buzzb blog @buzzbdev-blog - Tumblr Blog

by Mark McWhirter

buzzb V1.2 is now releaed on iOS. Our Kickstarter supports will receive an email when the Android Version has been released with instructions on how to redeem your Premium version.

Much Love,

Team Concept x

Public Beta

by Mark McWhirter

Hi Folks,

Quick message with an opportunity for your friends. Now that the Private (Kickstarter Supporters) Beta testing has completed, we're now taking applications for our Public Testing.

Unlike you, people who test the app publicly won't get the premium content at the end of the testing period. Just to make that point clear.

If you think that you might have some friends who would be interested, have them complete this form here.

You can also help us out by sharing our Social Media messages; Twitter or Facebook

Otherwise, keep in touch & don't be strangers.

Thanks again for supporting us, and we hope you enjoy buzzb after release.

Cheers, Mark

Final Testing Survey

by Mark McWhirter

Hi Folks,

Time to complete your final survey for testing please!

Head to here and complete the survey.

Both iOS & Android apps will be locked down on Wednesday 25th Feb

Cheers again for your help, and your feedback has been so great.

Thanks, Concept96 xx

mark-mcwhirter

We’re releasing @buzzbapp for beta testing today. If you’re a kickstarter supporter keep and eye on your inbox for more details. #beta #buzzb #kickstarter #app #chromecast (at Concept96 HQ)

Beta is coming!

by Mark McWhirter

Hi Backers,

It's finally here, the week we're releasing Buzzb for beta testing.

We're expecting to have the app released before the weekend, everything ready to rock & roll, and we're just adding some questions for you to play.

Just as a reminder; please, please, please make sure you've registered your device on hockeyapp. I can't iterate that enough! Especially if you're testing on an iPhone, we need to register all your UUID's with Apple, and this process takes time.

One big issue we were facing was 'what if something goes wrong with the Chromecast and not the app, we can't see the logs', we've developed a feature called 'mayday'. The mayday button is on every view on the app, pressing on it submits the logs from the Chromecast to our servers, and then provides you with a mayday code. Please give that with any bug reports so we can link the bug report with the log from the Chromecast.

I'll be in touch over the next few days with some FAQ's, and instructions.

Speak soon!

Team Buzzb x

Expected Outage: Concept96.co.uk & buzzbapp.com

By Concept96 Management

Dear Backers,

We've been experiencing some issues with our hosting provider over the last 6 months, and it's got to a point we've been forced to move providers.

We raised some concerns to our previous hosting provider, and in spite they decided to delete our hosting account and took control of our domains, meaning we lost all our domains & hosting.

Long story short, we've had to contact Nominet to get any .co.uk domains we owned back. As for .com domains we're awaiting for them to be transferred late this weekend.

Thankfully we had a good server setup, and everything managed to fall back to our backup servers. Although we're concerned that while the domains transfer to our new (and reliable registrar), we might experience a short period of downtime as DNS propagates, although we're hoping that nameservers transfer with the domain.

If the buzzbapp.com domain does experience any downtime this may affect our API, and as such this could affect the forum & apps (affecting the beta). If this is the case we will issue an outage communication to make you all aware.

We apologise for this inconvenience.

Regards

Concept96 Management

CES & Android Update

By Sam Devaney

As we move into the final week of development before our private beta testing begins there’s still a few features we’re trying to cram into Buzzb. This week we’ll be adding support for different types of media questions and finishing off the post-game results.

We’ve noticed a few issues with the Android application which we’re hoping to squash before beta. There’s a particularly annoying one which prevents the application connecting to a Chromecast on certain devices with no clear way of reproducing it. A device with the problem is on it’s way to me so there shouldn’t be any problems when you all get your hands on it later this week!

Finally I’ll be working on adding support for Android devices using an OS version older than 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). These devices use the Android Browser to render Webkit views rather than the feature-rich Chrome renderer meaning it doesn’t support CSS3 (which Buzzb uses). Buzzb will run on Android version 2.3 and up.

We were keeping an eye on CES last week and we’re really happy to see manufacturers adopting Android TV. Whilst we can’t vouch for Buzzb working on Android TV until we’ve bought ourselves a Nexus Player (they’re not available in the UK yet) we’re hoping that the common cast functionality between Google Cast and Android TV means that porting it over will be easy.

UPDATE: Beta Testing Invites

by Mark McWhirter

Hi Backers,

Please ensure you own a Chromecast and iOS / Android Device before you attempt to beta test

This afternoon (Sunday 11th) the invite emails were sent out to all our backers to beta test the app (unless you are a £1 backer).

Please create an account on the website, and register your devices.

At this moment you won't see any apps, when we begin beta testing we'll send you all an email with some info.

Depending on the device you selected in the backer survey on Kickstarter, you will only be able to test on either an Android or iOS app. If you are able to test both apps please make us aware and we will add you to the relevant access group.

Due to time restraints it's essential that you register iOS devices now to get your UUID's registered with Apple so your device can download the app. So please add your device to your account.

If you have any questions please let us know. Send us an email: [email protected]

Really excited to see what your guys thoughts are on the app,

Many Thanks, Team 96 x

It's nearly time to test

by Mark McWhirter

Hi All,

We've been working hard this week getting the app nearly ready to test in a fortnights time.

We've decided that there's some elements that will be implemented in a later phase of testing, and they're not crucial for the first round of beta testing that you guys will be doing.

So while you get the app, it won't be 100% ready to rock and roll - some non-crucial for game-play features will be still under dev while you're testing (like player pictures on the TV).

We've also started to do email updates to our blog posts, if you didn't see the email from us you can sign up for them here; http://eepurl.com/baUTmT

In the meantime it's full steam ahead here at Concept HQ, this week we're implementing video questions now that we've got the game engine for text questions completed. Will update you during the week.

Much love as always,

Team 96 xx

Happy 2015 & Progress Report

by Mark McWhirter

Hi Folks,

Happy 2015 to you all and hope you had a lovely festive break.

Excited to announce that we've set a firm date for beta testing this week. It'll be (partly or not) in your hands by Wednesday 21st Jan. So keep your eyes peeled for that email that will allow you to get your device registered.

In other news we've been refactoring our code, giving it that spring winter cleaning it's desperately needed. Makes our debugging so much quicker and easier. So as a part of this we've had to go back to our Android & iOS apps and change some code to make it all work with the new receiver file.

Hope Santa was good to you all, the fact it's now January hasn't stopped me from wearing my Christmas socks with snowmen!

That's all for now,

Cheers,

Mark

p.s. Those of you who supported our £10 pledge and the reward that came with some cookies, you'll have them posted to you this weekend so expect them early next week :)

'tis the season

By Mark McWhirter

fa la la la la, la la la la.

Christmas is the best time of the year, fighting spending time with your loved ones, enjoying those new presents under the Christmas tree etc.

Sadly Christmas at Concept96 has meant that our development time has been throttled, I for one have left Leeds & I'm back in Northern Ireland, while I may have my Mac etc. with me, spending Christmas day coding isn't exactly the most sociable thing to do.

We've been spending the last week doing some awesome stuff with our receiver file once again (that nifty piece of code that displays on your TV). Gameplay is getting there with our API now in full use and questions being added every day, for those of you who've pledged enough for a category to be made 'by you' - we'll be in touch very soon to get the ball rolling.

In other news, I'm back behind the mic and desk this weekend for my other hobby radio broadcasting - need to try to slip a sneaky little (or 'wee' for our Scottish / N. Irish backers) plug about buzzb - see pic below of me in the studio last year.

Have a fantastic Christmas everyone, hope you're spending it with your loved ones.

Stay classy,

Mark

(Ho ho ho)

Receiving the Game

by Sam Devaney

Hi everyone - I’m focusing mainly on the development for the Chromecast “receiver” app (that’s what you’ll see on your TV), this is coming along really well. We’re developing the game sequentially as if we were players playing the game. We’ve got the barebones completed so far (create player, join lobby, start game, answer questions) and we’ve only got a few more features to implement before we’re ready for beta testing during January. Watch out for a separate blog post with details about the beta testing programme over the coming weeks!

Hope you all have a very merry Christmas - this will be the last update until the new year. Check out our Christmas hat pics on our main blog - here

Sam.

Keeping it ticking

by Mark McWhirter

As Brad had explained in his last post, we're using an api to power the app and output the questions to both the device & Chromecast. This is the biggest expense for us, running this server & being able to cope with the demand.

This week I've been working on a few things, namely monetizing the app with thanks to our advertising partners, and continuing work on the communication between the Chromecast & the players device. It's getting this communication between the two perfect across all the devices that is going to give players an awesome experience.

It's time to API

by Brad Allen (Backend Developer)

Buzzb gets its content such as categories, questions and answers from something called a 'API'. Our API allows our iOS and Android apps to talk to the server and get questions, categories and other content. We built our API from scratch, it's built on a framework called Rails, a powerful framework written in Ruby that follows a "MVC" (Model, View, Controller) pattern.

The last few weeks have seen the implementation of a lot of features & functionality that keeps the app running.

Our API allows the apps to be updated dynamically on the categories page on the mobile app. This means as soon as we add new categories and questions you get them without having to update the app from the app store. Isn't technology amazing?!

A few API endpoints that allow the application to list questions and answers for a chosen category...

An Administration panel, this lets us easily add new question's, categories etc, again without having to edit a line of code.

That's all from me this week though!

Cheers,

Brad xx

Managing the Chromecast

by Mark McWhirter (iOS Developer)

Hi folks,

The iOS app's user interface is now complete - now it's onto the hard part; the actual coding of the app itself.

So what's new this week?

We've created our iOS device controller, that's the piece of code which communicates with the Chromecast and tells it what to do, and when you press buttons on the app it sends commands to the Chromecast to reflect that.

I love this bit, the header of the coding. It's tempting to make some pretty pictures at the top of my code. I'll try to get something cool in the code to show you in my next update.

Bye for now,

Mark

xx

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