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Android build is a go!

Colorful Critter
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android

If you have a reasonably recent Android device, feel free to try out the Android version of Colorful Critter! I've only tested it on a handful of higher-spec devices but it seems to all work fine.

Making the Android build turned out to not be all that difficult, although because of how the Android LÖVE toolchain is put together it required some annoying submodule-related stuff to happen. (To be fair, this is primarily a problem with how Android apps work.)

This procedure might be helpful for others if they want to go down a similar path:

  1. Fork the Android port of LÖVE as a separate Android build support target
  2. Fixed a few things in said port to work with the current Android toolchain
  3. Add the Android build support target as a submodule of the main app
  4. Add a new, properly-namespaced activity that inherits from GameActivity
  5. Add my app icons (I used a silly automated process for that)
  6. Modify the AndroidManifest.xml appropriately
  7. Set up some annoying build rules which automatically build the .love file, move it into the Android asset directory, build the Android project, and copy the .apk to where it needs to go (also ensuring that the submodule is up-to-date)

And now I can build the Android package from my main project, without having to manually update a bunch of stuff! Oh, and builds from Android Studio also work, although that doesn't update the .love file (I can run make android-bundle for that to happen if necessary)

I would have preferred an approach where I could simply reference the love-android project as a build dependency and pull it in as a library, but this was easy enough to do, and updating from upstream isn't too difficult, should that need ever arise.

Files

  • Android 5.2 MB
    Version 2
  • macOS, x86-64 18 MB
    Version 42
  • Windows, x86-64 5.5 MB
    Version 39
  • Windows, x86-32 5 MB
    Version 41
  • Technical whitepaper (boring) 8 MB
    Version 8
  • LÖVE bundle version 1.6 MB
    Version 48
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