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[kneego]

Slovak Hangman - first game story

Our story begun at then beginning of the 2011. We found out that there is no Hangman game in Slovak language.

We start learn Android development and also prepare words database. First game prototype was done in a few days. Design (sorry...let's call it design :)) was really simple.

Check some assets used in game. How do you guys like it? :)

We were surprised when we reached first 500 downloads in a few days. Then 1000 and then 5000.

It was strong impulse to make this game better. First of all we added custom word feature, scoreboard and new words database. Second part was... you can guess... correct!... Redesign.

Our friend Andrej Znášik helped us with it a lot. Just compare these two versions.

It was amazing change and gamers reaction was amazing too. Hundreds and then thousands downloads pre day.

Marketing and promo?... none active.

It started with downloads by our friends and friends of friends. Later, local game magazine reviewed it. And that was it.

What we learned?

- being first on local market is a bullseye shot - publishing games for Android is easy as hell compare to Apple's App Store - reviews in online game magazines are important part of marketing - your friends can help you a lot

Slovak Hangman (Obesenec) was first game we made under KneeGo label. It has more than 200.000 downloads now. Slovak Hangman is available on Google Play. You can try also English, German or Czech version.

Find them and more our games at www.kneego.org.

[kneego]

How Kids Slide Puzzle images were made

Kids Slide Puzzle’s images are the most beautiful part of the whole game and that's thanks to our friend Kristina.

Compare her hand drawn sketches with the final version of the puzzle images.

Animals

Fruits

Vegetable

You can find more images in the game. Kids Slide Puzzle is available on Google Play and in App Store.

Check out Kristina's blog, she is really an amazing graphic designer.

Find more games on www.kneego.org.

[kneego]

This is a short blog post about how The Mouse Family was born

The game mechanics of The Mouse Family is very simple and the whole idea came to us in a café. Since we are KneeGo, all of our ideas are made in cafes or pubs. Simply on a shoestring, or as we say in Slovakia - “on the knee”.

Mouse Family is such a simple game, that it should be a weekend project. But we don’t believe in such things, so we published it after 6 months of work. 

It’s because apart from the creating of the game itself, we had to do other things too. Upload to the store; find the right sounds, set achievements and scoreboard and of course testing… And the popular 20% of operations always takes 80% of time. All of us have day jobs, so we couldn’t have devoted all our time to Mouse Family.

Making of the game

The first prototype didn’t look like much, but it was entertaining so we decided that it was worth working on and finishing. 

The game is based on a simple principle: the mouse collects cheese and has to avoid being caught by a cat. 

A little bit of work and the second version was ready. We started to fine-tune the graphics and the idea about the family and the mouse hole came up.

We added more food and traps to make the game more fun.

After a longer brake, we decided that it was really high time we finally finished the game. We started tuning it again, exchanging hundreds of emails with suggestions, ideas for improvements and about the whole concept of the game to make it just great. 

We rejected half of those ideas; another 30% is saved in our drawers for later. The game will never be 100% ready. There will always be things to improve, change, remove, and finish. The important thing is that the game is catchy and playable.

We finally finished the latest version, we fixed the graphics and it’s time to play now!

How doe the game look like from programmers point of view?

It is built on the multiplatform framework Corona SDK and is available for Android and iOS. 

It has approximately 2000 lines of code. 

What we learned: 

When handling touch event, make “return true” 

Always cancel all timers when changing the scene

Object/rotation can have values more than 360 and less than 0. It has to be normalized. 

To avoid the reflection upon collision, it is necessary to set isSensor = true

PhysicsEditor is great and make the work a lot easier

Audio channel does not play sounds until the currently played sound stops, therefore it has to be stopped by audio.stop (channel)

We wish you a lot of fun!

You can find the game at Google Play and App Store. Download, play and have fun! 

[kneego]

Big list of Android app stores

Hi developers,

did you create perfect app and now you want to release it into the world of Android?

But googlin “all app store” isn’t working?... or you find the same short lists?

I had this problem as well.

So i took some time and started creating my own list. Never ending list.

Here I give you some results. There are almost all for me known stores and I added short information about experience I had with them. It will be changing. It’s never ending story.

If you have other opinion, it will be great to let me know.

Thanks.

PS: We have 8 apps. Most successfull is our Hangman. You can find all apps at www.kneego.org

Blazej

KneeGo Team

TOP stores:

AMAZON https://developer.amazon.com Amazon had done good work. Developers site is nice and working. Still exploring the Kindle Fire distribution.

Google play.google.com Very important are description, ratings and updates. It really works when you keep on working on this.

PHOLOAD http://www.phoload.com/developer/ Maybe not so popular but they have good downloads numbers and developer's site is very simple and easy.

SAMSUNGhttp://seller.samsungapps.com/ We just tried this and nobody expected so good downloads. Very good thing is that your app will be under detailed review. They check everything. They returned our app like 5 times. We got angry because the bugs were really simple but at the end it really works.

SLIDEME http://slideme.org/ Very good downloads. App was approved within few days. Must have description in english and have to change very common keywords, which force you to think about it :)

Good one:

ANDAPPONLINE www.andapponline.com Good upload and good potential.

Androidfreeware http://www.androidfreeware.net/users/developers Quick upload.

ANDROIDPIT http://www.androidpit.com/developer/ Checks apk throu Google Play.

APPBRAIN http://www.appbrain.com/ Only Google Play needed.

Appchina http://dev.appchina.com/ Well ...China...potentially great. Our app has just few downloads.

APPSLIB http://appslib.com/developers Tablets oriented.

APPSURFER https://publisher.appsurfer.com Good for online presentation.

camangimarket http://www.camangimarket.com/ Works. Could be more downloads.

GETJAR http://www.getjar.com/ Working. Might be.

Mikandi developer.mikandi.com Working.

MOBANGO http://developer.mobango.com/ Good downloads. Could be faster with publishing.

Mobiles24 http://www.mobiles24.com Good downloads but could make better stats.

OPENAPPMKT http://www.openappmkt.com/ It's working. Good looking.

OPERA http://publishers.apps.opera.com/ It also distribute app to other stores.

Pandaapp http://i.pandaapp.com/ Why just not to keep it simple with upload of APK?

SOC.IO http://mall.soc.io/apps It works.

Allmost good:

SYNAPSY https://ssl.synapsy.net/mcms/api/ No downloads and don't know why.

YANDEX https://developer.store.yandex.com/ Still waiting for our 1.download :)

1mobile http://author.1mobile.com/ Wait for approving more than 2 months.

Androidtapp http://www.androidtapp.com/ Not good search and didn't approved app 2 months.

AndroLib www.androlib.com Long wait for sign in link.

HANDANGO http://www.handango.com/ Long wait to approve.

INSYDEMARKET http://developer.insydemarket.com/ Long wait but some downloads.

APTOID http://www.aptoide.com/ Strange because our app was under another account.

  Didn’t understand:

appia https://dev.appia.com/ No downloads.

HANDMARK https://store.handmark.com No response.

androinica http://androinica.com/ Submit doesnt work

APPITALISM http://www.appitalism.com/dev/ How the hell to login in to Developers again?

Cellmania cellmania.com No idea what's going on.

Anzhi http://dev.anzhi.com/ Need some kind of ID ???

appbackr http://www.appbackr.com/marketplace Credit card needed.

  Just a list... No experience with them. Need some time to discover...

Baidu http://developer.baidu.com/

Blackberry http://developer.blackberry.com/android/

CHINA UNICOM http://dev.wo.com.cn/

Docomo http://www.docomo-usa.com/en/developer/

EOEmarket http://dev.eoemarket.com/

Exent http://www.exent.com/

f i l e DIR http://filedir.com/

F-DROID http://f-droid.org/

GFAN http://dev.gfan.com/

Myapp http://tap.myapp.com/android/

OPTUS http://appstore.optus.com.au/

pdassi http://pdassi.de/

Tucows https://author.tucows.com/

upload.cnet upload.cnet.com

verizon http://developer.verizon.com/

wandoujia account.wandoujia.com

YAAM http://yaam.mobi/

10086 http://dev.10086.cn/en/supesite/register_en.php

ackuna http://ackuna.com/languages

189store http://ap.189store.com/

GameTop http://www.gametop.com/

mobango http://www.mobango.com/

DELL dellmobileappstore.com

LG http://developer.lge.com/

OPTUS http://partnerconnect.optusnet.com.au/

NOOK CHINA https://nookdeveloper.barnesandnoble.com

Mobilism http://forum.mobilism.org/

Blackdroid http://blackdroid.net/

Smartmobil http://smartmobil.sk/

Talkandroid http://www.talkandroid.com/

Android HILFE DE http://www.android-hilfe.de/

Softonic DE http://www.softonic.de/

24 android http://www.24android.com/

Appland http://www.applandinc.com/products/developers/

GFAN CHINA http://dev.gfan.com/

Hiapk CHINA http://dev.apk.hiapk.com/

LENOVO CHINA http://developer.lenovomm.com/developer/

NDUOA CHINA http://www.nduoa.com/developer

TSTORE http://dev.tstore.co.kr/

SNAPP CLOUD https://portal.snappcloud.com/

TAP myapp http://tap.myapp.com/android/

TAOBAO http://app.taobao.com/

[kneego]

Monitor Android app with New Relic

As we have mentioned in our previous blog post, we use New Relic to monitor our Android applications.

On this picture You can see several applications that we currently monitor and which make a HTTP requests to our API. There is also one new application (Drby CZ - Czech gossip aggregator), which was not released in that time.

What we need for installation? Click on the link Add new moblie app in the New Relic administration interface, choose the platform (for us it's Android) and select the name. After the confirmation of the application You will get application token. Download of the New Relic SDK is the last step.

Implemetation is also very easy. Essentially only need to do two steps. - setup of project. Execute the command nrandroid-setup for this. It will ask for the path to the project and the application token. - build of the project. Execute the command nrandroid-ant clean release for this.

If a project contains ant.properties file then the build will be signed, otherwise it needs to be signed manually.

Example of the ant.properties file: key.store=/Users/kneego/Development/android-release-key.keystore key.alias=kneego key.store.password=0g4b9t5k23mf9w key.alias.password=0dlk7ubs04g0d5 We met with one problem during application build. After the build of application newrelic.android.jar file is removed from lib directory. In the AndroidManifest.xml however it still remains registered. For debugging we always need to delete reference and for release build we need to put it back.

Maybe it happen because we use JetBrains IntelliJ. Maybe it's something else. Anyway we still love New Relic.

--pk

[kneego]

AdMob at the bottom of layout (what I discovered today)

AdMob is a service that can monetize your free application and bring you some dollars.

AdMob view will never be displayed if you want tu put it under the element with fill_parent defined height. Full size element will occupied all visible area and AdMob will be added under it. You will never see it.

Solution is a small trick:

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent"> <WebView android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="0px" android:layout_weight="1" android:id="@+id/webView"/> <LinearLayout android:id="@+id/ad_container" android:gravity="center" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:background="#000000" android:paddingTop="4sp"> </LinearLayout> </LinearLayout>

WebView is an element that will take the whole visible area. Under it is the Ad element, which always take as many space as it need.

--pk

[kneego]

How to monitor mobile applications

We monitor our mobile applications with two tools. The first is Google Analytics, which every web developer probably knows. The second is New Relic, an excellent tool for monitoring network traffic and web applications.

Google Analytics

In addition to a web version, Google Analytics also has a version for mobile applications (Android, iOS).  Besides classical statistics for the analysis of user behavior, it provides information that is more oriented to data that comes from mobile phones.

It is thus possible to detect types of phones, resolution, versions of the system, or operators name.

How many users are using the application right now.

What versions of applications users have installed.

Installation is simple. Just import the GA library (https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/android/) and run the right methods each time activities start or stop (for Android). Alternatively, you can set your own metrics, dimensions and events.

Nicely displayed information about mobile devices.

GA allows reporting unhandled exceptions. Unfortunately, nowhere has more detailed info. GooglePlay contains stack traces of error. This is very important for debugging.

New Relic

New Relic is a tool for monitoring web applications (with excellent support for web frameworks, for example - Ruby on Rails, Django), network traffic monitoring and server monitoring.

NR recently launched a tool to monitor mobile applications (http://newrelic.com/mobile-monitoring). This allows you to track where the mobile application is connected and how successfully. If the mobile application uses the web service API, it can be an excellent tool for monitoring behavior.

Where application makes requests and how long it lasts.

How the application uses resources of the phone.

The main difference from GA is that you have to use the special tool nrandroid-ant (for Android) to build the project. It will import the NR library into the project. If you are using IDE, you will need to modify the build script, or use the nrandroid-ant tool. A release build should be properly signed by your certificate.

New Relic is also so cool that when you use their service, New Relic sends a shirt to you.

Maps

Both GA and NR contain maps. What they show is a little different.

GA says that our Bulvar app is used in the United States.

NR has their own opinion on it.

--pk