This Week's Frustration: Windows Phone 7 Live Tiles
at Fri, May 11, 2012 - 08:58:39 via Blog

I just spent the better part of the morning trying to update a Live Tile's Background and BackBackground image in WP7.

The reason it took more than the 5 minutes it should have taken is because most people who paste code on development blogs put too much weight into their assumptions about what other people may or may not know. In my case, the omission was with visual studio file/asset properties. The following piece of code was supposed to 'just work':



However, the author failed to mention that you need specific properties on the livetilefront.png and livetileback.png images otherwise they won't be displayed. Those properties are:

Build Action: Content
Copy to Output Directory: Copy always ('Copy if newer' should suffice as well).

Without these settings, the images were not being copied into the XAP file, and as such were not showing on the Live Tile. Now, I've been reading some articles that suggest that the 'copy to output directory' shouldn't have affected the content in the xap file, which is what I originally though as well (which is why it took me so long to solve this problem). So unless there is something wrong with my Visual Studio environment, this is the way things need to be.

Note: The PhoneGameThumb.png file does not have 'Copy always' set and yet it appears in the output directory. So I'm not sure what is going on here, but I'm just glad everything is working now. I'll save the investigation for some other time.

Mongoose Loves Mangos Progress
at Fri, May 04, 2012 - 09:18:34 via Blog

I've been making sure I put work in daily on 'Mongoose Loves Mangos', because it's very easy to procrastinate when you're home alone.

I made a short youtube video of where I'm at so far, which you'll see is a long way since the last video update:


Other than the awesome artwork I've been getting from Paul, I added some sound effects to the game which should give it a more polished and professional feel. Quick note, the sounds are from chimps even though I'm calling the animals in the trees monkeys.

I've slowly been putting all the other menus together. Just yesterday I added high score tracking, and I'm going to be working on the instructions next. Then I need to start figuring out how to make the game get progressively more difficult without just becoming a rain storm of impossibly fast moving mangos.

All in all I think I'm working at an OK pace for my end of May deadline, however I doubt I'll get my 2 app quote finished by then.

Busy With A Move
at Thu, Apr 26, 2012 - 12:15:13 via Blog

I've been a bit busy organizing all the junk I've accumulated over time because I'm in the middle of preparing to move again. The good news is it's a short move, just a couple doors over, so there is no rush to get everything packed and into a truck. We're just hauling stuff over as it's ready over the next few days.

Of particular interest to me is getting my internet and satellite up and running as quickly as possible on Saturday (when we're going to be switching over to the new place). I've got the Bell installer coming over Friday evening so it'll be ready for Saturday, and as I write this I've been testing out the cable internet and router in the new place to make sure it still works. I tested out a few locations in the house to make sure that there is cable service and that the WiFi signal is strong enough to reach the highest and lowest floors while not having to be placed in an unsightly location.

Since I've been preoccupied with that I haven't had much time to work on my Windows Phone 7 game since Monday. The last thing I did was clean up the main game interface using images to show health (heart) and score (mango) instead of the words "health" and "score". I also worked on the collision box for the mongoose so that only mangos that hit him in the torso, head and hands count as caught mangos. This way, you can't get freebie points if the mango just touches the tip of his tail. Not sure how popular that decision will be, but it should increase the difficulty a bit from being painfully simple.

COCOS2D, Retina Display and UIImage
at Mon, Apr 16, 2012 - 11:38:26 via Blog

I've been having a small issue with my iOS game development for a while that's using the COCOS2D framework. Since the start of development I wanted to make sure I supported the retina display. For the most part, I had no problem adding the double resolution images with the -hd filename suffix (COCOS2d doesn't use iOS's standard @2x suffix).

I only started running into an issue when I tried swapping out a texture on a sprite with another image on the fly. I was using the following code to create the texture:


When I replaced the sprite's texture with the one created above it was always using the lower resolution image, not the fullstar-hd.png image.

Turns out UIImage is an iOS class and not a COCOS2D class so it follows iOS's retina display rules. In this case, I need to have an image named fullstar.@2x.png. Once I created that image and added it to the project my retina resolution image was loaded.

So, what did I learn here? Make sure you know who made your objects! If it's a COCOS2D object (prefixed with CC) use the -hd suffix for images. If it's an iOS object, @2x. Simple mistake, and as per usual makes perfect sense in hindsight. Also, this probably would have been avoided by using a spritesheet instead and just treating the changing of the image as an animation.

Who Does Google Think They're Fooling?
at Mon, Apr 16, 2012 - 10:32:38 via Blog

I don't know why I'm so angry, but the last couple of days every little piece of bad or stupid news has just set me off. It started with seeing headshot after headshot during the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and now it's with a news story about Google warning about the web not being 'open' enough.

I came across an article from The Guardian where Google co-founder Sergey Brin is talking about the threat Apple and Facebook pose with their 'walled garden' approach. He is quoted as saying:


Let me translate that statement into what it REALLY means: We, GOOGLE, can't search this data with our web crawlers and put it in our search results. Therefore, we can't stick ads beside it and make tons of money!

I don't deny that Sergey probably cares a lot about the web being open, but he shouldn't sit there and pretend that his concern is primarily based on moral beliefs and not financial gain. I doubt if he was a billionaire who ran a window making factory that he'd be pontificating on the merits of an open web. But if he did it certainly would have been more convincing.

Note: this article was originally titled "Google Is Full of Shit" but I calmed down a bit after writing this article.

Free Stuff Gets Me Every Time
at Thu, Apr 12, 2012 - 12:36:32 via Blog

So I am working on another app just to get some free stuff. It is a recurring theme for me, and it's how I started off developing apps.

My first app was PlayCreator for the Blackberry Playbook. The reason I wrote it was because RIM was going to send me a Playbook for free if the app was ready before launch. I then converted it over to Android (here) because Google and Samsung gave me a free Galaxy Tab 10.1

I'm at it again now with a new Windows Phone 7 game, Mongoose Loves Mangos. The only reason I'm making this game is because the Canadian arm of Microsoft is offering free stuff to people who create new 'quality' Windows Phone 7 apps. If I make 2 I get a free phone. If I only do one I get my choice of some other stuff. So, assuming I get this app and Picado done I'll get my hands on a new Windows Phone 7 phone (stupid name).

Here is a short demo of what I've got done so far. What I'm showing here is the sliding effect when the mongoose changes direction. Also to note, the concept art was done by Paul Covello