Newton

Crash Reports with Acra

On 08.08.10, In Android, Newton, By Mario

I instrumented Newton with the acra library today. Acra registers an UncaughtExceptionHandler (which is also available in desktop Java) and everytime your application crashes bad on a user’s device it send an error report with information such as android version, phone model plus stacktrace to a Google spreadsheet you set up for that purpose. The steps to include this in your application are totally easy:

Create the Google spreadsheet as lined out in Arca’s Wiki
Create a class that extends CrashReportApplication and implement the getFormId() Method, returning the form id you got from your spreadsheet
add android:name=”YourCrashReportApplicationClass” to your AndroidManifest.xml file
…
Crash Reports!

I especially like the solution of using Google spreadsheets for this kind of crash reporting. It also works on devices < 2.2 (down to 1.5) which is a definite plus. Finally you can add your own reports besides standard crash reports at any point in your application. With this feature you could for example log the average FPS of your game.

I used the standard crash reporting facilities of Acra and behold i got crash reports!

java.lang.NullPointerException at at.knowcenter.pfx.gui.widgets.Label.dispose(Label.java:60) at at.knowcenter.pfx.gui.Gui.removeWidgets(Gui.java:170) at at.knowcenter.pfx.gui.Gui.render(Gui.java:136) at com.badlogic.newton.game.MainMenu.render(MainMenu.java:167) at com.badlogic.newton.game.Game.render(Game.java:126) at at.knowcenter.pfx.backends.opengles.OpenGLESApplication.onDrawFrame(OpenGLESApplication.java:317) at android.opengl.GLSurfaceView$GLThread.guardedRun(GLSurfaceView.java:955) at android.opengl.GLSurfaceView$GLThread.run(GLSurfaceView.java:887)

Now that is nasty. Gui widgets in Newton are initialized in a lazy fashion. If the user is fast enough i try to dispose something which has not been initialized yet.

I hereby fully recommend the use of Acra in your application! The code is solid and doesn't do anything nasty (e.g. send your stats to a 3rd party).

QR Codes: Tweet and Marketplace

On 05.18.10, In Android, Newton, By Mario

Behold, the QR codes:

Tim made this, it’s kinda magic, i have no idea how he did it. That’s what tim says about them: They will open up your browser and try to Tweet a link to Badlogic. If you enjoy the site please share =)

And these two will show you all games by Badlogic. Share!

Thanks Tim, those codes are awesome!

Newton is finally out

On 05.16.10, In Android, Newton, By Mario

Today i released Newton, the paid version as well as updated the Lite version to be ad supported. I included all 27 levels Stefanie did in the lite version plus the editor and level sharing capabilities. The full version has no ads and features another 47 levels by Tim. The full version is 0.99€ on the market, i think it’s a very fair price. Given that we added the full feature set to the lite version too i think we can’t do more for our players. I’m curious how this works out. Thanks for your support and patience.

Update: we already have 2 sales! Awesome, thanks to you two guys.

And this is awesome too:

“It feels a little cheap”, that’s how we roll!

Update 2: half a day has passed by and we have 27 sales. Thanks a bunch to you people out there. On the other hand we also have nice comments on the free version:

“Only more ads with update”
“Update is just ADS. DO NOT UPDATE.”

Awesome, i guess a map editor, map sharing and 27 new levels in the LITE version are not enough for some folks. Well, can’t make everyone happy…

Update 3: 32 sales in 24 hours. That’s a lot more than i expected. Also, only 2 people did cancel their order. Would have thought that rate would be higher. Cool, we won’t get rich though

Calling it quits

On 05.08.10, In Android, Newton, OMG Ponies!, libgdx, By Mario

I just send out the mail to the guy who asked me to do a port of his game to Android telling him that i have to quit the project for various reasons. I won’t elaborate on those here, it’s none of your business . However, i want to say something related to this: In the last couple of months i have invested so much of my spare time into the Android business that my life began to suffer a little. I will therefor reduce my efforts meaning that development of libgdx will slow down a bit (altough i have a nice surprise for you if you have a look at the latest SVN changelog).

Tim and Stefanie are working on the last levels for Newton at the moment. Once those are finished i’ll give Newton the final touches, fix some stuff i wanted to fix for the last couple of months and release it as an ad supported and paid version. I guess that will be the last thing i do on Android for a long time.

Keep checking back here every now and then, i might add some new tutorials for libgdx as well as some news on other stuff i might do in the meantime.

And the picture of me will come! Promised!

Thanks Google

On 05.04.10, In Newton, OMG Ponies!, By Mario

I got my Nexus One yesterday, being one of the lucky bastards the android seeding program chose to send a free phone. I replaced my Milestone with it for the past 2 days and i must say i really like the experience. It feels a tad bit snappier than the Milestone and the colors of the AMOLED are shiny.

Tim is working on the final levels for Newton. To my embarassment i haven’t put a lot of work into Newton during the last 2 months due to libgdx, the audio work i did as well as the project i’m involved in at the moment. No date on the final release from me :p.

I also fooled around with GWT at work today. Pretty niffty though i only did some basic RPC client/server stuff. I was never into web coding but GWT seems like a nice way for people like me to get their feet a little wet.

To the generous donator: i haven’t forgotten about the promised pic, i just didn’t find the time yet to get into a sexy mood.

Anyways, here’s hell:

So it begins

On 04.17.10, In Newton, OMG Ponies!, libgdx, By Mario

No new post for a few days. Well, i guess that’s how it begins. To be honest, i don’t feel the need to write at least one post per day if i don’t have to say anything of interest. I signed the contract for that new project yesterday and the conditions are pretty good. It’s gonna be a load of work and most of my spare time will be killed by that over the course of the next few months. Additionally, Tim and me started working on Newton a bit again. He already build 18 new maps and suggested some new features which i currently evaluate for feasability. And beside all that there’s still the ongoing work on libgdx. I’m currently not sure where to head next. I wanted to start on a proper sprite module which makes 2D animations a bit easier. On the other hand a neat little GUI module would also be a nice to have. I look around on the web for some potential projects that i could include, but most of the stuff i found is either overly complex or not useable in the context of libgdx and Android. The only thing i came across that nearly meet all my needs was Nifty Gui which looked pretty good on first sight. The current SVN trunk even offers the possibility to add your own rendering backend which would be exactly what i’d need. However, the poor thing is not well documented and i’m not sure whether i want to go the data driven GUI (read XML) route. If there’s anyone among you how would like to help out with writting a proper GUI module drop me a line. I’d love to get some idea exchange going and have something up and running by the end of next week.

Speaking of next week: I’ll be in London for a couple of days from sunday on. I go there with Stefanie and my band mates to play some small pubs. I hope we don’t get stoned for our accent

Newton’s future

On 04.09.10, In Android, Newton, By Mario

After my call for a Newton level designer Tim from Android Guys was kind enough to offer his help. Without a lot of hassle we agreed on a simple deal and he’ll be the official Newton level designer from now on. Welcome on board! We have no money but our women are awesome!

Newton was and is a kind of experiment for me to get a feel for the Android market and going kinda indie there. Given this fact the future of Newton will be experimental in terms of release policy. I just signed up for Mobclix and registered a PayPal account. This will be used for the ad supported version of Newton. I plan on displaying Mobclix adds in the menus of the game which shouldn’t be to obstrusive.

The other road i’ll travel will be a paid Version of Newton without ads. It will be 1.49€. I’m really looking forward to how this will work out. After some talks with Robert from Battery Powered Games i came to the conclusion that the ad supported version of Newton will probably do better, as people like their stuff to be free. It’s a bit of a shame but if that’s what people want then the ad way is the only way there is.

I also stopped tracking statistics for Newton on a daily basis. I’m now at nearly 20k downloads with an installation base stagnant at 7000, so a bit over 30%. Given that there hasn’t been an update for quiet some time that’s ok i guess. As oposed to games like Gem Miner the demo version of Newton also doesn’t offer endless play in a sense. Once you finished all levels there’s really no incentive to go over them again. That’s where the levels from Tim as well as the in-game editor and level sharing should kick in hopefully.

As i hate strict deadlines myself at least in my private projects i didn’t push Tim to have the levels done by some point in time. It’s done when it’s done

Want to be a Newton Level Designer?

On 04.07.10, In Android, Newton, OMG Ponies!, By Mario

Newton has been out since the 24th of december, and the code for it is finished since mid january. We have 29 additional levels now, a level editor, in game level sharing etc. Still, 29 levels is not enough to ask people to pay. Stefanie are currently really busy with real life stuff and barely find the time to do anything Newton related. Before Newton dies i want to give a shout out to you. If you want to do levels for Newton and get a percentage from the income a paid version generates drop me a line at contact@badlogicgames.com or post a comment below. We need another 40-50 levels which can be easily created with a desktop level editor (Which is the same that is included in the Android version). I can’t offer a fixed sum of money to you as my budget is more than limited. However, i’d share 10% of the income Newton generates. We’d setup a simple one page contract defining the terms of the collaboration. Here’s hope that there’s some awesome level designers among my readers

Newton Lite 1.56

On 03.13.10, In Android, Newton, By Mario

Upon a request from a Newton player i implemented zoom via a slider. The update just got published to the market, i hope it is a welcome addition.

Stefanie will probably start creating levels soon again, the full version should hopefully be out sometime in april. Yes, we are slow :/

Slow News Day

On 03.04.10, In Android, Newton, By Mario

To much to do at work, i didn’t have any time to get anything interesting done today. Well, maybe it’s interesting to know that i’m preparing my current game development framework for going open source. It’s 100% OpenGL based and works in Java. On the desktop i use Jogl for all OpenGL stuff, on Android OpenGL ES. The framework is written in a plattform agnostic way, code written with it will run without modification on both the desktop as well as on Android. This reduces development time greatly as i can do most of the work on my desktop without the need to try it out on the device all the time.

It also contains native components to speed up some things. I’m currently thinking about including a Box2D and a Bullet native wrapper but as i don’t need physics at the moment i might postpone that for a while. What is in there is the complete audio framework in native code to do audio analysis.

I plan on releasing it under the GPL or LGPL, i’m not settled on that yet. Neither do i know when i will release it to the public. I’m currently reworking the gui module to be even more flexible and easy to use so that might take some time.

Stefanie has completed another bunch of levels, we are nearing the release of Newtons full version. I had a talk with Robert from Battery Powered Games who pointed out that Newton is extremely similar to Gravity Pods and that that might bring me into hells kitchen. So i contacted Keith Peters, the maker of Gravity Pods yesterday asking for permission to publish it. I have not received any response from him yet. I’m in no hurry.

As a last line: Newtons install base is declining. I’m now down to 44%. While i get 100 new downloads a day i lose 140 in install base. That makes kitty sad :/

Badlogic Games