Well I’ve been on hiatus for a while but wanted to go through the Android release process. So I sketched up a simple app to keep track of life and poison totals in Magic the Gathering. I’ve got some ideas brewing for the next version of it and am actively taking feedback from the community. If you want to check it out for yourself, here is the link.
Until next time,
Kyle
Well tonight we got the overhead navigation system complete for the game with a locked in chase camera until a map edge is hit then the player character can move closer to the screen edge. I am so excited, this weekend I am going to work on changing levels (screens / sub maps), getting some animated sprites working, non-agressive NPC interaction, and dynamically populating the inventory, equipment, and character screens.
After some research we decided to use an off the shelf OpenGL ES game engine for Android to handle all of the graphics work. The engine we got is pretty impressive and fully featured so we got some art moving around on the screen being controlled by us the gamers! Pretty exciting stuff, next I am going to work on the database model and get the inter-connectivity between Activities from inside the game full operational.
Till next time my friends, screen shots to come soon 
It has been a long time but I have been quite busy! The game is coming along quite nicely! After much research we decided to go with OpenGL to render the main action in the game and are using the Android Views to handle sub menus. Earlier today I wrapped up the Character screen with inventory, stats, and equipment. After I watch this movie more work will be done! Quite a productive weekend so far but it is still just starting. Until next time readers, but next time might be in a few hours. I have code fever tonight and the only cure is more coding!
Well the new SDK made me want to give all the features a spin. So the baseline of the Mobile MUD GUI is done, diagonal swipes work again, and now the next feature to do is the animation of the character and screen transitions between the different GUI’s (menu, map, inventory, etc…). I cleaned up the code a ton over the past two days and am quite pleased with the manageability the project is maintaining.
I would like to take this time to thank my friends that are watching this blog unfold, without you guys, well… No one would read this
Just a quick update on the progress, tonight I got home and in little time I was able to get diagonal swipes working. Now you can steer your character in the game 8 possible ways. This is the way of the MUD! The more I work on this the more excited I get, soon I will enter interface design and have some screenshots up here for you readers.
Well I started developing on the concept of a MUD that is played from mobile devices. Turns out this project is attracting a small amount of attention from my local crowd and we might get a smaller team together to pound out some solid code base in the near future. Tonight I wanted to get the basic functionality of the game in place and relearn some of the basics of Android development.
Thanks to some tutorials and API assistance I was able to get some nice gesturing features going (this will be the way you navigate around the world). Originally I wanted to use an accelerometer system to move your character around but thinking about playing a game like that just seemed to take away from the fun of it. Also I was able to scratch the entire “layout” view that Android has and will be going with a strictly code based implementation of adding GUI elements to the screen.
There are tons of posts out there on how to correctly do swipe events but here is the computation that I ended up choosing.
public boolean onFling(MotionEvent e1, MotionEvent e2, float velocityX, float velocityY)
{
try
{
if (Math.abs(e1.getY() - e2.getY()) > SWIPE_MAX_OFF_PATH)
return false;
// right to left swipe
if(e1.getX() - e2.getX() > SWIPE_MIN_DISTANCE && Math.abs(velocityX) > SWIPE_THRESHOLD_VELOCITY) {
Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "Left Swipe", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
} else if (e2.getX() - e1.getX() > SWIPE_MIN_DISTANCE && Math.abs(velocityX) > SWIPE_THRESHOLD_VELOCITY) {
Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "Right Swipe", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
}
else if(e1.getY() - e2.getY() > SWIPE_MIN_DISTANCE && Math.abs(velocityY) > SWIPE_THRESHOLD_VELOCITY) {
Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "Swipe up", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
} else if (e2.getY() - e1.getY() > SWIPE_MIN_DISTANCE && Math.abs(velocityY) > SWIPE_THRESHOLD_VELOCITY) {
Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "Swipe down", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
}
} catch (Exception e) {
// nothing
}
return true;
}
Very simple code, I can’t wait to decide on what to implement next. Oh it will probably be moving the character around with these swipe movements
Sup!
Today it was decided that the project that will attract the majority of my free time and that of whoever else I can drag into it will be a web and mobile based game that will be loosely constructed around the idea of multi-user dungeons (MUDs). This brings a warm fuzzy feeling inside me because this is what I grew up on in the BBS days. The game won’t leverage all the graphics capabilities of the devices so we will have to make sure it is fun to play, addictive, and most of all promotes a sense of community while demonstrating all of the features that your phones are capable of.
So far we plan on making use of accelerometers, geographical location, WiFi / Bluetooth, and possibly generating dynamic content based on random stuff on your phone (contacts, pictures, cache, etc, without being too intrusive).
On a side note this is a test to make sure we can do code pastes here
/**
* SyntaxHighlighter
*/
function foo()
{
if (counter <= 10)
return;
// it works!
}