Android: use APK Expansion Files

nat12

Hello,
Anyone has experience using googleplay APK Expansion Files (http://developer.android.com/google/play/expansion-files.html) with Gideros?

I suppose integrating the Downloader Library will be easy, but we have no clue on how to make Gideros read the assets from the downloaded file...

Giuseppe_Crugliano

To add a note: we are trying to resolve the limit of 50mb of the Google Store since our game is a gigantic 500+ mb file. nat12 is trying to figure out the right approach to do so.
Do anyone knows how to post an app/game bigger than 50mb? I mean do someone had a solution?

fxone

@Giuseppe_Crugliano @nat12 yeah it looks like a programming hell, isn't? For native application is little easier task but for non native sdks such as Gideros is truly tough. Some guy from Marmalade community spent 2 weeks on preparing plugin. There is logical scheme, how to do this:
http://www.mirthwerx.com/index.php/2012/09/20/using-marmalade-with-google-play-expansion-files-jni-and-lvl-license-checks/
As I know Corona users still wait for embedded solution (it's on their roadmap). But something tell me that great tool Jvbridge should be helpful in such case: http://www.giderosmobile.com/forum/discussion/2319/jvbridge-plugin-android#Item_13

nat12

Yes fxone, implementing a loader plugin can be an hell, but my real nightmare is what to do next... after i have the expansion file in the external storage, how to make Gideros Texture.new (and other) read images from here ?

hnim

@nat12: about loading file: http://www.giderosmobile.com/forum/discussion/comment/14936#Comment_14936

atilim

Also I'll read this documentation: http://developer.android.com/google/play/expansion-files.html and try to post an official solution here.

Javi

@atilim: any plan to load resources in Gideros directly from memory arrays? it would be perfect to work with problems like this.

atilim

@Javi - I'm planning to introduce a library like http://www.nongnu.org/techne/lua/luaarray/ that implements C like memory arrays to Lua. But I'm not sure if I'll extend the resource system in that way.

Javi

@Javi - I'm planning to introduce a library like http://www.nongnu.org/techne/lua/luaarray/ that implements C like memory arrays to Lua. But I'm not sure if I'll extend the resource system in that way.

It would be very useful to load the resources directly from the expansion files and even to encrypt them, etc.

atilim

I've read the documentation about expansion files currently I'm implementing them.

@Javi - yes you're right. let me think about it. (because it's not easy to implement such a system).

Javi

@atilim wow great! >:D<

speeder_kidoteca

Is this done yet Atilim?

This is... yet another thing I forgot to check before using Gideros...

Our games NEED this, and this is one of the reasons we decided to dump Corona

ar2rsawseen

@speeder_kidoteca if you mean you need to use expansion files, then here are instructions:
http://giderosmobile.com/DevCenter/index.php/APK_Expansion_Files

zoolax

I tried it and tested it , works like a charm on my kindle.
But somebody who downloaded it had a problem,It might be something that I have done wrong.
Are there any special permission that I have to add?

ar2rsawseen

@zoolax really don't know, it was working the way describe din the wiki.
Just make sure that all the paths and naming conventions are strictly followed as everything is determined by the names of files

speeder_kidoteca

Maybe they only work if you download from Google Play?

ar2rsawseen

Either way there is a precaution against it

@speeder_kidoteca check this thread:
http://giderosmobile.com/forum/discussion/4776/expansion-files/p1

zoolax

I have tried it again,and it works fine.Sometimes a slow connection can corrupt the download for some reason.but it can be very rare

ar2rsawseen

@zoolax but licensing plugin should have detected that it is corrupted and dispatch an error event and attempt to redownload

zoolax

@ar2rsawseen ,that was before the plugin:)