We've got a few things going on right now, actually. Firstly, we've been invited to show our glorious wares at Mobile World Congress next week, so are making a new wallpaper paying homage to Android for the occasion! It's called Jumpgate and has our little Android friend soaring through space at faster than light speeds.
Other projects include getting a framework going that has proper support for OpenGL 2.0, so we can start taking advantage of pixel and vertex shaders. This should let us do some nice effects that aren't feasible with the 1.1 framework we're using now.
There's more than one wallpaper in progress right now as well, but none of them are really at a showable state. Thus, a few days of general silence on the blog front. Sorry!
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Friendly Bugs v1.2
- New Feature: Animation smoothing!
- Update: 5 new butterflies!
- Update: "Never" butterfly spawn frequency
- Bug Fix: Better preview screen handling
The initial plan here was just to add some more butterflies, so you've got five more arriving at their landing zones now! At the same time I speed-tested interpolated animation and discovered on a 2.2 device it works with a minimal speed hit.
What's that mean? Basically, normally we're just playing back animation frames at a regular interval -- this is usually around 15-20fps depending on the item. If the framerate of the wallpaper is higher than that (and it almost always is), you end up seeing the same animation frame twice in a row. This means the animation is choppier than it seems like it should be, but the benefit is that the animation is very inexpensive to render.
The interpolation means that instead of this doubling-up behavior, the system will generate additional in-between animation frames as it goes, so your animation is effectively playing back as fast as the framerate allows. This means smoother butterflies on the screen, basically. You can't go too far wrong with smoother butterflies, so it's now available as an option in the preferences screen.
- Update: 5 new butterflies!
- Update: "Never" butterfly spawn frequency
- Bug Fix: Better preview screen handling
The initial plan here was just to add some more butterflies, so you've got five more arriving at their landing zones now! At the same time I speed-tested interpolated animation and discovered on a 2.2 device it works with a minimal speed hit.
What's that mean? Basically, normally we're just playing back animation frames at a regular interval -- this is usually around 15-20fps depending on the item. If the framerate of the wallpaper is higher than that (and it almost always is), you end up seeing the same animation frame twice in a row. This means the animation is choppier than it seems like it should be, but the benefit is that the animation is very inexpensive to render.
The interpolation means that instead of this doubling-up behavior, the system will generate additional in-between animation frames as it goes, so your animation is effectively playing back as fast as the framerate allows. This means smoother butterflies on the screen, basically. You can't go too far wrong with smoother butterflies, so it's now available as an option in the preferences screen.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Aquarium Live Wallpaper v2.3
- New Feature: Lionfish!
- New Feature: Jellyfish!
- New Feature: Two new toys!
- Bug Fix: Better Preview screen behavior
Getting the movement on the Jellyfish to look reasonable took a little while, and I still get the feeling some tweaking is going to happen, but it looks pretty good overall! By popular demand there's a lionfish in place now too!
The two new toys are a ship anchor and a old-style diving helmet, which feel pretty appropriate to me. The new art was done by Allyson Vaughn!
- New Feature: Jellyfish!
- New Feature: Two new toys!
- Bug Fix: Better Preview screen behavior
Getting the movement on the Jellyfish to look reasonable took a little while, and I still get the feeling some tweaking is going to happen, but it looks pretty good overall! By popular demand there's a lionfish in place now too!
The two new toys are a ship anchor and a old-style diving helmet, which feel pretty appropriate to me. The new art was done by Allyson Vaughn!
Monday, January 24, 2011
Blue Skies Live Wallpaper v1.3
- New Feature: UFO sightings
- Bug Fix: Better Preview screen behavior
- Bug Fix: No more wispy cloud popping
Strangely we've had a number of requests for this one. You can now enable UFO sightings in the settings screen. These can either be random, or can appear when your battery is running low -- they'll start at the 20% mark. Silly but fun!
- Bug Fix: Better Preview screen behavior
- Bug Fix: No more wispy cloud popping
Strangely we've had a number of requests for this one. You can now enable UFO sightings in the settings screen. These can either be random, or can appear when your battery is running low -- they'll start at the 20% mark. Silly but fun!
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Hearts Live Wallpaper v1.05
- New Feature: Hearts with your own picture in them!
The new version of hearts allows you to enable 'Locket' hearts. These are hearts with a photo inside them, similar to a traditional locket. Browse for your favorite picture of a loved one!
It should detect the format of the image you selected and properly adjust the scaling and everything, but even so you'll want to make sure your selected image has the subject reasonably centered to work properly. It's tuned to handle 16x9, 4x3, 3x4, and 9x16 properly, which are the common cell-phone photo ratios as far as I can tell.
Let me know what you think!
The new version of hearts allows you to enable 'Locket' hearts. These are hearts with a photo inside them, similar to a traditional locket. Browse for your favorite picture of a loved one!
It should detect the format of the image you selected and properly adjust the scaling and everything, but even so you'll want to make sure your selected image has the subject reasonably centered to work properly. It's tuned to handle 16x9, 4x3, 3x4, and 9x16 properly, which are the common cell-phone photo ratios as far as I can tell.
Let me know what you think!
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Thunderstorm Live Wallpaper v1.4
- New Feature: Lightning strikes where you touched
- Update: New cloud art
- Update: How To activity
Sweet, you can now have summoned lightning actually strike your finger! It was randomly placed before, and you can go back to that by unchecking a box in the settings if you prefer. This update also includes updated cloud art with a little more range to it, hopefully everybody approves!
The How To activity is the little popup box that explains how to use a live wallpaper, Thunderstorm was the only one that didn't have this implemented, so it's finally in place now, helping to reduce confusion!
- Update: New cloud art
- Update: How To activity
Sweet, you can now have summoned lightning actually strike your finger! It was randomly placed before, and you can go back to that by unchecking a box in the settings if you prefer. This update also includes updated cloud art with a little more range to it, hopefully everybody approves!
The How To activity is the little popup box that explains how to use a live wallpaper, Thunderstorm was the only one that didn't have this implemented, so it's finally in place now, helping to reduce confusion!
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