I know several of you wrote your apps and games before 1.6 was out or
before you had a trusty N1 or Droid to test on.  This led to many apps
that rely on compatibility mode, that is, a width (when portrait) that
is always 320 to make things work out.

For 3D games, this made our games continue to work because when the
games are run full resolution, our 1.5-compliant textures get scaled
up automatically and become non power-of-two, causing white or black
wherever a texture should be drawn (and then users complain that our
games are nothing but white!)

Well I wasn't very worried about it and I still have a few games in
compatibility mode but recently a user contacted me, telling me that
one of my games (Light Racer 3D) and a few other 3D games were all
white on his Droid.  I asked him if he had ever run any kind of tweak
utility and he said that when he first got his phone, he installed an
app called "Spare Parts" and played with some settings on it.
Apparently one of the settings disabled compatibility mode and runs
everything full-res, breaking many of our apps and games.  Of course
users don't know that's what they are doing.  They think they are
somehow unlocking their phone's potential that their evil carriers
didn't give them access to.  If only they understood!

First of all, if you're the author of "Spare Parts", that's a bad
idea.  Please don't give users that option.  Nothing good can come of
it.

Second, since there will probably always be some kind of tweak app out
there that allows for disabling compatibility mode, it's in your best
interest as a developer to update your old apps and make them work at
every resolution.  Counting on compatibility mode in the long term is
a bad idea I think.

That's all.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Android Developers" group.
To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en

Reply via email to