ADC2: Final Results on Monday

The final results of the Android Developers Challenge 2 should be available on Monday and I have to admit that I am not too excited. I haven't seen any "kick-ass" applications while testing a few of the top 20...
Fish! downloads did increase a lot in the past, I don't know why exactly!? 14k downloads is the current status, and that is still without an update. The main reason for this is lack of time and a change of targets for the application. I am currently looking for a shark to implement, probably the most wanted features according to the comments.
I am also looking into fish swarm algorithms, there are already some good papers about this topic. As well as some nice implementations. I just need to figure out the fastest that is suited for the small device. A small sardine fish is ready to meet his friends *g*.

Finally Round 2

Google finally released a list of all top 20 applications. You can find the list here.
Fish! didn't make it, but I am not too disappointed. I might do better next year *g*.

HTC Sync

I haven't posted for a while now, mainly because I didn't have a lot to say *g*. Now there are no news about the ADC2 contest, but Google released SDK 2.0 meanwhile and this is of course interesting for all android developers.
Looking threw the API, the main changes don't look too exciting for me and I do not understand that big jump from 1.6 to 2.0. Where did all the numbers in between go? Probably this is not a decision made by developers. "2.0" just sounds so nice I guess...

Never mind while adding new features to Fish! I am also changing the application to support all the new resolutions and I am planing to release an update on the weekend. The level of detail of the 3d models is high, so the new devices should definitely benefit from it. Also more fishes should be possible. A new snapdragon device should be able to render about 35-50 fishes with full details. I wish I had one of this devices :D.

For testing I decided to upgrade my HTC Magic with a new 1.6 ROM. Austrian provider "3" seams to ignore the new versions and as a customer your left alone with your old version. This is kinda lame, especially for all developers who want to use new features but don't want to block users with old version.
Now updating should be easy, I thought... That's not the case if your operating system is a german WinXp. The update tool from HTC requires HTC Sync to be installed and connected with your device. So I downloaded the latest version and started the setup. During installation the setup application complained, that it can't find the driver in the "C:\Program Files..." folder. The installation did complete, but was broken of course. If you are not using a localized version of WindowsXP, you will have no problem. Microsoft for some reason decided to localize the "Program Files" folder to "Programme" in the German version. The HTCSync setup ignores that fact and fails to install unless you copy the files manually in your hand created folder with the correct name.
I could imagine that many ordinary users fail to upgrade there devices just because of this installation problem....

Google speechless...

This is the current situation with ADC2, no word from google. A week has already past and as a developer I expected at least a list of all top 20 applications in round 2. I guess passion is the only thing that we have left now ;).

Development of the Fish! application is going slowly at the moment. My wife and I are currently looking for a house to buy, and we had to plan our vacation this week. Anyway a few nice ideas came into my mind and I hope we can release an update soon. The fishes are now reacting to touch events and swim away if you click on one of them. Not too impressive but I like the fact that interaction is increasing now and we like to add a lot more...

ADC 2 Round 1 Scoring Complete

A little bit earlier as expected, round 1 of ADC2 has ended and we are waiting for the second round to start. The release of 1.6 might have something to do with the early ending. Some developers reported that the application they developed are broken for the new version and they feel a bit disappointed for not being able to fix that.

The official rules also state very clearly that there will be no option to send an upgrade for your application even for round 2. Actually I think that the voting turned out to be a very strange process. The post on the android developer blog made it clear to me, that applications where presented for voting until they had 100 votes and then disappeared. This explains for me why I have seen only very few interesting applications. All cool applications had 100 votes early in the voting process, thats just the way it works...

Meanwhile, I was able to increase the performance of Fish! a lot and me and my brother are working on an improved version. Also the feedback from the first release was great, I am already sure you will like the new version more *g*.

We also understand that creating a home background out of it would be great, unfortunately there is no API that does support that in a smooth way. If we find a way to do that, we will for sure release a version with that option.

Beo's Blog and ADC2

This is my firt Blog, and I am manly using this to post news about my Android applications and as a feedback option for everyone who wants to tell me how good or bad my applications are *g*.

So lets start with my first app "Fish!". It was actually created with the help of my brother so this one is basically a teamwork and most likly future applications will be as well. This opengl fish simulation was created for the ADC 2 (Android Developers Contest) and we decided to make it avaliable for free in the market so everyone can download it.
We might enhance the application later and create a benchmark application of it.

You might not see it, but we have used a very high level of details for the fish and the textures. So we are at the limit of the actuall devices. I hope you guys like it.