Droid-Blog

Android development and money stuff

Show menu Hide menu

Tagandroid

Announcing TUMBLE PANDA

2015/07/06 / / 0 Comments

I am absolutely excited to announce Andlabs’ first big game: Tumble Panda, coming to Google Play tomorrow.

Pandas are quite cute and adorable. We always knew that and always loved the cuddlesome black and white, bamboo-loving bears. And when the opportunity came along to make a Panda the hero in one our newest game, we took it.

Tumble Panda is a 2D jump ‘n’ roll adventure game. As a hungry Panda, the player is perma- nently looking for delicious bamboo. And since trotting is just not fun, the little Panda prefers to roll through the 40 handcrafted levels.

But obstacles are blocking the way. Geysers eject hot water and steam, unstable paths made of lampions need to be crossed and trampolines used to reach high platforms. A normal day in the life of a hungry Panda.

The Panda curls up into a ball, gains speed and launches himself over an abyss. While flying, he uses his Panda-powers to trigger an explosion at just the right time to destroy a pile of stones obstructing his way on the other side. Alternatively, he could have also caused an earthquake to clear them away in advance. Many adventures and challenges await the little Panda.

We will have many more information soon, at this place. In the meantime check out our website at TumblePanda.com and the screenshots bellow:

screenshot_menu_1024x576
screenshot_lampions_text screenshot_looping_text screenshot_explosion_textscreenshot_geyser_text

Wanted: Beta Tester

2015/03/26 / / 0 Comments

We will soon release our first big game, Tumble Panda.

We put a lot of effort in this game, and I think we created a great and fun product. However, in order to find the last bugs and get your valuable feedback on where to improve next, we need beta testers. If you are interested, please go to our Google plus community and click on “Ask to join” . I will grant you access within 24 hours.

A click on "Ask to join" will open your gate to tremendous amounts of gaming fun

A click on “Ask to join” will open your gate to tremendous amounts of gaming fun

Enough of the text, here are some screenshots:

menublueskyboom3

And some of Tumble Panda’s features:

  • Be a furry Panda
  • Tumble around the world
  • Eat bamboo
  • Collect hidden stars
  • Jump on trampolines, fly on geysers, balance on lampions and fall into water
  • Destroy obstacles using Panda-powers
  • Train your Panda’s abilities
  • Hand illustrated, colorful graphics
  • Simple gameplay
  • 40 Levels, all free
  • Regular updates with new levels

Thank  all of you that are joining in advance. I’m looking forward to your feedback.

 

Simplified Logging in Android

2013/09/23 / / 1 Comment

Logging is one of the important tools for debugging an application.

When logging in Android, one usually writes code like

public class LoggingSample {

    public static final String TAG = "LoggingSample";
    ... 

    public void loggingMethod() {   

    final String formattedTestString = "first argument = %s, " + 
             "second argument = %s";
    final String firstArgument = "abc";
    final Object secondArgument = new  Object() {
        public String toString() {
            return "123";
        }
    };
    Log.d(TAG, "loggingMethod(): " + 
           String.format(formattedTestString, firstArgument,
           secondArgument));

    }
}

This then results in an output like

D/ LoggingSample: loggingMethod(): first argument = abc, second argument = 123

We need to add a tag and many times, in order to reproduce procedures, the name of the calling method. Not much of a deal, but since logging is done frequently it is often repeated

Since we don’t like repetitions, we decided to make it a little easier. Instead of the above, we now type

    L.d(formattedTestString, firstArgument, secondArgument);

To get an output like

D/LoggingSample:26(18510): onCreate(): first argument = abc, second argument = 123

What we get is the calling class’s name and the line number as a tag, the calling methods name plus the formatted string as a message.

 

If you are interested in this type of logging, you can now git clone the ANDLABS Android Utils and add them as a library project.

 

What do you think? How do you use logging? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Introduction to AndEngine – Getting the code

2012/12/28 / / 2 Comments

In this series I will tell you how to use one of my favorite Android 2D Game Engines, AndEngine. We will go step by step through the processes, starting at simply getting the code, continuing with drawing sprites, using cameras, physics and so on.

AndEngine was started by Nicolas Gramlich as part of his Bachelor’s thesis in the beginning of 2010. It is an engine that provides lots of powerful features while hiding more advanced things like Open GL calls from the developer. It provides lots of extensions like a  Robotium extension, a Box2D extension, which is mostly written and maintained by badlogicgames‘ Mario Zechner for his libGDX-project, a SVG extension or a TMX tiled maps extension.

It has been used in various featured games like Greedy Spiders, Noogra Nuts or Zynga’s Dream Zoo.

Let’s get started.

 

Getting the code

At the very beginning you’ll need to download the most recent version of AndEngine. To do that, open your console, go to the directory of your choice and do a git clone of the engine by typing

git clone git://github.com/nicolasgramlich/AndEngine.git

That’s all. You now have a powerful game engine, ready to be used on your computer or mobile device.

Now here’s a story: When AndEngine was written, the author had to make a choice: did he want to write lots of useful code or lots of useful documentation? He chose the more fun part and that’s why AndEngine provides little to no documentation, which is one of its most frequent points of criticism. However, the source is all open, you can read it, change it, do whatever you like with it. There are the AndEngine forums and Nicolas tries to write the code in a way that it’s documenting itself.

In order to provide the developers an idea of what AndEngine can do, the AndEngine samples were created. You can get them by also cloning the git repository:

git clone git://github.com/nicolasgramlich/AndEngineExamples.git

As you can now see there are a lot of dependencies to the different extensions. Go ahead and clone them:

git clone git://github.com/nicolasgramlich/AndEngineAugmentedRealityExtension.git
git clone git://github.com/nicolasgramlich/AndEngineLiveWallpaperExtension.git
git clone git://github.com/nicolasgramlich/AndEngineMODPlayerExtension.git
git clone https://github.com/nicolasgramlich/AndEngineMultiplayerExtension
git clone https://github.com/nicolasgramlich/AndEnginePhysicsBox2DExtension
git clone https://github.com/nicolasgramlich/AndEngineSVGTextureRegionExtension
git clone https://github.com/nicolasgramlich/AndEngineTexturePackerExtension
git clone https://github.com/nicolasgramlich/AndEngineTMXTiledMapExtension

Now you have a lot of code. Import them into your IDE of choice. Your workspace should now look something like this:

Let’s start a look at the examples. Connect your device or start an emulator with GPU emulation and run the AndEngineExamples on it.

AndEngine physics example

AndEngine physics example

What you will find is an overview over AndEngine’s many features.

There are two important branches of AndEngine: The GLES2-branch and the GLES2-AnchorCenter branch. Since the latter will become the main branch soon, it is recommended to pull its code too. To do so, just go into each of your AndEngine-projects using your shell and execute

git pull origin GLES2-AnchorCenter

You might want to switch to this branch now by executing

git checkout -b GLES2-AnchorCenter origin/GLES2-AnchorCenter

Now take your time to play, take a look into the code and look forward to the next part of this series in which we will go through the basic parts of the engine.

 

If you are having problems compiling any of AndEngine’s code or issues cloning the repositories, please post a comment.

Older posts

© 2024 Droid-Blog

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑