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HOLLYWOOD PLAYER 5.1 FOR ANDROID
================================
(C) BY ANDREAS FALKENHAHN 2012
I. INTRODUCTION
===============
This is a WIP (work-in-progress) version of Hollywood 5.1 for Android devices. It allows you
to run your Hollywood applets on Android devices such as smart phones or tablet computers. So
far, this build has only been tested on a Samsung GT-I9001 smart phone running Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)
and on an Acer Iconia A500 tablet running Android 3.1 (Honeycomb) and later Android 4.0 (Ice
Cream Sandwich). Because of the multitude of different Android devices with often more or less
polished drivers and the scarcely documented native API interface to Android this version of Hollywood
should be considered BETA. It might run just fine on your system - or not at all. Please report
any problems to andreas@airsoftsoftwair.
II. REQUIREMENTS
================
- at least Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)
- both ARMv5 or ARMv7 are supported (the package manager should automatically choose the right
one for your CPU)
III. USAGE
==========
To get your Hollywood projects onto your Android device, you have to do the following:
1. Compile your Hollywood project as a Hollywood applet (*.hwa) in the Hollywood GUI or
in Designer or from the command line.
2. Copy the *.hwa file to the directory "Hollywood" on your Android's device SD card. The
directory "Hollywood" is automatically created when you first launch Hollywood on
your Android device. If it is not there, create it on your own. It has to be in the
root directory of your SD card.
3. If your applet does not load any external files and has all files linked in, skip to
item 6.
4. If your applet loads external files, create a directory for your applet inside the
"Hollywood" directory. The directory name must be identical to the name of your applet
minus the file extension (*.hwa). For example: If your applet is called "My cool game.hwa",
you will have to create the directory "My cool game" for it inside the Hollywood directory.
5. Copy all data files required by your applet into the newly created directory.
6. Run Hollywood on your device. A list of all applets that could be found will be shown.
Select your applet and then touch the play button in the control bar at the bottom of
the screen.
7. Now your applet should start!
You can configure some options by touching the "?" button. Refer to your Hollywood manual
for an explanation of the available options. The option "Keep screen on" is a new feature
of Hollywood 5.1 and will force the Android device to keep its screen on even if there is
no user activity. Normally, Android devices will switch to a battery safer mode after a
certain amount of user inactivity time.
IV. SPECIAL FEATURES
====================
1. The Android version of Hollywood comes with native support for Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora.
You do not need any plugins to open these file formats. They will run out of the box
on Android.
2. You can bring up Android's virtual keyboard using the ShowKeyboard() and HideKeyboard()
functions. You can also listen to the "HideKeyboard" event handler to find out when the
user closes the virtual keyboard.
3. You can listen to the "OrientationChange" event handler to find out when the user rotates
the device.
V. LIMITATIONS
==============
The following commands are currently not available in the Android version of Hollywood:
- ActivateDisplay()
- ChangeDisplayMode()
- ClearClipboard()
- CloseDisplay()
- ColorRequest()
- CreatePointer()
- CreatePort()
- DebugPrompt()
- Execute()
- FileRequest()
- FontRequest()
- FreePointer()
- GetClipboard()
- GetEnv()
- GetFileArgument()
- HideDisplay()
- HidePointer()
- ListRequest()
- MovePointer()
- OpenDisplay()
- PathRequest()
- PeekClipboard()
- Run()
- SelectDisplay()
- SendMessage()
- SetClipboard()
- SetDisplayAttributes()
- SetPointer()
- SetEnv()
- ShowDisplay()
- ShowPointer()
- StringRequest()
- UnsetEnv()
The following functionality is currently not available in the Android version of Hollywood:
- multiple displays are not supported --> you can only use a single display
- executing external programs is not supported due to security reasons
- mouse pointer functions are disabled because there is no mouse pointer :-)
- transparent BGPics are not supported
- the "Desktop" tag in @DISPLAY is not supported
VI. WHAT IF MY SCRIPT RUNS VERY SLOW
====================================
If your script runs extremely slow on Android, then you need to change your drawing technique.
Refreshing the screen is quite slow on Android and that is why you should try to minimize the
frequency of screen refreshes. The best way to do this is to use double buffered drawing
using BeginDoubleBuffer() and Flip(). Things that will slow down the graphics engine on Android
are many drawing operations that affect only small areas. Try to combine as many drawing
operations in just a single call. A double buffer is the best solution for this problem. There
are plans to implement a more clever drawing engine in Hollywood for Android in the future
but until then you will have to use a double buffer to get the maximum speed.
VII. PLUGINS
============
The Android version of Hollywood also supports Hollywood plugins. You have to copy
them to the directory "Hollywood/_Plugins" on your SD card. Hollywood will scan this
location on every startup and load all plugins from there. If you want to compile
your own plugins, make sure that you compile in thumb mode.
VIII. KNOWN ISSUES/BUGS
=======================
- non-English characters and some special characters are not supported by the virtual
keyboard at the moment
- drawing is quite slow in many cases; Hollywood needs some optimization here; if you
want the maximum speed, use a double buffer! (see also above VI.)
IX. CONTACT
===========
If there are any problems, you can reach me here:
Official forums: http://forums.hollywood-mal.com/
Email: [email protected]
