All apps fit into one of two categories: Entertain or Organize

Testing this post in Medium, mainly because I like the ability for readers to be able to comment each paragraph, rather than just the entire post.

Linkage: https://medium.com/@danialgoodwin/all-apps-fit-into-one-of-two-categories-entertain-or-organize-1196ba3f1c2b

Level Up - Android Dev: How to get started with AndroidAnnotations (easy) (and build Chuck Norris app)

AndroidAnnotations is an open source framework for Android. Basically, you provide Java annotations for things, and the framework will auto-generate the necessary boilerplate code so you don't have to write it yourself. Runs at compile-time! (Read: No reflection or startup time impact) And, there's a lot of code AndroidAnnotations saves you from writing manually.

For example, want to run something in a background thread? Annotate the method with `@Background`. Want to run something in the main/UI thread? (rub some bacon on it) Annotate the method with `@UiThread`.

In this article, I provide a quick walkthrough for creating a very simple Chuck Norris facts app. I'll assume that you already have basic Android knowledge (and using Android Studio + Gradle). Then, at the end, I'll explain in more details some issues/gotchas I ran into while using AndroidAnnotations for the first time, and mention other goodies.

Getting started..

Level Up - Android Dev: The default emulator is horrendously slow, use Genymotion!

Many years back when I built and published my first Android apps, I only tested them on the default emulator provided by Google. And, even now, the default emulator is still too slow for my liking. It doesn't allow me to properly test apps. So, I purchased physical devices so that I would never have to touch the Android emulator again.

Genymotion provides a different take on the Android emulator. I've known about it for at least a year, but never got around to trying it because of my really bad experience with the default emulator. I've always heard that it was much faster than Google's implementation, but I didn't think an Android emulator could ever be fast enough for me compared to my physical devices.

I'm always learning something new, and today was finally time for me to learn more about Genymotion and test just how much better it is.

Results: Excellent! So much of a great experience that I had to write this blog post about it! I should have tried Genymotion when I first heard about it, and this is my message to all Android devs to also try it out now!

Sidenote: I was going to compare the default emulator with the Genymotion emulator side-by-side, but it was taking too long to load for me, whereas Genymotion startup was a breeze of fresh air. It runs without any lag. It runs faster than my old API 17 device.

Another great benefit is that Genymotion provides system images for many of the most popular devices, including Samsung Galaxy, Samsung Note, HTC One, Nexus, and more. And, they have a very convenient plugin for Android Studio to launch the emulator.

TLDR: It's fast. I have to make sure I stress that because I didn't believe how fast it would be. Genymotion's Android emulator is much faster and better experience than the default Android emulator.



Here, I even saved enough time to write a quick walkthrough for getting started. ;)

1. Go to Genymotion.com, click "Get Genymotion".
2. Download the free version, you'll have to sign up and confirm your email. (It's quick and it's worth it!)
3. Install it along with VirtualBox. For Windows users, they can bundle the two together in the download. For other, you'll have to install VirtualBox separately.
4. If you try to run it now, you might get an error that says "genymotion virtualization engine not found. Unable to load VirtualBox engine". So, just restart your computer and that fixed it for me. Some others had to enable the virtualization feature in the BIOS.
5. Run! Fast!
6. Now, you can click run in Android Studio and you will see an option to load the app in the Genymotion emulator that is running.

Bonus: How to Install the Genymotion Plugin for Android Studio (and, the first time you click on the installed plugin button, you'll have to add the path to where you installed it. Windows default is "C:\Program Files\Genymobile\Genymotion". Mac default is "/Applications/Genymotion.app")

~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog

Level Up - Android: How to Root Nexus 4 on Android Lollipop 5.0 (Easy)

In my last post, I explained how to flash Android Lollipop 5.0 system image to Nexus 4. After I did that to my own device, the next thing I did was root it, using fewer steps than that other post. ;)

Rooted Nexus 4 on Android Lollipop 5.0

This will be a quick walk-through for the steps I took to root my Nexus 4. These directions are extended from the site with the great "CF-Auto-Root" tool that we will use.

Prerequisites:

1. I assume that your bootloader is unlocked. If not, please see my previous post for how to unlock the bootloader.
2. I assume you have `adb` added to your environment variable PATH. If not, please see my previous post.
3. I assume you are running Windows, but Max and Linux users will be able to use these general directions also.

Walk-though for rooting the Nexus 4:

1. Download the LGE Nexus 4 Android 5.0 file from http://autoroot.chainfire.eu/#fastboot
2. Unzip the file. You should see two folders and three files in that folder, one should be called "root-windows.bat".
3. Connect your Nexus 4 device to computer, then run `adb reboot-bootloader` in your computer's terminal. This will bring your device to the "fastboot" mode.
4. Make sure again that your bootloader is unlocked before proceeding (label found at bottom-left).
5. Open your computer's terminal to where you downloaded and unzipped the file, and run `root-windows` (Mac and Linux users use your own variant). You should see a red Android if the process is working.

Congrats! When the script is done, it will reboot your device and your Nexus 4 will be rooted!

This process will install the Root Check app so that you can verify a successful root.

More info:

• I didn't have any trouble using these directions for rooting my Nexus 4, so if you have any troubles with the steps, then I'll try to help in my limited capacity.
• Previously, when I was running Android 4.4 rooted, I used ES File Explorer to browse the root directories. But, it didn't work in Android 5.0, so instead I am now using the Root Browser app successfully.

~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog

Memory Match Theme Popularities Compared

Hi, here's my first go at building a Construct 2 (hybrid game app creation program) memory match template. I decided that I wanted to create many different versions to see which topics get the most popular so that I would spend more time developing the popular ones. So, which theme do you like the most?

Please try them all and let me know what you think. Or, maybe just 1-3 of the most interesting ones to you.

- Memory Match 3
- Memory Match: Roman Numerals
- Memory Match: Color Names
- Memory Match: Colors
- Memory Match: Numbers
- Memory Match: Alphabet
- Memory Match: Letters
- Memory Match: Wildlife
- Memory Match: Cartoon Animals


Results so far:
- Wildlife theme has the highest amount of downloads.
- Colors theme has second highest amount of downloads.
- Color names theme has second lowest amount of downloads.
- Roman numerals theme has the lowest amount of downloads. (Sidenote: These cards took the longest to create also, so good thing I didn't make more)
- My favorite, "Memory Match 3", is getting close to 100 downloads


This information could be good for any of your app that you may want to theme. Seems like people prefer the basics of wildlife and colors, rather than things that require more thinking like color names and roman numerals.. And, I have about 10 different versions that I need to organize.


~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog

Published Two New Apps: Flappy Gravity and Gravity Runner

Using Construct 2, I've created two new HTML5 apps which run natively in Windows 8 and Windows Phone. I'd like to encourage you to try the apps. The links go to the store where you can see screenshots of the apps.

Gravity Runner
Gravity has gone crazy. There's only one hope... But, beware, the more times you change gravity, the more your power goes down.
- You are in control of gravity!
- Infinite, randomized levels
- Touch-enabled

Available now:
- Windows 8
- Windows Phone


Flappy Gravity
Gravity gone wrong! Change gravity with every tap! Avoid the obstacles.

Available now:
- Windows 8
- Windows Phone


~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog

Published New App: Wall Ball

I just created a new game using a concept that I haven't seen in any other game. It's almost like a single player pong game with different objectives.

Using the Construct 2 game engine, so that I only have to create the code base once, I've made the game available for Windows 8 and Windows Phone.

Try it out now:
- On Windows 8
- On Windows Phone



~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog

Experience Publishing to Different App Platforms

Q: How do you gain experience in publishing apps to a certain platform?
A: You create 100 apps and publish them.

Q: How do you lose experience in publishing apps to a certain platform?
A: You create 100 apps and publish them. (Details below)

I don't think anybody actually asks the second question (but I just did!). Anyways, after the first few publishes, programmers/hackers get tired of the same routines. Our jobs are basically to automate things and makes things easier!

So, that's what I did and am doing. I'm starting to automate the entire process of publishing an app. There is this great tool that is a high-level scripting language called AutoHotkey. With it, I can easily open any program programatically, and send any keyboard and mouse commands that I want to the program. Basically, a macro builder for the entire end-user operating system.

About half of the process is automated now. I'm about halfway to my personal goal of 100 apps. My goal would be to make the entire process from app file to publish a one-click process. I know it's possible, and it'll be fun to build.

Once the process is all automated, I can be free to forget the process and start thinking of other abstractions to make.

;)
~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog

Published New App: One-Click Saga

Today (and yesterday), I created this "One-Click Saga" game using the Construct 2 game engine. C2 definitely allows great games to be created with ease.

Description:
Three games to master. Flappy's too tired to flap anymore, so he is taking a ride on different airborne vehicles. Rules are the same: tap to save the clone bird's life! But, in each game a tap does something different...

Available Now:
- Windows 8
- Windows Phone
- HTML5


~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog

Published New App: Flappy Fishes

(YAFBC = Yet Another Flappy Bird Clone)

I really wasn't going to make a copy, but then I did.

Available for:
- Windows 8
- Windows Phone
- HTML5 (slightly older version)

~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog

Level Up - Webmaster: Setting Up Your First Laravel Website Or App

(For webmasters, a continuation on my last post Level Up - Webmaster: Installing Laravel and Composer on Bluehost.)

This walkthrough contains all the instructions I would have needed on one page, rather than looking through twenty different pages. This is a blunt how-to for connecting to a database with Laravel and displaying information. At the end are links for more specific and advanced info.

The following has explicit instructions and commands for a shared hosting provider like Bluehost, but the instructions should be the roughly the same for other providers and setups. I suggest to follow the steps explicitly the first time through, then run through it a second time with your specific project's names.

0. This simple "tutorial" assumes that you already know a little bit about Laravel and have possibly read my first install and setup walkthrough.

Setup the database:
1. Create a database on your server with a user and password.
2. From your root project folder, edit app/config/database.php to match your new database credentials.
3. In your root project directory, run php-cli artisan migrate:make create_users_table

4. You should now have the file that looks something like: app/database/migrations/2014_02_09_195357_create_users_table.php. Edit the up() and down() function to look like:

    public function up()

    {

        Schema::create('users', function($table)

        {

            $table->increments('id');

            $table->string('email')->unique();

            $table->string('name');

            $table->timestamps();

        });

    }

    public function down()

    {

        Schema::drop('users');

    }

5. Now, back in the project root dir, run: php-cli artisan migrate

6. At this time, your tables in the database will be automatically created. Add some data manually so that we can test that retrieving data works.

Create a view:

7. Create a route (subdirectory pointer) in app/routes.php by adding the following code:

    Route::get('users', function()

    {

        $users = User::all();

        return View::make('users')->with('users', $users);

    });

8. Create two new views in app/views. Call the first one layout.blade.php and add this code:
   
       
           

Laravel Quickstart

            @yield('content')
        
    
Create the second view, called users.blade.php:
    @extends('layout')

    @section('content')
        @foreach($users as $user)
            {{ $user->name }}
        @endforeach
    @stop
9. Go to your doman.com/users and you should have all the user names from the database displayed on the page.

Note:

- If the php-cli command doesn't work for you, then try just php


More info:

- Laravel Quickstart



~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog

Construct 2 Bug Export To Windows 8: Too many characters in description.

Here's the full error message in Visual Studio:

"The 'Description' attribute is invalid - The value '' is invalid according to its datatype 'http://WPTokens:ST_String' - The actual length is greater than the MaxLength value"

Basically, this error says that your description is too long.

Through trial and error, I've found out that the max allowable length of the Windows 8 app description in WMAppManifest.xml is 256 characters. So, in order to fix this problem, all you have to do open "WMAppManifest.xml", which can be found in the Properties folder of your app's project. Then, edit your description so that it is not as long. I used Notepad++ to count the number of characters in the description.

I spent a few minutes looking for the official documentation for this file, but didn't find it. I found many official resources for Windows 8 that was close, but weren't for the exact file WMAppManifest.xml. Here's one of the links that is something that I'm looking for <link>.

If you know where the official page for this documentation of max length of 256 characters for the description, then please let me know. This bug still hasn't been reported to the developers of Construct 2 yet, because I think there will be other areas around this spot that also has bugs, and I would like to report them all in one go. This will make things much easier for the developer also. And, it's always good to source fixes.

A picture of the error message.

~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog

Construct 2: Reporting Bugs for Windows Phone 8

For the past few WP8 apps I've been creating using Construct 2, I've been manually making the necessary bug fixes myself. Today I've decided to properly report three of these bugs to the developers of Construct 2. My last bug report that I sent to them a few weeks ago was fixed. And, I expect the same with these bugs, especially, since I described them almost like I fixed it for them. ;)

The three errors reported:
- WP8 Export: Fullscreen not being set
- WP8 Export: App title not carrying over to WP8
- Windows Phone 8 Export, no apostrophes allowed

In the meantime, until these errors are fixed, you can visit the links to see how I solved the problems manually. If the links don't work, then that most likely means that the bug has been fixed and the bug report post has moved to a different place.


UPDATE: Each of these reported bugs have now been fixed! Construct 2, release 157

~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog

C2: [Bug Fix] Windows Phone Export Doesn't Go Full-Screen or Landscape Mode

So, in my quest to create 100 Windows apps, I'm finding more solutions to bugs/issues/problems with the export of Windows Phone from Construct 2.

Problem: No Fullscreen. Here's how to fix it:
1. After you have exported the app from Construct 2, open MainPage.xaml
2. Find the line that says:
shell:SystemTray.IsVisible="True"

And, change it to:
shell:SystemTray.IsVisible="False"



Problem: No Landscape Mode. Here's how to fix it:
1. After you have exported the app from Construct 2, open MainPage.xaml
2. Find the line that says:
SupportedOrientations="Portrait" Orientation="Portrait"

And, change it to:
SupportedOrientations="Landscape" Orientation="Landscape"


That should do it! =]

UPDATE: The landscape mode problem has now been fixed! (2013-12-19)

~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog

Error: The Windows Phone Emulator wasn't able to ensure the virtual machine was running

Here's just another problem that I experienced while trying to create a Windows Phone app. It didn't come up last night for my last app. So, I figured out that I was running too many things at once for my 4GB RAM laptop. Or, should I say, Windows was running too many things? The one differentiating factor between last night and tonight was that tonight there was a "Windows Maintenance in progress". But, it wasn't too bad. I just closed out every other program I had open, including the Dropbox sync and I was able to continue opening the Windows Phone WXGA emulator so that I could take screenshots for the store.

Here's the full error report:

[Window Title]Windows Phone Emulator 

[Content]The Windows Phone Emulator wasn't able to ensure the virtual machine was running:
Something happened while starting a virtual machine: 'Emulator WXGA.danial' could not initialize. (Virtual machine ID C3F3456A-1234-ASDF-87GH-ABD23456GG90)
Not enough memory in the system to start the virtual machine Emulator WXGA.danial with ram size 1024 megabytes. (Virtual machine ID C3F3456A-1234-ASDF-87GH-ABD23456GG90)
[Close]

~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog

Construct 2: Exporting to Windows Phone

Windows Phone app certification requires games to have "Back" button functionality. E.g. Main menu should exit app and other pages should either go back within the game for navigation or bring up a pause popup.

So, using the plugin + strategy mentioned here, I was able to bring the Windows Phone app up to standards for publishing. There is a great function/event/action that can be called to intercept the back button presses so that the developer can do whatever.

Also, I didn't use the entire strategy mentioned at the above link, but that's the method I would recommend others to take. I took the harder method just for learning how the plugin worked and involves moving a lot of code around manually and breaks some of the functionalities in the plugin so that only `Back` works. But, eventually, I think I will share the specifics for learning about the C2 plugins.

~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog

Level Up! Applying Textures to Graphics

Before today, I had no idea how to apply textures to a picture, nor how long it would take. I now know that it takes less than five minutes once you have the graphics. And, this was my first time doing it! And, I didn't even look up how to do this texturizing thing. I had a lucky guess that just worked. My choice of graphics program was Paint.NET.

 Here's some screenshots of the work: A before, an after, and my final app that I'm producing for kids. Big kids too if you like. ;]

First, I put the texture (candy cane) in one layer and put the object in a different layer .

2. Use the magic-wand-selector to select the text. 3. Change layers. 4. Copy. 5. Paste in a new project.

Here's how it looks in the app, Help Santa!

+1 Graphics skill level!

~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog

Creating Windows Apps With Construct 2

Intro:
I plan on creating 100 games with Construct 2. I'll be writing about all/most of my experiences of using the program. Originally, I was thinking about creating a separate blog for just this endeavor, but I already have too many blog concurrently. So, posts in this blog with be tagged "construct 2" and "c2" when they are related to this.

Goals for each game:
 - I must learn something for every game I create.
 - I must feel reasonably good about them. Though, they also may not be my best work.
 - These games should be publishable.
 - At first, the games will only be published to the Windows 8 Store and Windows Phone Store.

Why only Windows?
Mainly because it's currently the best platform to publish to. The Windows platforms may not have the largest market share, but they still do have millions upon millions of users. Soon, just about ever computer will be running Windows 8, and they will need apps to download, my apps. ;)

After goals:
After accumulating all the knowledge that comes from creating 100 different games. I mostly likely will update the most popular ones with more levels/features. Then, we'll see. =]

~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog

Android 4.4 Developer

A few days ago, I had my Nexus 4's OS updated from Android 4.3 to Android 4.4. The system is running very smooth. Two of the first things I did was enable developer mode and then enabled all apps to use the new ART compiler rather than the old Dalvik compiler.

You are now a developer! Again! 

~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog

Android Publishers Cannot Purchase Their Own Apps

This is not new news by a longshot. But, through the regular course of my day, I encountered this error again and decided to take a picture so that I can let others know about it too.

In order for developers to have the pro versions of their apps, they must side-load it. And, it is typically a debug (non-public release) build.

The publisher cannot purchase this item.

Well, I guess it at least saved me 30% of the app cost if I wanted to buy from myself.

NOTE: This only applies to when using Google's in-app billing system. I don't think third-parties care as much about who is giving them money.

~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog