Monday, August 29, 2011

Galactic Core Live Wallpaper v2.02

  - Bug Fix: Settings screen crash on 2.1 devices

So, one of the additions in the 2.0 version was a custom PreferenceColor that has a visible color swatch.  This is technically the first product we pushed out using that, and everything largely seemed fine... until I started getting a bunch of e-mail from Sony XPeria X8 users saying they get a crash when they push the settings button.

This worked on every device we tried it on, so that was really confusing.  Eventually I asked a few of the customers to send over a log file using aLogCat, and sure enough saw the same callstack in each one that arrived: a crash in setColorFilter.

Ultimately this made a lot of sense -- while we build against the 2.3.4 SDK, we allow our products to run on anything as low as 2.1.  The particular setColorFilter I was using didn't get introduced until Android 2.2, and I hadn't tested the preference listing on a 2.1 device (only the rendering), so didn't notice the problem.  The solution is simply to use an alternate setColorFilter that did exist in earlier SDK versions.

Sorry about that folks, lesson learned.  I may go pick up an X8 or Zio so we have another 2.1 device around, most of our test phones have ended up being updated to at least 2.2 over time.

Bamboo Forest Live Wallpaper v1.3

  - New Feature: Color swatches in preference screen
  - Update: Fixed a small animation hitch

This is a small update that fixes a couple of problematic animation spots.  A user sent in a bug report and sure enough, I'd managed to miss that all this time.

At the time time I integrated our custom PreferenceColor tile, so there's an on-screen swatch now showing your current color settings.  Previously, you'd have to click on the setting and look at the popup window to see.

Friday, August 26, 2011

Galactic Core v2.01

  - New Feature: Pref to remove all framerate limiting
  - Update: Better orientation sensor handling
  - Update: Greater star depth

The main reason for this update is to improve the orientation sensor, which had some bad logic going on on my part.  Basically, for 2.0 I switched it over to using the orientation sensor rather than the accelerometer, which is much better for battery life but returns an angle (0-359) rather than a gravity vector.  To smooth out the behavior, I accumulated the values gradually instead of just using the most recent one.  This smoothed things out, but I was still noticing that sometimes it seems like the behavior would be backwards.

I finally realized what it was and got it fixed.  Basically, since we're just using the orientation to modify the X axis of the camera, the range 0-180 is visually the same as 360-180.  360 and 0 being the same is cool and all, except that when you're doing a bunch of averaging 360 isn't the same as 0 at all -- it's dragging your average over towards 180 instead, which is the opposite value.  Obvious in retrospect but I missed this for a while.  The easy fix is that if the incoming value is greater than 180, subtract it from 360 before putting it into the accumulator, then work with that value range.

I also hooked up a checkbox in the settings that will let you uncap the framerate if you'd like.  Normally I'm keeping it low to help the UI stay snappy, but if you've got a Galaxy S or something feel free to let it go wild, it'll be fine.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Galactic Core Live Wallpaper v2.0

  - Update: Now using OpenGL 2.0
  - Update: Better performance on tablets
  - Update: Smaller filesize
  - Update: More scene depth

While it looks pretty similar at a glace, this update actually revises just about everything, and as a result I think there's a lot more depth to the scene.  The layers have been handled differently and there's now a particle system adding additional variance.  At the same time performance should be noticeably higher, especially on a Xoom or similar device.

Please let me know what you think!

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Koi Live Wallpaper v1.1

  - New Feature: Custom background images
  - Update: Adjusted swim animation

There's been a lot of requests for this one, so this update has support for a custom background image.  I also tweaked the swim animation to help desync the fins more than they were before.  Enjoy, folks!

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Aquarium Live Wallpaper v2.65

  - New Feature: Sunken ship background!

This update includes a couple minor update and such, but really the main thing is to get this really excellent sunken ship background out there.  This was painted by Kim Lathrop, who's got a heck of a talent for this sort of thing.