The Database App Continued

The database app is nearing completion. The user can now set a picture from their device's gallery for each entry and then it will show up on the entry's details page. A small version will also be displayed on the "Add" page as a preview. As far as I can tell, my search is working as well. You can fill out all the information to filter for from drop down lists and the display page is filled with all your entries that meet the criteria. I still need to do a bit more testing on the search functionality. There are a lot of things to search for, and although it seems to be working, there could be some weird combination that screws up the search. I'm fairly certain that my code doesn't allow for that sort of thing so it should be all working smoothly. I added an option to delete the entirety of the main table, but the user has to go through three different confirmation dialogs to do that. The app needs a bit more "field testing" but otherwise it is looking like its almost ready to go, barring any new bugs that haven't yet been found. Hopefully the app will be ready for release sometime soon.

I also plan to release a "Demo" Version that is free and works the same, but limits the user to a maximum of only 10 entries. This would mainly be so that the user can first test the app out and see if it works on their device, is something they would want to use, etc. Making a demo version will be a pretty short process so it should work out all right.

The Database App

I've made a lot of progress on the database app. Up to 7 tables now, which I think is all I need. I've also got a bunch of the pages set up on it. You can fill out a form to add an entry to the database, export the database as a comma delimited file, and import the same type of file back into the database. When you are viewing the list of entries, you can click one and it takes you to a details page where all of the entry's info is listed out along with an "Edit" and "Delete" button. The delete button obviously deletes the entry from the database. The edit button opens up the "add entry" form, but with the entry's info all filled out and when you change and save it, the edited entry takes the place of the old one.

The only major things I have left to do are like a filter/search page where you can pick out some info from the database to filter the list of entries by, and then I'd really like to add the ability to set a picture for each entry that would be shown on the entry's info page. It's going pretty well and I'm hoping to get it all set up in the next few days.

More Summer Games 3: The Revenge (and Databases)

So, lately we've mostly been taking a break from working on games. We'll get started again in a little while, but Tia cut her hand and can't really work on anything for a while and I'm currently working on a database, non-game, app for Android. We do have two more events for Androidian Summer Games full version planned though. The first one is a Track Cycling Sprint, which is pretty simple, but fun enough. The second event is easily my favorite of the two, and probably my favorite of all the events in general. The new event of which I speak, is of course the Discus Throw. It's pretty much done besides some graphics and I really like it. So, those will be out in a new update, hopefully soon depending on how Tia's hand heals and how quickly she starts feeling up for the task of the necessary graphics.

Now, the other project I'm working on currently isn't a game at all, but rather a personal database application. I won't go in to too much detail, but it has been pretty fun and even more daunting to work with SQLite for this app. I haven't really done any database stuff for around 3 years, so it has been intimidating to jump back into all this. Luckily, a lot of it is coming back to me. I've been reading a few chapters of some SQLite books and looking at a lot of examples and I've made some really good progress. I think it is pretty good progress at least. I have two tables so far, and the first one references the second one twice, and some spinners (aka dropdown boxes) on the UI I made fill with the data from the second table. Then you pick something from the list and along with some text you type into a text box, it all gets saved to the database and then it is displayed on a separate page that is available. I still have a lot to do with the app, but I'm pretty excited with the amount of work that I've accomplished so far. Plus, having some database experience under my belt is always good.

So, the database app is my main project right now. I'll try to get this one going and then hopefully I will dive back into the multiple game ideas we are looking in to.

The Making of Androidian Summer Games

Keeping in line with a couple of my other posts, here is some stuff on our Androidian Summer Games project.

Unlike our last two games, there wasn't as much of a slow, gradual transition between the first, bad looking game and the finished one. Since we were playing around with the idea of an Olympics themed game less than a month before the actual Olympics started, and then really didn't get down to working on it seriously until just a couple weeks before, the graphics went into the game pretty much all at once. So, here are just some simple before and after shots:

Hurdles:

Long Jump:

Swimming:

Rowing:

You can see how things didn't change too much in concept, but there is a definite improvement in the overall look. A background was put behind the timer to make it easier to see and the medal banner was added to the upper left. Of course, the weird stick figures were replaced by the Android Robot, and grass was given some texture. Also, the stands were replaced with a crowd of cheering robots, and the buttons were given a much better 3D look to them and their transparency was lost.

And there you go. The before and afters of the Androidian Summer Games!

Androidian Summer Games

The time has come! We've released our Olympics style game: Androidian Summer Games. You can check it out now on the Google Play market:

The events are Hurdles, Long Jump, Triple Jump, Freestyle Swimming, and Sculls Rowing. We might add a Cycling event in a future update. You can post a fastest time or longest jump for each event on global Scoreloop leaderboards. We added a couple fun little skins that you can choose for your character to make them look like a little more "patriotic" in some cases, depending on the country you are rooting for. All the games are very simple, but they are deceptively addicting and have you repeating a single event over and over to get a better time or a longer distance. My personal favorites are the Triple Jump and the Sculls Rowing.

Get it on your Android device today!

Deep Sea Trapper Lite and Even More Summer Games

So, we've just released Deep Sea Trapper Lite! Its just like the normal version of Deep Sea Trapper, but free (also, it has ads and is missing several game difficulties)!

Go pick that up and give it a try. If you like it, help us out and give us a review, or better yet, buy the full version, because that would be awesome

Progress on the "Summer Games" project has been good since my last post about it. I've put in the Decathlon style thing. It's named the "Droidcathlon". Technically the "c" shouldn't be there in the middle since in the word "decathlon" the "dec-" part means 10 and the "-athlon" part means "feat". So really if anything it should be "Droidathlon" without the "c" but my reasoning for leaving it in there is that more people will get that when its read or especially when its spoken outload, it clear to the user that it's a decathlon style event where you do all the events and get a medal based on your performance. The left handed mode is a pretty awesome addition, in my opinion, though admittedly an incredibly simple one. I've also got Scoreloop fully integrated with a leaderboard for each event and achievements for medals in each event. Pause menus are set up, the main menu is good, and the event page is looking nice. I've also got swipe-able help pages in there, but they don't actually have anything helpful on them yet. So pretty much the game is good to go as soon as we can get some finalized graphics in there along with a few more sound effects (background music provided by Andrew's music generator is pretty sweet). Hopefully we'll have it out on Google Play before the second half of the London Olympics have started, but its tough to say at this point.