As Vulkan crashes immediately on launch on a lot of Android devices (for around 15% of users that commented on the Android beta on Discord).
The previous usage of the OpenGL backend in the shortcuts was incorrect, as this backend is not strictly available on Android and the GLES backend should be used instead, as this is also what is displayed in the graphics settings.
The minimum supported API version must be specified when building the native libraries, otherwise this may cause linking errors when launching the app.
The minimum API level is increased to 24 (Android 7.0, covering 97.2% of usages) because:
- Vulkan is only available from API 24+ on ARM64 and x64.
- curl only compiles with API 23+.
- The NDK version we use supports only API 21+.
Ensure that the C++/Linker flags are set when building Android libraries, which was causing errors due to `-fPIC` not being set for all libraries.
Specify `android:installLocation="auto"` so the app can be installed on and move to the external storage.
Specify optional features which the app may use (touchscreen, game controller, external mouse).
Specify `android:preferMinimalPostProcessing="true"` so lower latency HDMI mode is enabled when available. Specify `android:hardwareAccelerated="true"` for consistency (it is already the default setting).
Specify same `android:configChanges` and `android:alwaysRetainTaskState` values as SDL to avoid potential bugs due to inconsistency with what the `SDLActivity` expects.
See f5ed158d1f/android-project/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml
Gradle can determine the NDK version automatically and this property is only required if multiple NDK versions are installed. The NDK version previously determined from the filename could not be parsed by Gradle anyway.
Define shortcuts to launch the client with either Vulkan or OpenGL graphics backend, which can be accessed by long-pressing the app icon on the home screen. This feature is available for Android 7.1 and newer.
Specify that Vulkan 1.1.0 is used if supported.
Remove explicit requirement of OpenGL ES 3.0 as OpenGL ES 1.0 is also supported as fallback and the client should pick the highest supported version.
Restarting the client previously did not work, as the `shell_execute` function on Android uses `fork` which is not supported.
Now, the client is restarted by using an Android intent to restart the main activity. This is triggered by sending a user-defined message from the native code to the SDL main activity thread.
Split the user storage location and the data folder in the app specific external storage in the folders `data` and `user` instead of writing the user setting directly to the external storage.
Remove unnecessary storage permissions. The client only accesses files in its own external storage location, hence these permissions are not necessary for Android API 19 and higher, which is always given as we only target API 19 and higher.
Only unpack changed assets when their hash in the integrity index is different instead of unpacking all assets again, so the app starts faster after updates. Avoid unpacking the entire integrity index file unless it changed, by initially reading only the first hash directly from the asset, so the app starts faster when the data is up-to-date.
Add error handling for external storage not being accessible and other I/O errors during unpacking of assets.
Add `android_main.h` header to export the `InitAndroid` function and potentially other functions in the future. The `extern "C"` and `__attribute__((visibility("default")))` attributes seem to be unnecessary, as this function is only called directly from the native code like many other functions without these attributes.
Initialize the Android storage after the loggers, so the log message are printed properly.
Add documentation for the use of `std::exit` on Android, which is used to forcefully terminate the entire process, to ensure that static variables will be initialized correctly when the app is started again after quitting. Returning from the main function is not enough, as this only results in the native thread terminating, but the Java thread will continue. Java does not support unloading libraries once they have been loaded, so all static variables will not have their expected initial values anymore when the app is started again after quitting.
Use `fs_chdir` and `fs_makedir` instead of `chdir` and `mkdir`.
SDK 19 is the lowest API level support by SDL2 because it is the lowest API level supported by the latest NDK toolchain. According to https://www.composables.com/tools/distribution-chart this should cover virtually all Android devices.
The dependencies on Kotlin and various `androidx`-Packages were entirely unnecessary and can be removed.
Abort the Android CMake build immediately if any of the command line arguments is not specified, instead of assuming default values.
Add more log messages for different build steps to improve progress reporting and improve the existing log messages.
Improve and fix colors of log messages. Previously, some log message colors were not terminated properly, causing the output color of subsequent commands to change.
Avoid some error messages when the build script is executed for the first time, i.e. when cleanup of the previous build is not necessary because the files do not exist yet.
Make some related variable names more readable by removing the unnecessary underscore and `DEFAULT` prefixes.
SDL automatically loads the libraries specified in the array returned by the `getLibraries` method, so loading it manually is unnecessary. SDL also has additional error handling to quit the app with an appropriate error message popup if the library could not be loaded, which was not handled previously.
Extract `build_gradle` function to reduce duplicate code for running the Gradle build. Remove the initial invocation of Gradle without a build target, which has no effect and was causing an error message during the build.
Upgrade to Gradle 8.5 and Gradle Plugin 8.3.0 for compatibility with Java 21. Explicity set Java version 21 in `build.gradle`. Increment compile and target SDK version to 34 accordingly.
Remove the explicitly defined, obsolete `buildToolsVersion` property in `build.gradle`, as it is now automatically derived by Gradle.
Replace the deprecated property `android:extractNativeLibs` in `AndroidMainfest.xml` with `useLegacyPackaging` in `build.gradle`.
Replace the deprecated package definition `package="tw.DDNet"` in `AndroidMainfest.xml` with `namespace("tw.DDNet")` in `build.gradle`.
Add the required property `android:exported="true"` to the main activity in `AndroidMainfest.xml`.
Always force landscape orientation to be used for the game on Android.
Hide the title bar so it is not shown when starting the game. There is also a bug with SDL currently that leads to the title bar and status bar being shown permanently after minimizing and reopening the app, which is alleviated by hiding the title bar.
In ./scripts/android/files/build.sh line 3:
[ x"$1" == x ] && {
^---^ SC2268 (style): Avoid x-prefix in comparisons as it no longer serves a purpose.
Did you mean:
[ "$1" == "" ] && {
ChillerDragon
