Wanting someone to update Beebdroid. Money waiting :)

[sleekweasel]

Nice work sleek Don`t know how I missed this. .I have no way of compiling it, is there a binary apk I could try on my GPDXD+ ?

Looking at your git.. I can`t see the .apk :/

EDIT: Found it thank you

You're quite welcome.

If you need additional game controls bound, you're going to have to recompile it at some stage: it currently seems to have a hard-coded list in the 'controller.java' file: no in-app mechanism. (Aside from possibly something in the disk images... maybe, if I didn't misread that bit of the code.)

Once I get round to working out how to bind my Amazon Remote's D-PAD controls to the Beebdroid controller system, I may implement a one-off binding system, involving holding down a D-PAD direction while typing a key on the on-screen keyboard, which 'sticks' for the current session, which should suffice.

 

[Stainy]

Thanks very much. I did see in Arcadians.. right and fire doesn`t work... left and fire works.. odd

 

[sleekweasel]

Thanks very much. I did see in Arcadians.. right and fire doesn`t work... left and fire works.. odd

What are the actual keys involved?

Keyboardless mode tries to produce the character as typed on the keyboard by pressing a BBC key with shift if needed, regardless of what shift is doing in reality - so ':' which is 'shift-;' on my keyboard presses the BBC ':' key but not the BBC shift key.

The other two modes... Oh, I think I buggered them up. Sorry - I'll have to restore that, but at least I know you're in keyboard mode!

In the original, they associate a BBC key with each physical key and press BBC shift if you pressed shift. That means you can't press BBC ':' at all from your keyboard (unless it has a ':' key, I suppose). And return wasn't mapped either!

Restoring the original keyboard responses for the other two modes shouldn't be too hard, but I'm currently trying to update the project to build with a current version of Android Studio (my home machine has an old release and a virtually full disk), without having absolute paths specific to my machine baked in to some of the new JNI-related files that I apparently have to check in.

I'll try to restore the old keyboard behaviour in the other modes within a few days, even if I have to pause fixing the configuration.

 

[Stainy]

Sounds good... well you have a beta tester right here if you need

 

[levi]

IIRC Arcadians uses Z, X and return for fire. Could be wrong, but I don't think it even allows the player to move up and down, as it's a pretty straight Galaxians clone. According to wikipedia neither does Galaga; moving up and down was introduced to the series in Gaplus. I can't remember if Zalaga on the BBC allowed it or now.

 

[sleekweasel]

IIRC Arcadians uses Z, X and return for fire.

Having spare a moment, I loaded it up: it uses ctrl and caps to move left-right and return to fire.

Return was never bound on a physical keyboard - that was one of my main reasons for starting this - and on my keyboard ctrl is used to work the control characters, so I wouldn't be binding it directly because it wouldn't generate anything to map usefully.

Oh, but hang on - ctrl+shift together pause scrolling text, don't they? And isn't shift+caps used to make shift generate lower case characters? Maybe I should arrange some support for those, so long as no real keys are being pressed. Maybe the 'anti-shift' bit in the hardware matrix routine would be useful there.

Post automatically merged: Jan 8, 2020

Thanks very much. I did see in Arcadians.. right and fire doesn`t work... left and fire works.. odd

Oh! You mean firing while moving left/right. Ok, I can have a look.

 

[Stainy]

Yes... seems you can`t have both pressed at the same time going right. Going left and firing is ok.

 

[levi]

Oh, but hang on - ctrl+shift together pause scrolling text, don't they? And isn't shift+caps used to make shift generate lower case characters? Maybe I should arrange some support for those, so long as no real keys are being pressed. Maybe the 'anti-shift' bit in the hardware matrix routine would be useful there.

I never used ctrl+shift to pause text. IIRC I always started the long command using ctrl+N which paged scrolling text and pressed something else to make it actually page along; the memory is getting hazy now.

Edit: I guess in the parent OS ctrl+return/enter might well create a third distinct keycode. Depends at what level you're sampling it I guess.

 

[sleekweasel]

I never used ctrl+shift to pause text. IIRC I always started the long command using ctrl+N which paged scrolling text and pressed something else to make it actually page along; the memory is getting hazy now.

Yeah, ctrl-n put it into page mode, and... ctrl o took it out?

 

[levi]

Yes, that sounds reasonable. I think there was some way to go to the next page of text as well; it might have been something as simple as pressing shift, but my memory fails me on this, and I don't have a bbc micro emulator currently set up to test it.

 

[Stainy]

I just tried this on my GPDXD+ and it bombs out really early with a 'open app again' prompt !

 

[sleekweasel]

I just tried this on my GPDXD+ and it bombs out really early with a 'open app again' prompt !

Nougat should work. A logcat of the crash report would help.

 

[sleekweasel]

Having had a closer look, it seems the original keyboard support was supposed to map PC style keyboards, complete with support for the ;/: key etc. But it's not managing that, so I'm going to replace it with my ASCII-based code, and make controller-mode map physical keys directly even if the keycaps don't quite match, so games - which rely on binding to keys more than the keys' symbols - should be more comfortable, particularly if they use shift/caps/ctrl as controller keys.

I'm going to have to use f11 and possibly f12 though, since the BBC has more dedicated symbol keys than standard keyboards, like @ and 0.

 

[sleekweasel]

Ok, new release v0.2 at GitHub sleekweasel Beebdroid
- default mode is direct key binding for games, so the Arcadians keys work, but shift-; gets you + like on a real BBC keyboard and other symbol keys are mapped with some vague similarly, also taking F10, 11, 12 for shiftlock, @, and £/_
- mouse on adval 1,2,3 work (they're 2*the coordinate, so the lowest bit shows timing)
- menu key is broken in ASCII mode. Oops. Alt-2 to change keyboard mode. Or press the on-screen button.

 

[Stainy]

V0.1 works on my V20( 8.0 ) . Doesn`t work on my GPD XD+ on 8.0 I just tried v0.2 on my V20. Still doesn`t go right with fire.. Goes left with fire.. just like the 0.1

 

[sleekweasel]

V0.1 works on my V20( 8.0 ) . Doesn`t work on my GPD XD+ on 8.0

Mm. I can't do much to solve that without a crash log. You know about the 'adb logcat' command?

I just tried v0.2 on my V20. Still doesn`t go right with fire.. Goes left with fire.. just like the 0.1

Oh? For me, pressing ctrl and tapping return on both my Bluetooth keyboards fired and kept moving right with the controller image on screen. I've just uninstalled and then installed that precise APK and confirmed.

Are you in the mode with the orange keys, the mode with the controller, or the mode with neither? I usually play games in the controller mode.

What does the info in the field that includes KEYCODE_ENTER say for return and ctrl on your machine?

 

[Stainy]

I`m in the mode with the three keys at the bottom. [Ab*] in the corner next to the disc icon.

With that mode selected it shows this at the top
Lock f11=@ f12=£/_AltRt=CopyNoLk

 

[sleekweasel]

I`m in the mode with the three keys at the bottom. [Ab*] in the corner next to the disc icon.

With that mode selected it shows this at the top
Lock f11=@ f12=£/_AltRt=CopyNoLk

Right - you're in controller mode - the ab* shows the *next* mode that button will put you in.

So that's direct mode, where shift-; gives you +.

Loading Arcadians only gives me the joypad overlay, but ctrl moves right and tapping return doesn't stop it for me.

 

[Stainy]

Odd then.

even if I have the keyboard showing... holding ctrl and return at the same time doesn`t work :/

 

[sleekweasel]

Odd then.

even if I have the keyboard showing... holding ctrl and return at the same time doesn`t work :/

Yeah... Do you have another keyboard to try? Or another Android device? It might be a quirk of your current one - if we're doing the same experiment but getting different results.

Also, the f11=@ bit is telling you about the keys to press on the Bluetooth keyboard to get those functions - don't you get a line showing something about inkey(-98) that keeps changing when you press a Bluetooth key?