cocos Creator doesn't run out of the box.
The IDE is missing libvips which needs to be compiled / installed first
In order to get the IDE running on Linux, you need to follow these steps:

1. Download the unofficial Linux Version 1.9.0 mentioned on this thread:
   https://discuss.cocos2d-x.org/t/successfully-run-cocos-creator-on-linux-and-released-it-as-docker-image/40755/8
   Direct download link:
   https://goo.gl/p5KSAz

2. Install libvips-8.4.2
   Unfortunately the version in my Linux Mint 18.3 repos was too old so
   I had to compile it myself:

   • You can find the compilation guide here:
     https://jcupitt.github.io/libvips/install.html

   • download the source zip from here:
     https://github.com/jcupitt/libvips/releases

   • Install the mentioned dependencies:
     build-essential, pkg-config, glib2.0-dev, libexpat1-dev

     plus these ones in addition:
     sudo apt-get install gtk-doc-tools gobject-introspection swig
     Then run:
     ./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install

3. Run the Cocos-Creator IDE
   The unofficial Linux version can't open a project from the dash board
   so you need to run the dashboard first via ./cocos-creator
   and create a new project.
   The IDE is going to crash when you try to open the project

4. Run ./cocos-creator --path /path/to/my/project
   And it will open the project in the editor ready to develop

5. In order to export your project, choose build from the project menu
   
   In the build dialog under "Platform" choose "Web Mobile"
   
   After clicking on "Build", your HTML5 game gets created in the "build" sub folder.

Clickable

see GDevelop5 for creating a click package.

I'm interested in this too. SDL seems to be the only way to get GPU acceleration on Ubuntu Touch currently. A step by step tutorial on how to set up an SDL project would be awesome.

Not really. Since Love2d depends on SDL2 we'd first figure out how to compile SDL with clickable:

• All dependencies included
• With SDL2 version <= 2.0.7

When upgrading to Xenial we lost quite a few games on OpenStore.
Currently HTML5 games seem to be the only option for game developers, even though there is no WebGL available. The WebStorage is also pretty limiting when it comes to saving games and it also behaves a little wonky. Saved data is sometimes lost after one of the random reboots on FP2.

My questions:

• What is the state of GPU accelerated native games for running them on UT?
• How about including some widely used Libraries like SDL or Love2d into the system image?
  Love relies on SDL and uses LUA as scripting language. The cool thing about it is, that it acts as an interpreter for games written in LUA. The game developer doesn't need to compile anything, just zip their project folder and pass it over to the love2d executable.
• I created a thread about game engines supporting UT here. Maybe you could do some advertising in the Q&A to get a few C/C++ developers on board since all we currently have are HTML5 engines. Unfortunately compiling a game engine for ARM Linux is not straight forward.

I did some adjustments to the rendering code that will hopefully fix the flickering which occurs on some devices.
Please tell me if the game runs better now.
Little incentive: The linked version already contains a new unreleased feature

You can download it here:
https://www.magentacloud.de/lnk/gQk5kuWa

Install it with this command in the Ubuntu Touch Terminal App:
pkcon install-local --allow-untrusted sakawochi.wendigosoft_0.2.9_all.click
(You can later remove it like any other App)

Hi,
I have another question about the browser. In a later Q&A you mentioned that the underlying Chromium based browser engine got an update. Does the Browser-App support WebAssembly now?
This would make porting games from the Godot Engine over to Ubuntu Touch a lot easier.

@mymike said in Add custom starter to App scope:

@wendigo thanks
but why do we need to compile love2d? can't we use an existing armhf love build?
let me know if there are any progress (and maybe how can I help in this), as I'm interested in a love game on UT...

btw, are you also ion telegram, where we can chat easily?

IIRC the armhf build for Raspberry Pi was built for X11 with Mir/Wayland explicitly excluded via compiler flags, but I'm not quite sure. All I remember is that it didn't work.
You can find me on Telegram and Matrix (FluffyChat) under the name: [ a t ]mickey83
Though I'm more active on Matrix.

Version 0.2.10 is now live on OpenStore

Changes:

• Fixed a bug that caused flickering on some devices
• Fish food is now a limited resource and needs to be collected by catching snails, that appear in your aquarium from time to time.
• Reduced price for crabs
• Blowfish now grows a little faster
• New sound effects

Next on the roadmap is a revamp of the localization system that makes it easier to add additional languages.

I wish you much fun!

@advocatux said in Sakawochi development thread:

@wendigo hi, thanks again for your work! The sound of the snails dying is pretty funny XD

I'm glad you like it. It was also much fun recording. Didn't even have to raise the pitch afterwards. ^^

• Question. Once you've read the instructions the first time, is there an easy way to access the instructions while playing your game?

Currently only by resetting the game (which removes all you progress). But I could add a button somewhere that shows the tutorial again. I need to tidy up the settings screen, it gets more and more convoluted. The credits also need a dedicated screen. Need to think about where to put it all.

• Minor issue. I think this starting screen is confusing because it says "Please wait while loading" but you can see it's always "Loading...", and you can press the START button at anytime, and the game starts.

The whole loading screen was only made for Android since I was told that web games only start playing music after the screen was touched. But GDevelop only lets me check if the game is running on Mobile or Desktop. I found a way to read out the browsers operating system via navigator.userAgent or navigator.platform which outputs "Linux armv7l". But I still need to investigate what (if at all) the UT browser App returns when running a local web game.
I think I should rename it on Android to something like "Tab 'Start' to begin".

Version 0.2.11 is now live on OpenStore

Changes:

• Fixed a bug that prevented the activation of the fish food button when only crabs were in the tank.
• Fixed a bug that limited the size bar of fish to about 3/4 of its full size.
• New feature: Earn some coins by collecting plastic waste that floats through the tank.
• Reduced price for decorations.
• Reworked the localization system to make it easier to add new languages

Due to the first mentioned bug which I consider game breaking, I had to push this Update a little earlier than intended.
But at least the background work for the localization has been done.
If you like to contribute an additional language, you can edit the json file linked at the end of this post. (I need to create a repository for this later)
Looks like I don't have permission to upload text files here so please save the text into a file and name it for example "en.json" for English.

Unfortunately the format doesn't support line breaks, so please insert a "\n" manually whenever you want to start a new line.
If it is too cumbersome for you just eyeball it, I can adjust things later.
As a license I have chosen CC-BY-SA. Please stick with it since different licenses for different languages would make things complicated.
If you later intend to edit an existing version of a language file just add a new line (\n) to the "translator" field with your name.

Template file:
https://pastebin.com/M7cPHJci

Wow that was fast. Many thanks for taking the time to translate the game.
See you on the credits screen