Minecraft Bedrock handheld port v2.0.0-rc.8

Superseded by v2.0.0-rc.9

Nothing here is broken, but this release offers you every Minecraft version
Google Play serves and then refuses to install most of them — the range check
ran only after the download and the full unpack had already happened.

rc.9 asks first, and lets you go ahead. Install rc.9 instead.

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Bedrock on your handheld. No game files are included — you supply your own
Google Play copy, and the helper below is how you get it.

Which download?

You have	Take
Any normal PortMaster handheld	Standard edition
An Anbernic RG DS	RGDS edition (dual-screen, arm64 only)
A Windows PC, and no game files yet	Windows APK helper (.zip)
A Linux PC, and no game files yet	Linux APK helper (.AppImage)

Extract the port archive at the root of the storage holding your ROM folders,
refresh the Ports list, and launch Minecraft Bedrock once. Then use the
helper on a PC to download your own copy, put the files in
ports/minecraftbedrock-data/apk/, and choose Install APK.

What changed

All of it is the on-device launcher menu. The game, the client binaries and the
PC helpers are unchanged from rc.7.

Holding up or down scrolls

Get APK from Google Play → Other versions lists every build Google Play
still serves — over a hundred for ARM64 alone — and until now each one had to
be stepped past with its own button press. Hold a direction and it repeats: ten
rows a second, speeding up to twenty-five after a second of holding. A single
tap still moves exactly one row.

Left and right still switch ARM64/ARM32 on one press; they deliberately do not
repeat.

Every version says what it is

Each row now carries the same labels the desktop helper shows in its columns:

1.16.221.01 [ARM64]
RECOMMENDED | No RenderDragon | Bedrock | Nether Update

1.21.132.1 [ARM64]
AVOID: RenderDragon | Bedrock | Tricky Trials | Tiny UI

• RenderDragon is called out both ways round. Builds that use it stutter
  badly on this hardware and are marked AVOID; builds that don't say No
  RenderDragon, because that is a reason to choose one.
• Bedrock or Pocket Edition. Pocket Edition is a different, older game,
  and it is touch-only — the row says so, because a handheld's buttons will not
  work in it.
• The named update it belongs to: Nether Update, Trails & Tales, and so on.
• Tiny UI on anything newer than 1.16.221.01, whose interface is the most
  readable on a small screen.

The Play code moved off the row to make space for these. It is still on the
confirmation screen, along with the full warning for the build you picked.

1.16.221.01 remains the one to pick unless you have a reason not to.

Fixed: text running into the lines around it

Four places placed text at fixed fractions of the screen rather than measuring
it, and the overflow landed on the borders:

• The header's port version had a 92-pixel limit for a 135-pixel string, so it
  wrapped and the second line sat on the accent rule under the header.
• The subtitle could wrap the same way. It cleared by one pixel at 720px wide
  and did not fit at all at 640px.
• List rows put a title and a description in a row too short to hold both, so
  descriptions ran under the titles and through the row's own bottom border.
• The 1/111 position counter was aligned to the screen edge while the list
  frame stops short of it, so it was drawn across that frame's border.

These are now sized from the font's metrics, and trimmed rather than wrapped.
Rows are never shorter than the text they hold.

Faster to draw

The menu backdrop's dot grid and scanlines were about 1500 individual draw
calls every frame. They never change, so they are now baked once into a single
batch — worth having when a held direction redraws the list continuously.

Status

Testing channel. Final R36S and revised RGDS physical acceptance checks remain
pending, and nothing here is promoted to stable or newly labelled Validated.

Verify downloads against SHA256SUMS.txt. Neither helper is code-signed, so
SmartScreen and antivirus heuristics may complain about the Windows one. The
Linux sign-in window has not yet been exercised on a real desktop; if it
misbehaves, please open an issue at
mcbedrock-get.

NOT AN OFFICIAL MINECRAFT PRODUCT. NOT APPROVED BY OR ASSOCIATED WITH MOJANG
OR MICROSOFT.