F8 Developer Conference 2014 - 10Up to build with Facebook?

 

Following the Facebook F8 Developer Conference this April has me excited to find out whats the latest. It appears that Facebook is focusing on mobile platform and cross development with some apps focus. That's great news for app developers which has me realizing that I don't have true Facebook integration for the 10Up App.

The 10Up App page is where users can get the latest news about 10Up but the app does not directly post to the page. This conference has me aiming to focus on Facebook integration in the next update! What do you think?

Now that I'm starting to get more traction with the app I want to make sure it gives users all the social features they want. After update 1.7 we integrated Google Play Services allowing users to share with their Google+ Circles for Leaderboards and Achievements. Many users are jumping on board and posting their scores I just want to extend that experience.

Now back to the Facebook F8 Developer conference, they have announced anonymous login to users to lower the trust barrier that users have with allowing apps to have access to their Facebook due to spam and not wanting to share this type of information with friends. I'm glad to see Mark Zuckerberg and the team has addressed this. Great Move!

Hopefully I'll have 10Up v1.8 out to you soon and continue to build the SarioDev brand.

Test Share Feature for IN 5

I just fought procrastination with @IN5Browser! 5 pages in 2 mins #IN5 #SarioDev

Adding Adbuddiz library in Android Studio

SarioDev, 2014

The Adbuddiz support page gives you 5 steps to add their SDK and start serving Ads in your app. Link here: http://publishers.adbuddiz.com/portal/support/java

There is a slight variation in step 2 (Add jar to your app) for developers using Android Studio. 

In Android Studio first you add AdBuddiz-2.0.1.jar to the libs folder and then instead of Project properties you open Project Structure

Then select the Dependencies Tab, press the green plus sign to add a File dependency. 

Select the jar file you just added and you're done. Move on to step 3 as normal.

In 5: New Logo and functionality

Today the Logo is ready to go into the app and onto the Facebook page.

It's been changed and hopefully marks the time for the app to be put up to the test and submitted to the Play Store.

The Logo is the first point of contact with the user and is also the first clue to whether your App is good or not.
I don't believe that the Logo has the power to get users to click it more so than its ability to NOT deter potential interest to click the app.

In any case when designing a new app, or any product for that matter, it is worth your time considering the logo and the branding of your app. It's the first piece of marketing.

In 5 - ready for prime time.

Android development: Next App

It's been quite a while since SarioDev released 10 - Up.  Unfortunately no updates nor its coming to Android or iOS is being announced at this stage. I've decided instead to begin developing my next app and it will be on the Android platform. The name:

In 5

2014 - A big year

As the new year begins so does my intention to expand the content of this blog. It has been reiterated in the new description of the blog, now titled "Life and Tech by a Sario".

So with that being said, 2014 is going to be a big year for me and for many others I presume. For myself, it is an important year of planning, preparation and development to put myself in the best position possible in the year 2015. Now that may seem relatively far ahead in the future, but a couple of important milestones will be coming up during that time. - My Wedding and of course moving in with my Wife to be.

That leads to a few focus goals over the year which includes Organizing and Planning the wedding as well as continuing to improve as a Computer Systems Engineer. Other interests will also have some goals such as more App Development - expanding to iOS and improving in Android whilst finding time to make the first update to 10-Up on the Windows Store. Improving my personal fitness and adding approximately 10kg to my current weight.
Videography - producing and directing as more work opportunities arise and also learning 3D animation with Blender. 

Now that is actually quite a fair bit due to the fact that my focus will be as a Control Systems Engineer where my career will require improving in many other areas including Logic Design, Network design and security, overall system design and of course knowledge and skills in Engineering Practice.

Of course, it does help that a lot of these areas have small to large transferable skills depending on how you look at them but they exist nonetheless. To help me this year I have prepared a few plans and guidelines for the year in the format shown. I will review and update this weekly to keep me on the ball.



In any case, welcome to the new year of 2014 and good luck to all trying to achieve their own plans this year! Please feel free to share what your goal success secrets are!

Tweaking

It has been about 5 weeks since 10-Up was listed in the Windows Store and now it's time to start the tweaking process. I recently read a blog from successful app developers, reminding me that I should be tweaking my app often. These tweaks aren't particularly major app updates with new features, but can also be changes to keywords, descriptions, screenshots and more.

With that said, this will be a part of my regular process to try and keep the app up-to-date. Not being able to dedicate full-time like hours to the app, it is difficult to keep up with the competition. These small tweaks will be important to keep up in some way.
So the focus is to TWEAK.

Third Time's a charm!

After cleaning up some minor issues and also adding in a feature my app is going in for certification for the third time. Version 1.0.3 of 10-Up will hopefully be the first release and I'm looking forward to any more feedback from the Microsoft Team in the Content Compliance.

If you're like me, the certification and marketing take almost as long as the development, spending extra time on graphic design for your promotional images as well as putting in time to consider your market and price point. Further to this, there are a bunch of privacy statements to consider and other certificates as well.

All in all, I've learned that when developing something like a game or app, you must consider the market side of things as well.

I'll post once I get the app certified. In the meantime here is one of the promotional images used!

Sprites

For the design of this game it was decided to create characters to represent numbers to give the game some life. All arithmetic buttons have a bubble like feel to give the game more of a flow to it. It is important that the game be identifiable to the audience when they see the game and to differentiate it from a standard number type game. A single puzzle in itself may or may not be difficult depending on what numbers are generated - it's random, but collectively the challenge is to beat the puzzle as many times as possible within the amount of time given.

All design has been created with vector based graphics, giving me the ability to adjust the image files for the game with ease.

Here is a look at the sprites for addition and multiplication:

 Characters

In the previous post I revealed the Logo Character designed for the game and this time, we will reveal other characters designed for particular numbers. 

Numbers between 0-9 have had characters created with different colors and different facial expressions to make them unique. The idea behind this is to also give a visual aid to the user as they play the game. Color matching can be quicker than reading the actual numbers. For example, combining two characters of the same color with a division will generally result in a 1 - or in the case of this game, an orange character.

By introducing these characters we add some personality to the game.

Now without further ado, here's a sample of some of the characters from 10-Up !

To see more of the characters, they will be made available on the games Facebook page - Remember to 'Like' the page to support the development of this game !

In the next post , look forward to some of the sound effects and music compositions made for the game.

A First Attempt: Developing a Windows 8 App

Having held off on jump into the app game the past few years, whether it be for Apple, or Android, I've finally got myself a new device that allows me to develop in the right environment with the right tools.

App ideas are currently in abundance, but there have been many factors delaying my attempt to enter the market. I can summarize these reasons to 1. Hardware/Tools - Apple requires a MAC and xcode, objective c and $$$. Whilst Android, there were too many different devices and versions to cater for that are all so different.
2. The market is so competitive and well established before I'd even started that I would need a really well made app to have a chance, with anything less risk not even getting seen.

Neither of these factors alone are enough to stop me learning to develop apps for these platforms, but together has always discouraged me enough that I wouldn't put any time towards learning it.

Now, when talking about developing windows 8 apps, it does have less sales and market opportunities right now, but it does also mean that the market is raw, and therefore the competition is raw too. What will and won't take off isn't set in stone at this stage and I for one am willing to jump into this space and see how things go. Supposing success, it may compel me enough to try bring these apps to the Apple scope or the Android scope. As mentioned previously in this post, I've just got my hands on the Dell XPS 12 Convertible and will be using this to (attempt to)develop apps.

Surely enough, the information and support supplied by Microsoft for development in their environment has been so inviting thus far that I've already got some apps lined up, with prices ratings etc ready to go.
Now all I need is the app. - Where to start?

Visual Studio 2012 interface

I've just gone through the first 3 tutorials of the classic "Hello World" application. The experience has actually been pleasing and it has been very clear how to support all the different devices that will be running windows 8 including when they are used in portrait view or snapped in/out.
I am so far impressed with the default types, blocks and text provided by Microsoft making it easy to work with.

The Hello World app after 3 tutorials

I've developed in C# in the past so there has been a small transition into the windows 8 space and visual studio 2012 is so easy to work with as well.

If your thinking about trying to develop some windows 8 Apps, you will be happy with what is available to you to help you develop as I've seen (so far) and if not feel free to share why not.


I will update my progress and how things go during development and hopefully, will be able to bring an app to Microsoft's App store.