Monday, August 30, 2010

Our First Android Project Is a Game!!

snapshot #1 of All Lights Up in Android Market

snapshot #2 of All Lights Up in Android Market

Friend's son - Jonathan who's still in college wanted to learn some programming during his summer vacation, I gave him a Droid and Android SDK to play around. He never wrote Java before, and now.. after two months hard work, our first Android baby comes to the world! If you have an Android please don't forget to download it and give him some comments, just remember this came from a boy who didn't know how to write program two months ago! The challenges of the project was not only to get to know the UI of Android but to find a good algorithm to help player to solve the game if they click at "Hint" key. 
the opening screen
the menu screen
one of the 5x5 game screenshot
high-scores listing


The game can play on any Android device without internet connection, however, if you want to download more games, or see the high scores or upload your high scores then the internet connection is required. I have managed to implement the service from Google App Engine(GAE), it handles the service calls from the Android devices and keep all upload games and users' uploaded high scores. A web-based administration portal is offered to manage all games contents, upload activities and users preferences, this is done by GAE and Dojo JavaScript library.
activities management page


games management page