Tag Archives: android

What day is it with Unity?

May 18, 2013   admin

Time has been slipping away what with setting up the new Mac and going through my old Linux Mint hard drive to bring everything across. Everything, that wasn’t trashed when the old Linux PC slid off the desk onto the floor while I was trying to make space for the iMac… at least I’d backed up most of the stuff on the old PC before I started moving stuff around.

One of the things that caught me out about Unity is the use of reserved file and folder names. A few days ago, I created a new script file, after which I tried to compile the project. This resulted in a load of errors appearing from nowhere, with messages like “The name ‘Editor’ does not denote a valid type (‘not found’)”. Because this was immediately following the migration from the MacBook to the iMac, I spent some time checking the code to make sure everything had come across properly.

Eventually, I figured out that it was actually the name of the new script that was the problem: “ShapeEditor”. “Editor” is a reserved word which Unity uses to identify editor extensions, and any class that has the word in it’s name has to reside under a folder called “Editor”. Renaming the script file fixed all the compilation errors, but it’s an easy mistake to make, and the error messages it produces aren’t exactly obvious.

There’s other similar reserved words, such as the folder name “Resources” which Unity will look in whenever you call a function such as Resources.Load to instantiate an object at runtime.

Yet more plugins

Progress has been slow on my game because I’m continually backtracking and re-doing bits as I learn more about Unity. I’m not trying to make perfect code, what I am trying to do is to find the most efficient way of writing code for Unity so that the next project will be faster and easier to write.

For instance, I decided that I wanted to add a grid to the level editor so that I could get an accurate view of the where all the objects are placed on the 2D game area. Unity’s line drawing functionality doesn’t seem to be particularly useful – In fact, it’s much like Shiva, the only line drawing calls are used for debugging, and don’t show up in final code.

The logical solution is to create lines using vectors as part of  an object. I started off by constructing a grid from an array of lines in Inkscape, then imported it as an SVG spline to bypass having to figure out how to create an object from scratch with Unity. By messing around with the scale I was able to get the grid to match the size of the blocks on the 2D game area, and then I implemented drag and drop, with the ability to paint new objects into the scene from a palette of pre-defined splines imported from Inkscape. This turned out to be a lot of work because of the calculations involved in lining everything up and have it all at the same scale.

The result was several hundred lines of code spread across a number of files.

Once I had it working, I realised that I needed to alter the size of the grid slightly to account for the relatively narrow screen aspect ratio of some iOS devices. My fiendish plans unravelled due to the difficulty of adjusting the lines on the grid, and then applying the same changes to all the objects in the scene. While Googling for solutions, I came across yet another Unity plugin called “Grid Framework”. It wasn’t free, but for $20, I was able to implement a much better solution that allows me to control the size of everything in the game world from one line of code. The plugin also halved the amount of code that was needed to run the editor… if only I’d thought of looking for a grid plugin before I’d started…

Speaking of purchases, I have just bought a license for creating iOS apps with Unity, in addition to the Android one I already have.

The only outstanding compiler now is the Blackberry one, which I hope will become available soon, and I also hope is compatibile with all the plugins I’ve purchased… I still haven’t heard if Blackberry still has plans to upgrade the old Playbook to BB10 – it would be silly for them not to do it because they need all the goodwill they can get when facing off against Android and iOS.

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2012: An app developer’s year in review

December 29, 2012   admin   No comments

logosI’ve been an active app developer for about 18 months, and although I’m not earning a living at it, it is now a significant part of my income. Despite a number of setbacks this year which limited the time I had available, I was able to make major improvements to Solar Explorer and Exoplanet Explorer and launch them on a number of new market places including Blackberry, Nook and Samsung.

I also had plans to write a series of simple games using a framework that I created with Shiva3D, but also due to the limited time, I was only able to release one game that used it: Transmutation. I’m currently working on a second game which I hope will be released in the first week of 2013.

Google Play

Google generates the lion’s share of my app income through a combination of paid app sales and ad revenue. In December last year my apps were ranked in the top 25 in the Education category – at the time there weren’t many high quality apps. Things have changed somewhat, causing my apps to drop to position 50 or lower. Despite no longer ranking on the first page, app sales are actually up, which implies that Google’s market has gained a population of users who have more than just moths in their pockets.

At least it’s now possible for developers to make some money without having a permanent place on the first page of category results. 2,200 apps were sold up till the 31st of December 2011. I passed the significant milestone of 10,000 apps sold on Google Play on the 19th of December 2012. The total now stands at 10,300, of which 8,100 were sold this year. I didn’t expect to earn enough to buy a cup of coffee when I started experimenting in late June 2011, especially since it considered impossible to make money on Android.

Solar Explorer, Solar Explorer Lite, Exoplanet Explorer, Exoplanet Explorer Lite

Blackberry AppWorld

The Blackberry Palybook launch in February/March also turned out to be an unexpectedly big winner for me, thanks to RIM’s eager user base and in-house developer support, which included providing me with a free Playbook and regularly featuring my apps on AppWorld.

Publicity provided by RIM and further enhanced by enthusiastic posts on Crackberry resulted in sales of about 2,000 apps in the first month. Writing about my positive experience lead to further publicity on a popular Android blog, which in turn caused a sales spike of another 1,000 apps on Android Market. My tally for App World currently stands at 7,150 apps sold which is truly amazing, as it’s not far behind Google Play which has a huge user base in comparison.

I’m looking forward to the BB10 launch and I’ve got my fingers crossed that Blackberry will become the third stable smartphone ecosystem.

Solar Explorer, Exoplanet Explorer

Admob

Advertising revenue for my free apps had been pretty flat all year – averaging about $150 per month this year, about $5 per day. Things started to change in November with a noticeable increase in daily income. December has been outstanding with all-time revenue records being broken every couple of days, peaking on the 25th at $44.  Compared to Christmas last year, I only earned $7.30 for a 15,000 impressions, versus 20,000 this year. I can come up with a few possible explanations for this:

  • I updated to the latest Admob in November which fixed a scaling problem on tablets that had caused ads to be small and phone sized
  • A lot more content was added to the free version of Solar Explorer which also saw the vast majority of the ad revenue increase
  • Google introduced their “click twice” ads, which possibly resulted in advertisers feeling more confident about mobile ads, and thus willing to bid higher
  • Decent Android tablet prices have crashed in the past few months, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were a popular Christmas gift

I am expecting ad revenue to decline into the new year as the holidays draw to a close – this is normal. It will be interesting to see where it settles down because at the moment, daily ad earnings for my Lite apps are not far behind daily paid app sales on Google Play.

B&N Nook

B&N has had their own Android market place for a while now, but it wasn’t until earlier this year that they permitted non-US residents to sell apps for the Nook. Due to certain US tax requirements, I ended up having to register an Australian company to be able to sign up for their marketplace. Its been my experience that those who join a a new market early get high visibility, while those who arrive late are lost in the noise. I was very late for this party, so despite reports of fantastic app sales on Nook, and my apps being ideal for an eBook tablet device, sales have been pretty weak.

Since launching in early November, I’ve sold a total of 93 apps, so that’s a couple per day on average, which isn’t too bad compared to other 3rd party market places. The most annoying thing about B&N is that they pay non-US residents by US cheque only, which costs $10 to cash and takes 28 days to process. My first cheque from B&N was for US$47, which converted to about AU$43, less $10 processing, left me with a 20%+ haircut.

Solar Explorer, Exoplanet Explorer

Samsung Apps

I decided to release my app on Samsung’s market place because they have such a dominant position in handset sales. I figured that if they can duplicate the success of their Galaxy products, then their market place could be a winner. At the moment, it’s not a winner, but it’s still one of the better 3rd party market places. With only Solar Explorer available, I’m seeing one sale every few days. Exoplanet Explorer isn’t as popular as Solar Explorer, so I doubt I’d get more than a few sales a month if it was available there.

Solar Explorer

 

SlideMe

When I signed up on SlideMe Market late last year, I did so with the impression that it was the only potentially viable alternative to Google’s. At the time it was populated with things that looked like test apps, or refugees from Android Market, such as unauthorised console emulators that got banned. However, the team were supportive and they featured my apps for the first few months. This lead to a slow, but consistent rate of sales which has tailed off to a couple per month, totalling about 100 over the last year. I suspect that SlideMe’s biggest problems are that it has poor app discoverability and that it’s too easy for a potential app buyer to see something they like on SlideMe, then pop over to Google Play to buy it. I’ve noticed that releasing an update on SlideMe often causes a detectable boost in Google Play sales. This was the case even after I modified my apps to include a “buy me” button for both SlideMe and Android Market which showed that almost nobody clicked SlideMe, but they hammered on the Google Play button.

Solar Explorer, Solar Explorer Lite, Exoplanet Explorer, Exoplanet Explorer Lite

AppsLib

I launched my apps on AppsLib in December last year. This market is targeted at tablets that don’t have access to Google Play, and its curated by the tablet manufacturers – many of them will actually test the apps on their own devices to confirm that they work. I really didn’t expect much from these guys, but I’ve actually seen a similar number of sales to SlideMe, about 100 app over the past year.

The AppsLib website has a landing page has a section that summarises the most popular apps. Early on, Solar Explorer made it on to this list, which resulted in about 60 sales over  a few months until it finally dropped off. Since then I’ve been getting a few sales a month. The main problem also appears to be a lack of discoverability – it seems to be very difficult to find an app that’s not on the landing page, unless you know it’s there. It’s hard to tell though – I can’t run the AppsLib market app because I only have Google authorised devices, and the app blocks devices that it doesn’t recognise.

In summary

Google Play and Blackberry are about equal in terms of revenue, in part because publicity generated by launching on RIM’s Playbook lead to increased app sales on Google Play. If you’re an Android developer then I recommended you give AppWorld a go. Depending on the type of app you’ve written, RIM provides some tools that can convert Android apps to work on Playbook. If you write your apps with something like Shiva3D, which makes porting trivial, then you’d be crazy not to give it a go.

In second place is advertising revenue. Android users generally don’t mind ads, and if you design your app well, you can present ads without making it annoying. Once RIM finalise the advertising API for BB10, I plan to release my free Android apps on Blackberry as well. Right now, it can only be done using the Cascades API which is not compatible with my tool of choice, Shiva3D. RIM have said that they are working on an OpenGL compatible advertising solution which will be available “soon”.

Barnes & Noble’s Nook takes third place. Sales are off to a slow start, but it has only been six weeks, and I wouldn’t be surprised if things improve over time as my app gets a few positive ratings and comments.

The runners up are Samsung, SlideMe and AppsLib. I get the impression that Samsung’s store will continue to generate a few sales a week. My apps on SlideMe get lots of downloads, but SlideMe have thus far been unable to monetise it, instead their store is apparently acting as a discovery tool for Google Play. Meanwhile, AppsLib will continue to generate a few sales here and there from it’s captive audience of users who don’t have access to Google Play.

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Barnes and Noble’s Microsoft deal is a mistake

May 01, 2012   admin   3 Comments

I read with alarm the news today that Microsoft was making an investment in Barnes and Noble and the ridiculous patent lawsuits were going away.

This news is of particular interest to me because I found out a few days ago that B&N finally decided to allow non-US developers to release apps on Nook back in November last year. I signed up to their developer program and was investigating the implications of getting a US tax id, which is the method that B&N use to allow foreign developers to sell apps.

With the news of the Microsoft deal, I now wonder if it’s worth bothering.

I am unaware of any company that has accepted a significant joint-venture type investment from Microsoft that hasn’t ended up being ransacked or trashed because of it.

Two recent examples include the stealth takeover of Nokia and Yahoo, both of which have been crippled by business decisions that have been made after “former” Microsoft execs entered their respective boards. Yahoo continues to lose market share to Bing after their board decided to shut down the search engine R&D department following a Microsoft investment, while we all know about Stephen Elop’s bizarre decision to publicly trash Nokia’s major bread-winner in his infamous burning platform memo.

Given Microsoft’s history, I have to wonder how long it will be before we hear that Microsoft execs have begun taking up positions on B&N’s board, followed by a decision to drop Android and switch to Windows 8 for ARM.

I believe the real winner from this deal will be Amazon because Microsoft’s self-interest will not do B&N’s business any good at all.

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Solar Explorer 2.4

March 30, 2012   admin   7 Comments

The new version of Solar Explorer has been out for about a week on Android. During that period of time, I’ve been trying to sort out bugs that are affecting the latest Motorola phones, causing the spacecraft to be invisible in the app. It’s not fixed yet, but I’ve narrowed it down to either a Motorola bug or a bug in my development tools. I’ve submitted it to Stonetrip and they’ll look into it further.

Since I can’t fix the Motorola problem any time soon, I’ve now gone ahead and built an updated version of the app for Playbook, and submitted it to AppWorld a few minutes ago. The new release it going to require Playbook’s 2.0 OS, because the latest bug-fixed Shiva engine also requires it. Hopefully you’ve all upgraded to the superior 2.0, because I can no longer build for the old 1.0 SDK.

As mentioned previously, there’s quite a few changes in this version, including a calendar to select a date on which to view the location of the Planets and Asteroids. There’s also the option to set one of four different simulation speeds so you can speed up or slow down the rate at which everything happens. The date selector is hidden when the info panel is open, so if you don’t see it, close the info panel. Screen space is limited, and I want to keep the UI as clean as possible.

The biggest improvement is a complete rewrite of the orbit calculations to allow for the accuracy needed to position the planets accurately on a given date. This was built on the changes recently made to Exoplanet Explorer that animated elliptical orbits with much better accurately.

In terms of bug fixes, the “vanishing sun” problem is now resolved, so when you zoom out to show the orbit rings, our Solar System will no longer be suitable for vampires. Another similar bug caused vanishing textures when the planets were zoomed out (far away), and that’s also been resolved. Both are related to the graphics chip used in the Playbook, and the same exact problem showed up on Android devices that also used the same chip. Cross platform development can also cause cross platform bugs.

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Exoplanet Explorer: Available on App World!

March 21, 2012   admin   7 Comments

Finally, it’s arrived!

It took some time, but AppWorld finally approved Exoplanet Explorer for sale, and I’ve just flagged it as available.

Because I know there are a number of Playbook users who are waiting for the app to be released, I’ve decided to start it off at the introductory price of $1.99.

The app originally launch on Android Market at $1.99 late last year too, with the price going up to $2.99 in late December when the feature to automatically update the database was added, because those updates are maintained by me, and delivered from my server.

So, if you are Playbook user who’s interested in exploring our close galactic neighbours, then get it while it’s hot, before the introductory discount price is history.

Solar Explorer

I’m still working hard on the next Solar Explorer update and I finally got the math working for calculating planetary positions.

There’s not a lot left to do apart from some testing and minor tweaks.

I’m hoping to release it by the weekend on Android, and the update should appear on App World sometime next week.

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Exoplanet Explorer: ready for App World

March 13, 2012   admin   21 Comments

Exoplanet Explorer is finally ready to be submitted to App World!

It was a good thing I didn’t try to send it off blind, like I did with Solar Explorer. My first attempt to run the app on the Playbook last week saw it freeze as soon as the title screen appeared. It turned out to be a minor bug that also affected Android, but by pure chance, was only being triggered on Playbook.

Once fixed, Exoplanet Explorer started up and everything worked flawlessly.

That’s the nice thing about working with a cross platform tool like Shiva3D: I don’t have to worry about “fragmentation” on Android, and I also don’t have to worry about porting my apps to other platforms. I’ve only had two reports of Solar Explorer not working due to actual hardware issues in nearly 5,000 installs of the app on Android. Most of the support issues I have to deal with are Android Market glitches.

New features

There’s going to be a couple of new features in this release for existing users of the app.

The first is an improvement to the orbit simulation, something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. The app had been showing highly eccentric orbits (oval shaped) with the planets moving at the same speed all the way through the year. This isn’t how it works in the real world, where a planet’s speed is constantly changing unless it’s in a circular orbit. I couldn’t fix it because of the Shiva’s 32 bit math performance limitation, but now I’ve gone back and implemented the necessary code as a plugin, using 64bit math.

There’s also some new buttons on the toolbar, including a back button which works the same as the physical back button on an Android phone. This was added for Playbook users because it’s needed to navigate the app.

The other button that’s been added controls the speed the simulation runs at. There’s some really bizarre systems out there that have planets that whip around their parent star(s) in a few hours, and others that take hundreds of our years to complete just one orbit. This button will slow the action down or speed it up so you’ve got a better idea of what is going on.

Apart from that, there’s a few bug fixes as well.

I plan to release the new version on Android Market early tomorrow and submit it to App World later in the day.

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Solar Explorer: CrackBerry’s publicity factor

March 10, 2012   admin   12 Comments

It’s certainly been an interesting start to March, after CrackBerry.com mentioned Solar Explorer, and kicked off a wave of app sales on Playbook.

Things quickly died down, which was expected, as educational apps don’t generally sit near the top of any market.

It’s all good though, as the CrackBerry feature turned into the gift that keeps on giving by raising the profile of my apps and this blog.

I’d been running apps.burlock.org for about 10 months, starting it at about the time I launched Solar Explorer on Android. In that time it had gone from a few hits a day (terrible) to about 60 (slightly less than terrible).

Most of the visitors were coming from the “Feedback” button I added to my apps in December last year. Almost nobody was linking to the site, which is probably because nobody knew it existed, and quite possibly because it was boring.

With the CrackBerry feature, in addition to the sales explosion, site traffic surged, receiving about 2,000 visitors over 24 hours. This attention later flowed on to a number of sites linking to mine, in particular the unexpectedly warm reception post which started it all, and later the favourable Playbook review I wrote after I’d received my freebie.

I even scored a mention on the Mobile Nations Monday Brief, at about the 3:00 minute mark.

Mobile Nations Monday Brief

That was my 15 seconds of fame :)

Android wasn’t forgotten though, as the increased publicity was obviously related to a one day jump in sales earlier in the week, equalling the previous best day I’d had on Android in early January, a total of about 50 sales.

Things had been calming down since then, Android sales were back to about 25 per day, App World sales were levelling out at about 40, and visits to the site were settling in above the 200 mark.

That was until logged into the Google Checkout console this morning and discovered that Solar Explorer had been selling at a rate of about one per minute for the past couple of hours.

At first I thought that the Market system had glitched and was sending me phantom sales. After watching it for a bit, I have come to the conclusion it is legit, and besides, nobody has been emailing me complaints.

The CrackBerry publicity must have lead to an influential Android user to downloading my app, then writing about it on a blog or forum somewhere. I’ll figure it out eventually.

Another big thank you to my mystery beneficiary.

What a month!

Update: Mystery solved, Android Central wrote a nice review of Solar Explorer.

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Solar Explorer: Work progressing

March 08, 2012   admin   2 Comments

I though I’d give a quick update on the status of upcoming things, including the new features in Solar Explorer and what’s happening to Exoplanet Explorer.

Solar Explorer

First of all, here’s some screen shots of the upcoming changes. You’ll see that there’s now a date and time at the top of the screen with a button either side.

The button on the left controls the rate at which the simulation runs. It has four settings, corresponding to (measured in real-worlds seconds):

  • real-time
  • 30 minutes per second
  • two hours per second
  • six hours per second

When the camera is zoomed out to show the orbit rings, the four settings represent (also measured in real-worlds seconds):

  • real time
  • one week per second
  • one month per second
  • three months per second.

The reason that the speed varies is that things happen so slowly when zoomed fully out that you’d barely notice any change at all if simulation time didn’t pass at a week per real-world second.

The button on the right displays a touch optimised calendar, meaning I made a custom calendar panel rather than make you mess around with an on-screen keyboard which would have been a pain for entering a date. If you pick a date, then hit apply, the planets in the simulation will move to the position they were in on that date, relative to each other.

The possible range is between about 1950 and 2050 because the calculation method becomes increasingly inaccurate beyond about 50 years either side of the year 2000. It’s good enough, but I wouldn’t want to use Solar Explorer to plot a manned flight to Mars sometime in 2100…

For Playbook users (and Android with a 1GHz or better tablet or phone), please be sure to go into the Audio/Video options in the menu turn on “Detailed Planets”. This enables normal and specular mapping which are technical terms for bumpy land and shiny water. The reason it isn’t active is that I wasn’t sure if it would work on the Playbook. It does. Be aware that there is a visual glitch that makes the planet textures look a bit odd when a planet is very far away. I hope to fix that in the upcoming release.

Exoplanet Explorer

While I’m waiting for the paint to dry on Solar Explorer, I’ll begin preparation for releasing Exoplanet Explorer on AppWorld, which I expect will be submitted as soon as it’s ready.

One of the things I want to do is create a demo video so that people can see what it looks like before they buy it. I don’t intend to bring the free versions of either app to AppWorld as they really only exist because because of the way that Android Market works, where free apps are the best way to get noticed. If they hadn’t existed then the full versions wouldn’t have gotten as far as they did. They really aren’t the best showcase of what the full apps have to offer.

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Blackberry Playbook from an Android user perspective

March 06, 2012   admin   19 Comments

I’ve been waiting a while, but my free Playbook has finally arrived after submitting Solar Explorer to AppWorld one month ago.

The hardware

The unit came in an elasticised pouch which will be good for keeping it safe on the go. It’s slightly larger and heavier with more bezel area than my old 7″ Galaxy Tab. The screens of the two devices are exactly the same size and resolution at 1024×600 pixels. The Playbook certainly feels as sturdy as the Samsung. The Playbook even appears to use real metal for the power and volume buttons, though I would have preferred it if the power button were a bit larger and closer to a corner to make it easier to find.

An unusual feature is the stereo speaker setup on the front of the unit. What a novel idea, having the speakers face the user so the sound doesn’t get muffled! They are good quality too, making the Playbook suitable for watching movies without using headphones, especially in an environment with background noise. My Transformer Prime has only one speaker strategically placed right where I’d be likely to hold it which is quite annoying at times.

The Playbook easily wins on screen quality compared to the Galaxy Tab. Colours and brightness are slightly better, but the pixel response is much better, which is important for fast moving scenes in movies or games.

The only minor problem I had was that RIM shipped me the US version of the device, complete with the US wall charger. The power supply supports Australia’s 240 volt system, so it was just a case of finding a $2 travel adapter to get it charging. I’d have grown old and died waiting for it to charge over USB.

The experience

There aren’t any buttons on the device besides power and volume, instead, the Playbook uses gestures to function as replacements for some of the standard Android buttons. Sweeping upwards from the touch sensitive bezel minimises the current app and shows the active tasks. Sweeping downwards from the top acts like a menu button, showing extra options for the currently active app. Both of these quickly become second nature, but I do miss Android’s back button.

The desktop isn’t as flexible as Android, which can be tweaked and changed in just about any way you’d like. The Playbook desktop always shows all the installed apps, sort of like using Android’s app drawer as the desktop. If you don’t want an icon showing, it seems you have to uninstall the app.

I have to wonder if the Playbook desktop might become unwieldly if I had lots and lots of apps installed, though apps can be stacked in folders by dragging them onto one another. On the other hand, I know a number of computer novices who have Android devices with desktops covered in icons and widgets, in many cases copies of the same ones all over the place, even things they don’t even use or want, because they don’t understand how to use it. The way the Playbook works would be better for them because it takes the decision out of their hands.

The Playbook comes with a couple of games pre-loaded, theres’s Need For Speed: Undercover and everyone’s favourite, Tetris, both from EA. Blackberry also offer two extra games for downloading, Modern Combat HD and Asphalt 6 HD, both from GameLoft, and both of which are amongst the best looking games around at the moment for tablets. I happen to also have these on my Galaxy Tab, but only Asphalt works on the Prime.

I tried starting Modern Combat on both 7″ tabs, but to be honest, it’s not worth comparing them. When the game is paused, they look identical, but when it’s running the image is so much crisper and smoother on the Playbook, that I just turned the Galaxy Tab off and put it back on the charger.

Next I tried Asphalt HD, Prime vs Playbook. Both ran the game incredibly smoothly though I have to say it looked slightly better on the Playbook. The Prime has a much brighter screen which washed the colours out a little, but it also has a bigger screen area and higher resolution which showed up weaknesses in the graphics. The game probably needs to be “Super HD” to look good on the Prime.

The conclusion

Because the Playbook launched a few months after the original 7″ Galaxy Tab, I had thought it would be comparable, but it’s not. The Playbook makes the Galaxy Tab look old.

It would be more realistic to compare it to a current model dual core Android Tablet, but only if that tablet featured quality hardware and construction and only if it’s running Ice Cream Sandwich. Older versions of Android just weren’t very user friendly, or missed key features.

I haven’t tested video playback capabilities, but the hardware is easily up to the challenge. The screen is excellent and the speakers are stand-out amongst the tablets I’ve tried.

Power users might find the Playbook’s OS a bit constrictive. It’s sort of like a slightly relaxed version of iOS. It’s great for casual users though, as the “restrictions” will stop them getting confused.

For gaming, nothing to worry about here. Game developers really haven’t pushed high-end portable hardware much, so I have yet to see anything that I think would make the Playbook struggle, with the exception of a couple of games written specifically for the Prime.

The Playbook’s only real weakness is a shortage of apps, though it’s not the number of apps that’s the problem, it’s the odd one or two must-have’s that are missed. RIM have thought about this and OS 2.0 supports porting and running Android apps on the Playbook. It works better with apps than games, but it’s usually the apps that are the must-have’s. This feature is going to make it easier for developers to test the AppWorld waters and learn that they’ll probably get more sales from one million Playbook users than they would from one hundred million Android users. No offence to Android users, it’s Google that strangles developers.

Overall, it’s an excellent device and it will be replacing my Galaxy Tab for daily use.

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Announcing Transmutation

February 22, 2012   admin   6 Comments

One of the problems I’ve been struggling with recently is a lack of exposure for my apps, Solar Explorer and Exoplanet Explorer. This has caused them to lose rank positions in the Education category in Android Market and I believe it was the result of changes I’d made to the apps in late December, which although improving them, also caused them to be shared less.

I made some adjustments a few weeks ago, and it has had a positive effect, resulting in a doubling of the rate at which my apps are shared. This has significantly boosted downloads of the free versions on SlideMe and AppsLib markets, but hasn’t translated into increased sales. Sharing on Android Market increased from such a low level that it’s only really stopped the decline, and has yet to turn into measurable growth.

Because of this, I’ve decided to branch out and produce a series of free apps to stake out a presence in other categories besides Education, which will hopefully draw more attention to my work from people who don’t frequent the education category. As Shiva3D is really designed for producing game and multi-media applications, I’m going to write some simple games, but I’m going to make them as awesome as possible.

Simple and awesome. What could possibly go wrong?!

Transmutation

After two weeks of development, the first app is ready, and it’s called Transmutation, available now on Android Market and SlideMe and later on various other smaller markets.

The player controls a microbe located at the corner of the game board, and has the ability to change it’s colour using buttons arranged along the bottom of the screen. The colour changes will spread across the board to other microbes that are the same colour as the player’s, but only if they are touching it, or another that is the same colour. The player only has a limited number of colour changes for each level, and a level is only complete once all the microbes are the same colour.

Much of the last fortnight was actually spent constructing the menu system that you see in the game. I’ve written it in such a way that it’s easy to configure is reusable, so that I can take the menu system, apply a coat of paint, and use it again in the next app. The framework will be shared between all the apps I write, so that if I upgrade the framework for one, I’ll only need to recompile the others for them all to inherit the improvements.

It’s actually been a fascinating project so far, especially now that it’s been uploaded and I can see how people are playing it. There’s only been a handful of downloads so far (damn you Android Market’s lack-of-discoverability!), but it’s nice to see that most of the users who have tried it have actually kept it installed and played it a few times.

This is actually the second game I’ve written, the first being a shoot-em-up called “Scumble” written way back in 1991 on my Commodore Amiga, which was released to Aminet and is probably out there on the Internet somewhere. I’ve long since lost the source code, so I’ll have to track it down one day and relive the olden days with an Amiga emulator.

Why such a large gap? I, like many programmers, was afflicted with the chronic inability to finish a project because I’d get bored after the fun bit was done and think of something more interesting to write. I’ve since learned secret of how to deal with that phase of a project: I start to lose interest, I write up a list of everything that’s left to do and then make myself complete each item, one at a time.

It’s a painful process, but it gets the job done.

That’s the first game out of the way, so it’s time to start on number two. I expect this one will feature monkeys and bicycles, and should be complete with less than 14 days of development time.

But you never know, it could turn into something completely different.

Playbook update

RIM have finally confirmed that I’ve scored a free Playbook, and that it’s going to ship shortly. Exoplanet Explorer will appear on App World soon after the tablet falls into my hands.

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