Tag - Apps

3 min read

Windows Phone is one of the major smartphone operating systems available today. This article is focused on guiding anyone who is interested in game development to develop games for Windows Phone 8/8.1 devices.

Choosing a game engine

There are several game engines which support Windows Phone 8/8.1. These are some of the well know ones.

GameMaker – https://www.yoyogames.com/studio
Cocos2d-x – http://www.cocos2d-x.org/
Construct 2 – https://www.scirra.com/construct2
Corona SDK – http://coronalabs.com/products/corona-sdk/
Unity – http://unity3d.com/

In this case we are going to use Unity. Unity is game multiplatform game engine which allows us to create both 2D and 3D games. It has a free version which can be downloaded from here. The Pro version of Unity comes with more advanced features, but the free version is good enough if you’re working on a simple 2D game.

Setting up the development environment

Download and install Unity.
Download and install Visual Studio 2013 Express.

This includes the Windows Phone SDK which allows you to build your project.

In order build apps, you need to register your device. See this guide for more information.

Creating the project

1. Open Unity and create a new project.

File > New Project…

Browse for a folder to save the project and set the project defaults to 2D.

2. Create these folders to store different types of assets.

3. When you create a new project in Unity, by default the target platform is set to PC. We have to change the target platform to Windows Phone.

Go to File > Build Settings and choose Windows Phone from the list. Then click “Switch Platform”. Now the project has been converted to a Windows Phone project.

4. We are going to use some free graphics assets in our game. You can download them from here.

Visit kenney.nl for more awesome graphics.

Extract the folder and drag and drop the graphics into the Player folder you created in your project

Now we are going to create a simple animation. Select all the character sprites and drag and drop them into the scene. You will be prompted to save the animation. Save it with the name “Walk”.

Now select the character and change its position.

Select the Main Camera and set its size to 1.5. They hit play and you will see the animated character on the screen.

5. Save the scene and go to “Build Settings”. Press “Add Current” button to add the scene to the build. Connect your device to the PC and unlock the screen. Then hit “Build and Run”. Select a folder to save the Visual Studio project. Then the game will be deployed to your Windows Phone device.

I hope now you have a basic understanding about deploying your Unity projects on Windows Phone. Stay tuned for more tutorials.

Swing Copters, the return of Flappy Bird?

August 24, 2014

Manindu

Apps, Games

Swing Copters Google Play, Swing Copters Apple store

2 min read

Flappy Bird was removed from the App Store this February. No one thought it would flap to the top position of app stores. However it became the most downloaded app in Apple’s App Store and Android Play store for some time.

Flappy Bird was developed by a Vietnamese developer called Dong Nguyen and it was available in Apple app store since May 2013. But it was unnoticed for months. Then some players started to tweet about its absurd difficult and the game went viral.

The game got global attention in February 2014. Flappy bird became an overnight sensation and reached the top position of App Store and Google Play. Once Nguyen claimed that the game was generating $50, 000 a day from ads.In the end the developer pulled the game out of the app stores saying that it had become too addictive.

Then he promised to re-launch the game with some changes according to the tweets below.

New-Flappy-Bird

Finally last week, Don released the next game called Swing Copters. However The dynamics are similar to flappy bird but instead of moving in the horizontal direction, you have to move in the vertical direction. And also it is much harder which is confirmed by the low rating and feedback.

Swing-Copter-Screenshots

Check out the new app and let us know what you think on the app.

Venture Engine – Ideamart Startup Competition 2014

April 18, 2014

Entrepreneurship

1 min read

Over the past couple of years Ideamart, the developer platform powered by Dialog Axiata, has enabled the creation of thousands of apps, by hundreds of developers and content providers. Most of these apps are SMS and USSD based apps using telco APIs exposed by Dialog. Developers who have utilized this platform successfully are getting good returns and has resulted in the emergence of several entrepreneurs.

With aims of taking these entrepreneurs to the next level, Ideamart has partnered with Venture Engine to bring Venture Engine – Ideamart Startup Competion. This competition will provide developers with high potential Ideamart apps a chance to obtain funding to transform that idea to a successful startup. This is a valuable rare opportunity, and hopefully the developer community will take full advantage of it. Ideas should be submitted by the 20th of April. No time to lose!!

For more information on the competition click here.

To learn more about Ideamart, visit www.ideamart.lk

Venture Engine Ideamart

Book Seeker will save you hours at the Colombo International Book Fair

September 13, 2013

Thameera Senanayaka

5 Comments

3 min read

The time in the year every book lover is waiting for has come. The Colombo International Book Fair is just hours away. It’s time to grab the hardly-earned money and run to BMICH before another book worm grabs the most sought-after books.

But, let’s face it, it’s not as easy as it sounds. During the nine days of the fair, BMICH is packed with book lovers from all over the country. There are long queues at the stalls. Finding the exact book you are looking for would not be the best experience you’ve had. That’s exactly what Book Seeker aims to solve.

Book Seeker is a mobile application developed by a group of undergraduates of the Faculty of Engineering, University of Moratuwa with the collaboration of Dialog and Sri Lanka Book Publishers’ Association. It aims to make use of the technology to let you find where you should be looking for to buy your book.

Being SMS-based, you don’t need a high-end mobile device to use Book Seeker. Any phone that could send a simple text message and a Dialog connection would do. After registering for the service (more details below), you type in ‘isk’ followed by the name of the book you are looking for and hit Send. Within a few seconds Book Seeker would reply you with an SMS with a list of book publishers who would be selling the book at the fair. It would also include the stall numbers they will be in.

Book seeker sample results

You have to type the name in English, even if it’s a Sinhala book. For example to look for Gam Peraliya, your SMS would be ‘isk gam peraliya’. Even if you made a small typo in the name, the app is intelligent enough to find the correct book for you. In case the terms has no immediate matches, it will show up with a list of possible suggestions as well.

How to use Book Seeker:
1. Send reg<space>isk to 77115 from your Dialog mobile. This is a one-time registration and you will receive a confirmation SMS.
2. Type isk<space><book name> and send to 77115. Book Seeker will get back to you with the stalls you can find the book in.
3. Repeat the 2nd step for all the books you need to search.

Book Seeker banner

It is a simple concept, but one that solves an actual problem. The team has put forward a commendable effort to make the lives of every book lover easier. So if you’re planning to visit the book fair in the coming days, make sure you do check the books with Book Seeker beforehand. It would save you hours of precious time you could have spent reading those gems.

An interview with the founders of Arangaya Apps

August 13, 2013

Apps, Entrepreneurship

6 min read

Note from the Editor: Arangaya Apps is a Mobile Application Development company which was founded in 2009 by 2 Sri Lankans, Chamira Fernando and Shenal Murray. During these few years Arangaya Apps has become one of the leading iOS app developers in the Sri Lankan market and are the creators of popular apps such as SL Radio, SL Paper, SL Dictionary, iSinglish, and SL Chat.

We got a chance to have an interesting chat with the founders on their journey, their motivation and the future plans of Arangaya Apps.

What is Arangaya Apps? What is the objective behind it?

Well this is how it started. Since I was away from home (Sri Lanka) I wanted to keep in touch with Sri Lanka all the time. I wanted to read local newspapers, to listen to local radio. So when I got my iPhone, I thought of doing a SL newspaper app in order to read the local paper. Then I wanted others to read newspaper on their own devices. So in 2010 I thought of doing the SL paper app for all Sri Lankans. That’s how we started, to enable Sri Lankans to know what’s happening at home. That’s the whole intention, because I know personally that being away from home is not easy and being in touch helps a lot.

SL Paper

After that we released SLRadio which became a big hit in the iOS market. Once that happens, you know once you do thing right other ideas would also start to work out. Then we thought of doing SL Dictionary followed by iSinglish which is a phonetic Sinhala editor. Recently we launched SL chat, for users to chat in Sinhala.

Who are the people behind Arangaya Apps?

At the moment there is, Myself (Chamira), and Shenal. I (Chamira) work on the iOS development. Shenal is our creative designer.

Arangaya Founders

How did you guys get together to form Arangaya Apps? What motivated you to take it forward?

Actually at that time I studied is Singapore and Shenal was also in Singapore. We met in one of the social events for Sri Lankans. Shenal is good designer and a really humble guy, so I asked him whether he wants to join with me on this task, and he agreed.

One day, we met up at McDonalds and decided that we are going to work on this common objective. We all are having full time jobs, so this started as a kind of a hobby, something to do when you have free time. However with time it gradually turned out to be much more.

It was quite pleasing when we received good feedback from users for our initial apps like SL Radio. That plus the fact that our apps were at to the top in the Apple app store really motivated us.

Where did the name Arangaya originate from?

Arangaya is actually an endemic bird to Sri Lanka. We wanted to have a name that would be unique and related to Sri Lanka. Arangaya also sounds good for a company name.

What is your flagship product?

Definitely it’s the SLRadio app. You can check the number of downloads, we have over 150,000+ downloads. We are pretty happy and proud of that product. None of the other SL apps have this many downloads.

SL Radio

How do you run your organization?

Communication is a bit of hassle, but Shenal sleeps in odd hours so communicating with him is not a problem. However with so many communication mediums available nowadays, we somehow manage. I (Chamira) take the role of the Project Manager and take the responsibility on driving the project.

At Arangaya apps, we give a lot of emphasis on the design quality of the app.

Design prospective is one of our main concerns. We have seen some Sri Lankan apps in the appstore lacking a good designs. We make sure our apps are high quality in terms of the design and ultimate user experience.

How do you manage to put time in to Arangaya while working full time?

Actually I work for another app development company in Norway. After work there is some free time. However when I was in Singapore it was really tough, but when you have the motivation you can do thing even when it gets difficult. Due to this we don’t go out much. That is a sacrifice we have to make at these initial stages.

How many iOS/Android apps do you have?

In iOS we have 15 apps. And some of the apps are not in the store right now since they are seasonal. Like the one we did for the T20 cup, for ball by ball commentary. We currently do not have any Android apps, but they are in the pipeline.

Arangaya Products

What is your revenue model? Is Arangaya Apps still a hobby?

It is a business now. Revenue is mainly from downloads and mobile advertisements. SL Radio has ads on it, and we get revenue from that. There are advertisement free premium versions of some of our applications which brings revenue per download. SL Radio and SL Dictionary are the main apps that bring us money.

Do you develop apps for 3^rd Party clients? Will that be your future target?

We have done apps for 3^rd parties in Norway and Singapore. We want to do products for Sri Lanka and we want to have a development company in Sri Lanka soon. By the time we move back to Sri Lanka we would have our own company.

Although we will put some time for 3^rd Party Apps, we want to make the full package of apps for Sri Lankans. So we will continue to create great apps for Sri Lankans.

Are you looking at making apps for the world market?

Yes we have a plan to go Global. Currently we have apps for the Norwegian market. We want to expand our products to markets in US, UK, Japan and Australia where there is a huge potential.

grammar_police

Is your team hiring?

Yes, if there are any young developers or designers, who want to excel in this area, and if you have the right attitude and willing to work hard, contact us on support@arangaya.com . You have a chance to do cool stuff and be part of something Special.

What is your message to budding entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka?

We will summarise our message to young entrepreneurs in three words!

Passion – In order to succeed in your career you must have deep passion! Passion is your energy, It drives you where you want to be. Find your passion!

Confidence – The whole would against you and your ideas, they think you are crazy and unrealistic but trust yourself have confidence on what you do!

Commitment – Having passion and confidence wouldn’t take you where you want to be! It is ultimate commitment which would take you where you want to be. Give your full commitment! Its not easy! There would be so many occasions you feel like giving up. Never ever give up! Your hard work will be paid off.

“Arangaya Apps” is a result of Passion, Confidence and Commitment!

THE MOST USED SMARTPHONE APPS IN THE WORLD

August 12, 2013

1 Comment

1 min read

A survey done by GlobalWebIndex, shows us the top most used apps for Q2 2013. As per survey data, Google Maps tops the list as the most used app in the world with 54% usage. Goes to show that finding directions and places are the users top requirement.

The rest of the top 10 apps are a mix of social media and chat applications. Facebook, the number 1 social media comes in second with 44% usage and Youtube comes 3rd with 35% usage.

i guess most of the below app usages would apply to Sri Lankan users. However we believe WeChat and Google+ would not be in the top 10 of the local list.

So do you agree with the list? What are your most used apps?

Most used apps

Image Credits : Statista, mashable.com, theguardian.com

Introducing the WSO2 App Factory

July 18, 2013

Udara Liyanage

Apps, SW

6 Comments

5 min read

By definition WSO2 App Factory is a multi-tenant, elastic and self-service Enterprise DevOps platform that enables multiple project teams to collaboratively create, run and manage enterprise applications.

Oh! kind of confusing? Yes, as most other definitions, only a few will grab what App Factory means from the first look at its definition. If it’s explained it in simpler words, WSO2 App Factory is a Platform as a service (PAAS) which manage enterprise application development from the cradle of the application to the grave.

(Still confusing…? Figure below illustrates the move from the traditional on-premise software to cloud based services. You can see the Platform as a service in the third column.)

PAAS illustration

Unless it is a university assignment or test, every real world application development has to undergo several phases until it is ready to go live. Applications has to be designed, developed and sent to QA for testing. Then, QA has to test them rigorously before approving for production. Then the bug fixing and stabilization phase. When the software is ready, it gets deployed. Finally when the application completed its job, it is needed to be retired.

Organizations have to use a number of tools in each of the above phases. For instance, developers may be using SVN for creating code repositories, maven or ant for building the projects, JIRA for ticket tracking and various other tools for finding bugs in the application. Above tools are independent of each other which results in organizations having to put a considerable effort in deploying those tools. If you are a developer, QA manager, system administrator or a DevOps or any other stakeholder who is involved in application development, there is no doubt that you have endured the pain of above and you might be wondering “Is there one single tool which does the work of all of the above tools?”. WSO2 App Factory does exactly that. By using App Factory you gain all the support for your application development, all under one roof.

Individual building blocks of the App Factory is illustrated in the below diagram.

wso2_appfactory-topology

Diagram 1 depicts the components of the App factory. Management portal, what is the main interaction point to the system is at the center. Source code management, issue trackers and other features are accessible via the portal. When a developer created an app via the management portal, he is provided with a space in the repo , space in the build environment and a project in the issue tracker and so on. You clone from the repository you are provided into your development machine. Then develop the application with your favorite programming IDE and commit. WSO2 is planning to rollout a browser based IDE in the future to make the complete lifecycle run on the cloud. The application you are developing is continuously built in the cloud using your built tool. If automatic build is enabled, the build process will be triggered automatically when you commit. If auto deploy is enabled, the app will be deployed in the development cloud automatically after the build. Then after the development is completed, the apps will be promoted to the test cloud. This promotion will retire the apps from the development cloud and deploy them in the test cloud. QA department will test them, promote to the production or staging cloud if tests pass or demote again to the development cloud if fail. The ultimate step is to send the apps to the app store enabling users to discover the apps. The most interesting thing is, all the above tasks can be executed using a single tool via a single management portal.

wso2_appfactory-lifecycle

Features of App factory

Self-Provisioning of the workspace and resources such as code repository, issue tracking, build configuration and bug finding tools… etc.
Support a variety of application

○     Web applications
○     PHP
○     Jaxrs
○     Jaxws
○     Jaggery
○     WSO2 ESB
○     WSO2 BPEL
○     WSO2 Data services

Gather developers, QAs and DevOps of the organization to the application workspace
Automate continuous builds, continuous tests and development activities
One click solutions for branching and versioning
Deploy application into WSO2 rich middleware stack
No need to change your way of doing things

○ App factory can be configured to integrate with your existing software development life cycle.
○ Integrate with your existing users via LDAP or Microsoft Active directory

WSO2 AppFactory applications integrated

Yes, WSO2 App Factory is customizable. For instance organizations are not required to use the tools that App factory supports, they can plug in a tool of their preference. It is a matter of integrating another tool. Different organizations have different workflows, still App Factory can be configured to suit their own workflows.

In summary WSO2 App Factory is a cloud enabled DevOps PAAS for enterprise which manages the entire life cycle of an application. It leverages the application development giving enterprises a competitive advantage in the cloud.

Enough of talking, so help yourself by visiting App Factory preview in live. It is free and open source.

This article is just a bird’s eye view of the WSO2 App Factory. Visit its home page to broaden your knowledge. Good short video about the product is shown below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljtR37__jFY

Eat em all – Android Game Review

January 7, 2013

3 Comments

3 min read

In a nutshell: Strategic puzzle game with an Alien Invasion story line

Category: Games

Platform: Android

The Good: Addictive Gameplay, Cool graphics and sound, Nice story line, Free

The Bad: Not clear on star strategy

Description :

Photonfission presents Eat em all, a strategy puzzle game where you take the role of Troopie the hero and genius of Troop land. Troopland has been invaded by aliens and have laid alien eggs everywhere in the village, and it is up to Troopie to Eat all the eggs and save the village.

Eat em all Screenshots

This is a level based game, (such as Angry birds and Cut the rope) where in each level you have a puzzle which needs to be completed to move on to the next level. In each puzzle you will get alien eggs laid in lines connected by red stop points. It is up to you to navigate troopie through the lines of eggs from one stop point to another. However once you have eaten a line of eggs you cannot move through that line again. Your final goal is to eat all the eggs without being stranded on a stop point with nowhere to go.

Eat em all Screenshots

The first few levels are quite straightforward, and can be finished easily. However as you go on you will encounter challenging levels where you need a lot of thinking. You will also encounter features such as strong eggs and powers like Thunder, Grenade, Timer Explosives, Flame, and Bridge. These features make sure there is something new to keep you interested and addicted throughout the 72 levels. The 72 levels are broken down to 8 areas. Three of the areas are free, while the rest of the areas you need to purchase. The only thing we did not understand was obtaining stars which are obtained when troopie eats them. Generally the number of stars are given on how well you complete the level, but in the levels we played you get all stars if you complete the level in any manner.

Overall the game is very impressive and addictive, and by far the best Sri Lankan developed game that we have come across

The graphics and sounds are very good and have a very polished look. Overall the game is very impressive and addictive, and by far the best Sri Lankan developed game that we have come across. We recommended that you download and play the game right now. Don’t forget to rate the app and spread the word to support these talented Sri Lankan developers.

Click Here for Eat em all on Google Play store. Go ahead and eat em all!!

Jacqueline Fernandez Android Apps : Probably the first android app for a Sri Lankan actress

December 1, 2012