Android port: HS Tutor 0.5.1

Hello!

I've rewritten some parts of the HS Tutor code to make it compatible with Android.

Download link, HS Tutor 0.5.1 android: MEGA (750.3 MB) 

How to install:

•  copy the "apk" to your smartphone/tablet and touch it through some file manager to install the game
  
•  the game will be installed in the main memory of your device (unfortunately it is not possible to run Renpy games direct from the SD Card)
  
• remember, even after moving apk - which has 750MB - to your device, you still need 750MB free to install the game! If you don't have an SD card, make sure there is more than 1.5GB of free memory on your mobile device. After the game is installed, you can discard the apk to free up memory. You can install the apk direct from the SD card to the main memory too.

About the Android version:

• this is a port of the 0.5.0 PC version, the only difference is that the font size is bigger for easier reading (and I fixed some bugs). This means that many things are very small to touch on the screen (but it is perfectly possible to play if your finger is not too fat).
  
• don't download this version if your smartphone is crap like mine, although the game is perfectly playable in 90% of the time even on weak devices, the animations will kill the frame rate and make the experience painful.
  
• in some devices it can be difficult to change the name of the protagonist and the role of the two girls. On my device it worked normally on the first try, but on second try for some reason the on-screen keyboard did not work right and I had to try dozens of times until I could rename the main character. This is Renpy's problem and I can't fix it.
  
• I tested the entire game on an emulator and everything is working. If you find bugs, let me know!

A technical explanation of what I did:

In HS Tutor I use a Renpy function called "focus_mask". This function allows me to place multiple layers of images on top of each other to compose the background.

For example, when you visit school in the morning and meet Mila, Kelly and Megan in the classroom, you are actually looking at several overlapping images. Focus_mask discards the entire transparent part of the images and allows you to click on the girls.

On android, this does not work. That means I had to re-create all these images, cut them to the correct size, and manually position them in the background. Then I rewrote a good part of the code making the desktop/mobile version work on the same project.

Although it consumed some time, it was not wasted time because from now on I will be able to make android versions without much extra work.

Last comments

If you have a low-cost smartphone, I don't recommend installing the game. My smartphone is a Samsumg Galaxy J1, with a 4-inch screen, 700MB of RAM and a poor processor. Although it is possible to play the game normally during the characters conversations, the animations overwhelm the system and make everything unstable. Some things take a long time to happen too, such as loading a saved game.

If you have a high-performance device, you probably will not have any problem playing HS Tutor and the experience will be very similar to that of the PC.

Bye!