Playing Gemp on Mobile Devices (tablets, ipads, ipods, phones, etc.)?

[sgtdraino]

I've been trying to figure out what mobile devices work well for playing Gemp. So far, my experiences have been underwhelming:

Ipad:

The game seems to work well for me on the ipad, EXCEPT I can find no way to blow up cards to see details. This can become pretty important when you have cards played on other cards, mostly concealed by them. There's no way to shift-click, and dragging up just moves the whole screen. Also, popup windows (for playing sites, bidding burdens, etc.) can't be moved around or resized. If there are ways around these problems, I'd very much like to hear them. I heard about one guy playing on an ipad, not sure if he changed the settings somehow.

Ipod:

Same issue, but also the screen is just too tiny. I find myself constantly zooming in and scolling around, and it just takes too long.

Kindle:

I believe the Kindle uses a version of the Android operating system. Seems to work pretty well, and the drag-up properly blows up cards and displays details. BUT the browser kept getting hung up, freezing, not doing anything for long periods of time, and sometimes it didn't seem to be able to tell when I was pressing a button, like the "pass" button. Button would light up and everything, but it didn't seem to actually be activating.

So, I'd like to hear some other people's experiences playing on mobile devices, any advice folks have on how to may playing on them easier, and what the best mobile devices are for Gemp!

[bibfortuna25]

When I was away from my laptop for a few weeks this summer, I resorted to playing on my iPhone. I encountered a lot of the same problems you described about the iPad, so I had to rely on my memory to know what hidden cards could do. Another difficult thing was trying to select an individual card from a stack, like if I wanted to use Cantea FTW to discard a specific possession among the half dozen cards a companion was carrying. I didn't really have a problem with zooming in and out; I found a medium setting where I could see the active skirmish as well as the cards in my hand and support area, so that worked out fine.

It's definitely not my preferred way to play, but it did work.

[MarcinS]

I'm pretty sure, that all the issues you have are fixable (in one way or another), but the biggest obstacle for me to fix it, is I have no access to the devices. If there is any JQuery/HTML developer on the forum, that has access to any of the devices, they are free to do some code changes and submit them to me.

The code is available at:
http://code.google.com/p/gemp-lotr/

[fenix]

I am unable to click on the pop ups (think site path post shadows or starting fellowships) on my ipad

[Tbiesty]

With a couple tweaks, I've been able to successfully play on my iPhone (using Google Chrome), including having swipe up show the card details.  I haven't tried it on iPad yet, but I hope to play around with one at some point.

[sgtdraino]

With a couple tweaks, I've been able to successfully play on my iPhone (using Google Chrome), including having swipe up show the card details.  I haven't tried it on iPad yet, but I hope to play around with one at some point.

That's great news, Tbiesty. If it works on the iPhone, I would think that would also hold true for iPad. Can you describe what tweaks you did? My brother has an iPad, I can see if it works.

[bibfortuna25]

I played my first game on an iPad last night, and it worked a lot more smoothly than on my iPhone. Being able to see the whole playing surface at once is one big advantage for the iPad. I still haven't figured out how to swipe up to view a hidden card, but as I only acquired an iPad less than 48 hours ago, I've still got a lot more tinkering until I figure out its secrets.

[Tbiesty]

The tweaks involve actually changing the JQuery code that loads from the Gemp-Lotr server. After I test a bit more on my alternate server (perhaps with some help from you) I'll pass along the updates to Marcin.

[sgtdraino]

Excellent. And you also said you were using the google browser, right?

Are you saying that the "tweaks" are all on Gemp's end? That once MarcinS makes the changes, iPods and iPads should be good to go?

That would be awesome

Swipe-up does seem to work on the Android browser, but it has a tendency to freeze up during the game.

[Tbiesty]

I've gotten swipe up to work with iPad and iPhone running iOS 6.  With iOS 6, Google Chrome works very well, but for some reason Safari seems to have some type of "cache" problems, so you have to keep hitting the refresh button after each time your opponent does an action, or you don't see it.  So I think I'll be sticking with Google Chrome on these devices for now.

[radry]

Any progress on a mobile compatible version yet? Currently gestures don't work neither on chrome nor firefox on android. As the site uses jquerry it's just a matter to change some code, jquery even supports gestures for touchscreens already.

[sgtdraino]

Tbiesty said Chrome worked on iPhone and iPad with iOS 6. I assume swiping up is what you mean by "gestures?"

I can say that gemp does NOT work with Chrome on iPhone or iPad if you're running a version earlier than iOS 6. I have not tried iOS 6 myself though.

[radry]

Yes i mean swiping up. I was talking about Android. Also in chrome it loads very slow compared To Firefox.

[Kralik]

I just played with my 7.7" Android Tablet and it worked quite well. Swiping up on a card brings the full version popup. Firefox was buggy and had trouble with assignment. The only way I could assign was to long press on a character and wait until the browser menu came up, then press 'Back' and assign. Chrome, on the other hand, was significantly faster and had no real issues. 7" is a bit small, so I had to zoom in a few times to see specifics. 10" would probably be better.

[radry]

on what browser and version did the swiping up work? does it work in deck builder for you? it either scrolls or does nothing when I try it.