Because of these reasons:
- I'm using the OpenSL ES as sound output API and the native asset api, which're both first available from as of Android >= 2.3 / Android API Level >= 9.
- Since Scenemon is a music game: Android <=2.2 / Android API Level <=8 had only the AudioTrack Java API with too large sound latency, see http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=3434 and http://www.synthtopia.com/content/20...android-phone/ and http://arunraghavan.net/2012/01/puls...flinger-fight/ (at Android 2.3 is the sound latency problem still existent but is already a bit better, when the device supports the android.hardware.audio.low_latency feature, which exists even from as of Android >= 2.3)
- Incomplete OpenGL 2.0 API implementation at Java level, where many API functions were empty stubs with unimplemented-exception-calls, good for native-code stuff this is no issue, but Android <=2.2 has still many other OpenGL-based issues, for example, buggy GPU drivers.
- Android <= 2.2 has no parallel-executed garbage collector, only a stop-and-go incremental garbage collector, which can be often a frame rate killer, even at native code non-java-based games, if the CPU is only a singlecore CPU and in the background runs still many other java-based apps.
- Devices, which can run Android >= 2.3 with an offical Android >= 2.3 ROM from the device manufacturer (not inoffical homebrew hacky custom ROM stuff), meets the minimum hardware requirements of Scenemon in 98% of the cases, and devices, which can run maximal Android 2.2 / had only ROM updates to Android 2.2, only in circa 25% of the cases.
Yes in the next days or weeks, since I must even for my reallife day job improve the ARM code generator of FreePascal for the company where I'm working for them, and when I'm done with it, I'll send all patches to FPK (Florian Klaempf) in one big patch archive.
Because SDL is for the usage on the Windows, Linux and Mac OSX target platforms at the same time, see my C64 emulator micro64 for Win/Linux/MacOSX http://micro64.de/ (which is one of the most accurate C64 emulators today). Short Scenemon is already for Linux and MacOSX without any further code changes but I had found no time yet, to reboot, to build these Linux and MacOSX binaries.
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