Desperately Seeking Frameworks...

[BrokenHammer]

Tyrano developer here. Reaching out because Tyrano is not being very responsive and I figure this issue might affect more than just us. Literally their Frameworks are from Swift 3 era (iOS reference) and the guy who manages communication between the Japan team, the publisher, and the developers has seemingly stopped doing his job with no explanation given.

Problem:

-Google Play Store has changed.

Now they require things to be packaged. Starter app needs to be 150MB with up to 2GB asset containers. Can't just dump on a big APK because there is a 1% chance it will sell better with 150MB size (according to Google's docs).

My programmer is not super experienced with their system. He has gotten some prototypes working but audio plays, no video/etc. Tyrano's Framework for Android is better than iOS but, it might also be part of the problem.

-iOS Framework grossly outdated.

As described above, it's Swift 3. To give an example, this is from Mac OS El Capitan which requires a Mac from a decade ago to work. Which, we've gotten our hands on and have been able to convert it up to function with modern Xcode 13 which is Swift 5. However, the framework uses UIwebview which Apple has deprecated in favor of a new standard. I got a friend who does more iOS app development who tried to patch up Tyrano's framework to work. However, it doesn't load properly. All he can guess is it's something with the build itself that isn't wanting to function with the updated Framework. We can load a sim build if we leave things in UIwebview.

-Mac OS/Linux builds might benefit too

Mac OS Tyrano is still 32bit and requires Mac OS 10.8 Snow Leopard...yeah, literally they didn't update it at all on the English side. Porting to Mac OS requires the Japanese TyranoStudio to export, which is fully 64bit. The 64bit Tyrano patch has been out over a year now on PC and Mac OS side has had nothing done since. Considering possibly using a Framework to compile a Browser build for Mac OS. So, this is another factor. Linux plays into that too.

Solutions:

-Need a framework that can work with all of this.

Tyrano used to use PhoneGap. Which was deprecated in 2020. I am aware that Cordova is pretty much the same thing but when I look into Cordova I see it still using UIwebview. So, it probably wouldn't solve the issue. Been searching but there are a lot of Frameworks and not enough documentation to decide.

-Switch engine to something that is more mobile friendly

Not really what we want to do given how far along the project is. Unity seems to offer the best support for these things and does have some VN engine plugins. Not excited about paying $150 for a plugin that doesn't do half of what Tyrano does, nor is as quick to compile with. Most of the others I saw are about the same if not worse. Renpy? Still need to figure the framework issue...

Seeking some wisdom from other VN makers who have experience in this area! Thanks!