Beginning of a new game development

I have been working with Google’s Android mobile platform for a little while and at the back of my mind I have had a pretty simple, but fun, retro sideshow game on my mind. Well now it is no longer in the back of my mind and time to put fingers on the keyboard and crack on with it. So what I plan to do here is blog and twitter on the process I am going through and update on, hopefully, how quick and easy it is to implement a simple game in Android.

Well that is the plan….let’s see if  it happens?

First steps starting today are create the new project and create the first couple of simple screens. These screens consist of a welcome menu, a simple instructions page, an about popup (this is me and I wrote this), and a quit button to close the app. So if you want to know how it is going as it goes along then follow me on twitter, otherwise you can check back here and I will try and update with posts each day (maybe twice if I go really well).

So on these first steps I have been working for about 20 minutes or so and have my basic welcome menu page. Next I implemented the finish( ) method call in the listener for the ‘quit’ button. Next up is the ‘about’ page popup and then the ‘instructions’ page, although the instructions will be very high level at this point. The goal is that in the limited time I have right now to get the basics in place and then tomorrow when I have a bit more time to work through the start of the game page.

Now back to the coding….remember to follow on twitter for more frequent updates and check back here for updates.

Filed under: android, design, development, menu, mobile

Setting up an SD Card for the Android Emulator

While starting to setup my environment (Ubuntu and Eclipse) to start creating Andoid applications I realised that I need to find a way to create an SD Card for the Emulator. Not that it is essential to be able to develop and test on the emulator but if you are wanting to create apps that also use the media functionality within Android then you are going to need some media.

Luckily the emulator comes with a means to pass in arguments which include defining an SD Card image. When searching the Android site I found the information on how to setup the Emulator. Here there are instructions on creating an SD Card image which you can then add files to and pass into the emulator through the arguments. Following these instructions was relatively straight forward but I did find some steps required some research. Here is what I found….

To create the image you can use the mksdcard command which is found in the tools folder of your android sdk. I used the following

/$ ./mksdcard -l sd1024M 1024M /home/android/sd1024M.img

which equates to

/$ mksdcard [-l label] <size> <file>

You can then use a tool like mtools to copy content into the image.

/$ mtools -c mcopy -i /home/android/sd1024M.img -v -s /home/android/path/to/folder/ ::

Finally add the SD Card to the arguments in the emulator so that the content becomes accesible when you run it.

/$ -sdcard /home/android/sd1024M.img

From there you should be able to access files such as music and photos to help fine tune and improve the quality of your results.

Filed under: android

by way of an introduction

Hi, this is my first post on here about a project that I have decided I need to get started on….the project is to start creating Android applications for mobile devices. It’s something that I have been thinking about for a long time and I am well overdue in getting this kicked off.

Why the wait….probably something to do with waiting to see what happens with Android and wether it has any legs to really compete.

At the moment there is really only the G1 available and if I am honest I don’t think it is that great and ready to take on the main players, although having said that the previews of a potential G2 (as well as news from some of the other manufacturers) gives me hope that there is definitely going to be a growth in the adoption of Android as a real mobile platform.

So where am I at with this project…at the moment I don’t have any specific applications in mind and the starting point is to get to understand the api and the efficiency required to create a lightweight yet functional and enjoyable application. There are going to be a few false starts along the way and a big learning curve but I am hoping I am going to enjoy the experience.

Anyway hope you stay tuned and follow along with my progress…hoping it will be interesting

Technorati Tags: android, development, programming

Filed under: android, design, functionality, general