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AppGameKit Classic Chat / APK Over 50 MB - How Can I Use The APK Expansion Files Option?

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JHA
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Posted: 15th Jan 2014 17:19
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Hello All,

My APK has gone over the 50MB limit for the Google Play store, so I cannot upload it to them. I get the following error when trying to upload it:

Quote: "Upload failed

You need to reduce your APK file size to 50MB or use APK Expansion Files."


Has anyone used the APK Expansion Files option?
If so, what do I need to do, because it isn't clear?

It is the Audio files that are the bulk of the problem, so if I could somehow load them in after the user installs the App, that might solve the problem.

I have no idea how to do that though, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
JHA
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JHA
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Posted: 15th Jan 2014 17:41
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Thinking about this again, maybe I don't have to do that, if I can get my Audio (.mp3) files below the 50MB requirement.

What are the lowest settings possible to get a quality audio file?

I am reading in chapters from a book, so it needs to be voice quality with a small file size.

Right now, the files range from 1.6 MB to as much as 3.3 MB each. If I can reduce the recording settings and still get decent quality recordings, I think I can get below the 50 MB threshold.

Currently, I am using an app on my iPhone called Voice Record Pro. It does let me manipulate the settings, but I already recorded the chapters using the following settings, which resulted in the files sizes above.

Sample Rate: 22,050
Bit Depth: 8
Channels: Mono
Bit Rate: 64,000
Encode Quality: Medium

Those are the Medium settings on the app. The Low settings give poor results, so I can't use that one. The app does let me change the settings, but I'm not sure what to set them to.

I know I can just fiddle around until I find what works, but I am on a little bit of a schedule, so I am just looking to see if anyone knows a thing or two about voice recordings with low file size?

Thanks for any input you may have.
JHA
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JimHawkins
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Posted: 15th Jan 2014 19:13 Edited at: 15th Jan 2014 19:14
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An iPhone is not really the tool to do this well. If you start with poor quality audio, compressing will be harder. Have a look at how to use expansion files:

http://developer.android.com/google/play/expansion-files.html

The simplest solution would be to make your program in two parts, with 50% resources in each part.

If you want to post a file up hare I\'ll see what might be done. Speech should be fine at 11025 s/s, if the playback system allows it.

-- Jim - When is there going to be a release?
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easter bunny
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Posted: 15th Jan 2014 23:15 Edited at: 15th Jan 2014 23:18
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If you find expansion files too hard, you can just include some/most of your media in the APK, and get it to download a ZIP containing the rest or the media from a webserver after the app is installed.

The only problem is that users might not appreciate having to download more stuff to get the game working


Audacia Games
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JHA
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Posted: 16th Jan 2014 17:29
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Thanks for the feedback Jim and EB. Much appreciated. I'll update how things go.
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nickele upgraded
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Posted: 16th Jan 2014 22:02
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OK, I am a bit confused here. You people mean that AppGameKit can't produce the necessary bytecode in two parts that can be then compiled to the "limited" 50M first part and the "extended" second one (for Android)?

If that's the case, a stupid question is born:

For those of us who don't have knowledge of maintaining / setting-up a web server (or even don't have the money to do so), does this mean that we can't publish on Google Play with AppGameKit?

"For Those About to Program We Salute You"
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easter bunny
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Posted: 17th Jan 2014 00:12
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Firstly, you can use free hosting, something like 000 webhost is fine.

I don't know exactly how the expansion files work, but it looks like you use whatever format you want to the expansion file.
If this is in fact the case, just plop half your media into a zip, add it as an expansion file, then extract the zip on the first run of the game.

The only problem, is that I don't know how you would access the file It says it gets stored to <shared-storage>/Android/obb/<package-name>/, Wherever that is


Audacia Games
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SoftMotion3D
AGK Developer
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Posted: 17th Jan 2014 00:56 Edited at: 17th Jan 2014 01:21
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Quote: "If that's the case, a stupid question is born:

For those of us who don't have knowledge of maintaining / setting-up a web server (or even don't have the money to do so), does this mean that we can't publish on Google Play with AppGameKit?"


apparently not a dumb question at all..

if its over 50mb I believe you need to have downloadable files on a server....

Guess I will not be releasing my music app on google play. However I can release big files to OUYA as they do not have such small restrictions like google play

does anyone know if amazon has the same restrictions?
maybe you can send them bigger files?

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Paul Johnston
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Posted: 17th Jan 2014 02:30
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We ran into this problem with the Hazard Perception app for Android, it requires about 300MB of video files which means using expansion files. My experience of them hasn't been great, we get occasional reports from people who say the expansion file doesn't download, and it's a pain to setup, so I'm not keen to include the functionality in AppGameKit just yet.

The expansion file itself is just a zip file with a .obb extension which is downloaded to a specific file path separate from your app, you can then opt to extract files from it or read files directly from the zip if you chose no compression. Unfortunately either method requires changes to the way AppGameKit reads files which have so far only been done for videos.

A much easier way is to host the files somewhere and download them through HTTP, but that could use up a lot of bandwidth. Or you could try hacking the AGKHelper.java file to extract the expansion files into the media folder if you like a challenge.

Quote: "does anyone know if amazon has the same restrictions?"


We had no problems with Amazon and a 300MB+ APK.
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nickele upgraded
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Posted: 17th Jan 2014 11:53
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First of all: Apologies for my delayed responses but it takes a bit of time till my posts are approved and then I see them at a later time etc.

Second and most important: The 50+ MB Android problem. Forgive me for returning back to this issue, but it is a very important factor for some developers.

My friends and I are struggling for some months now in order to create a *very* ambitious 2D game, with LOTS of graphics. At this very moment we estimate that there are at least 250 MB of graphics/sprites alone (not optimised yet)! This number is (again estimated) to double in 7-11 months, when the game reaches its almost final/beta development stages!

It was BASIC that we knew well and BASIC only was the language we wanted to program in. The reason we selected AppGameKit is because it promised an easy porting to various platforms, and so PC, iOS and Android are our first choices of publishing (when that time comes). It was a choice based on the fact that we wouldn't have to dig deep into every platforms development environment (Visual Studio, Xcode or Eclipse if I am correct).

...apparently not. We are shocked to realize now that this is not the case. From what we read till now, we conclude that AppGameKit can not offer a simple way for publishing games greater than 50 MB in Google Play.

Please correct me if I am wrong (and forgive my wrong conclusion) and allow me to ask if there is a possibility of fixing this "issue" in some future version of AppGameKit, or by publishing a *detailed* guide (which doesn't include web server stuff) in case I miss something.

"For Those About to Program We Salute You"
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JHA
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Posted: 17th Jan 2014 15:29 Edited at: 17th Jan 2014 15:37
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Quote: "Paul Johnston: We had no problems with Amazon and a 300MB+ APK."


Looks like I'm going the Amazon route then. At least for this project.

Thanks for that Paul!

[offtopic] I just realized that I just past my 11th anniversary on these forums! I'd better get something published to show something for it!! Especially, since I was on the older forums before that too!! Yikes![/offtopic]
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JimHawkins
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Posted: 17th Jan 2014 18:55
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nickele upgraded - I assume you're in Greece? Yammas.

The 50Mb limit is not AGK's fault. But is is a reasonable limit for Android, which is mostly on phones with very small available storage. I really don't see a game with all those assets being very popular on phones, frankly. Sounds more PC/Mac to me.

It looks fairly easy to add these additional files and I'm sure Paul can smooth the path. Meanwhile - you can upload to Amazon.

The problem for TGC is that the rules keep changing for various platforms. Apple is notorious for deprecating today what it demanded yesterday!

-- Jim - When is there going to be a release?
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nickele upgraded
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Posted: 17th Jan 2014 20:24
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Again I apologize for the delay of my answers.

Sir JimHawkins you assumed correctly. Yammas my friend!

Please, accept my apologies if my tone sounded offending. Under no circumstances do I undervalue the efforts and results of the TGC team. And I would never accuse the AGC creators for bugs / problems caused by Google, Apple, Microsoft, pick your choice.

It just would be nice to know TGC's plans about this Android issue. If there is no workaround then we'd like to know so that we cease development for Android and simply continue with PC/iOS. Trying to adjust our game for 5-6 extra different resolutions, is just very exhausting and time consuming.

We also believe that there is still a big market in the mobile scene for games that offer nice 2D graphics and compare to PC games. Smartphone users with advanced GPUs would like to see the potential of their devices.

And... Well... 50 MB reminds us the famous "640K ought to be enough for anybody"!

"For Those About to Program We Salute You"
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easter bunny
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Posted: 17th Jan 2014 23:22
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Workaround 1. Host much of your media on an external server and download it the first time the game starts.
The problem is that most users will dislike having to do this.

Workaround 2.
Quote: " Or you could try hacking the AGKHelper.java file to extract the expansion files into the media folder if you like a challenge."

Try that /\ it's in \src\com\thegamecreators\agk_player
Or, ask somebody else on the forum really nicely to try it instead You might get lucky


Audacia Games
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JimHawkins
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Posted: 17th Jan 2014 23:31
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Yiassou nikele - It's a fairly small addition to unpack the files, so I'm sure Paul will manage that soon. Most of the work is on the Android store upload. But I can see it will take some care deciding which assets go where.

-- Jim - When is there going to be a release?
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nickele upgraded
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Posted: 20th Jan 2014 10:38
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easter bunny, you are right with your suggestions. I hope Google doesn't change again its rules about file sizes.
JimHawkins, I will wait and see. It's better for the TGC people to concentrate on the AppGameKit v.2 platform than looking after Google's peculiar guidelines (I do believe the 50MB limit is peculiar, yes). Yiassou again, I have to face this flu I have for 2 days now.

"For Those About to Program We Salute You"
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JimHawkins
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Posted: 21st Jan 2014 00:28
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nickele - να πάρει την καλύτερη

I think simple fixes should be done soon.

-- Jim - When is there going to be a release?
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