How can I stop the phone back-light from turning off during a game?

[Simflare]

Hi guys

I'm making a game for Android and iOS. Right now I'm focusing on testing with a Samsung S3, and I've noticed that often the backlight will turn off after a while, which makes it really hard to see the game. So, 2 questions:

Why does the back light turn off?

Is there a way to make sure the back light stays on?

Thanks in advance!
Simflare

Edit Just in case it helps, my game uses mouse clicks as touch controls, it's just one tap to jump, that's it, that's the controls.

[rndpro]

Hi Simflare,

I may not be of any help but I don't understand why this is happening for you. For Android one of my devices I test my games on is a Galaxy S3 Mini which works perfectly and this does not happen. Maybe this is a setting on the phone or there could be a setting within the Android export options for your game that prevent this when used?

Thanks
James

[Simflare]

I don't think it's my particular phone, it's happened to me on other phones too. There may be a setting - but I feel there's probably also a way to turn it off during the game.

My assumption is that the screen light is meant to do that when no one does anything, like a pre-empt for a screen saver / turning off the screen, except we are doing something. So I believe there should be a way to keep it on.

Just to clarify, my game is controlled via mouse clicks as the touch controls.

[macca02]

I know with the android object extension you can prevent the device from going to sleep, helpful if your game uses accelerometers for movement and doesn't have any actual input.
Is your brightness setting set to auto?

[Simflare]

Hm, that does sound useful.

Yeah, the brightness setting is set to auto.

[Jeff]

Yes use the Android object and you might also need to check the wake lock permission in the Application Properties - Permissions area
I'll have to do some testing to see if that permission is needed or not but I suspect it is.

I did this in a game (with permission checked and the object with the action set) and it worked great.
Kept phone from going dim when user isn't touching the screen.

[Simflare]

Thanks Jeff, that sounds like a good suggestion, I'll give that a try.

What does the Android object do? Do I have to do anything with it or just put it on the stage? I've never used it before - I've actually made the entire game workable on my Samsung without it, I don't understand what the object does?

I checked the wake_lock permission, I will see how that goes! Thanks

[DaveC]

the android object gives you a bit of extra control with extra actions/conditions related to Android.

Eg.

condition
Start Of Frame -

Action (android object)
start sleep prevention

[Simflare]

I just found out the best way to stop the phone backlight from turning off, thanks to macca02!

With the sleep prevention you need the Android Object in the frame you want the sleep prevention.
Start of frame: Android Object --> Start sleep prevention.

And the permission "Wake Lock" checked in the properties (unsure if this is required i just assumed it was).

[Fernando]

you need that permission to sleep feature to work.