Project DD - update 2

I should have written this post 4 months ago because that's when the latest commit to the code repository for this project was done. So for the last 4 months the project have been in some sort of dormancy mildly put.

How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon? 

Dr. Seuss

Well I also wonder...

So what is the status/progress of the project since update 1.

• The app will be named Directory
• Release date is now TBA. It's done when it's done.
• The hero detail screen where you can find all sorts of information about a hero is now complete. You can see some screenshots of the result below.

Next I will focus on the hero chooser screen, the screen you will interact with before you arrive at the hero detail screen. I need to come up with a intuitive and slick way for users to choose and filter among the 100+ heroes so stay tuned :).

Project DD - update 1

First and foremost, Project DD is still alive, but will probably not make the initial targeted release date which was this spring/summer. My ability to allocate hours to this project is very very limited for the moment and will so be for the next couple of months. But last weekend I managed to squeeze in a couple of hours which I am thankful for. As for how the project is progressing I have now settled on the app's overall architecture.

• The "navigation drawer pattern" will be used for top level navigation. 
• A main activity will act as the content frame for which UI fragments will be switched in and out.
• App data will be powered by a sqlite database.

I am currently working on UI for displaying stats and information about a specific hero.

My idea here is to implement some sort of blur and a small parallax effect to a background image of the hero when the user scrolls (see screenshots below). I think it is a neat effect and suitable in this context.

No blur

Semi blur

Full blur

DotaUtils and Project DD

DotaUtils is a parsing and data extraction software tool I built for an upcoming Android project I have in mind (Project DD). Project DD is about to make the best companion app a player need for Dota 2 currently developed by Valve. Project DD will hopefully be released in the spring/summer 2014.

FIASPEL

Implemented a multiplayer version of the classic board game Ludo/Mensch ärgere dich nicht/Fia. This was an exercise in network programming with the server-side done in the Python programming language and the client-side in the Java programming language. The socket module was used to access the BSD socket interface through Python and the java.net package was utilized for implementing the networking on the Java-side. One intriguing part was designing a clean and  crisp protocol/API between the server and client to effectively support the game. API-design is hard!

The Android game-client support multiplay for 4 players, ingame chat, sound effects, animations, landscape/portrait mode and "syncing".

Context Situation Estimator (CSE)

My thesis project at Mid Sweden University with the title --Estimating Context – using mobile device sensors-- was about context estimation and context awareness which included the task to build a context situation estimator for Android.

Life

Took a 2 day detour from finalizing my thesis and made a Live Wallpaper for Android.

The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. This is a classic and straightforward implementation where the initial pattern is determined by randomness and the game evolves accordingly to the standard rules.

The interface is very simple, nothing to setup or configure.
Tapping the screen will start a new simulation run and set the color for the cells.
Cells will glow brighter as it survives and aging.

Requires Android 2.1 or above.

Keeper of the Books

Keeper of the Books is an app I wrote to keep track of my book collection. Utilizing open APIs from LIBRIS, Google Books.

Keepers of the Books enable you to easily and quickly keep track or your book collection.

Features:
• Search and add books by scanning the barcode
• See statistics such as estimated purchase cost and other things
• Available in following languages: English, Swedish


Requires Android 4.0 or above.