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I am developing an Android game, which I will upload to the market. I am using the NDK; the majority of the game code is C++.
Should I worry about supporting x86 devices? Are there actually any out there?
Currently I am building for ARMv6 only; building for both ARMv6 and v7 increases the APK size without making it any faster (it’s already fast enough). It would be nice if I only needed to build for a single architecture.
If you can do it without too much hassle, I would do it.
Not because there are tons of Android/x86 devices, but simply because supporting multiple architectures is a fantastic way to shake out bugs that you might otherwise never encounter (or that would lie dormant until something changes on the system two years from now, and suddenly your app doesn’t work anymore). It will make you a better programmer.
Also, I’m surprised that building for armv7 doesn’t confer any advantage. Do you mean that you’re already framerate-capped running the armv6 build on an armv7 device? If so, building armv7 may still allow your code to run faster, which typically saves energy even if it doesn’t increase “performance”. Less energy = people use your app longer.
Now, all that said, I don’t know the Android toolkit, so I don’t know how much hassle is actually involved with supporting multiple arches. If it’s a major hassle, then by all means stick to armv6; it’s a good baseline for “most” devices out there.