[android-challenge] Re: Android/Applets/J2ME - Chris - com.googlegroups.android-challenge

89 messages in com.googlegroups.android-challenge[android-challenge] Re: Android/Apple...

From	Sent On	Attachments
tberthel	28 Apr 2008 12:30
Incognito	28 Apr 2008 12:42
Kevin Galligan	28 Apr 2008 12:44
tberthel	28 Apr 2008 12:47
Incognito	28 Apr 2008 12:50
Incognito	28 Apr 2008 12:51
tberthel	28 Apr 2008 12:54
tberthel	28 Apr 2008 12:55
Incognito	28 Apr 2008 13:01
Incognito	28 Apr 2008 13:17
Kevin Galligan	28 Apr 2008 13:18
Incognito	28 Apr 2008 15:02
Kevin Galligan	28 Apr 2008 15:17
Incognito	28 Apr 2008 16:18
Incognito	28 Apr 2008 16:21
Incognito	28 Apr 2008 17:05
Incognito	28 Apr 2008 17:24
Cow Bay	28 Apr 2008 17:31
Incognito	28 Apr 2008 18:10
Cow Bay	28 Apr 2008 18:11
Cow Bay	28 Apr 2008 18:57
Kevin Galligan	28 Apr 2008 19:12
tberthel	28 Apr 2008 20:57
tberthel	28 Apr 2008 20:59
Kevin Galligan	28 Apr 2008 21:01
Chris	28 Apr 2008 21:24
Incognito	28 Apr 2008 21:33
Kevin Galligan	28 Apr 2008 21:41
Incognito	28 Apr 2008 21:58
Muthu Ramadoss	28 Apr 2008 21:59
Muthu Ramadoss	28 Apr 2008 22:00
Kevin Galligan	28 Apr 2008 22:02
Incognito	28 Apr 2008 22:19
Muthu Ramadoss	28 Apr 2008 22:23
Incognito	28 Apr 2008 22:24
Muthu Ramadoss	28 Apr 2008 22:32
Incognito	28 Apr 2008 23:00
Muthu Ramadoss	28 Apr 2008 23:06
Shane Isbell	28 Apr 2008 23:07
Muthu Ramadoss	28 Apr 2008 23:14
Chris	28 Apr 2008 23:25
Chris	28 Apr 2008 23:30
Muthu Ramadoss	28 Apr 2008 23:37
Incognito	29 Apr 2008 00:00
tberthel	29 Apr 2008 02:21
tberthel	29 Apr 2008 02:25
Hielko	29 Apr 2008 05:06
Muthu Ramadoss	29 Apr 2008 08:32
tberthel	29 Apr 2008 10:00
Kevin Galligan	29 Apr 2008 10:18
Chris	29 Apr 2008 10:43
tberthel	29 Apr 2008 11:00
Chris	29 Apr 2008 11:41
tberthel	29 Apr 2008 12:30
Incognito	29 Apr 2008 12:33
Kevin Galligan	29 Apr 2008 13:12
Izard	29 Apr 2008 14:26
tberthel	29 Apr 2008 14:50
tberthel	29 Apr 2008 14:52
Izard	29 Apr 2008 17:11
tberthel	29 Apr 2008 19:50
tberthel	29 Apr 2008 20:00
Hielko	29 Apr 2008 20:26
Izard	29 Apr 2008 20:34
Izard	29 Apr 2008 20:45
tberthel	29 Apr 2008 20:50
tberthel	29 Apr 2008 20:58
Izard	29 Apr 2008 21:06
Incognito	29 Apr 2008 21:15
Izard	29 Apr 2008 21:22
Kevin Galligan	29 Apr 2008 21:25
Living Sword	29 Apr 2008 21:28
Incognito	30 Apr 2008 00:05
Incognito	30 Apr 2008 00:09
Chris	30 Apr 2008 00:20
Izard	30 Apr 2008 03:53
Hielko	30 Apr 2008 04:45
Muthu Ramadoss	30 Apr 2008 05:57
Chris	30 Apr 2008 08:05
Muthu Ramadoss	30 Apr 2008 08:23
Chris	30 Apr 2008 08:39
tberthel	30 Apr 2008 09:02
Peli	30 Apr 2008 09:09
Peli	30 Apr 2008 09:13
Finn Kennedy	30 Apr 2008 09:29
Dan Morrill	30 Apr 2008 18:15
Kevin	30 Apr 2008 21:29
Kevin	30 Apr 2008 21:31
Hielko	01 May 2008 01:18

Subject:	[android-challenge] Re: Android/Applets/J2ME
From:	Chris (crhu...@gmail.com)
Date:	04/28/2008 11:25:21 PM
List:	com.googlegroups.android-challenge

Hmmm, no offense but based on my experience applications that cannot be easily ported to a new platform is usually because the developer has not done a good job of isolating their code and making it modular. Any application that follows the Model-View-Controller pattern will be relatively easy to port to a new platform, regardless of the platform as opposed to an application that did not follow it. Saying that your application uses the platform better just because it cannot be ported to another platform easily is a bad argument and it only shows that you've been writing bad code.

Hi Incognito,

Perhaps I wasn't very clear. I'm not talking about porting the code per se, my point is that the judges are looking for things that were previously impossible on the last generation of mobile phones. If you can just do a couple quick tweaks and the application works universally, how are you demonstrating the power of the Android platform? I'd expect that a lot of the winning applications will be a great fit for the iPhone, but I have a hard time believing that someone will win submitting an application that can just as easily be fired up on your free-with-activation $50 Nokia.

I'm not at all criticizing universally compatible applications - Brick Breaker has been a god send on my blackberry - I'm just addressing tberthel's list of features and his challenge to "think of a submission that uses more Android features than mine." My takeaway point is that any features that can easily be ported to a 5 year old handset probably aren't ones that will get high marks from the judges. Do you disagree? I personally will be pretty upset if an established company ports Bejeweled to Android and wins over me!

I'm also not saying that all winning applications will use LBS. I've seen applications that allow you to remotely access your PC, scan barcodes, and improve web browsing which all do impressive things without using the GPS function at all, but would have been impossible on older handsets.

On Apr 28, 9:58 pm, Incognito <andr...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Games that truly highlight the platform are ones like WiFi Army (if they can actually build it) and Parallel Kingdom, which would be impossible to create on an existing framework. From my understanding of the competition, this is the type of creativity the judges are looking for.

On Apr 29, 12:24 am, Chris <crhu...@gmail.com> wrote:

If you are bringing it up for debate, perhaps you are using many features of the Android platform, but I don't think you are truly showing off the Android platform itself. Your list of features are relatively generic and not particularly next-gen -I think your own statement that this was a quick port to J2ME is more telling than anything else. If your application can be ported so quickly to an existing phone, I don't see how you are highlighting the platform regardless of how many bullet points you hit.

Since you are competing against more non-platform specific games, you are up against entries like the ones from OmniGSoft and a myriad of 2D competitors, which to be frank, look more polished than yours regardless of whose is more powerful from a technical standpoint. I think it is a brutal reality that given the category you entered in, you will be judged on how much fun the judges have playing your application more than anything else.

I hope I'm not coming across as overly critical, but since you've challenged the group to analyze the virtues of your entry, these are my two cents.

On Apr 28, 8:59 pm, tberthel <trav...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Can you think of a submission that uses more Android features than mine?

On Apr 28, 10:58 pm, tberthel <trav...@hotmail.com> wrote:

I probably have the most performant and processing intensive use of the Android Platform showing the most effective use of the platforms 2D graphics capabilities. I also use compelling features including the following:

* Vibration * Orientation * Animations * Touch Screen * Progress Bars/Dialogs * Lifecycle Implementation * And other Android specific features

Accelerometer is the only major feature I am missing.

On Apr 28, 7:24 pm, Incognito <andr...@yahoo.com> wrote:

I think my chances are slim, but not because I'm not making effective use of Android. From Judges perspective they will not know the difference. I'm using touch functionality, a lot of the GUI components, pop ups, etc, etc. Based on your logic even tberthel has a worse chance of winning than me. All he is doing is using the drawing utilities from what I've seen from his demos. In fact, a lot of the applications I've seen all they do is use the 3d or 2d drawing utilities and that is it. This is true specially for a lot of the games.

On Apr 28, 9:11 pm, "Cow Bay" <nmlg...@gmail.com> wrote:

i feel kinda sorry for your possibility to lose ADC, for it sounds like you fail ADC Judging Criteria 2, " Effective Use of the Android Platform" >:{)

still wishing you good lucks....

----- Original Message ----- From: "Incognito" <andr...@yahoo.com> To: "Android Challenge" <andr...@googlegroups.com> Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 4:05 PM Subject: [android-challenge] Re: Android/Applets/J2ME

sounds like your apps were originally designed and implemented platform-agnostic. that is, they were not originally for android because, if they had been, imho, it would not seem so easy as you describe.

True, that was my goal. I wrote my code so that it would initially work on J2SE, J2ME, and Android. This forced me to write the business layer platform-agnostic and just write interfaces that were platform specific.

take for examples Android Intent, LBS, content provider, AndroidManifests.xml, Services, and other Android-specific components, which are seldomly seen in other mobile platforms, not to mention those android-specific api "constraints".

how did you convert those?

I'm not using LBS so no problem there. However, if I were I would just put that behind a generic interface. Services - My application does not require to be running on the background so I didn't need to convert this. Android Intent, content provider - I didn't have to use this feature so I did not have to create an interface for it. IPhone does has something very similar to this though. They pass URL's between applications.

What I did have to create interfaces for are the drawing utilities, Threads, GUI objects, like buttons, text fields, text buttons, touch and key event handling, etc.

On Apr 28, 8:32 pm, "Cow Bay" <nmlg...@gmail.com> wrote:

how did you convert those?

----- Original Message ----- From: "Incognito" <andr...@yahoo.com> To: "Android Challenge" <andr...@googlegroups.com> Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 2:02 PM Subject: [android-challenge] Re: Android/Applets/J2ME

So, I'd guess if you want an iphone app in its native platform, you're going to have a much easier time just manually building it after your java version is done, then update it based on diffs.

At first glance that sounds like a really good idea. It would probably be true for small apps. i.e. A couple of thousand lines. I have tens of thousands of line of code written (distributted among several applications), easily close to 100,000 lines, and more than 1000 automated unit test cases. Trying to manually convert all this code to objective C would be extremely tedious. I would never have the patience to rewrite code that I already wrote once in a language and that has been tested and debugged thoroughly. Automating this is the best route for me. Then when I want to make changes to my code I make the changes only in Java and then I run the utility to convert the code to Objective-C, thus porting the changes over to Objective-C.

Even if objective-C has every language feature of Java, and is syntactially very similar (or easily transformable), you have all the dependent libraries to worry about.

Is not as bad as you think. For the IPhone specific functionality, i.e. drawing, touch events, key events, I'm using interfaces that abstract or hide the actual API. So my applications speak to my interfaces and then my interfaces speak to the actual platform APIs. Very similiar to what Java Standard Edition does. So all I have to do is connect my interfaces with the actual hardware or platform specific API's and I'm all set to go.

On Apr 28, 4:18 pm, "Kevin Galligan" <kgal...@gmail.com> wrote:

I don't know your software background, and I don't know what objective-C is like, but I'd highly suggest not doing that. I imagine the commercial thing sucks. Rolling your own would be incredibly painful. Even if objective-C has every language feature of Java, and is syntactially very similar (or easily transformable), you have all the dependent libraries to worry about. I'm sure the commercial thing does a partial conversion, which would then require you to massage it into a working application. When you want to update your original app, you'd then wind up manually updating both anyway.

So, I'd guess if you want an iphone app in its native platform, you're going to have a much easier time just manually building it after your java version is done, then update it based on diffs.

...