From what I understand some of the Android problems stem from various ARM GPU vendors really poor driver support, for instance I've read that Nvidia brought their usual drive game with Tegra yet some how Qualcomm's Adreno stuff is pretty damn awful (which is a pain since so many handset's use Adreno).

I'm curious, have you tried developing for Windows Phone 8? Just interested in seeing what you think of it if you've tried it.

no argument here. sorry to hear about the bad reviews.

I love Android. So no.

Yeah the GPU driver problem is really bad, each one handles texture compression differently and the one that works for all devices is really shitty.

Well it is in unity so it is possible but right now the publisher is not looking for a WP8 release.

Yup sucks, I mean they are in the right, if you buy a game and it doesn't work on your phone that is pretty screwed up and deserves a low score. The problem is I want them to play and want them to have the game run and I am just not sure if it is even possible.

Damn, sorry about that. I'm actually in the process of learning some basic Android development with App Inventor (don't laugh) and Java. Please don't tell me I'm wasting my time and should just go learn C# or something.

Java is more widely used since it runs on everything (AFAIK), and C# is extremely similar. Either will do.

Not sure about the technical stuff, but there's no way you can come up with spec requirements for Android? I mean, no PC is created equal and that's how they tell people if they can run a game or not.

The only thing I get in the android dev center is LITERALLY a list of 3000 devices and a check box on if the app will support it or not. I mean I agree it would be really nice to have some min specs out but that doesn't mean people will listen to it. I mean the IOS version does not support iPad1 and we tell people that in the description ( can't tell apple to not support a device only os ver) and people still buy it...

honestly since you will be working natively that may be more compatible. I am using Unity which is a 3Dengine.

@pufferfiz said:

Can't you test on a VM? It's been a while since I fiddled with it, but I remember the Android VM allowed you to pick stuff like the amount of RAM the system had and possibly OS version, things like that.

I want Windows phone to do better so I don't have to Java for Android.. seriously I don't understand why Google pick Java for it.

That would not be an efficient/realistic way of testing. There are literally thousands of Android phones with so many differences that can make it so an app may not run on them correctly (Look at the nightmare that is Samsung's phone lineup. Different versions of what is supposed to be the same phone have different specs. Heck in some cases even what is advertised as the same phone has a different processor based on region). The problem with the Play Store is that it doesn't convey well enough to the user if an application will work with a given device so you get situations like the OP's where it is completely out of his control because people with sketchy phones try and use his app and it doesn't work because their phone is garbage. At least with the iOS App Store, if an app will not work it straight up doesn't let you get it or warns you in advance that it may not work (Usually the former. I have only seen the latter once). But with so few devices that isn't nearly as much a problem anyway.

OP has stated basically exactly why I will never touch Android when it comes to development unless they become reasonable and make things less insane for developers. From what I remember there are a couple restrictions you can place on apps in the Play Store but it isn't anywhere near enough.

Edit: Also, I sound harsh on Google but I am not happy with them right now. They dropped update support for my Galaxy Nexus after less than 2 years after release and with an update they touted as being optimized for older hardware. Seems backwards to me.

As another Android developer, I get what you're saying. It can be a really big pain. I'm more of a native developer, right inside the SDK, so I don't get as much headaches as I imagine you would on Unity. At the same time, this weakness of fragmentation I also think is one of it's strongest points. So a little bit from column A, a little bit from column B...

So you hate Android because the hardware it runs on isn't standardized? Isn't that sorta like Dice complaining that Battlefield 4 doesn't run the same on every Windows machine?

We have a fucking arsenal of phones that we test our software on before releasing (as mentioned, the VM isn't always sufficient) , and granted, it can be a real headache but I don't think Android is to blame.

After learning Java, the switch to C# is a breeze, so I wouldn't say you're wasting your time at all.

I looked at the play store and it has 2 reviews. Maybe you're overreacting a bit? The other games from the company you work for have much better reviews, so give it some time. Maybe it'll go up a bit.

Side Note: I'm not the biggest fan of horror games, but I will say that the game does look really nice!

Diversity in devices is the price you pay for an open system. That has advantages and disadvantages ... thats life :)

@pillclinton: You can copy paste C# code into Java and vice versa and have it running in like ten minutes.

Make it on PC instead. Phone games are so 2011.

You should change the topic title to: Android development sucks.

It's a bit misleading.

Ha you are right

Man the only thing I can think of when looking at the title of this thread is how much Apple sucks. Apple is really a shitty company. Like for real. Utter shit. Vomit,shit and urine solidified into one company.

I dont know shit, but couldnt you just focus development on the top android devices at any given time. Like the Galaxy S3 and S4 would be safe bets among other phones. Of course, I dont know shit.

No you are not completely off base. The problem is I don't have a lot of money to go buy phones, so I can only test on ones I have or am able to borrow. Which is pretty limiting.

I believe that the reason for that is because of the Texas Instruments processors that are in those phones. Texas Instruments gave up on the smartphone processor market and left it a year ago.

I'm not a fan of Android phones simply because from my personal experience, it takes far too long for some devices to get an OS update, e.g. a year, and they often refused to update it after 18 months. That and I don't like giant phones, which Android phone manufacturers tend to think people want - perhaps they do, I'm just not one of them.

so do i

So I was able to cut about 100mb from the game by selectively compressing textures that didn't need it. It helps. But Users will have to cache all that data before playing (if using the google play version).

Are we supposed to know what game you're working on somehow? If not, why does this information matter?

Well I am being disingenuous about it because I don't want to seem like advertising. Because honestly the game doesn't matter. The problem is android and the way google play handles data and how there are a bunch of different devices that all handle texture compression differently.

You should be blaming Unity for not handling the texture compression. That's the whole point of using a third party engine. It should be handling all of the IO.

Open systems there so terrible if only we lived in a communist country and all have the same phone that would be so great !!!

Watch out for Java pitfalls when copying from C#. Gotta move those variable declarations out of the loops if you don't want memory to continually being allocated.

I'm not a developer but I recently came across a report from OpenSignal that was shown off during a presentation from Double Fine and how they're scaling for Broken Age.

You are not wrong, The unity team should take some of the blame. You are right that is why we are using a engine and not writing native code. And even with our pro license I can not access the source code.

On the plus side Kit Kat should help with some of that fragmentation on the software side at least.

Also the play store tells me when i shouldn't get an app, and it's always been right if it says i can handle it, how is that stuff handled? do developers just list specs and the sorting figures it out? do they have to test every device?

Hell a lot of older android phones don't even have access to the play store so I really hope you're not developing for the original Galaxy S or something. I mean on Ios wouldn't you be developing for.... 3-4 phones (maybe 5 now with the C) 2-3 years of ipads, and now 2 years of iipad mini's, possibly Ipod touches as well, that's around 10 devices at any given time in current circulation, do people really get that upset if you don't directly support more than 2-3 Android phones per manufacturer? I mean go with the flagships of the last few years per manufacturer and some other popular models, and everything else is an afterthought. It's not like apple still expects 3GS support or something. Why should Google/Android users.

PS this is all off the top of my head as a tech dork and former phone salesman, I'm sure there's a lot more too it than just that.

Nobody develops for Windows Phone 8.

Like ever.