android

Set-up and build Eternal Lands for Android

Test environment

These instructions are tested using a clean virtual environment created using the Ubuntu Multipass tool. Using Multipass a new Ubuntu LTS environment can be created and launched using a set of commands like the following. Be sure to allocate enough disk space.

multipass launch --name el-android --disk 10G
multipass shell el-android
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade && sudo apt dist-upgrade && sudo apt clean

The utilities and java environment needed can be installed using:

sudo apt install git wget unzip openjdk-8-jdk-headless ant

Android tools

Currently, the build uses Ant which is no longer included in the latest ANDROID tools, for now we can use the last supported version. Despite this, we can still use the current stable build-tools, platform-tools and NDK.

To use a clean install, create a tools directory, then download and unpack the android tools:

mkdir ~/android-tools
cd ~/android-tools/
wget https://dl.google.com/android/repository/tools_r25.2.5-linux.zip
unzip tools_r25.2.5-linux.zip 

Now we have the basic tools, we can get the build-tools, platform-tools and NDK, and install the android platforms needed for the build:

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64
export ANDROID_HOME=$HOME/android-tools

# note the need to accept the licence
$ANDROID_HOME/tools/bin/sdkmanager "platform-tools"

$ANDROID_HOME/tools/bin/sdkmanager "build-tools;30.0.3"
$ANDROID_HOME/tools/bin/sdkmanager "ndk-bundle"

$ANDROID_HOME/tools/bin/sdkmanager "platforms;android-21"
$ANDROID_HOME/tools/bin/sdkmanager "platforms;android-34"

Setting up the build tree

If you cloned this repo, you will have the build tree already so just change to the android directory and skip the rest of this step, otherwise create a directory for the build tree and clone the repo using steps like this:

cd
mkdir el
cd el
git clone https://github.com/pjbroad/el-build-methods.git
cd el-build-methods/android/

Downloading the Eternal Lands Client

Next, clone the Eternal Lands source into the build tree.

cd jni
git clone https://github.com/raduprv/Eternal-Lands.git src
cd ..

Building the Android package

The build process needs the path to JAVA and the path to the android NDK so ensure those are set.

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64
export ANDROID_HOME=$HOME/android-tools

There is a script provided that downloads and sets-up the additional libraries needed. Assuming you are in the android directory, run this using:

./setup-libs.bash

You only need to do this once, but it can be run again. Each time it will remove and set-up the libraries again. You can also specify a --clean parameter that can be used to just remove the libraries.

The command that you will use more often builds and packages the client. The script optionally downloads and creates the assets file tree, builds the libraries, builds the client and creates the Android apk file. Run this using:

./build-apk.bash

Installing and debugging

You can install the client (and view debug) on your android device if you use the android debug bridge. The adb can be installed using sudo apt install adb. You also have to enable developer mode on your android device and connected it to your build machine over USB.

Install to the device using:

adb install -r bin/SDLActivity-debug.apk

You can view debug from the running client using:

adb logcat | grep "SDL"