Quick app update

So I live over here in Taiwan and the if you've seen the news you probably knew we are getting battered by a slow moving heavy rain typhoon. Well before it came I was looking for a flashlight app, well the ones on the app store were so bloated and filled with "fun" features that it drove me nuts, I just wanted a simple flashlight app.

Well after all that stuff, I decided to create my own. It's nothing fancy just an off and on button, I plan on adding a few updates in the coming weeks, what update do you might wonder? Well I would like to add a widget to put on the home screen so that you can turn on the light without launching the app.

This app was written in pure android, it was a different experience working with native android and it has a lot of cool features but some quirks, It's pretty cool though but dealing in XML is one of those quirks.

You can check it out below.

http://goo.gl/axnPj

On a side note I am working on my opengl tutorials, I have a lot of code already up at the google code page; the code is also documented in the source but, I just need to write the tutorials. I'll get them up soon.

Subversion! me and you.

What is subversion ?

CollabNet : Out of the box, and in its simplest form, Subversion is nothing more than an advanced, open source version control system.


Why?
Because I'm creating some android specific gles20 tutorials.


What does that mean for me?
Well you can follow along in my blog posts to learn with me how to use gles20, my tutorials are really simple and use common language and simple metaphors and things as such.


Ok before I start pointing you towards my svn trunk, you gotta go do some research and install a subversion client if you don't already have one.


A very easy tutorial to understand with logs of pictures : http://www.shokhirev.com/nikolai/programs/SVN/svn.html

Once you have that client installed stay tuned for moar.

where have you

been?

OK, so it's been a long time since I've written anything on this blog. A few reasons; I'm lazy and don't like to write. I've actually contemplated deleting this blog many a days but for some reason it's still up. I focus too intensely; when I start a new project I usually give it 100 percent of myself until I get to a point then I start something new and the cycle repeats.

So what have I been up to recently? I started learning opengles shaders, I gotta say after a few days of reading I really enjoy feeders, its cool. I think with shaders I will be able to do some tutorials, I know I've been saying i'll write some tutorials about something but I get distracted easily, I find learning more interesting than blogging.

I do plan on writing a few things about gles based on the android platform, why do you ask? We'll they are lacking; I mean there are gles2 tutorials out there which is cool but they are either based on c, c++, c# or they are based off the old NEHE tutorials which while are great but the way shaders work, its better to rearrange the way you think. The programmable shaders are different than the fixed func so its better to study it from scratch.

Also the tutorials I see often leave huge segments of code missing, when I am learning I prefer to have all the code right there to look at and follow, I really dont like following a tutorial only to have compile errors and then I realize parts of the codes are missing. Anyhew I will be trying to do something about shaders, I'll put up videos and what not too.

stay tuned ya'll Im serious this time, maybe
bluBee

Six

Today I released my 6th app, whoopie... Well the more I develop the more I realize how much I don't know and how much my peers seem to understand. I feel like I'm drowning in my lame sauce trying to program but hey, I'm sure we all feel that way about something in the sphere that influences us all.

So Fruit Drop Blitz, its a interesting take on the traditional match 3 games, in this one you can move one space at a time anywhere on the board, so if you think ahead you can setup some really amazing score multipliers. That's basically the way to get high scores, think a few steps ahead and setup the fruits to smash, splat, and spray their juices all about.

The game is up on the market now, you can check it out here

You can also point your qr scanner at the image below.

Mobile game development....

and me.

I decided to use develop for the android market for many reasons.
1. Only a one time $25 dollar fee to sign up.
2. Android is growing very rapidly.
3. Almost real time feedback on apps or games that you release.
4. There seemed to be many suitable frameworks to build from.
5. Google Android is mostly open source
6. Starting in Java saves headaches.

I will go into more details on the above list in future blog posts but those were just a few of the reasons why I decided to develop for android.

Now that I knew what platform I would develop for the next step was to find a framework to use. After much research, trial error, quitting and starting over, I decided to use the LIBGDX framework. LIBGDX is an opensource framework developed by badlogic and nate sweet. You can find more information on the framework here, the blog here, and their forums here.

Now that I had my target platform, development framework, now all I needed was an amazing idea. After a lot of thinking I decided to take on the technically challenging Arkanoid. After a bit of cold feet, I got started actually writing semi functional mobile code about 5 or 6 months ago. My first Android Game Break!

I chose this seemingly simple game because the game mechanics are straight forward, the ball bounces off the walls, paddle, and destroys the blocks and the player gets some points. If the ball falls below the paddle, the player loses a life and if the player loses all their lives its game over.

With such simple game play mechanics one would think it should be easy to create such a game. Well for me, it took me about one and a half month to get the game. The game play is very fast and can be quite challenging, once you get the feel for the game it becomes a little easier to handle but it does take some time.

Even with such a great framework and a fairly easy to use programming language, It was still very technically challenging to get something to even show up on screen. Then actually implementing the above stated mechanics in code.

You can check out the game for yourself.

or 

download at the Google Play Store

to be continued....