Introducing support for mobile devices

Posted by Oleksandr on June 26, 2019

June 2019 development update (v6) brings support for mobile devices, engine and infrastructure improvements for the game and the website, and plenty of bugfixes.

Running on mobile devices

Most of the work this development cycle was spent implementing all the required changes for the game to be able to run smoothly on (relatively) underpowered phone hardware, supporting small screen sizes in the UI, and making it installable as an app.

Currently, you would need Chrome or Firefox on Android. iOS support will come when Apple implements missing features in their browser engine. Also right now you would need to enable experimental WebAssembly threads support in your browser of choice. In Chrome, open chrome://flags and set WebAssembly threads support to "Enabled". In Firefox, open about:config and set javascript.options.shared_memory to "true".

Installable app

You can now install the game as a Progressive Web App. This works both on desktop and mobile. When in game, open the main menu and press "Install App...". You will get the launcher icon on your desktop / app drawer, and the game will now run in its own window / fullscreen activity, separate from the browser.

All important changes since v5 release (March 2019)

• State borders are now easier to read when the camera is zoomed out.
• Improved performance of "Switch Perspective" feature in the demo mode.
• Improved support for high resolution screens (at 2x and higher pixel ratio).
• Implemented responsive UI layouts for narrow screens (i.e. mobile devices).
• Touch gestures from the edge of the screen are ignored to avoid interfering with system UI on mobile devices.
• Client is automatically reloaded on reconnect when a new version is available.
• Camera position and user settings are now persistent (saved locally).
• "Waiting for server reply..." message is shown when the server reply takes too long to arrive.
• WebAssembly is used instead of plain JavaScript, which improves performance.
• WebGL 2 is used when available, to reduce CPU overhead.
• Implemented support for ASTC texture compression format in the tools and the game engine, needed for mobile devices.
• The game is now installable as a Progressive Web App on desktop and mobile.
• Improved handling of errors and network offline state on the loading splash screen.
• Adopted modern JavaScript and CSS features, dropped support for legacy browsers.
• Gallery mode for images in the blog. Improved layout of images on blog pages.
• Website remains readable even when JavaScript is disabled.
• Improved internal analytics tools. Client-side crashes/errors are now recorded.