Mobile App update

The level of feedback is about what I expected. Still, I turned on Google analytics before making the site publicly known, so folks contributed simply by visiting.

The results are interesting. Out of 17 visits, and about 15 unique visitors, not many people made it past the first page. Most only ventured about two or three steps into the story. The exception is one visitor who appears to have gone through every single option meticulously. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, “Thanks mom!”

Once again, my thanks for those that were able to take some time and try out some of the story options. Hopefully you were at least a little entertained.

At the moment I’m trying to figure out how to preserve the state so that the program remembers where you left off and starts you back there again. I have templates for doing just that, but none of them work even in their template state, so that requires a bit more experimentation.

For those interested, here is the decision tree for the story, indicating possible endings and paths you can take:

From Windows Live Writer

Choose your own adventure?

Mobile app update. I’ve finished the first draft of the content. It’s a story written in the style of a choose your own adventure. I have fond memories of reading these when I was younger, and thought that smart phones would do well to see more of these things become available. For those that are interested, and would like to critique, I’ve posted the entire thing here:

https://sites.google.com/site/dmxcyoacaveexplroer/

From a writing perspective, it’s an interesting challenge to write a branching storyline. It’s the first time I ever really used a branching flow chart to lay out all the different plots, identify choices, and decide how different things will turn out. Sometimes different paths lead to the same point in the story, which means you have to take into consideration what previous experiences might not have happened for the reader, and avoid referencing them.

Because it’s written in the second person, you can’t really characterize the protagonist. It’s not my place to tell you who you are, simply present you with choices and notify you of the consequences. It’s also a mistake to write a single story path from start to finish. You’ll unintentionally make it the preferred path, the one where you put most of your energy, and the rest become more filler and the experience less enjoyable for the reader.

So, I’ve got the framework, I’ve got the content, now it’s time to work on the features. There are a couple of extras I’d like to put into the apps to make the experience more enjoyable, and will spend some time fleshing those out.

In the meantime, feedback is, as always greatly appreciated. I’ve done my best to have a good mix of good, bad and neutral endings, as well as consequences that follow a certain logic.

At the same time, you’ll be dealing with giant lizards, so this is not something to be taken too seriously.

Regardless, please take a look, let me know what you do and do not like. I have a problem with drifting between present and past tense, so kudos to anyone who can flag those that I have missed.

Mobile App update: It’s not dead!

The last few months have been busy. The time when I’m sitting on the bus is the time I have to work on personal projects. Unfortunately, a project for the church has occupied that time for the last few months. I have been reading profiles of pastors, and lots of them.

Interesting stuff. There are a lot of different pastors out there, all of them very different and quite interesting. It’s made choosing who and who not to interview very challenging. That being said, 80+ profiles each with an average of 30 pages that have to be read like I’m reviewing thesis tends to be rather time intensive, and I’ve been fully preoccupied with that, when not doing work for my job.

I’ve not played videogames in over a month.

The good news? The reading of profiles has tapered off and I’m getting my bus time back to work on personal projects. I’m continuing to develop content for the mobile app, and hope to have something for people to play around with in the next few months.

Android app success!

As much as I’ve complained about Java and the stupidity of the emulator (it’s also dog slow), I’ve gotten to the same level of functionality in much less time than it took me with Windows Phone. I’ve got features I want to add to both, so it remains to be seen which works better in the long run, but I will tip my hat to Android on this round.

But not to java. Java still sucks.

*shakes fist at Java*

It’s still just as temperamental as it’s always been. I copied code directly from the Android developer’s website, keeping the formatting, and it did not work. It gave me an error that no one has reported through google. I purged that project, created a new one, copied the code again, and this time it’s not giving me the error. It’s still refusing to launch the emulator, something about @foo, which is not very clear, but I might be making progress.

Eclipse is like a less polished version of Visual Studio. Admittedly, it’s more general purpose, and less honed to design mobile apps for android, and the wizards for creating new projects and viewing your layout on different screen sizes are pretty nice. It’s just a shame that you have to write the code in Java.

*Update* I finally got the emulator running. Turns out that the default path the files get installed to has a space in the folder name, and the emulator can’t handle spaces in the folder name. They’ve only been doing that since 1995, so I guess it’s understandable.

Oh noes! Java!

After more investigation, I’ve gotten eclipse installed and look to be more on my way to creating an android app. I have, however, discovered a disturbing fact. Andoid apps are written in Java.

Java is one of the reasons I stopped writing code.

Back in the days of yore, when I was in college, java was the new and exciting language everyone needed to learn, because it was not platform specific. Theoretically, code you wrote in java could then be compiled to work on anything and everything.

The problem is that as soon as it was released, that stopped being true. Special libraries had to be written for each platform, and those got so interwoven into the basic fabric of java, that writing a program for one platform meant writing a program for one platform. Hell, Apple has maintained a separate implementation of java for years, meaning that web code written in java often does not work on macs. They’ve only recently abandoned that with Lion. So, maybe this aspect is better. Time will tell. They also simplified debugging. Any error, no matter what it was, generated a null pointer exception. I hate null pointer exceptions.

It doesn’t matter if you’re missing a semi-colon at the end of a line, or did not correctly declare a variable, or a loop is not terminating correctly, everything generates a null pointer exception. It also never told me where I was getting a null pointer exception, which meant I had to go through the code with a fine tooth comb to track down errors. Java is the reason I had to demonstrate an ability to go three days without sleeping. Did I mention I don’t care for Java?

But times have changed, and so have I. Perhaps this will work out. Perhaps things will be better the second time around. Perhaps eclipse is more capable of finding bugs and the errors have gotten more descriptive. I do  know that this time I intend to get more sleep!

In the meantime, I’ve asked my wife to tell me if I mumble '”javac!” in my sleep. (Programming joke, not even a funny one).

Visio is fun!

I’d never used the program before, but in less than an hour I’ve got a great flowchart going to help me plan everything out. This thing is fantastic. I’d tried freemind, but it’s more of an outline tool, so you can’t link back to an earlier statement. There’s only one parent for any given possibility. Hooray for Visio!

Mobile app developments

A victory! worked through the remaining bugs on the WP7 app in fairly short order. I have a program now! It’s lacking content, and is pretty ugly, but it works. Now to add functionality, content, and make it look nice. How hard can that be?

App writing, Getting started

I’ve downloaded the free tools from Microsoft and Google for their respective sdk’s and worked on getting both running. I’ve given windows phone the most soak time, so I’ll start with that one.

In all, the toolset provided by visual studio is pretty impressive. I’m used to writing code in notepad and compiling from a command line, so things like intellisense are pretty handy. Good coding practice is to give variable names things that make sense, like “PointertoHandleExceptionsDuringRuntime.” I never liked names like that because they took so long to type, so I settled for variable names that were much shorter to type, like “bob and “noon”. I’ve written a great deal of bob++ in my day. Intellisense makes it possible to start typing a variable name, and it guesses what you’re writing and helps you complete it, so I only have to type as many letters as bob, and get a more descriptive name like the one mentioned above. See? I don’t even want to copy paste it, it’s so long!

There’s also a pretty fantastic set of videos I found on www.learnvisualstudio.net by Bob Tabor called Windows Phone 7 for absolute beginners. It uses the free tools, and is intended for people who don’t know how to program. I used to know how to program, so it’s a bit slow for me, but each video shows a trick with the tool that is handy to know, and I’m learning some of the nuances of C# and XAML, the code used to write WP7 apps.

Laying out the program took less than a day (it’s a very simple program). The content will likely take me a couple of months to write, I’m hoping to be able to format it in such a way that I can reuse it. The code…. well…. the code is getting there.

I found some sample code that does something similar to what I’m trying to achieve to use as a baseline and hack into what I want to accomplish. The code was written with the beta version of the SDK, so there are some things done that don’t work. That’s disappointing, but I was able to quickly find and correct those issues, and the sample program runs fine. My real gripe comes from the fact that lines of code that I’m taking from that program are not working in the new program.  Simple things that should work, like resource declarations.

At the beginning of a program, you declare what resources from the phone your program is going to need to run. One line, “using Microsoft.Xna.Framework;” works fine in the sample program, but not in mine! It boggles my mind that such a simple thing isn’t working. I suspect is has something to do with the original program template that I used, but it seems strange that you would be denied resources based solely on the template.  All that being said, I think I can overcome these hurdles.

Whenever I want to feel better about my progress on the WP7 app, I switch over to Android development.

It sucks.

Out of the box, fresh from installation, I tried to create a VM, and it refuses to launch. The error that pops up tells me to type something in a command window that does not exist. Google, while being a great search engine to find content, does little to add to that content through their own documentation of how to use their tools.

I’m sure I’m missing some subtle detail, but the difference so far is that with the microsoft tools I was able to get into writing the program before I started hitting snags and errors. With Android, I can’t even get into the tool!

App writing, a journal of the experience

I’ve opted to try my hand at creating a simple app for mobile devices. The idea is to create a program that is free, but with content one pays for, and then produce a steady stream of content as a a revenue generator. I’d like to produce the app for the iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone 7. Given that I don’t have a mac, I’ll start by developing for the latter two initially. I’ve not written code in many years, so it’ll be a pretty steep learning curve, and will post thoughts and opinions about developing with the different tools as I go.

I may also just give up at some point, in which case you may never hear of this ever again.