Opera App store invite

It's been a long time since I did android development. Everytime I start to do a bit, I lose interest because my primary interest is in games, but I am too lazy to draw graphics for them. Haha. Of course the correct attitude would be to use circles first then swap image when ready. So yeah, I am just lazy. I keep toying with the idea of building onto Burger Stacko. But I think it will be wiser to build it as a new app instead. On the other hand, should give something back to the users who bothered to keep this old game on their devices. HMmm.
Anyway I received an invite from Opera Mobile store today to join as a partner/developer. I did a little background check on them to find that it is a relaunch in 2012 by Opera after its acquisition of Handster. Joining Opera Mobile store is free, and platform free. In fact they appeared to be so friendly that they offered to publish my one and only app on my behalf.

Invalid command-line parameter

New error found when trying to run the application using the emulator:

invalid command-line parameter: [blah blah blah]
Hint: use '@foo' to launch a virtual device named 'foo'.
please use -help for more information

This is something totally new to me. Apparently Eclipse can suddenly become even dumber than usual and not recognise where your Android SDK home is, after you have been using it at that location for the last two years. My god, it is like your boyfriend telling you "sorry hunny, I went to fuck the neighbor by mistake, because I don't know where we live anymore."

Right there you moronic software. Anyway according to various online resources (1)(2), it's because the path is too long *bullshit*. Close Eclipse (because some resources in the SDK are still being used. Apparently your boyfriend still remembers enough to leave his car parked outside), Move the SDK home into something like D:\ (i.e. no funny folders in between), and then restart Eclipse and run the project.

Note: there is no need to delete or recreate your AVD devices. Ignore any lame advice that tells you that.

Anyway, Burgerstacko has been upgraded. It handles incoming phone calls <- removal of bug.

Forced against my will

I want to smack the Android Developer Console. 

I changed to a new development machine as you know (psst, more because for CoH, but the irony is that the machine sucks for both CoH and Eclipse). So now I am trying to deploy Burgerstacko again. Truth be told, I am very ashamed of this game (but then again I am always easily embarrassed, if I am conscious and aware). 

So I didn't copy my keystore over. Now to think of it, it would be easier to copy the keystore over than to create a new one. But anyway, the bloody keystore is different, so stupid Developer Console won't let me upgrade. Thanks, Google.

emulator: WARNING: Unable to create sensors port: Unknown error

Console error:
emulator-5554 disconnected! Cancelling 'com.[your apk] activity launch'!

Attempt 1:
Tried to kill adb.exe via task manager and run again -> fail

Googled, found proposed solutions:

1. Try cleaning the user data on your emulator. To do so, open your avd location (for me it was "C:\Users\UserName.android\avd") find your emulator (I guess it's 3DEVO.avd) and delete the files called "userdata.img" and "userdata-qemu.img".
2. While your program is running and stuck, open your Task Manager, go to processes and kill adb. Go back to Eclipse and run again. If there's an error about adb not launched, quit Eclipse and launch again
3. Uninstall/Reinstall Eclipse (Me: WTF!? Don't do that!)

What I did, and succeeded:

1. In Eclipse, go to "Window->AVD Manager"
2. Find the offensive AVD inside the list of existing Android Virtual Devices
3. Bitched "Oh great, it's green (meaning valid, and not red meaning failed to load, which is more accurate)"
4. Click on the offensive AVD
5. Choose "Start..."
6. Tick on "Wipe User Data"
7. Press Launch
8. Android emulator will be started. I notice it will take a longer time, which makes me think that keeping the user data is a form of caching -> faster loading. For subsequent faster loading, I think you can uncheck wipe user data.
9. Success. Now close the AVD Manager and run your app. Case closed.

Notice something interesting? I keep bitching about Android, and I haven't even gotten started on my implementation. Fun times everyone~! Should I build the simpler game, and focus on the graphics, or take a longer time and build the other game? Arghz. Whatever it is, I will continue to hate on the emulator. Forever!!!

Skipping index file "...\ thumbs.db"

This got to be one of the lamest stupidest errors on earth. I am not sure whether I should even write the solution here since I think everyone will know how to fix it. But I have a policy on reporting all stupid Android errors and their solutions

If you encounter this error "Skipping index file ....\thumbs.db", it means you must have opened your drawable folder in Windows. In Eclipse, go to res\drawable, delete thumbs.db and recompile. QED.

Android Functional Testing

I just created a generic Android Functional Testing list, taking references from Vodafone's QA list and mobileappstesting and my own testing. I will probably supplement it with additional tests as I do more tests. I am thinking of asking the South Koreans if they have a default functional testing checklist.

Hmmm. Anyway no matter if you are an android developer or user, please login and fill out the form for user experience? Thanks! The generic testing and the Additional testing worksheets have been frozen. If you want to contribute to those, please comment here instead and I will update the form directly. Thanks!

I need photos of cupcakes

I want to start on my next game. I skived long enough chatting on Skype with unappreciative people (not you, Schnappi) and trolling too much on CoH. Maybe I should just play CoH on Saturday and Sunday mornings, cos most of the people I like are online and playing then.

Lazy Coders are doomed to be punished

I don't consider myself to be a coder. Can't be, when I spend my nights in front of the pc playing COH instead of doing constructive work. Haven't started on anything other than upgrading the latest SDK. Yawn. Doesn't help that I am still mad at Google.

Now I am supposed to change something for Ubinuri and I am mentally face2palming myself because I realize I changed all the words in the game back to English already. Stupid. Should have dumped everything into the xmls instead. Idiot!!!!

Better stop being a lazy ass and finish the stuff already. The best part of working with the South Korean team is that they test my shitty app for me. For free. And they post the video so that you can see what they mean. I don't even have a working phone anymore, let alone testing the app with other functionality (e.g. phone calls) so all this testing is definitely invaluable. Absolutely priceless.

And if I finally get off my ass to do the other coding, I will definitely push the game to them for testing. *wicked grin*

I must cut back on my Company of Heroes

I thought that I have finally cured myself of my addiction to CoH with my 14 days of withdrawal (while in Hanoi and later flu). Apparently not...since Friday I have been playing a lot of Steinwall, but that is with my usual group (I added two more friends, a Daddy from HongKong and another, a History major from US).

B1 is nagging at me to do my next game (plus I opened a can of worms, by telling the South Koreans that I was going to upgrade my Burger Stacko). Well, my next game is a bit more complicated, so I need to break down into two parts. So I will be building a simple puzzle game, leveraging on code from Juzzle (this game will be free on Android, if completed), before I move onto build the more complicated version (which I will definitely be charging).

That aside, I had an interesting conversation with Hongkong Daddy, who is a friend of Ductuan (my Hanoi friend). I had played once or twice with him because of Ductuan. He knew about my visiting the latter because he told him. I was waiting to start a Stonewall game with my English friend, when this guy joined with his USA friend (the History Major). I didn't play with them though because with his friend, they closed the number of slots available for the game and I had promised NoNick that I would play with him so I had to exit the game (but not before this guy requested to be my friend).

So later when we played together, I asked him what else did Ductuan tell him about my visit. He told me that Ductuan told him that I was a lady (remind me to tell Ductuan to keep it a secret, but I think it is already a very badly kept one). Then he invited me to visit him in Hongkong and said he would treat me to dinner. *???*

Joining the dark side (Part III) - from Google's Android to Apple's iOS development?

B1 wants to give me a iMac for my birthday, as a sort of weird ass encouragement to stop developing Android apps and move to developing for iPhone and iPad.

"Don't bother," he said, "Android market is full of malware, especially those free apps (I hope he is not referring to BurgerStacko, even though it is now labelled as a junky app. Hey at only ~160KB, don't expect miracles!). Those evil China developers steal apps off the market and trojanize them."

I have to agree on that point. Some months ago, I wrote a super scathing email response to this Chinese website which had the bloody cheek to tell me that they had taken my app off the market and stored it somewhere on their site and do I want to register a developer account with them?!

WTF. Seriously.

"I don't know Objective-C." I replied as I continued to play his "Hanging with Friends". That game is seriously addictive. Now and again, I kick myself for not thinking of this game first.

"Maybe if you build the games with me, then I might consider changing platforms."

"No. I know your pattern. You will say you have an idea, and then make me do all the coding."

This man must be seriously traumatized from all the coding work I chucked at him during our uni days. Don't know what is his problem, I have always been Project Manager material *I vomit a little in my mouth*.

"Fine. Then you buy yourself the iMac and build an iOS version of BurgerStacko (it's only logical, since the images and code are already available). Then I will join iOS development."

Wait a second. Did I just agree to him buying an Apple product again? Damn. Anyway I don't like Google very much anymore (not since the Google Ad nonsense) but I have detested Apple because of the pretentious, "holier-than-thou" impression their users imagine that they project.

Updated!!!
I wish the stupid Android SDK is a human so I can slap it sometimes. Why is it so difficult to update? And then on top of that, the stupid Eclipse says I never set the stupid SDK. Wtf seriously. You think I so keh kiang go and move the damn thing around meh? Maybe I should get that stupid Android icon as a stuffed toy for my birthday, so I can stomp my fat foot on it whenever I have problems with the SDK.

The importance of a Changes.txt

Damn, it's been such a long time since I last coded that I have to search around the desktop for the Eclipse folder. It does not help that my desktop is cluttered.

Since I was very annoyed by people leaving bitchy comments instead of constructive comments on the game, I have stopped maintaining the app, not even after I patched the game for the South Korean release. However since it's been one whole year, and it's time to restart the engine. I do have some stupid stuff that I was building. Now a quick glance told me that I had 8 projects other than Burgerstacko! Winz.Should bring them to market.

Probably the driving factor is that I don't intend to charge $ for the games I build. Since I am from the school of thought "Why pay more, or even, pay at all?", I can't really expect others to pay me. And all my nonsense with Nuffnang and Google Ads, it's even funnier to expect ad money from a free app. But I am still toying with the idea.

Anyway, I must highlight the importance of changes.txt. Even though I constantly curse out Company of Heroes for changing stuff on me (like dropping my rank), changes.txt is very important because they tell me where did I last left off?

Hmm, last change was Jan 2011. Not that bad, but that was the South Korean version. Oops

When Choosing Programming Language for Projects

This afternoon an ex-colleague called me in desperation. He was due to submit a project and he needed help desperately to do the programming work. I was like huh, when he told me what programming language his team chose. PHP?

Face2palm man.

101 when doing IT programming projects. 

(1) Always choose good teammates, those who actually can do the work quickly, not the kind who talks a good game and leeches you. You can observe from the way they do their project work. Of course if you are a bloody leech, no excellent programmer is going to touch you with a ten-feet barge pole. It works both ways, unless you are a babe and/or the guy's a geek and/or you have something/someone that the guy wants. 

(2)  For chris' sakes, choose a language that the whole team knows. If the team is a group of leeches, then for God's sakes, choose a language that all your friends know. In this case, I was like, why the hell didn't you choose Java. Everyone in *censored* knows Java and Javascript. Even I can muster up a thing or two if you give me enough time. PHP? I last had a dalliance with that project when I did my FYP. It's a easy language to learn, but 1.5 month to finish building a project at the scale he wants? No way... not unless I am not working.

(3) Of course, you must choose a language that has the most frameworks, online help sources, and free IDEs, e.g. Java, PHP. Personally I will never choose C# or anything related to the Microsoft Visual Studio, but that's because I am a tight pussy when it comes to programming language. That's also why you will never see me doing iPhone programming. NIEMAL.

Ubinuri - Android Distributor with Integrity *Thumbs up*

Some months ago, after I just released BurgerStacko, I received this email from this Korean company, Ubinuri, saying that they are the biggest distributor of Android applications in South Korea. But I ignored them as my usual wont *haha* since I was just coding for fun, and also I googled the company to see if others had actually worked with them before. At that time, I think Ubinuri had just started mass mailing every developer, so everyone was curious but no one took the bait.

Later came this news that all video, computer and Web-based games sold in South Korea are required to be reviewed and rated by the state-run Games Ratings Board, 게임물등급위원회 Geimmul Deung-Geub-Wiwonhoe (GRB). So Android Market had to remove all its games. Then came this email from the same dude from Ubinuri, this time saying he would pay me USD200 to distribute my free game. And I read a google result showed that someone did get paid. Besides my game is free, so I have nothing to lose right?

By then, I had abandoned BurgerStacko because the Android users were too harsh for my fragile ego. I replied them that I would work with them, on the condition that I didn't have to change the code base much.

In the end, I still had to make three changes, two I agree with, one I didn't. But the important part is, the guys at Ubinuri (three of them, S, T and F) whose patience I tried very much, first with my slow coding (very stressed with my new project at work) and then my totally noob job of filling in the wrong bank account number, are very nice guys. I would say it was worth it working with them.

And today, after the totally shit day I had (this bitch cancelled the meeting and didn't tell me, and I was soaked to the skin from the heavy rain, and then waited 1 hour in the cold air-con. I now have a fever of about 37 plus degrees), I come home to find that the banks have processed the payment. 

Nothing speaks better than a photo. GPGT people!

Fantastic.. Except, eh... why so little? JP Morgan took a cut *fuck* USD21.50 and then POSB also took another cut of about S$10 when they already earned from the exchange rate. Fuck man. This is daylight robbery. Next time I will ask the guys to mail me the USD. I'd rather risk the chance of robbery via snail mail then get robbed legally by banks. Not like I asked those stupid bankers to jump through hoops or something. Neighbourhood money changer  is more honest than these bastards!

But I digress. I am going to do my bid for my poor fellow Android developer community and tell them you can trust Ubinuri =D. They have demonstrated integrity, honesty and patience. So if you get an email from the Ubinuri guys to distribute in South Korea, do work with them!

Burger Stacko goes Hangol

My preference

Ubinuri's preference

Which one do you think is nicer?! You wouldn't believe it but the one on top was harder to do. The one below was eh... easy. Talk about KISS.

Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-0" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/jdesktop/swingworker/SwingWorker

Cannot open the stupid draw9patch.bat in your Android tools folder?

Just before you become as cynical as me and think that Android (or Google) hates all developers (well THEY DO. Android used to let unappreciative users download paid apps for 1 whole day before returning! Now it is 15 min. Noch  crap. It's only USD1 to USD5 per app, and yet after all that effort, you see assholes returning your app BECAUSE THEY CAN!!), see solution from  Marco Massenzio(God bless this magnificent man)

(1) Download latest Swinglabs.zip from here.

(2) Unzip and dump the swinglabs.jar into "[your Android SDK folder]\tools\lib" folder.

(3) Double click on the draw9patch.bat folder in your "[your Android SDK folder]\tools" folder.

Voila! It works!

Then you can continue to torture yourself on using 9patch (this is from Google, duh). Use this friendlier tutorial here. I on the other hand, cannot be bothered, as I am in a dreadful rush to deliver what I owe to the nice guys at Ubinuri, whose patience I have terribly abused =P

Btw be careful with the 9 patch. You might end up with a resource.ap error, which happened to me. This is how to resolve the problem, though you will have to delete the 9.png. Yes, me the poor sod. After all that effort.

Some characters cannot be mapped using “Cp1252″ character encoding.

Thanks to burakddd.

Solution:

1. Windows Menu –> Preferences –> General (expand it) –> Workspace (click on it).
2. Look for a box “Text File Encoding”. Default will be “Cp1252″.
3. Change radio to select other and select “UTF-8″ from combo box.

Of course this will not happen, if you dump all your text in strings.xml in the first place. *haha*

[?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?]  (replace the [] with <>)

Error generating final archive: java.io.FileNotFoundException: xxx\bin\resources.ap_ does not exist

It's a unknown packaging problem.

Delete the error and the "Unparsed aapt error(s)!" error message that you are also likely to see. Then Go to Project-> Clean.

Choose "Clean projects selected below" and the project you are encountering problems in. Restart your Eclipse.

Updated!!!( 24th Jan 2011)
Had feedback from Bin (see comment below) that it does not work. I am grateful for his comment, even though I must admit it was rather grating on my ego. Oh ya, you got to restart your Eclipse. I forgot to mention it. 

I went to do some research on it. Seems like some of the people who cleaned the project like me, could solve the problem, and some couldn't. That is sehr unlucky I would say.

In that case, I recommend that you use the same old Eclipse tricks.
(1)  Undo your last change, esp if you did something to something in your res folder.
(2) Definitely restart your Eclipse. Be extra kiasu and delete the app in your phone or close off the emulator beforehand.
(3) Check that you have the correct Android target (right click on your project -> go to Properties->Android)
(4) Run the app again.

This is interesting, and somewhat ironic. After I typed this in, this stupid error happened to me too.  Again. (Damn you Android!!) This time cleaning did not help immediately. In fact it was because I tried the 9 patch png, which Android could not interpret correctly, therefore screwing  my R.java (I suspect) and all my other resources (which were declared in another layout xml). I would call it bad juju.

Anyway I had to wipe out the stupid png, before doing the above steps. The above cleaning solution then worked fine for me, in the end.

Oh yeah, if it works for you this time, please say so. If not, please also state your solution, so that others  (such as yours truly *haha*) can benefit from thy wisdom. TY! 

Googlers (I am assuming you are since you are coming from Mountain View, California) be a buddy, and provide the solution if you have one. thanks! 

org.eclipse.core.internal.resources.ResourceException: Resource is out of sync with the file system: '//AndroidManifest.xml'. AndroidManifest.xml does not declare a Java package: Build aborted.

Ignore it, it's fucking bull.

Of course you can try the usual trick, which is to refresh the project... but if it doesn't work...

Most likely you have your emulator or phone up and running. Kill it, then delete the rows of errors in the error log and run as an android app again.

Irritating Android Market spin-offs - mAPPn 先斩后奏

There are many third party Android markets popping up all over the world. While I am open to having my games distributed on different markets, I am extremely annoyed with this Chinese company, mAPPn, sending me a email to tell me that they have already downloaded my game from Google Market and published it in their own market.

"Dear Sir/Madam,

This is XXX from mAPPn Inc.. gfan.com,which lay emphasis on providing localized Chinese Android market and Android technique solution to Chinese users, is a leading Android forum and market in China. Moreover, we are the business partner of Samsung, MOTO, China Telecom etc, which makes us become more and more famouse in Android area.

we have over 1.1 million users in market and forum, with over 300,000 times dowloads.
Now we provide the following service to Android application developers:


1. Application Downloading: developers can register account and publish the application onto our market freely,and update new version, check data, etc.


2. Application selling: developers can publish paid apps onto our market, and share 70% revenue;


3. Advertisement SDK: developers can add our Ads SDK into the application and get the revenue. All the advertisements are localized.


4. Data analysis and statistics;


5. Translation: we can help the developers to translate the application into Chinese.

In order to provide more and more excellent applications to users, we have published the application you published on google market( free version) onto our market. After you register account, you can ask for the escheatage of the application. if you do not agree us to do this, please tell me, we will unpublish your application.
About mappn: http://www.mappn.com


About www.gfan.com: http://www.gfan.com


developers platform: http://www.gfan.com/dev


aMarket: http://apk.gfan.com/Index/Index.html"
 
WTF, they want me to ask for escheatage for my own application?! I was so pissed I sent them a blistering email in Chinese back.
 
"尊敬的XXX，


我对贵公司先斩后奏的行为感到很不满。请立刻把本人的产品下架。
如果公司想邀请开发者加入， 应该先通知我们，不是直接从Google Market下载我们的产品。 即使当时我有兴趣加入， 我现在却觉得反感。

并非你在邮件里所说的， 我到此网站寻找我的产品， 但无法找到。请给我个合理的交代。谢谢。"

I hate Android Emulator

'nuff said.

Fuck, why am I so poor I cannot afford a Android 2.3 phone? Dear god!!! Before I can earn any $$, I must invest so much $$?

Now the *&%#@ Gingerbread keeps crashing and foreclosing without a reason. Thanks leh. I also ran my Burgerstacko, which ironically appeared ok.