Android Testers required

RE: Android Testers required

I bought a Galaxy Tab this christmas and I'll give it a try soon :)

2786 days, 20 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hey Beacon!

That's amazing - I'm wondering why there are so few responses yet.
I installed your app and it works smoothly on my old Android phone with very low memory even.
Zooming the starmap works too.

I'm not able to switch to a planet or a ship view though. Maybe I'm just missing how to do that?

Will your code be open btw?

Cheers,
kwesy

2786 days, 15 hours, 24 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Strange... Tried to download it from the market but it says my Galaxy is.not compatible with it. :(

2786 days, 11 hours, 45 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi,

@kwesy: well, the Desire S (currently I still can count downloads in single digits, so I think this is your Download :-)) isn't that old, it would be strange if it wouldn't work there.

the Code isn't open at the moment. I'm not a software developer for >5 years now and my coding skills have somewhat degraded...and as this was my first large Android project, the code contains kind of weird things. I'm currently refactoring it to be more mantainable and then we'll see.

@rudel: Do you happen to know which Android version you are running exactly? You can check from the home screen/menu button/settings and the something like "telephone info)"(last entry in the list) and then either Android version in this list or click on software info there.

I made a mistake in the Manifest file and only enabled devices with at least 2.3. I already changed this to >2.1, but still have to upload an update. The only other requirement is a touchscreen. I am running it on my Nook Color (which is way better than on the small phone screen) with CM7 fine here. I think I will be able to upload a new version latest late next week, though I hope earlier.

Beacon

2786 days, 11 hours, 14 minutes ago

capnkill

RE: Android Testers required

I installed it on the Galaxy II phone... what should I be able to do with this at this stage?

Issues I've seen, and assuming probably not implemented yet?

1. Click on Ship or Planet takes to star map but doesn't put circle around the desired object.
2. Not sure how to get to ship or planet screens
3. How do you move a ship?

That's pretty much as far as I could get so far... pretty neat though if you can get all the functionality to work I'd say.

2786 days, 10 hours, 35 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

ok, forgot some things in my first reply :-)

The Galaxy Tab is really only version 2.2. As I wrtoe, with the next version it will be running there too.

Regarding the Planet/Ship details, this screen is not there (yet). Actually it is, but I disabled it for now as I don't know yet how to put all the information on one screen. Think I have a way, but I still have to really make it usefull. I hope I can deliver one soon...but not with the version next week.

@capnkill: That's the reason why you can't get a detail screen yet.

There is no circle on the star map if you click on a ship or planet as this element is always exactly in the center of the screen. I thought about adding some kind of animation or marker, but didn't see sense in just showing it in the middle all the time. But I think I should reactivate it again :-)

About moving ships, as I wrote, right now the client is read only (for various reasons). Also I tried adding ship movement, but this is on a normal phone screen just not really usable. If anyone has a good idea, I'd be happy to hear it. Right now, positioning a waypoint on a touchscreen isn't funny.

Currently I think before enabling ship movement I will add messaging and some tools that also write data.

But as I wrote, almost everything is open for discussion :-)

Beacon

2786 days, 10 hours, 13 minutes ago

capnkill

RE: Android Testers required

I think it would be VERY useful to mark whatever item we click on when we get to the star map, even if it is centered, it is still hard to tell, especially if you are in a cluster of planets or what not.

Once you enable the ship screen I can play around wit hit and see what the best way to do ship movement would be.

I think your goal should be to give the mobile up 100% full functionality, so that someone can do their entire turn from it... or else, there isn't much point I would say.

Ship movement would be simple I'd think... you click on the ship as we normaly do, then you can tap to where you want the ship to fly. Perhaps a double tap can open up a coordinate window if you want to do specific deep space movement? Or if not double tap an extended press. .like i fyou tap the ship goes there, if you hold for 2 or 3 seconds you get a little dialog where you can input specific coordinates?

How hard is it to do what they do with some video games now on mobile, where they show you a little UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT game pad type of thing on the screen and you can use that to fine tune ship movements? I have no idea if that's easy or not to accomplish.

I think what you are doing is awesome btw, so please don't take any of my criticisms the wrong way, they are totally meant to be 100% constructive :)

2786 days, 0 hours, 22 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Yeah I am using the 2.2 software so I will be waiting for the next release :)

2784 days, 17 hours, 45 minutes ago

smn

RE: Android Testers required

Awesome!

I'm happy with playing my turns on a regular comp but would love a tool which lets me observe and analyze stuff on my phone. Does the API make it possible to easily switch to past turns from, say, the starmap view?

2784 days, 8 hours, 19 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi all,

I saw I won't have too much time during this week, so I decided to add a night shift to create a new build.

The new version includes:

Android 2.2 now supported also by popular demand :-)
When selecting a ship, planet or message, now there is a indicator on the map what was selected
Switching to background and foreground again is now more robust...but still not good and still has quite some room for improvement

Next I will try to find a feasible solution for ship and planet details and then let's see what we can do on movement.

@smn: The API supports moving between turns, but as I started long before this API was available, the app doesn't yet (the way I access the data doesn't support it either). Currently there's somethign missing in the API that prevents me from switching and even then it will be a major rework to include this, but I will do it eventually.

What you will find out after having played a few turns, there is a ship and ionstorm history in the map. It will show up to five last known positions for all ships you currently can see.

But I know about the value of a real history, so stay tuned, I will provide one.

Beacon

2783 days, 13 hours, 31 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi Beacon,

here's a little feedback:
- since today I can't view one of my 2 games. When loading it I see "Requesting rst", then
"Parsing rst", then the games list comes back.
It happened with both versions before and after the update.
- The tracking lines are not 100% accurate. I have a ship that went from planet a to b
(one turn distance) and then turned to somewhere else. On the starmap it looks like it
turned between the two planets.
- What happens after 100 turns? Will the map be covered by tracking lines?
An option to switch them off/on would be nice.
I like the feature btw.

BTW:
when I installed the update from the market Google told me that someone who has installed the app also installed "Nethack" . Thanks for bringing my attention to this great ancient nerd game from former times. I loved to play it (decades ago) ....

2783 days, 5 hours, 50 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi Kwesy,

hmm, which of your games is this, Innsmouth?

The symptom you describe normally happens, if there is something completly unexpected in the RST and i saw this a lot after I joined the first stellar cartography game (and also when I joined the first game with 12 players...). I _think_ I covered everything that could appear in stellar cartography, but maybe I haven't seen everythign that could appear in those games yet. Do you see anything special in this game, that you haven't seen in any games before (an example, the same happened, when I encountered my first unowned ship due to a cluster)?

Currently the app tries to parse the RST and if there's something wrong it bails out...what I still have to implement is to provide more information if this happens.

Beacon

2783 days, 2 hours, 15 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi Beacon,

yes, it is the Innsmouth game.

I must admit though that I'm not 100% sure anymore to have opened the Innsmouth game with your app previously. Perhaps the error was there before.

Perhaps the problem is one of these:
- there's a ghost ship sitting in a star cluster halo
- there are star clusters/nebulas/asteroid fields and at some places they overlap (which should not
happen - Joshua says it's fixed in newer games)
- no ion storms

2782 days, 22 hours, 51 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

I re-checked and now it's working perfectly with my 2.2 tab. The app looks really good! Especially because everything worked... combat is a little small, but also the other tables are very helpful.

One of my games is missing, too. But it's paused by Joshua so maybe this is the reason?

2782 days, 18 hours, 35 minutes ago

beandigger

RE: Android Testers required

This is great for checking out your turn on the go. I'm looking forward to increased functionality.

2782 days, 17 hours, 42 minutes ago

richard hendricks

RE: Android Testers required

Downloaded it to my Motorola Droid 2 Global, but I can't get it to login. I suspect it is because my userid has a space in it? It is "richard hendricks".

2782 days, 17 hours, 14 minutes ago

admiral_thrain

RE: Android Testers required

Excellent! I'll give it a try with my new Samsung Galaxy XCover...

- Edit... Can't login... (this was the first time I run the app and got an error of false login stuff even before I entered anything)

- Edit... Can login.

2782 days, 16 hours, 56 minutes ago

admiral_thrain

RE: Android Testers required

Combat results are not indentical to what really happens... mk7 torps don't do any damage. :(

Currently nice for previewing turns and planning your strategy while sitting in a bus on your way home/work.

2781 days, 4 hours, 39 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi all,

ok, shipp details are making progress. Not finished yet, but looks lik eit will be nice.

I also found the issue with the torpedoes (thanks to the admiral, I hardly fight with Torps myself)...though at the same time your comment arrived I also saw there's something wrong, I got a turn with a battle that I should win 100% against a torp ship...and lost it :-(

The first login is a little weird as the error message for not providing name/password is the same as for having a wrong combination. This is on my list of issues, but I have to admit not to far at the top as this happens only once normally :-)

Regarding the username with teh space in it, this normally should work as the field doesn't care for spaces, but this might really be the cause, though I will have to contact Joshua for this one.

finally the missing games, yes right now I only show active games, no training, no finished, no paused. I eventually will list all games, but first I have to check what this really means if a game is in any other state, how data changes etc.

Beacon

2781 days, 4 hours, 11 minutes ago

zach malmgren

RE: Android Testers required

FYI, it works well on my HTC EVO 3D. This is an awesome idea! Thank you for your time on this!

2780 days, 13 hours, 28 minutes ago

richard hendricks

RE: Android Testers required

Beacon,

I created a test account, "test account", with a password "zaq123" for you to test with.

2779 days, 15 hours, 0 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi,

ok, brief update.

The login with the space was a tough one, but finally it is fixed. It will be included in the next version.

Ship details are almost done, looks nice and useful.

Though the next version including those the fix and the feature still needs some more testing and a little tweaking, so I can not promise it will be ready by the end of the weekend. But I will try my best.

Beacon

2779 days, 7 hours, 7 minutes ago

orsen

RE: Android Testers required

Hi,

testet on Asus eePad transformer and Samsung Galaxy S9000i.

On both the login does not work.

Bye
Orsen

2778 days, 23 hours, 25 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi Orsen,

do you also have some spaces or other "unusual" characters in your username?

If not, yesterday, roughly at the time of your post have been at least two server restarts during which you couldn'T login. Is it still not working?

What error are you getting. There are other users with an S9000i and there it works fine...and I never got around buying a Transformer but I'm waitin gfor the Prime :-)

Beacon

2778 days, 22 hours, 34 minutes ago

orsen

RE: Android Testers required

Hi Beacon,

testet both again. Still Login not succesfull. Username + Password. Can´t see I made an error.

Edit: Don´t have any spaces ony an @.
Edit2: Also the Test Account does not work on the Transformer

Btw. I was pissed about bying the Transformer (whished I´d bought something with Win7 or IOS). Android seems not ready for (Note)Pads, for Smartphones its o.k. . Most of my anger came, cause I couldn´t play Planets. Hope to get your app running, this will maybe change my view to Android on Pads :).

Keep on with the good work
Orsen

2778 days, 17 hours, 56 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

yes, the @ is the problem, same as for the space. Actually all non letters or numbers pose a problem right now as the server doesn't expect them encoded like all other servers...but the next version will fix this.

Regarding your Transformer, stay tuned for the Android 4 Upgrade. I've already seen some tablets with Android 4, really great.

Beacon

2778 days, 15 hours, 21 minutes ago

joshua

RE: Android Testers required

beacon, are you using the API yet for those logins? That is designed as you'd expect and is much simpler.

2777 days, 8 hours, 18 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

I can't even download it. Market on my device doesn't find it when I search "vga planets" and clicking the link in this thread does the same.

Working on it...

2776 days, 9 hours, 55 minutes ago

chaos1357

RE: Android Testers required

won't let me log in.

Acer Iconia 500

initial test over a public hotspot. will retest on my network later.

2776 days, 8 hours, 31 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Still can't download it. Can somebody email me the file?

2776 days, 7 hours, 16 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

@mark: see private mail, we can try...but I doubt it will work, normally the market filters "correct" meaning if you do not see it it won't run. As there are only three requirements for this app (internet, touchscreen and Androdi >2.2) I think you have Android 2.1 or lower. I saw someone inthe makret succeeding to run it there, but I doubt everyrhing works.

What device do you have?

@Chaos: Do you have "weird" characters in your username or password (anything except letters and numbers). there's a bug that I fixed already, but have it in the same version as the ship details. Bad practice, I know, but I didn't expect to take the details that long. If I do not succeed to release a version with the details tomorrrow, I will release a version containing only this fix.

Beacon

2776 days, 7 hours, 10 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

I have a cheapo tablet (Coby Kyros) running 2.3. It should run it, but I can see how Market might be confused about it's capabilities since I had to root it just to get Market working at all.

2776 days, 4 hours, 35 minutes ago

chaos1357

RE: Android Testers required

beacon - I was able to log in using my home wireless network. I don't know what the difference is (unless the hot spot I was at somehow was filtering it...)

2775 days, 7 hours, 12 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi all,

New version available...

As I wrote yesterday, I released a new version today. Recent changes are

- Login problems with for usernames and passwords with spaces or other special characters are fixed (at least I hope now everythign should work)

- Ship details have finally arrived (though they still need some tweaking) Important, the calculation of the ship mass still seems to be buggy and therefore the calculation of fuel consumption is not available yet. I still have to understand the logic Joshua implemented there. Also there is currently no distinction between own ships, ally ships and enemy ships. This means, there is still information display for the latte rtwo that only makes sense for own ships. I still have to figure out, what exactly makes sense to display for the other ships.

- New setting to set the default action (show map, show details, show selector) in the ship list introduced

- Selecting a ship in the list in map view also opens ship details

- Zoom buttons available on map view now (to support devices without multitouch)

I have to admit I have done much less testing than I would like have done. But I wanted to release the login fix as soon as possible and therefore decided to skip some testing on the ship details. the next version will be mostly a maintenance release to fix any bugs that occur in the ship details.

@Chaos: maybe the network connection just wasn't "good enough". I saw today I have to improve on the error handling as sometimes the device thinks there is network while there isn't data flowing. Which actually leads to exactly the sympton you describe.

But I have to admit, this is also not on the top of my priority list, let's see when I will have time for this.

Beacon

2775 days, 7 hours, 4 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi all,

in the market I see there are two people usign the app with Android 2.1. Is one of yue following this thread?

As I didn't release the App for this version yet, I actuallly have two questions to you.

- how did you manage to install the app, the market shouldn't offer it to you

- does everything work? I hardly can believe this for a plain 2.1 device as I thought I'm using some API that have not been there before 2.2, even for the login. I also have a 2.1 (officially) device here (a pandigital) but this version in reality is somewhere between 2.1 and 2.2 and has those APIs implemented. What device are you using?

If it works fine on normal 2.1 devices I just could allow those to install it too...

Beacon

2775 days, 2 hours, 6 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi Beacon,

thanks a lot for your effort and the update.

Since the app still doesn't want to work with one of my two games (with Stellar Cartography) it'd be
nice if you could add some means for debugging or error analysis. Users that run into bugs or problems could give you more and better feedback then.

kwesy

2775 days, 1 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

hi kwesy,

this is one of the thing quite high on my prio list.

I'm not sure yet it iwll be in the next version (the maintencance release) or in the on efollowin this, but it will be soon.

Beacon

2773 days, 1 hours, 32 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

I think I found a (minor) bug. Here's how to reproduce it:
- read your messages
- tap a "heavy/light industrial activity ..." message
- the starmap opens and the respective planet is flashing (nice and useful actually)
- zoom out
- some spot in open space is flashing (not the planet)

2772 days, 13 hours, 5 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi Kwesy,

hmm, I can't reproduce this. But otoh, I made quite some changes and improvemnts to the map rendering since the last release and maybe accidentally fixed this also.

BTW, the version having some debug code for your problematic game makes good progress, maybe it will be available this weekend already.

Beacon

2770 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes ago

smn

RE: Android Testers required

I've been using this quite a lot. It's a very nice tool and good for checking out the turn.

What features I miss the most:
- Seeing the mission, friendly code and primary enemy of a ship on the starmap.
- Seeing the industries, friendly code, mineral densities. growth rates etc of planets. This and the above would be very user friendly if they would open in an overlay or something when tapped on from the list on starmap.
- Being able to read and send diplomatic messages. This would actually double or triple the amount of diplomacy I do.

2770 days, 9 hours, 54 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

snm: This is a great idea to have an additional overlay for the map. Right now I'm going to the details if clicking a ship on the map list, but this just doesn't feel right. I'll give this a try.

The Message functionality in the browser version has changed very much right before I released the Android Client...and I like the new browser UI. I'm already working on that and I also think sending and replying to messages might be one of the first feasible write operations that I should support.

Beacon

2770 days, 8 hours, 9 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi all,

version 1.04 has arrived. this are the changes:

- There's a debug mode now. If you have problems when loading a game, give it a try. To enable the debug mode, do a long press on a game in the list of games. It will save the whole RST as well as a debug file and try to send it via mail to me after parsing the RST. This _should_ work even if there's an error.

- Ship Details have now distance, fuel consumption, and arrival time implemented. Though warp wells are _not_ used yet

- Speed of loading a game was improved vastly, this was really a dumb mistake :-)

- Loading a game also can be cancelled now if you selected the wrong game. Just press back while the game is loaded

- The game list now should show the correct values for next host run and remaining time. Before this worked only for some time zones correct. If you still experience problems with those time, please send me a mail with the time you see in the app, the time the browser tells you and the timezone you're in

- Ships in planet are now displayed larger

- Map rendering has improved in speed

Someone gave feedback in the market that the ship history shows also a line if a ship gets destroyed and a ship with the same ID gets build somewhere else. Actually this is on purpose to show how the ship IDs are reassigned to you or your ally (and even more important which ones have been reassigned to someone else tio find out where the ship build queue is).

Question to all: do you think this is useful or doesn't it help but is confusing?

As I didn't receive any feedback from Android 2.1 users, is really nobody reading this thread?

Beacon

2770 days, 0 hours, 58 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi Beacon,

thanks for the update.

I sent you the debug results for my problematic game.
It seems the app has a problem with the non existent IonStorms.
The ionstorms-json is an empty array.

Concerning your question about the build queue:
If I think about it I find it more confusing that helpful. In an alliance you know where the build queue is. I admit that your feature reduces the need for more communication, but I'd rather prefer an indicator off the starmap (e.g. in the menue) that tells me the base id that is known to have last built a ship than confusing lines on the starmap.
However I assume that's quite more work.
Just my 2 cents though.

Cheers,
kwesy

2769 days, 22 hours, 50 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi kwesy,

yeah, the files indicate something like this. I do not have access to the sources here in the office, but I thought I handled empty arrays for all things. Looks like I'm mistaken. I will take a look today in teh evening and might ven be able to release a new version fixing this single issue.

The good thing is, debug code seems to be working :-)

Beacon

2769 days, 13 hours, 47 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi Kwesy,

there's a version 1.05 in the market, this _should_ fix the problem with the ionstorms.

I do not have a game at hand to check it, but as I forgot to include the empty check only for ionstorms and the same code works for minefields and notes, it should be fine.

Beacon

2769 days, 2 hours, 24 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi Beacon,

I can't see a new version in the market.

kwesy

2769 days, 1 hours, 57 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

weird, I just checked on my Nook and I get offered the update to 1.05. Don't get confused by the date, for whatever reason it still shows Jan, 11th as last release date in the market on the phone as well as here https://market.android.com/details?id=com.chfsoft.android.vgap

Also the description is still the same as for 1.04, I just added one line for the Ionstorms to recent changes.

I have to leave now for office, but if it still doesn't work in the evening, I will investigate it and try to upload another (identical) version 1.06, maybe the market got confused somehow :-)

Beacon

2769 days, 0 hours, 31 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi Beacon,

ok - using the market app it was not possible to notice a new version - I had to deinstall the app and the reinstall it.

The new version in fact works better. I can now load my game that caused the problems with the older versions. I can see the starmap, planet list, messages, score.
But when I want to see the ship list it crashes. This happens only in one of my games (with stellar cartography and about 90 ships).

Turning the device (portrait to landscape) while viewing the menu also causes the app to crash.
This happens in both of my games.

If I can help you with debugging please let me know.

2768 days, 11 hours, 2 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi Kwesy,

ok, the crash on the orientation change was...well, plain dumbness on my side fits quite well.

This happens if you do not test everything for every release...

Now let's see on the ship list issue. According to the log the ships have been parsed fine, you see quite a number of ships (the list contains all ships you see, not only your ships).

As you can see the map, do you also get the list at the left side that shows ships, planets etc. at a position? If there are ships, this is good. This means there is one ship with something that I didn't expect.

Is there anything visible if you go to the ship list, e.g. is the list on the top to select which ships to display already set to "own" or does the field count already contain a number? Does it happen immediatly when opening the screen or onyl after scrolling down?

Regardign debugging, you do not happen to have the Adnroid SDK installed (or maybe even Eclipse)? If so, the output from the command "adb logcat" while provoking the error would help me most.

If not, you can install the tool alogcat from the market. This will collect the same log information on the device. Handling this app is a little bit cumbersome, but for this case it is good enough to:

- start my app and go to the gamelist

- start alogcat

- select menu/clear

- switch back to my app

- load a game and try to display the ship list

- back to alogcat and select menu/share and send the log to me

I hope this will shed some light on the problem. If not, well then I have to create a small app that just tries to parse an RST from disk instead of the web. I still assume I will have to do this eventually, I'm pretty sure this is not the last problem of this type...

Beacon

2768 days, 8 hours, 55 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi kwesy,

ok forget for now everything I wrote before :-)

I found an easy way to load your RST into the App...and it worked fine, strange.

While analyzing the data a bit, I found a potential problem, it seems to be related to the ghost ships. Why this happens for you as soon as you open the list I don't know, I only saw it when showing all ships. Adn it didn'T crash but just skipped some ships...but well, at least an indication.

And this after I was pretty sure, I handled ghost ships correctly, well...

I'm not sure whether I will be awake long enough to upload another version tonight, but it should be available tomorrow.

I hope this also fixes the problem for you.

If not, we're back to my instructions above.

Beacon

2768 days, 8 hours, 8 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi,

ok, there we go, theres 1.06 in the market.

- this is mostly a bugfix release

- rotating the device in the gameview crashed the game, dumbness on my side...fixed

- there was a problem with ghost ships that is fixed

- still the fix introduced a new feature as well, in the ship list it is now possible to select unowned ships also, great for grabbing a few free ships :-)

Kwesy, I really hope this solves your ship list problem too...if not we have to investigate further. But at least on my device I could view your RST without any difficulties (though I also could do that before the fiy was there)

Now I hope there are no severe bugs left and I can go back to features again ;-)

Beacon

2768 days, 2 hours, 15 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi Beacon,

you're a night worker :-D
I updated to the newest version and everything works fine now.
Thanks for fixing the problems so quickly!

Cheers,
kwesy

2767 days, 19 hours, 50 minutes ago

vindler

RE: Android Testers required

Hi Beacon,

I've tried your tool in a HTC Sensation, and it works perfectly.
Thank you very much for your work, it is very useful !!!

Conman

2767 days, 4 hours, 3 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

kwesy, sometimes I feel more like a nightmare walking than a night worker after those night, but thank for the heads up :-)

Now back to the battle simulator, there seems to be something weird happening there too...

Beacon

2763 days, 3 hours, 57 minutes ago

richard hendricks

RE: Android Testers required

Beacon,
Really liking your tool for a quick checkup on game status. One minor bug, it looks like the ship on the right side of the VCR is not flipped left to right like it should be. Pretty funny watching me shoot torps up the other side's tailpipe. :)

2748 days, 9 hours, 36 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi Guys,

ok, work is keeping me quite busy for the last weeks and also for at least another two or three weeks, so updates come slowly atm :-(

But there is a new version in the Market.

Basically it contains roughly a Zillion small fixes and improvements. The most visible are:

- additional small details added to star map for own ships and planets

- removed ship history if ship id changes posession

- fixed ship list behaviour for details and map

- big bugfix for battle simulator, now it should really deliver reliable results

- the right ship in VCR is now again turned correctly, you don't have to feel bad for backstabbing anymore :-)

- removed ship details for ships where we do not have details. This will be back later for a reduced set for enemies and allies

Beacon

2748 days, 9 hours, 32 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

While looking at the statistics in the Android Market, more than 50% are using devices with another language than English. Is there interest to have a localized version too? As the web site here is English, I didn't even think of this before, but who knows...

Beacon

2748 days, 1 hours, 35 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Great job, I'll try it this evening. Although I'm from Germany, I think that most players who like Planets are used to English as the main language in the game.

2742 days, 11 hours, 9 minutes ago

conman

RE: Android Testers required

I'm a Spanish speaker, but as Nu is in English I prefer your tool in English, so I have the same names. If you translate it, maybe someone will get confused.

Thanks!

2661 days, 15 hours, 3 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Hi Guys,

in case anybody wonders, I'm still working on improving the client, but there are so many ideas but only so much time...Well, the change in the RST format has forced me to release the version im using for four weeks now on my device. It is far from complete, but at least some visible changes have been made:

fix for new RST format that I encountered today in my turns
switched navigation to use the action bar as advised for Android Apps
optimized map drawing the be faster on slow devices (though I have to admit, it does look slower on fast devices, but it isn't). This is in preparation for many new types of information on the map in future versions
a lot of small changes for things that I didn't like, though nothign serious, so I forgot most of them already

Beacon

2587 days, 9 hours, 7 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Ok, here we go again, 1.08 has arrived in the Google Play Store

This are the news:

Giant Melee Games now supported
Map rework is finally done. Now we have
Planet, ship, nebula, and star names
Minefield and Ionstorm IDs
Warp circles for ships and planets (including grav and HYP)
Everything on the map is now configurable
Crash on devices with ICS and GPU acceleration forced to on is fixed
All reported crashes have been fixed or at least a workaround
Tools are now available in the game view too. In games with different ship lists they are used
Scores for Giant Melee now fixed to include only non-dead players
Player messages now available again (under diplomacy). They became lost when the web site switched to have them under diplomacy
There was a bug in diplomacy when loading one game, cancelling that and loading another game. then in the second game allies have not been recognized. Fixed.

I hope you like the new version and I didn't miss too many new bugs here.

Beacon

2587 days, 8 hours, 27 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Thank you sir for your hard work!

Still very crashy on my HTC Evo LTE (ICS, LMNOP) and trying to find the APK to sideload it on my tablet now...

2587 days, 2 hours, 3 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Ok, getting the files for sideloading is easy. Here it is vgap_t1.apk

Regarding the crashiness, can you give any indication when or why it crashes, any system or any specific action when it happens? Do you get asked to send the crashlog and if yes, do you send it? I have fixed a few crashes I saw in the crash log that happen at positions where no crash can happen (I thought). I handle them now better, but still have no idea why it happens.

Beacon

2586 days, 3 hours, 56 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

Something funny must have happened. I installed right after I saw your update... but then the next day I got an update notification from Google for the app. Since then it hasn't crashed even once. So I'm thinking that I must have gotten the old version the other day. So far it's really good.

2585 days, 21 hours, 56 minutes ago

leader98

RE: Android Testers required

Excellent work Beacon!

The starmap now looks wonderful and does not crash the ap everytime I open it.
Keep up the good work!

2585 days, 4 hours, 29 minutes ago

vepr

RE: Android Testers required

crashes seem pretty random. sometime before the rst file even loads, sometime when viewing messages. almost always for me if i let the app sit open for a while without doing anything.

2551 days, 8 hours, 45 minutes ago

gabriel a. zorrilla

RE: Android Testers required

Hi there. Milestone 1, Android 2.3.7, user here and soon (i hope) SGS3. I noticed i can not do anything, just see stuff not give commands. Is this going to be supported? If so, this app would rock in tablets or hybrids. It's working very well, with no crashes.

2518 days, 10 hours, 53 minutes ago

smn

RE: Android Testers required

I've used this app for almost a year now to review my turn pretty much anywhere and it works nicely for that. I also have some random crashes but not often enough to really bother me. I also feel that it would be fairly difficult to make the app good enough for giving orders so I don't really expect that to happen.

However, this app would most definitely be perfect for sending diplomatic messages. Currently, it is frustrating to get a diplomatic message into my inbox on the phone and not being able to reply to it. Especially if it is a simple question that an ally is awaiting an answer for. I might have to wait several hours before getting a 5 minute breather with a computer to reply, but with an Android app I could reply almost instantly. Beacon, if you are still developing this app, please consider making diplo message sending a priority!

2518 days, 4 hours, 10 minutes ago

bacchus

RE: Android Testers required

As a second to smn!

I would love to have the ability to give some types of orders (eve if it was just planets for now) but being able to respond to Diplomatic messages would rock.

btw. The app is great. It lets me keep my obsessive fix of Planets fulfilled. You can spend a little time when you are bored (ie standing on a commute train waiting) to review your turn and plot out your next step. It means I spend less time doing my turn in front of the computer, because I already know what I am going to do.

But adding diplomatic messaging would really make things better for now!

2513 days, 8 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required

New problem on my phone (HTC EVO LTE, ICS). When I tap on a game it loads the RST... and then puts me back to the games list screen. So basically I can't actually LOOK at any of my games now, although apparently the data gets in there. I think that started after a software update from HTC, but not sure.

And I agree that being able to send any commands to NU would be a bonus.

2489 days, 7 hours, 57 minutes ago

RE: Android Testers required