In a world gone mad..

I have released a first version of Open Feint JamJam on the Android Market.

Took me a few days to integrate Open Feint because of my custom IntensiBuild build system. I do wonder why SDKs have to rely on the standard Android build process. It’s not rocket science to create a simple JAR based library instead of an Android library. And don’t even get me started on handling the resources.. :-)

Anyway, the new version of JamJam has an online leaderboard and tracks achievements online, too. I have a few online/offline issues to fix. But I’m looking forward to seeing some real competition soon. During a test game today on my HTC Tattoo I started off the hiscore hunt with a nice 60k+ score.

Cheers,
tfdj

Filed by The.French.DJ at 1:47 am under Android,Development,Games
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Just noticed that I totally forgot to write about the new achievements system integrated into JamJam.

When I started looking at Open Feint and Scoreloop I suddenly developed a certain interest in.. well.. achievements.

For JamJam I’m gonna start off easy and I’ve implemented only the achievement part for now. This was actually quite fun. I had to play test all these achievements. Most are easy enough for a seasoned JamJam player. But Drop Madness and Massive Reduce are a bit tricky. It was good fun testing these. And it took me about five days (not full time of course.. ;-) of play testing until I had the parameters right and successfully completed each achievement.

Right now I’m working on the Open Feint edition. I’ll look at Scoreloop next. But then I have something more planned for the achievement system. Like a secret bonus. (Plus an obvious bonus I guess. We’ll see.)

Anyway, cheers!

tfdj

Filed by The.French.DJ at 1:40 am under Android,Development,Games
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I have uploaded a very early release of JamJam with Open Feint support to the Android Market. Just testing the basic integration for now. Leaderboard and some achievements. More achievements and other features are following soon.

Link to Android Market page: https://market.android.com/details?id=de.generation4.jamjam.multi.feint

If you want to help us out testing this thing: Drop me a mail with your purchase order id or your name and i’ll refund you the EUR 1.00 after you bought the game.

Filed by The.French.DJ at 7:06 pm under Android,Development,Games
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From when I saw the first images of a rumored “PlayStationPhone” I knew this could be big for Android. The games I’m interested in don’t work well with touch controls. They need a game pad and or a analog or digital stick. With something like the PlayStationPhone available people could develop on the beautiful Android platform and target a very much gaming-capable single device (or line of devices).

Now, if the “PlayStationSuite” becomes real it would really blow away much of the iOS hype that is still going around. If Sony starts a gaming-oriented app store and provides tools for developers to develop for it, this will be huge.

[Minor Rant - Start]
Then, hopefully, we don’t have to read stupid posts about fragmentation and all that crap anymore. Just stumbled upon this one a few hours ago. People don’t get it. They argue apples versus oranges.

You like webOS? Fine. Go with it. You’re an Apple fanboy? Fine. Stick with your iPhone. But none of these “reasons” invalidate Android as a competing platform. You “liking” webOS doesn’t mean Android is fragmented. Or Android development sucks. Because: Here’s an “eye opener” for you.. I “like” Android development. I don’t think it sucks. I don’t see fragmentation. I see a rich suite of different devices. I write my apps targeting the core Android platform and add optional features that activate when the device has the proper capabilities.

But: Maybe webOS development sucks? Maybe iOS development sucks? Doh. Kindergarden.. :)
[Minor Rant - End]

Amen,

tfdj

Filed by The.French.DJ at 2:23 pm under Android,Development,Games,Rant
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There are a bunch of post online now about the rotten state of the Google Android Market. Here’s the latest I just stumbled upon.

I wonder why everybody seems to think that Google should create the Android Market. Google isn’t Apple. Android isn’t iOS. For me it looks like Google just provides a Android Market and silently waits for alternative markets to appear and fill more specific requirements.

Doesn’t that make sense?

Look at the AppsLib store for example. Focusing on applications tested specifically for the Archos tablets. There are other, more generic, market alternatives like SlideMe and Pdassi. Both with different payment methods.

Now look at the carriers and big game publishers if you will: Why shouldn’t they come up with their own app stores, too? Isn’t that exactly the freedom they want? Vodafone branded Android phones come with the Vodafone app store preinstalled. Simple payment using the phone bill would be possible. EA could provide the EA Android Store. With special download packs that may not even be apks..

With something like Apple’s closed iOS app store this looks like a good alternative. Doesn’t it?

Well, at least we are free to provide alternative markets.. That’s a good thing, right?

tfdj

Filed by The.French.DJ at 9:35 am under Android,Development,Rant
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before i started android development i did a quick analysis of the apple app store. i came up with some roughly comparable numbers as shown in this Communities Dominate Brands post.

the reason i chose the android platform is that you may still have some kind of first mover advantage. well, second mover. or third mover by now. but you get the point, right? :-)

now.. i still don’t get it why people are flocking like crazy to this weird apple world.. where apple sure makes some big bucks.. but apart from them, only a handful of developers are getting lucky..

of course there’s the coolness factor. it’s not all about money. but it’s very subjective. and for me google wins over apple.. evil both they are, of course.. but who isn’t?

anyway, just my two cents..

amen,
tfdj

Filed by The.French.DJ at 4:11 pm under Development,Rant
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Another take-down notice for Tetris clones. Read more on Droid Gamers.

So for now head on over to GETJAR or SlideME to download DroidShock. If you’re the lucky owner of an Archos tablet, find DroidShock in the AppsLib store. Or grab the apk from here: DroidShock.apk

Weird people.. Not sure what their intentions are..

tfdj

Filed by The.French.DJ at 12:32 am under Android,Development
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A few days ago I finished tweaking the touch controls of DroidShock. The initial release is up on the Android Market. Grab it and add a rating.. :)

A project page is located on IntensiCode.

There’s still a long way to go before a commercial release makes sense. Don’t even get me started talking about ‘device fragmentation’. And let’s not talk about the crappy quality of some of the popular devices’ touch screens. Please.

Amen!

tfdj

Filed by The.French.DJ at 12:26 am under Android,Development,Games
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Before I get started: Does someone seriously consider the iPhone or Android a gaming platform? Not saying that there aren’t any fun games for these devices. But they a clearly playing in a different league than the PSP or the DS, right? And it simply is not only about graphics and performance. Mostly it’s about usability and controls!

The last few days/weeks I worked on bringing touch and trackball controls to IntensiGame. Especially trying to make DroidShock/JamJam playable with these new control concepts.

So far I failed.

I have a somewhat usable trackball control implementation to make Galaxina and DroidShock playable. But when the going gets tough, nothing beats the DPAD of my Galaxy. Even the more precise touch screen of the Nexus One will simply not deliver the gaming experience the DPAD gives you. And so won’t the somewhat improved trackball of the Nexus. Compared to the G1/Dream there is some more control here. But it’s not enough.

Baseline: You can have a very responsive trackball or touch control, or you can have one that translates longer ‘motions’ into ‘multi events’. But combining these two approaches seems very hard.

And so far, it looks as if I am not the only one who failed. I haven’t found one shooter or Tetris-like game with touch controls that I would consider really usable. Everything using touch mostly sucks. Android and iPhone are not different here.

So, no good touch controls?

My point is: No good touch controls for these type of games! There are different games that benefit from touch controls. Of course. And you can bend you game a little and make it workable with touch controls. But for now I am not willing to make this compromise too easily. One example of ‘bending’: Touch controls with Tetris games will almost always result in showing where the tile will drop. Otherwise your finger will be in the way. Simple problem. Simple solution. Well.. Got the point?

I consider marking games via the AndroidManifest.xml to not work on devices without a DPAD or trackball, etc. Because: What is the alternative? People complaining about bad usability? Non-responsive touch controls? Too responsive touch controls?

I’ll keep on tweaking my implementation and I’ll add various control settings to the engine to let users tweak the touch and trackball behavior. But I doubt this will ever come close to proper game-pad-like controls. (Of course! Doh..)

Amen,
tfdj

Filed by The.French.DJ at 3:41 pm under Android,Development,Mobile,Rant
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A quick note about using ProGuard to optimize and/or obfuscate Android packages. Maybe this is useful to someone..

You can use optimize, but I had to disable code/simplification/cast and code/allocation/variable optimizations. In addition, overloadaggressively and allowaccessmodification will result in illegal opcodes detected at runtime only.

        <proguard optimize="true" shrink="true" defaultpackage=""
                  printmapping="false" verbose="false"
                  usemixedcaseclassnames="true" obfuscate="${obfuscate}"
                  overloadaggressively="false" printseeds="false"
                  allowaccessmodification="false" microedition="false">
            ... snip ...
            <keep name="*" extends="android.app.Activity">
                <method name="*"/>
            </keep>
            -optimizations !code/simplification/cast
            -optimizations !code/allocation/variable
        </proguard>

tfdj

Filed by The.French.DJ at 12:54 am under Android,Development
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