deanverleger.com

Post and Project Dump

dean — Sun, 22 May 2011 18:12:01 +0000

I’ve obviously been a bit lax at updating this blog. I have been busy though. Below you’ll find a list of blog posts I’ve written on the Silver Square Blog as well as a link to a project I’ve recently finished and am very happy with.

Posts

Most Recent Project

Indycontemporary.com is a site I’m very happy with. Check out my write up under the websites tab or just click this link. The project involved utilizing in house design as well as in house video production to create this multi-featured website/promotional tools. I love to help local artists and the people who represent them get artwork sold.

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Saying “Hello World” in an Android Emulator

dean — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 19:40:15 +0000

With the Spore Grant project ramping up into full speed it was high time I get setup for Android development. Below are the steps I followed to get a Hello World app up in about the amount of time required to download the Eclipse IDE and the Android SDK. I followed the steps detailed in this awesome article, http://mobiforge.com/developing/story/getting-started-with-android-development. If you want to get started with android development (as the name implies) I would head over there. My purpose for posting this is simply to show what changes I made along the way.

Setup Eclipse for Android Development

Download and setup the Eclipse IDE (available for free here: download)
Download the Android SDK – Get the installer version which requires you download JDK, java development kit (available for free here: http://developer.android.com/sdk/1.1_r1/index.html, the installer will link you to the JDK download page if you don’t have it)
Install the ADT plug-in in Eclipse (setup steps detailed here: http://developer.android.com/sdk/eclipse-adt.html#installing)
Configure Eclipse to point to the Android SDK (if you get stuck look here)

Starting an Android Project

First open up the java perspective. Either by Window > Open Perspective > Other > Java or through the open perspective icon in the top right corner. Then you can create a new Android Project.

Enter in the following values in the new Android Project Window

Project Name: The name of the project (i.e. HelloAndroidWorld)
Package Name: Name of the package used in your Java files. The convention is your domain name backwards. (i.e. com.deanverleger.HelloAndroidWorld)
Create Activity: Name of Android Activity. Mobiforge says an activity in Android is basically ‘a screen containing some actions’

After targeting the version of the SDK you want to devlop for (my phone currently uses 2.1.1) hit finish to create your project.

Examine The Package

View the package explorer on the left to see what files have been created.

HelloAndroidWorld.java found in SRC > and then your specific package name is the source file. Important points: HelloAndroidWorld extends the Activity class and runs the onCreate method when the activity is first created. A view is setup in this method “setContentView(R.layout.main);”. This refers to the XML file, main.xml, found in res > layout.

The Android Dev guide states that a layout is the “architecture for the user interface in an Activity” and that they can be created either programmatically at runtime or through declared UI elements in xml files. Our starter program uses the latter method.

Opening up our main.xml file first shows us a graphical representation of our application. Switching over to code view (the main.xml tab at the bottom of the window) allows us to edit the xml file.

In our xml file we see a LinearLayout element that holds our TextView. Notice the line in the TextView that says, android:text=”@string/hello”. This is setting the text value for our TextView to a previously declared value. This value is stored in the XML file, strings.xml, stored in res > values. Open this file up.

We now see the line Hello World, HelloAndroidWorld! which holds the text tied to the “hello” name.

Let’s make a second string named description that gives the a short description, “This is my first Android Application!”.

Let’s go back to main.xml file and add a new TextView for our “description” string. We can basically copy the previous TextView, paste it below the first, and change the text, android:text=”@string/hello” to android:text=”@string/description”. Switch to graphical layout and see what happened (make sure you save strings.xml or you’ll get an error).

Note: the file, R.java, found in gen > your-package-name is not to be edited and is generated automatically each time you save. If we view this file now we see a reference to our description string.

Saying Hello

Now comes the fun part, loading the application in an emulator. Hit F11 to debug/run the application. An error message should pop up saying there aren’t any Virtual Devices found. Hit yes to make one. We can now add a new virtual device. When adding a device there are only two important values for now: Name and target. I named mine “emulator” and set the target to “Android 2.1 …”. We should now have a new Android Virtual Device to use.

Go ahead and hit the x on this window, bringing up a new window “Android Device Chooser” Maker sure you hit refresh in the lower part of the window to find your emulator.

After hitting Ok, eclipse has to load the emulator and then install your application. This will take a while. Watch the output window to see what’s going on. After a long wait we finally get to see our application in action. Hooray!

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Using Dropbox and XMind to Synchronize Preproduction Efforts

dean — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 18:04:56 +0000

This is just a short note on a system I’ve been leaning on heavily to share preproduction elements. This system combines the mind-mapping and logic-organizing powers of XMind with the effortless synchronizing and universally accessable nature of Dropbox.

Dropbox for Syncing files
Many are already familiar wish SVN for version control. For web-development it knows no match. That being said, for people not familiar with it it can be cumbersome and overly complicated. Therefore, on the free side of things, it makes much more sense to share folders on dropbox rather than utilizing google code.

Most of the beauty of DropBox is that it runs invisibly in the background with virtually no configuration needed to be done. All you have to do is download the client and put in your account information. After that you can access your dropbox files from any computer with an internet connect. Do you have a folder and you want to share it with another team member? It’s as easy as clicking the sharing settings button when logged into DropBox.

XMind for Developing And Organizing Ideas
As I’ve said before, XMind is a really fun tool for laying out lots of information and keeping track of hierarchies and any other sort of separation of logic. I’m still learning how to best use it to develop complex story and interaction driven games, but it’s mostly a task of finding the quickest and easiest way to record me and my team-members ideas.

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Presenting Issue1 at the Tilt Arcade

dean — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 20:01:45 +0000

Along with a few other presenters I’ll be giving a brief show and tell with Jackie Crofts (artist) about our game, Issue #1, at the Tilt Arcade on Jan. 15th, 2011. We’ll be doing this in the context of an Indianapolis Video Game Development Association, or IVGDA, meeting where members will also be electing board members for the group. Since Issue #1 was a student project, Jackie and I will be talking about the challenges we faced and what we learned in the process.

If you’re interested in developing games or helping develop a thriving games industry in Indiana you should definately check out IVGDAS’s website. IVGDA is a group for people interested in any of the many facets of game development with the explicit goals of jump-starting Indiana’s game development industry within the next 5 years. They offer plenty of workshops and speaking events, not to mention professional game production for games that members pitch, so it’s a great thing to get involved with.

There’s been a lot of activity lately on the IVGDA website with people nominating theirselves for various board member positions not excluding myself. I’ve nominated myself for the Secretary position and the assistant producer role which would have me working alongside Thomas Marshall to coordinate and execute the production of IVDGA games. With any luck I’ll be participating in various group events in this role. Check back here after the 15th once board members have been elected for more official updates.

[Update: 1/18/2011] Presentation went well and I was voted in as the Secretary. Looking forward to many good workshops and meetings.

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Immersion

dean — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 16:15:57 +0000

I love Kotaku for some of it’s more contimplative articles like this one titled, Do Video Games Really Need to Be Immersive. Not only do I like to see the writers’ opinions, but sometimes commenters have valid points as well. Below is a roundup of some of the quotes either from outside sources or from the original writer or commenters. All these really struck a chord with me.

Francois Laramée said,

“All forms of entertainment strive to create suspension of disbelief, a state in which the player’s mind forgets that it is being subjected to entertainment and instead accepts what it perceives as reality.”

Ernest Adams said,

Immersion comes in 3 categories

Tactical immersion:

Tactical immersion is experienced when performing tactile operations that involve skill. Players feel “in the zone” while perfecting actions that result in success.

Strategic immersion:

Strategic immersion is more cerebral, and is associated with mental challenge. Chess players experience strategic immersion when choosing a correct solution among a broad array of possibilities.

Narrative immersion:

Narrative immersion occurs when players become invested in a story, and is similar to what is experienced while reading a book or watching a movie.

Thut said,

For me, immersion comes from the development of a clear dialogue between the player and the game. I believe that non-gamers find this difficult to understand, but it’s a necessary realization for aspiring game designers to make.

In a sense it’s about developing a language that is simple to understand and “works.” Taking this analogy one step further, the goal becomes to get the player “speaking the language” without even realizing they’re doing so. Anything that breaks the rules of the language or draws attention to the fact that the language is being spoken, detracts from the perceived “immersion.”

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