Finishing...

Last week, when were first evaluation presentations, we hadn't shown our presentation. We've had at least one week to improve our project and improve some functionality. Week's left and we're very closer to finish our project. What did we do last weeks?

We're working at server implementation of our project. We've used Restlet library for communication between Android application and server. It's very easy to configure and make first communication (at most two or three hundreds lines of code). We'd built JDO entity before (as we announced here) so we had to join entities together and make some controls. In Server Resources (same as controllers, in Restlet) we've used these controls to store and retrieve data from Data Store.

During testing and importing data we already tried Google limits because we overheated  limit of write operations. So we waited to next day for reset and continue to work :-)

Having server interface we're working on Android implementation. We've joined both project in Eclipse and in Android client use server interface for calling given methods. Every message is converted to/from JSON format. Using this we've had no problems with serialization and de-serialization of objects.

Against to last screenshot we've changed the color scheme. Any other team has been asked last week for dark scheme so we changed two lines in Android Manifest and use the light scheme. Which one is better?

Here are a few screenshots form actual version:

Choose user dialog

Choose university dialog

Main screen with challenges and results

During playing game

And here is our tomorrow's presentation.

Play game at tablet

Development is actually in progress. We've worked at Sudoku engine as Tomas mentioned in previous post. Having this we've implemented the first part of playing game sudoku on tablet. Choosing Google Account and dialog for choose university had been made before. We're working on server-side part too.

Sudoku generator

Hello,
I've made a progress in our app. Not in a Hello World, of course :) .

I've programmed a sudoku generator, which can generate sudoku based on difficulty (level 1 to 5, from the easiest to the hardest).

You can add or remove numbers, restart game and validate if numbers is in collision or not. This takes me several hours. Game should be solvable by humans.

Someone should test if it works right :) .

- Tomáš T.

First Tablet App!

And there it is!
Few weeks ago we've tried our first tablet application :) .
Classic Hello Word and if you fill in your name and press "Say hello!", our app will say Hello to you :) .

Start screen.











After pushing the button with empty editbox.











After filling in a name and pushing the button. Our app remember your last used name!
(btw, your first name is by default World :) ).








I've don't expected that this entire app will be so easy... programming this took me about an four hours. Now, I can do this again about four minutes :) ...

...and the best part - you can download it and try it on your own right here! Enjoy ;) .

- Tomáš T.

Competition - Menu and Options

Hello,
I've missed one important thing! In Andro and Open Sudoku there is an menu button in the bottom bar of tablet.

If you press it, you will see a little pop-up menu with six items (via screen shot). I will describe them one by one.

1) Back button - revert your previous actions.
2) Delete notes - delete all your notes.
3) Restart - play whole game from start.
4) Help - just help :) .
5) Options (will be described below).
6) Next - "Set checkpoint" and "Undo to checkpoint" - function like an ordinary save and load in most common games.

Options
Options is divided to three groups, Helpers, Fill-in Modes and Game.

Helpers
1) Wrong numbers - shows numbers that violate the rules of Sudoku.
2) Highlight complete numbers - highlights the numbers which has been filled more than 9-times
3) Show number totals - displays count of each number placed.
4) Fill-in notes - enable fill in notes menu item.

Fill-in Modes
1) Pop-up mode
2) Single Number mode
3) Numpad mode
You can enable or disable them in game.
4) More options -> Right shift - in Numpad mode, after filling a value, cell will move to the right.

Game
1) Show the time - shows the elapsed time.
2) Help in game - shows the help for quick understanding with application control.
3) Theme - there you can set the background of game table.
4) More options -> The size of border of display (some displays respond poorly to touch the edges of the screen, this should help) and Highlight the field in touch (highlight the columns and rows).

























That is all for now, thanks for reading!

- Tomáš T.

JDO - basic structure

Today, i made a basic structure of database in JDO. For begin i implemented just simple structure, for that what we need. It must be extended if we will want to add more applications. But for testing functions is better to have simple database.

I haven't implemented parts from model which supports more applications, like challenge relationship to program, user groups. At this moment user can only be a part of one university. Users cant create their own groups. In the JDO are only simple methods for adding universities and cities, and states to database. Of course there are methods for listing of data saved in the database.

Competition - two remaining apps

This is descritpion for two remaining sudokus: Sudoku from finger2finger and Sudoku Fighters from Drowning Zebra.

Both games have only one filling mode and that one is identical to NumPad mode in OpenSudoku. Both games does not react to turning the tablet to left nor right.

I will start with finger2finger Sudoku. When you start app, you will see some advertising

As you can see, this Sudoku version is vertically oriented and you can't do anything with it.

This is the main "option".














If you push up arrow button, small menu shows up where is credits, sound toggle button and some buttons for social networks.

This screenshots is showing credits - it's a endless loop of five rows text.













After pushing "Start" button, you can choose between Easy, Medium and Hard difficulty.
















The game itself look like this. It doesn't provide any possibility for notes and there are no warnings if you make some collisions.
















When you press "Pause" button, time ticking is stopped, but you can still see entire sudoku. And a small options with four buttons shows up - down arrow (return to game), rotated arrow (after click on it game crashes :) ), menu button and sound toggle button.

I dont't know why is there sound button anyway, because the game doesn't play any sounds at all.











This version acts to me simple, maybe too simple and very amateurish. Little plus for me is color.

Last tested sudoku is Sudoku Fighters from Drowning Zebra. This version of sudoku is quiet more proffesional than previous sudoku.

This is main menu, you can see it right after start.











In Option is Music and Sound toggle button (and yes, game plays both, music and/or sounds) and you can choose where do you want have keyboard (left or right).








This is "Level select" item. You can choose between one hundred generated sudokus. You can start game right from here or from main menu "Play".








Only loading screen. Music starts to play here. Loading is animated (playgroud comes to you from greater distance and starts enlarging to the final position as you can see).








This is how looks the game itself. You can see a small red dot, it represents a cursor. Each time when you fill (or unfill) a number, a sword swift sound is played. It's cool, I think :) . But maybe for some first games. This version doesn't show any warnings about collision too.






- Tomáš T.