Category Archives: Android

Small presentation of my cross-platform engine for mobile and desktop applications

I made small presentation about my cross-platform engine for mobile and desktop applications. Codename Kobald. Click on image to play it in new window (use arrows and space to move through):

Screenshot 2015-01-21 21.53.14

This is not-so-technical presentation and main info about engine will come later as separate post.

Dockerfile example how to compile libcurl for Android inside Docker container

Update: 5 july 2015 – See updated version of dockerfile at the end of post with new NDK / SSL / clang toolchain.

If you never heard of Docker be sure to check it out as fast as possible. There are lot of publications out there. At first it looks like another virtualisation software but it is actually more like new paradigm. Someone may call it very advanced chroot, someone may call virtual containers with version control and building scripts, and so on. I like it as the idea of application-centric containers – your application can keep whole operating system as a coating and its making perfect separation from outside influence. As well you can easily reproduce production process environment at another location. It makes virtualisation easy and fun.

Libcurl in docker

Almost everything can be done inside containers now. Recently i had to recompile curl for Android as static lib using latest NDK toolchain. Its not so complicated to do on your local machine (if it is not Windows) but now there is a more clean way to do this time-wasting operation. You can go to digital ocean, create droplet with Docker and using Dockerfile from the end of this post compile it while drinking coffee.

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Small guide: how to support immersive mode under Android 4.4+

In Android 4.4 version we have new Immersive mode which allows to make system bars translucent and extend application area to fit all screen. This looks great as it gives more space to application in terms of usability and it creates more stylish look if application design is done accordingly.

Immersive mode for TripBudget

I added support of immersive mode to TripBudget. And there were some unexpected troubles on the way so i decided to write some kind of guide here.

Note: I talk here about immersive mode where bottom navigation bar is hidden – using SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_IMMERSIVE_STICKY flag. This guide is aimed to gather and solve all problems which prevent sticky mode to work properly.

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Public localizator – web service for online localization of applications

Here i present small but powerful web instrument for public localization of applications and some more thoughts on software translations, which soon will be published as open-source after some tests in real projects.

Public localizator

Public localizator (beta) – is online web solution for fast translation of application strings to many languages by its users. Of course if you have money to invest in localization by paid services – it will be better solution, but if you have project which has wide range of users, which are interested in translation why not to create interface for them. As i had some positive experience of user translation i decided to create simple web tool. This approach is much better than sending some files/tools to your translators –  translation is easy, its continuous process and you can monitor progress at any time.

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How to create parallax effect using accelerometer

This is short guide how to create parallax effect using accelerometer on mobile platforms. Some code is related to Android, but all concept is applicable to iOS, etc.

What is parallax effect? There are some more complex definitions but i would define as simple as the following – you move your phone/device in space and some objects inside your application are shifting accordingly to compensate this movement. This allows to create some strong feeling of 3d interface as well as nice interaction effect.

As good example you can check out my live wallpaper (link on market), which is using this effect while rendering particle system of moving objects. More information about this application can be found here.

To create parallax effect we need to grab data from accelerometer sensor (as i found out gyroscope is not present at majority of phones while accelerometer gives enough of data to be happy with it), convert sensor data to relative rotation angles and shift some parts of application interface accordingly. 3 steps:

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Alive Numbers 2 – android release of my minimalistic live wallpaper with embedded widgets

Brand new version of live wallpaper –  Alive Numbers 2 for Android devices. Enjoy smooth OpenGl ES 2.0 animation of minimalistic animated background in couple with customisable embedded widgets. New version has adjustable color schemes and ability to hand-tune widget layout. You can choose from set of base animations and play with a lot of options for every widget.

Alive Numbers 2

It can be found by name ‘Alive numbers 2’ or here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.calibvr.minimal

This topic contains screens and details…

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Perfomance of complex GL ES 2.0 shaders on mobile devices

There is very nice site http://glsl.heroku.com/, where you can find the gallery of complex GLSL shaders (from very simple gradients to very complex rendering systems). You can modify their code at real-time using provided editor:

heroku

Current implementation of WebGL is using GL ES 2.0 – the same as all mordern android / iOS phones/tablets. So i decided to test if i can use these shaders at mobile applications – and tested their performance on Sumsung Galaxy Note II. Of course i tested only relatively simple shaders expecting them to run slow…

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Live Wallpaper under Android can be powered by my cross-platform engine now

After my recent modifications of android part of my cross-platform engine, it is possible to make application also run as android live background. I plan to implement the same feature as well for iOS 7, but a bit later. Here is working example (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.calibvr.synctimer):

Synctimer as live background

Android live wallpaper is not a general Activity application – it is special WallpaperService. And you cant implement it in pure C++ using NativeActivity. All my core is cross-platform C++ so i implemented two-way communication between C++ and JAVA. From C++ NativeActivity you can call JAVA classes through JNI and from java service you can call native (c++) methods of engine core.

The tricky part that all this communication involves a lot of different threads. Wallpaper service has its own thread, but rendering should be performed in another one. My native C++ core is launched as third thread and spawns other async threads which could call some java methods. But i got through all this nightmare using mutexed queues of events. As result i got full functionality of my engine at the background of android launcher.

When i only started working with android i wrote small live wallpaper in pure java (with no OpenGL). Wasted only couple of evenings and even lost the source code. But recently i was surprised when discovered that it has more than 100.000 downloads (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=back.livenumbers). It does not even work properly on my Note 2 now.

But the point is that now i have smooth OpenGl ES 2.0 animations/effects in couple with engine functionality. Probably, i will create couple of stylish backs fused with some in-code widgets (like battery indicator, weather forecast, clock, calendar date or something else) as implementation will be relatively easy now using my engine. Any suggestions on this matter are welcome.