Struggling to stay awake

Imagine a female with tanned skin, hairier on top and many years younger and you would get me... I am struggling to stay awake nowadays to do my coding. Just loading the bloody android SDK is making me feel like shooting myself in the head. To tell you the truth, everytime loading the SDK kills my wavering interest, and I run off to watch tv or play CoH. I admire Mr Bear's determination. He's been staying up to read Objective C and Android coding, which is probably the reason why he is walking around zombified nowadays. And me, hopping around like a Chinese vampire, which make us look like petrified undead.

I was grumbling to Mr Bear about having difficulty building the game that I have been thinking of doing for many years since Burgerstacko. He suggested a different approach which is actually really quite simple to do. Will need some time to build the graphics though, but pretty doable. Hmm. Damn.

Back to the drawing board

I have a policy of not talking about Arbeit as much as possible because I don't want to have the censorship board come after me. Besides I have found out by very bad experiences on why and how it is a bad idea to be identified by your blog content. 

[source: ijustdid.org]

But anyway Arbeit sucked so much yesterday, that when I got into the car yesterday, I told B1 I was going to train as a McDonald's staff. (Ok, that was until this afternoon when the ladies reminded that I would have to clean the toilets. So I am back to aspiring to be a dungeon mistress). I started chanting lines like "Do you want fries with that?", "Good morning Mdm, welcome to McDonald's!" in a super cheery voice.

He said "Why don't you go and work at *censored* since your friend is already a manager there?"

"Good morning Mdm, do you want a latte with that?!" I shrieked.

Anyway it's pretty bad. I decided it is time to re-examine my storyboard for ideas to do coding on. Like I told Mr Bear before, he ought to code small games to understand better how to do android coding than go full bang and then hate what he did. So I decided to follow my advice. 

I am now listening morosely to free music that people post online to collaborate with developers. Maybe now I can develop the game I wanted to make. Or maybe add a new simple game to Burgerstacko.

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.

Coding Stalemate

I am stuck.

New Game

I think I am done with the storyboard part. Now is the graphics *arghz*. Do I use canvasdraw, openGL or cheat with ordinary image rendering? I belong to the KISS group. Lesser work done better. =D

Even in school, my code is pathetically simple. I didn't go for the "impress the professor with my programming prowess (which I have none, that is why I am not doing programming @ Arbeit)" so I always scored the minimum for my code. Lazy.

I didn't do a good job planning Burgerstacko the other time, so my code wasn't scalable. It was a simple no-brainer game that one can play while waiting for the bus or on the train. 

O&S for Burgerstacko

Fixed the incoming phone call bug. Problem is I have forgotten how to repackage that apk. I had set up nicely in the old Eclipse environment but not for Indigo. I went home with the backed up workspace to do the deployment but the stupid Ganymede cannot work because I had not closed the workspace properly the other time. Shit. Think I will wait for B1 to finish the website and I will add in the code for the Internetview before deployment again.

I am adding the online scoreboard because a long time ago, someone asked nicely for it. Personally, I don't like applications connecting to Internet, so I built an inbuilt scoreboard instead. But it might be fun to see whether people are still playing this game 2 years on.

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. *???*

Google knows what we are thinking

Google has donated two opensource tools to Eclipse platform. Finally a more technik substitute to the weird ass App Inventor. I am grateful. One of them looks like a rival version to Microsoft Visual, which certainly welcomed. I will look forward to the new Eclipse release.

Android App Inventor Updates

I am too engrossed in my COH nowadays, especially after my violin exam. I am also pretty pissed at the people who said super nasty stuff about my app, so I have been trying to down the app for days. However Android market made some changes, so now I have to upload a high-res icon of my app, before I can down it! So I don't care anymore.

However it seems that the Android App Inventor community has become more active since the days where they issued invites only. I used it for a while, then decided that coding was easier (wtf, right?). I was reading on Mashable, that now The Android App Inventor has been opened up to everyone, so that's cool, and not  only that now you can download the source code to change. That's nice.

I did a quick visit just now. Apparently a Rutgers' undergrad class did some HCI (that's Human-Computer Interaction) apps using Android App Inventor. Have a look.  Anyway I wanted to do children games with HCI, since I used to study HCI. I am trying to feel encouraged by these guys' efforts, but it's hard. Those Android users are nasty with their comments.

Perhaps I am as nasty as Android users. Some of the undergrads, as students of HCI, don't seem to use the principles of HCI when designing their posters. The words are very small!!! *winks*

Infuriated!!!! Fixing my Game for Nothing?

I have been receiving a lot of nasty comments on my game recently. At least two of them said that they could not download all the way... I was wondering what they meant. Could it be that my latest deploy is not working? So last night I asked my friend Lively to help me download my game to her phone and try. She reported that it was ok.

I also spent an hour or two recompiling, uploading and tidying the game profile.

Then this afternoon, I was researching on how to build my next app, then I see this:

"Users of Android phones all over the world are unable to install or uninstall applications from the Android Market to their handsets.

This is obviously a huge problem for devices whose value can be measured by the applications people run on them. The Android Market currently hosts more than 100,000 free and paid applications.

There have been more than 200 posts about this problem in this thread that began Oct. 25 on the Android Market Help Forum. Owners of devices ranging from the Motorola Droid X to the HTC Desire and HTC myTouch handsets have made their gripes known.

T-Mobile myTouch owner ClaurenM wrote Nov. 4: "I get this in the notification and in the list of downloads (Market -> Downloads button). It hangs on ‘Starting download. . .’ no progress, then I get ‘Download unsuccessful.’ This is happening for updates and new app installations."

HTC Desire owner Deggers in the U.K. wrote Nov. 4: "I had an iPhone for 2 years and never experienced anything such as this. No announcements to customers on the marketplace website, no response on here. It's shameful! I have apps which now do, download. I also have apps which download but are still failing to move into install mode!"

Google isn't saying anything officially and has kept quiet on the forum despite pleas from users for help. However, a source familiar with Android Market operations said Google is aware of the issue and "working rapidly on a resolution."

I am so angry now. My app is quite sh*t without having to add frustration to my users with the new downloading problems.

Error generating final archive: Debug certificate expired on

I opened my Eclipse today to a very friendly error "Error generating final archive: Debug certificate expired on [Date here]!"

Stupid. What you do is:

(1) Go to Preferences -> Android -> Build and see where is the Default Debug keystore stored. That would be the lame file called debug.keystore.

(2) Delete it.

(3) Run the app again. If not, clean the app or go to the error log and fix any error there.

emulator: ERROR: the user data image is used by another emulator. aborting

A lot of people say the way to get rid of this problem "emulator: ERROR: the user data image is used by another emulator. aborting" is to go to ADB server and type the following line: adb kill-server && adb start-server (total noobs, this means you use command prompt then go to your android sdk folder then tools folder e.g. C:\Android...\tools \, and run that line).

Also there are people who advise (in Eclipse) going to Run Configurations-> Target (of the application you are trying to emulate) and click "Wipe User Data" option.

Actually I tried both. The only way it works for me, is to go to Task Manager and kill off the Emulator.exe process. Simple, isn't it? Haha.

Screen sizes in Android

After playing with B1's iPad, I marvel at the quality of the images in the (paid) games and also how they can scale according to your preference.

Seeing that Dell Streak is out and more Android-OS based tablets are coming soon, I am wondering if I should learn to scale up my android apps. I am reading up on Google's directions on screen size, before I start drawing my images. I previously toyed with the idea of making different xml files for different screens for Burger Stacko, but figured the images were horrible anyway, so didn't bother.

So far, I figure out that if you need to manipulate screen size in your game, use WindowManager and DisplayMetrics.

DisplayMetrics metrics = new DisplayMetrics();
getWindowManager().getDefaultDisplay().getMetrics(metrics);

Games wise, I like PopCap's Plants vs Zombies. I wonder how many developers and game designers do they employ? It was rather funny that PopCap claimed Microsoft wanted to acquire them some years ago, and then they only estimated the company was worth US$5M when the executives said they had US$4M in the bank at that point. Dude, bad luck. Anyway they earned US$1M from 9 days of sales of PvZ in Apple AppStore.

As for my misalignment struggles in displaying the scoreboard in Burger Stacko, a Development Lead advised me to use Courier or some other monospaced font. I learnt something new~! This is why I love hanging out with geeks and developers. :D

B1 joins the dark side again

Brainwashed by the iPad he received for his birthday, B1 became besotted by the Apple AppStore and is getting iPhone. He said the games in Apple AppStore has a bigger market than the limited Android market.

I am so annoyed now I can pass out bricks. Though my love for Google is going unappreciated, I am still trying very hard to code some decent stuff for Android. I sourly commented that his iPhone will probably join his Android phone in the glove compartment since neither of us can carry camera phones to work.

I am supposed to be working on the expansion for Burger Stacko and a new game. But the heat is getting to me so much, I fell asleep when watching Babies in air-conditioned comfort. Zzzz. I can't even play Company of Heroes, I am so tired. I am toying with the idea of buying a Bamboo drawing tablet. The previous pad I bought was terrible, and I reverted to using a computer mouse to sketch. The little girl you see as my avatar is drawn by mouse, as are the images in Burger Stacko though it is obvious I spent lesser effort when drawing those images. Haha.

Scorelists!!! Part 2

Over the weekend, I tried the Bistro Cook. I can understand how it is addictive, definitely it has better graphics than mine haha.

Anyway I was also struggling with my chosen XML solution. I realise now one must understand one's limitations (after much fluent cursing on my part)... so I swing to SQLiteDatabase despite my initial misgivings. Also, I might encounter problems if people reuse their names when submitting scores, so SQLite is a better idea.

Now I just need to fix up the layout a bit and I will be able to upload the new version soon. I might also change some parts of the code to make the icons move between different levels.

Also as a learning point for everyone who is more used to Oracle database. You know how Oracle Database allows you to enter rownum <11 to get the first ten rows. But in SQLite, you enter LIMIT 10 instead. Also you should sort first before you limit. So ORDER BY [COLUMN-NAME] DESC LIMIT 10.

Scorelists!!!

I don't want to be a bitch... but harlo people, if I can do a score list don't you think I would have packaged with my game? Shit, it's 3am and I am still struggling. It's the first time in weeks where I have started coding again.

For two weeks I have been torn between scoreninja, google spreadsheet, free php website, internal file, external storage xml file as the means of storage for the scores. My enthusiasm is flagging for the game. I want to do one myself because I want to reuse this for my future games *cross fingers and pinky swear*, yes, hopefully the ones that can draw me a decent income, instead of sucking my tiny store of logic, zzzz and USD25. Yes, Google, I am still pissed, why do I have to pay USD25 twice? One when I bought that shit Dream, where I registered an account in android market, and now when I upload that crap shit game of mine? I finally get a reply from Google helpdesk, and his/her reply makes it seem that I was speaking French and I don't speak French. No return, no payout and my fragile ego gets crushed.

Initially I was excited by the comments I got for the game, then it gradually became "wtf?" because there are some very weird comments, like the one from that Russian arschloch. Don't give 5 stars and say the game is crap shit in Russian. You basically wasted my time in translating and thinking of some fun German and Mandarin words to tell you, which you can have fun translating. Nevertheless there are some encouraging and constructive criticism such as the missing scorelist, which is the reason why I am awake at 3am, after watching a extremely disturbing Expendables where Slyvester almost (thankfully only almost) kissed a much younger woman. It was like "let Grandpa put a baby in your belly..." *gag*

I am also going to download the Bistro Cook. At least 2 of my colleagues have become addicted to this game (it's like the Android Farmville) and since I am nibblezware (as in food + software), I feel I should concentrate on making food games (I have a new idea but I need to pyscho a colleague to join in the coding effort, because at the way I am coding, it will take a blue moon before it will be completed). And the best way to learn is to understand what interests people. I have been reading a lot of design books, game books, HCI for game books. As for the graphics, haha, too bad, I use Microsoft Paint and a mouse, don't expect miracles. It's a one woman programming team (which is easily distracted by Company of Heroes and American TV. The fall season is coming at last! Rescuing me from the mind-numbing doldrums of reality TV).

Oooh, something other than Eclipse =D

Hi ya folks who are trying to code Android apps, good news, no longer do we have to suffer the whims of Eclipse. There are five other cross-platform mobile development tools that you can use. Note you can use them for developing iPhone and other mobile OSes. But I don't really care about those. Haha.

I am also super excited by Mashable.com, which has a lot of top 10 free stuff, especially the wireframe tools. That will definitely benefit me in creating my wireframes for TopCoder, though I never win *sobs*.

Btw I have been playing CoH alot. ALOT. So have stopped coding completely and opened myself to the joys of typing German and English curse words at my teammates. Ich liebe dich, Company of Heroes. I guess that is the reason why I like the game so much, because I can use what little German words I know.

Great News - Burger Stacko is in Android Market!!!

I have finally taken the plunge, and published my Burger Stacko game in the Android Market. Yes, I know it is a very dumb game, but it's simple and great for whiling away your commute.

Please Support me!!!

Updated!!!

Well, it's finally in the market, after I allowed users to download it off the device. While I am ok with people doing that (and then laughing at my app for its simplicity * I am a simple programmer *), it's rather like Hobson's choice isn't it? Giving you the option, then when you use it, your app doesn't appear... or is that problem limited to developer phones?

I saw some of the comments which are constructive and kind, and now I am tempted to build onto the game earlier than I thought. I was going to come back and build on it later, and start on my educational game first, but now I am thinking of adding the random stages to Burger Stacko now!