Target and Support Mobile Linux (ARM)

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Spacesurfer
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Sep 17, 2020 4:52 pm UTC

Target and Support Mobile Linux (ARM)

Post by Spacesurfer »

With the Librem 5 and PinePhone being out in the wild, am wondering about the possibility for Unvanquished to be packaged and scaled to run well on those phones.

Minimum Needs:

  • Scale UI for smaller screens and resolution (both phones are 720p)

  • Scale graphic settings to run on their older mobile GPUs

  • Runs at 30 fps

  • Gamepad Support

  • Packaging for those devices (whether general aarch64 package or specific one for each phone)

Wants:

  • Run consistently at 60 fps (more possible with the Librem 5's bigger GPU and faster RAM)

  • Touch screen input to play the game

Now that Linux phones are here, the prospect of free software Linux gaming on them sounds amazing. Plus if using Mobile Linux as a base, then can scale up for more powerful ARM devices like Pinebook Pro. But yeah, just a few things I've thought of. Curious to see what others think below.

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killing time
Programmer
Posts: 162
Joined: Wed Jul 04, 2012 7:55 am UTC

Re: Target and Support Mobile Linux (ARM)

Post by killing time »

It seems, on most phones you have to use GLES, rather than standard OpenGL. This is perhaps the biggest obstacle to getting the Daemon engine to run on a mobile platform (even more than porting to a non-x86 architecture, which is also required; I'm also ignoring networking). It would likely be necessary to have 2 rendering paths for the different flavors. A nice thing about having ES support would be we could also try to run in a browser.

I'm doubtful that you could really play Unvanquished on a phone though, since it requires fast and precise aiming.

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