[Android Apps and Games] stoneskin:
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I've not had much time this week, but I'll attach some screenshots. In summary:

1) Implemented zoom and scroll. Only currently supporting 2x zoom - why would you need more? - but simple to support infinite zooming if desired. Zoom uses the standard built-in control, can't be bothered to create my own. Scroll works by touch and drag. Zooming and scrolling aren't animated, i.e. you thumb-down, drag, thumb-up, and the map moves. That suits me fine for now, especially as so much to do.

2) With screen real-estate crucial, especially when catering for dinky phones like my own, I've planted a nicely large dice widget to the bottom right. It acts as a button, i.e. when enabled (dice are brilliant white) you just tap to roll, and I'm thinking this is the best place for it - quick and easy access for the right thumb. When it's not your turn it is disabled, both actually and visually.

3) I like your tab idea, so I've given it a quick whirl. I'm new to Android dev. so others may be able to help me here, but the standard Tab/Tabhost class seems to have been created with "tabbed activities" in mind, which is not what we want as we want "translucent" tabs that don't interfere.

Anyway, I've knocked up a "translucent" tab/panel system which currently drives off the buttons down the right-hand side.

A couple of things on that, I've used the standard buttons because that was the quickest thing to do. I don't know if anyone here or elsewhere has a tabbed layout/view I can use? Also, with dinky phones the tabs must be large enough for chunky thumbs, so the current buttons are at least unmissable! I've contemplated having the righthand button/tab panel to be vertically scrollable, meaning that we can add more (less often used) functions, without taking up the screen or using a complex context menu system.

The current buttons are fairly arbitrary at this point, and the lables were the first things that came into my head, so don't take them too seriously.

"Hand" only displays resource cards, but would also include dev cards.

"Build" just has a few buttons, but would also include the cost (as you suggested) and roads/settlements/cities remaining.

"Trade" doesn't do anything yet, but my word I'm a bit daunted about that. Moving on...

"Done" just completes your go. I put it bottom right for accessibility.

In terms of the actual game, here's where I'm at:

1) Currently only multi-human-player on one phone. The "game model" doesn't care about who or what the players are, so my full intention is that this would be extended for SMS-based, web-based or whatever-the-monkey-based play.

2) No dev cards, ports, trading or robber. This should be my priority I think.

3) No setup screens, configuration or whatever.

4) No Save/Load/Sounds, all that kind of nonsense. Not thinking about that right now.

5-1,000,000) No idea, I need a beer.

Over the next week I'm going to focus on (2).

In the meantime I'd love help from the following:

1) Graphics. If people were interested or knowledgable - use icons for the tabs/buttons/whatever? Thoughts on colours (I know desert should be paler, wheat golder). Thoughts on producing textured graphics that are performant, look great and professional but would work on low-spec Androids.

2) Layout. I'm new to this and I've no idea why Android layouts are so fiddly. So I've got some custom views or standard layouts, containing other views or layouts, and it is so darn fiddly. Why (TH) is it so difficult to do the following? I have a custom view (e.g. the dice) but I want the size to be relative to the screen size, so I want it to grow based on its content? Yep, that's my question. How do I:

a) Place a custom view in a relative layout

b) Allow it to grow based on the display size without filling the entire screen? My layout so far was cobbled together late at night with The Doors my only companians.

3) Tabs/tab content. Feel free to discuss, but I don't really want too many nice-to-haves as they can be added later. Right now it would be helpful if people were able to state the "minimum" requirements, as it were.

a) what tabs

b) Tab order (i.e. top-bottom)

c) tab content and format, what would the simplest but most gorgeously-simple trade tab look like?

Finally, I'm going to upload those screenshots. The "score/current player" information still looks rubbish. Let me know what info you think should be always visible regarding the game state.

Right, having typed myself to death, I'm going to find a cold one.