Conan-the-Caveman-Android

A side-scrolling caveman platformer for Android, built on Storm Engine v2.

Originally the example project from 'SDL Game Development' by Shaun Mitchell, re-architected on the engine's Game + GameStateMachine + AssetStore. This repo is the Android port: the engine and game compile into a single JNI library via Gradle + CMake + NDK, SDL's SDLActivity hosts it, and on-screen touch controls (a d-pad and a four-button action cluster) drive the caveman. The desktop version lives in Conan-the-Caveman-Linux.

Requirements

• Storm Engine v2 v1.2.0+, vendored as the external/storm-engine-v2 submodule (Android needs the engine compiled in, not an installed .so)
• Java 17, Android cmdline-tools, NDK, and CMake — see the engine's examples/android-platformer/README.md for the exact sdkmanager install commands
• A device with USB debugging enabled (or an emulator)

Setup

git clone --recursive https://github.com/WillSams/Conan-the-Caveman-Android.git
cd Conan-the-Caveman-Android
# if you cloned without --recursive:
git submodule update --init --recursive

The recursive init pulls the engine and, under it, the pinned SDL2 / SDL_image / SDL_ttf / SDL_mixer / tinyxml2 / glm Android sources.

Build, install, run

./gradlew assembleDebug     # app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk
./gradlew installDebug      # install onto the connected device
adb shell am start -n com.stormengine.conan/.ConanActivity

Or tap Conan the Caveman in the app drawer. The first build compiles SDL and FreeType from source, so it takes a while; later builds only recompile the game.

Installing a prebuilt APK

Every push to main publishes a debug APK to the latest release; the CI Android Build run also attaches it as an artifact. Because debug builds are signed with a throwaway keystore that differs between your machine and CI (and between CI runs), Android will refuse to install one over a copy signed by a different key — the install silently fails even though Play Protect passes it. Uninstall any existing copy first:

adb uninstall com.stormengine.conan   # or long-press the icon -> Uninstall
adb install app-debug.apk

adb install (rather than tapping the file) prints the real reason on failure — INSTALL_FAILED_UPDATE_INCOMPATIBLE confirms the signature mismatch.

Controls

On-screen, laid out for thumbs:

• Left — d-pad: a circular pad; left/right walk (up/down are wired for future use). Angle sectors mean diagonals register naturally.
• Right — action diamond: SNES-style X / Y / A / B. A or B jumps. X and Y are wired but unmapped in this game.
• Pause: the top-right zone, the Android Back button, or Start on a paired controller.

Bluetooth controllers and keyboards work too — the touch layer sits on top of the engine's existing gamepad/keyboard input.

Tests

The game's pure logic — platformer physics, collider-map parsing, menu-button hit-testing, and controller-input helpers — is unit-tested with igloo:

make test       # builds and runs the desktop spec suite

Layout

external/storm-engine-v2   Engine submodule (pinned to v1.2.0) with its vendored Android SDL sources
include/stormengine2       Symlink to the engine's common/ so <stormengine2/...> includes resolve
app/                       Gradle module: build.gradle, jni/CMakeLists.txt, ConanActivity, AndroidManifest
src/                       Game code — states, physics, input (gamepad helper; touch pad comes from the engine)
data/                      Level (conan.map + colliders), screen XML, gfx, sfx — extracted to internal storage at launch
specs/                     igloo specs for the pure logic