Hi HerzAusGold,
good to see you in the forum again!
> there is a iPhone/iPad port of EM available, here:
http://www.lesbird.com/EmeraldMine/
Yes, looks promising! Wasn't able to test it on an iOS device yet...
> But it's not very good playable on my iPone-Air (controlling is difficult).
Do you mean iPod or iPhone? I can imagine that it is not easy to implement good, usable game controls for an iPhone port, but for the iPad, something that works more or less fine should be possible, I think.
BTW: How do these controls exactly work? I've found this on the AppStore page of that game:
"Control your character by sliding your finger in the direction you want to go. Tap a nearby block to grab it. Tap and hold to plant dynamite. Many alternate control methods to choose from."
This sounds like a reasonable well-working game control for this kind of game. (And the "many alternate controls" suggests that there's something that works for mostly everybody.)
I'm asking because I'm just facing the exact same problem. My Android port of R'n'D already works quite fine (although it still needs an alternative default artwork set that fits the game to the small screen), but I'm indeed having problems with non-frustrating game controls at the moment. I've played around with both standard "emulated buttons" controls (which always tend to suck IMHO, because there's no feedback if you hit the right part of the touch screen) and "sliding finger" controls (which works quite fine on the touch pad of a MacBook Air, but currently doesn't on the touch screen of an S4 mini).
So maybe you can shed some light on those "alternate controls" and how they exactly work, and which of the available controls work best (or worst) in your opinion, and why?
> Hope you make a better port for android and maybe for iphone.
I'll try my best -- I think the following challenges are the most critical parts to get it working reasonably well:
The Screen Size
Although the game as we know it might work more or less fine on a tablet, the menu and the game is too small when played on a phone device. Therefore, it needs an alternative artwork set that makes it usable with normally sized fingers and normally sharp vision. The main problem is that standard R'n'D menus won't fit on the screen without scrolling anymore, but this can be fixed by adding scrollbars (and hopefully menu screens that can be scrolled by swiping gestures).
The Game Controls
See above! This is probably the most critical part of the port of R'n'D to mobile devices. For a long time, I have seen a (digital, that means "Amiga style") joystick as the gaming device best suited for playing R'n'D and similar games. Although owning a "Competition Pro" joystick with USB connector and having it used to play R'n'D, I've got used to using the keyboard for many years now, and it works as least as good as a joystick, I think. On a phone or a tablet, you (usually) have neither of them, which raises the question what might be the best way to play a game like R'n'D on a device like a smart phone (or if this kind of game is just not suited well enough for touch devices). I'm still trying to find game controls that do not suck too hard...
The Level Archive
While it was never trivial for beginners to add levels to R'n'D, most people get it to work once they know what to do (extract a zip archive into the right directory on the computer). On a mobile device, things may get a bit more complicated. The most similar method may be something like this: "Mount the SD card (if you have one, and if you know how to do that) from your mobile device on your laptop or desktop PC (if you have one) and extract (or copy) a zip archive into the right directory on that SD card." While this would probably work (not implemented yet), it's probably even less comfortable than adding levels to the desktop version of R'n'D. Solution: Use an online R'n'D level archive that can be browsed from within the game. This will most probably be the way to go for mobile R'n'D (and then also desktop R'n'D, of course).
> If you need zip-support or download-support take a look to RndTest source where i have implemented this.
I know well, and I'm very happy that you once already did that work! Even though this code never found its way into the "official" source tree of R'n'D, I still have all versions of the RndTest source code you once made available to me, and I will definitely use them to add the new "level archive" feature described above.
> If I can contribute to the development, just send a mail.
I will contact you regarding the above, and I'm also happy that you may be able to help with experience regarding game controls on touch devices for R'n'D style games!