[MOBF] Android issues

[DrMature]

Hi,
I have started using minetest on my phone (Sony Xperia M2). I have downloaded and configured the Mob Framework mod. However, when I start playing I repeatedly get messages saying that the mod did not respond quickly, and no mobs are seen. Am I doing something basically wrong, or is the mod running slowly.
Thanks for your help,
Neill

[TenPlus1]

Mobf really does need a decent speed processor to run but if you are looking for something with a little easier on your phone with many mobs and features try this:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=9917

[DrMature]

That's really great, thanks.

It would be cool to have a version which is somewhat similar to minitest, but running on android. Are there any other mods you would suggest (ores, redstone etc) which would work well for phones?

Thanks,

Neill

[Sokomine]

It would be cool to have a version which is somewhat similar to minitest, but running on android. Are there any other mods you would suggest (ores, redstone etc) which would work well for phones?

Did you try a newer version of mobf? It got quite hardware-friendly in recent versions. The most expensive part was the spawning of mobs, finding places for them to spawn.

Minetest's version of a mod that does something similar to redstone is called mesecons. It's not exactly something I'd recommend for a phone...but it depends on what you actually do with it. Emulating a computer on a phone might not be the best idea, while building a small circuit might not hurt performance at all.

It really depends on what you intend to do. And if you want to play more complex games, connecting to a server might be a good idea as that would eliminate the need to run the server on your phone as well.

[DrMature]

Hi guys. Many thanks for your responses, they are very much appreciated. I have found the mods redo mod to be much speedier, but still makes my phone a little laggy.

I had downloaded the mobf mod from the mods panel of the app. That allows you to choose the version from a list, and I had downloaded the Jan 2014 version, which is the latest.

Playing around with other (non-interactive) mods add much less load, and I can have a few of these without trouble. With this experience I could make a few observations.

1. An idiots guide to mods on android would be a good page. Particularly a list of established mods which could be used on a basic phone.

2. Efficiency is a bit of an issue with mods (both for minetest and minecraft). I wonder if there's something intrinsic about mods that makes them less efficient. (after all mcpe runs smoothly with many mobs)

3. I think there's a considerable appetite for an easy to use minecraft clone. Learning to use mods is not trivial and will put many users off. It would suggest that a suitably packaged version of minetest plus mods would be popular.

[Sokomine]

1. An idiots guide to mods on android would be a good page. Particularly a list of established mods which could be used on a basic phone.

That's hard to tell. There are so many mods! It really depends. Most ought to run fine on their own, but if you combine too many, the low ressources of a phone will show up. I wouldn't run Dreambuilder on a phone/tablet :-)

In theory, the online modstore ought to be a simple way to install mods. Other than that, there's always the file system where you can add mods directly...provided you know the basics (i.e. how to work on filesystem level). It's not diffrent from the desktop version in that regard.

2. Efficiency is a bit of an issue with mods (both for minetest and minecraft). I wonder if there's something intrinsic about mods that makes them less efficient. (after all mcpe runs smoothly with many mobs)

They're mods. They need to interface with the rest of the game, they do things on their own...hard to do without any ressources at all :-) In general, mods that only add a couple of blocks are cheapest. Mods that let those blocks change depending on circumstances (i.e. player detector, mesecons, reaction to players, reaction to environment in the game, leaf decay, ..) require some computation time for their tasks. Mods that change the landscape require time when new parts of the map are generated. Changing large parts of the map frequently is expensive.

3. I think there's a considerable appetite for an easy to use minecraft clone. Learning to use mods is not trivial and will put many users off. It would suggest that a suitably packaged version of minetest plus mods would be popular.

Perhaps the planned adding of subgames may help here. It's more relevant to the mobile version than to the normal one due to it beeing more tricky to install mods on the mobile version.

[DrMature]

That's hard to tell. There are so many mods! It really depends...
In theory, the online modstore ought to be a simple way to install mods.

I think I agree with this. However, I realise that most people won't know how to use a file browser on android. I follow something of the principle we've seen with apple - it should just work out of the box.

They're mods. They need to interface with the rest of the game, they do things on their own...hard to do without any ressources at all :-)

Reading around I see that mods are coded in Lua, but the main code is in C++. Presumably mods would be a lot quicker if coded as part of the main code.

So, my philosophy would be that if a few of the mods could be included in the main code for android it would be easier for those who are less confident with modding and also run faster. Does that make sense?

What I can't find is any details on how to compile for android. Any ideas who to speak to? Thanks.

[DrMature]

Did I say something hopelessly naive?

[rubenwardy]

Reading around I see that mods are coded in Lua, but the main code is in C++. Presumably mods would be a lot quicker if coded as part of the main code.

So, my philosophy would be that if a few of the mods could be included in the main code for android it would be easier for those who are less confident with modding and also run faster. Does that make sense?

In most cases, it isn't that Lua is slower, it is the time it takes to switch from Lua to C++, and vise-versa.

Defining items in C++ wouldn't be that much faster, but running ABMs and interactive things would be a bit. This can be got around by optimising and adding support in other areas (eg: inbuilt mob support)