Very small devices (Android Smartphones)

[Berni314]

Hi,

recently I've found Wagic for Android and tried it on my Smartphone.
Sadly I have to say, that's not really playable.

The reasons:
1) very often unwanted things happens
2) the font is very small (partly not readable, partly very exhausting)

Is there anybody working on the Android version?
If so, I would tell my ideas.

First about problem 1).
testing the windows version, it's as following: when mouse hovering over a little card, there would be shown it big. Then when clicking on it (little card), it'll be chosen.

On Android: when tapping down on a little card, it is shown big. Then when UNTAP, it is chosen.
That's very bad. For a beginner it's very hard to select the right card.
Also keeping the finger tapped and moving it up and down to see different cards will cause the danger to make a wipe-up, which will end the current turn.

So here my suggestions (for Android - at least smartphones, don't know about how it's working on tablets)
a) wipe-up mustn't end the turn
b) untap mustn't select the card. Better (one of some opportunities) to tap on the bigger shown card to select it

This would be the most important things to make it playable on a smartphone. (Maybe there are more, which will be visible, when testing/playing makes more fun by the changes told.)

About size: it would be great, if the cards would be shown on WHOLE screen, unfortunately makes it turning the phone to portrait-mode.
For example (only ONE idea): when make a wipe-up on a big card, then the card will be shown vertical at the whole screen (for example resolution 800x480). Turning the phone by 90 degres and tapping on it to close this full-screen-view.

That's all for now and I'm looking forward for an answer.

Thanks.

[kevlahnota]

I think you are using an old version of Wagic. wipe-up is already removed. I can play wagic on my old Galaxy Ace phone with no problems, it has only 3.5 inches display with 320x480 resolution. maybe I have small fingers... . Anyway, what phone do you have?

[Berni314]

I think you are using an old version of Wagic. wipe-up is already removed.

Strange.
I tested "the latest official version version 0.18.6" (from http://wololo.net/download/).
I also thought about testing the newest SVN, but I didn't expect too big changes.

I can play wagic on my old Galaxy Ace phone with no problems, it has only 3.5 inches display with 320x480 resolution. maybe I have small fingers... . Anyway, what phone do you have?

In my eyes it's not kind of type of the phone.
I have an alcatel one touch 992D (4 inch, 800x480).
I have thick fingers and I would like to select not by untapping. Also reading is very hard. Maybe you know the game very well, that you needn't reed anything.

[Zethfox]

Are you using the card images or the text display cards? i would like to see a pic of your phone ruining wagic.

Current version of wagic is 19. massive changes happen between 18.6 and 19. You can find the new version under compilations and sources " builds"

Can you adjust the resolution on your phone? 800 x 480 on a 4 inch, that might be the problem right there. that's shrinks down to 4 and wagic plays at native resolution, so everything gets much smaller.

The controls in wagic take getting use to, but eventually it all become natural. the idea of a flip displaying full size big image is good, not sure how hard it would be to implement though

[jwilkes99999]

Ironic that I have the opposite problem. For my first 5-10 games I accidentally up swiped and lost my phases but I quickly became used to the sensitivity and almost never made that mistake and it made playing the game as a right handed person extremely easy. Since the newest revision I'm starting to get used to having to press the phase wheel but I still hate it because the phone can no longer comfortably fit in my hand while I play. Also the addition of swipe left is driving me absolutely crazy as I have no use for expanding my hand and it typically just gets in my way (I haven't adapted to its sensitivity yet).

You also can select a card to read by pressing down on it and then when you are done slide your finger off/down to make sure its not selected. Once again its a sensitivity thing that you just have to learn to personally judge.

[Berni314]

Are you using the card images or the text display cards? i would like to see a pic of your phone ruining wagic.

Here are three examples:

[The extension jpg has been deactivated and can no longer be displayed.]

[The extension jpg has been deactivated and can no longer be displayed.]

[The extension jpg has been deactivated and can no longer be displayed.]

Yes, on my monitor, all screenshots are looking very well.
But on the monitor they are displayed with a diagonal about 26cm, while the phone has only about 10cm. Scaling to 40% ... (I know, it's completely different, reduzing the pixelnumber or reduzing the DPI, but it gives a feeling about how little it will be.)

The card from the second one could be read (still not relaxed on my smartphone).
But the left card on the third screenshot is very hard till completely impossible to read on my smartphone, because bad used colours.

Current version of wagic is 19. massive changes happen between 18.6 and 19.

Yes, for example advertisement.

Still testing it a little bit more, I recognized that I told wrong: cards are not selected by "untap"
When long tapping and then untap, the card is NOT selected. Only by a very short tap (+untap).
So maybe because my fingers are so "thick", moving to far to the right (off the screen), not best hardware, ... or something else, it happend too often that I made a "single short tap".

Nevertheless, how about an undo-feature?

Can you adjust the resolution on your phone?

Sorry, I can't.

The controls in wagic take getting use to, but eventually it all become natural. the idea of a flip displaying full size big image is good, not sure how hard it would be to implement though

Would be nice.
Maybe with optional own images. So the "normal" big ones could be with reduced text (only the numbers) and the "full big" with the whole explanation.

[wololo]

Nevertheless, how about an undo-feature?

It's already in there, although not super easy to access. In game, get to the menu (usually the "back" button of your phone), and click "undo".

The problems you mention about readability, etc... are real. The issue is that we are doing the best we can with the interface, being a bunch of hobbyists with little free time.
MTG is a game designed to be played on a table which is 50 times the size of your phone. Readability IS a problem on a tiny screen, but to be honest I have no problem on a 4.3 inches phone, especially with the new high resolution font, and if I use proper card images.
The game plays great on a tablet, and the phone implementation should be considered as a "bonus", but possibly not something we will focus on majorly.

Currently, suggestions and ideas is not what we lack. Your suggestions are appreciated, but without more hands in the code I don't think we'll act on them anytime soon . Again, things wold be different if we all had much more time to spend on the code. If you're an android dev or happen to know one, by all means, feel free to contribute.

Maybe with optional own images. So the "normal" big ones could be with reduced text (only the numbers) and the "full big" with the whole explanation.

That's a brilliant idea.

[wololo]

Also the addition of swipe left is driving me absolutely crazy as I have no use for expanding my hand and it typically just gets in my way (I haven't adapted to its sensitivity yet).

Agreed. Whoever added that will be properly shot in the head by myself. Hopefully I'll have time to make that an option (maybe it already is one, actually...)

[Zethfox]

i added it actually, as default wagic ships with hand hidden.
swipe up was FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR worse.
I'll tweak the open hand gesture.
lets keep one huge thing in mind. I add feature and 99% of the time NO ONE gives me any feedback on them. like no glitter mana, there are still people complaining about mana causing slow downs, yet i added no glitter option and it went completely ignored.

how about the feature of renaming sets from 3 letter code now being handled in translations, no one has even bothered with it and infact people are still just downloading the patch to do it.

plus i highly doubt you would shot the most active dev in the head

in the res->graphics folder of your install, rename f3.dat and simon.dat, and f3.jpeg and simon.jpeg to "old***" then the "pspf3" and "pspsimon" remove the "psp" part. try that.

edit: ill do one better, I'll remove the gesture. but swipe up is not coming back. it does not properly work on half of my test devices. thats enough to not readd it right there. i have 7 android devices, 4 are tablets. the 2 tablets of which trip that option simply putting my thumb on the screen.

[wololo]

Yeah, that was a figure of speech

And yes, I'm definitely guilty of not reviewing/giving feedback on your changes. That's because 99% of them are good, and recently I've been so busy I haven't looked that much. I do love the high res fonts for example, no question on that. But the "open hand" gesture... I can see how it works when the hand is in actual "hidden" mode... but when it shows up on the right of the screen (defaut behavior), there's little to no use to opening the hand.