Android Game Untitled Week Five

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Gameplay is the most important thing in the game. I have played lots of games, from physic to mental, from paper to video. Finally, I will create my own game, so exciting. And then, so frustrating.

Designing a game is not as easy as playing it, I know that before, but it’s more difficult than I imagined. I spent some time to learn basic concepts about game design like game, play. I thought I had some ideas of game design.

Game is an interactive system, and also is a complicated system like the reality. The distinction between boring reality and funny game is game has clear rules and targets and always give feedback to player. A good game in my mind should be neat, don’t have too many factors lead to complexity nor few factors lead to boring.

Because my target platform is mobile phone with touch screen, the control system is also my focus.

Free DiskGenius

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This is not a post about pirate software, just relax. DiskGenius is a great disk recovery software on Windows made by Chinese programmer Dahai Li. The English edition is not cheap, it would cost you $69.95. Of course it worth the money, data is priceless. However, there’s a free edition for Chinese customer, mainly because Chinese are not used to buy digital stuff. If you know Chinese, maybe you can try the Chinese edition to save your purse.

WARNING : IF YOU HAVE NO IDEA OF CHINESE, YOU SHOULD BOUGHT THE ENGLISH EDITION, OR YOUR VALUABLE DATA MAY LOST BY MISOPERATION.

Android Game Untitled Week Four

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How fast the time is. Actually this week I only spend 2 or 3 days on the project.

I simplified the role creation module. Before that I should wrote a create method for every role class. These classes all inherited from a abstract class, they have different name, and I should call corresponding constructor. The classes I would constructed is saved in a XML file with their names. So I use reflection to construct them with their class name in runtime. Although it would affect the efficiency, considered the mess I wrote for the classes, I can sacrifice some efficiency.

Another work I did was making the main game loop, now we can call it a game not a prototype. Karen made some draft of graphic assets, seems like she is already on the way.

Some Background of Dream Home

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Dream Home is a movie directed by Ho-Cheung Pang. This cult film told us a story of a normal woman did some crazy things for the apartment she dreamed of.

Actually the reality is crazier than the film. Since 1994, the system of dividing taxes lead most tax to the central government of China. Local government have more responsibilities but less money to spend. Some provinces found that they can lend the land to land agent for big profit. Because land in China belongs to Chinese people, so the government can not sell it but lend it. There are people live on the land would be lent. If some family don’t want to move to other place, it’s easy to solve it, as you can see in the movie. The officers and agents hire mobs to force the people move. Self-burning cases happened sometimes.

The Chinese housing price is very high. How high it is? For example, Google spent $1.9 billion bought new office in New York, it’s $6600 per square. And the housing price near second ring of Beijing is almost the same. The average annual salary of Beijing citizen is about $7000 and I think the number of New York is more than that.

There’s circle in Chinese society, government lent the people’s land to business men, business men built apartment and sold them to the people. People spent all the money their family have, from grandparents to parents, and also lent big money they should repay with their whole life from bank. The master of the land became the slave of it, the humble servant of the country stole everything of it. That’s the real story of the Chinese dream home.

Not Everyone Want To Make Big Money

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This is not another story about a saint gave up fortune and did some meaning things, like helping children in developing country or save some wild life close to extinction. I want to talk about greedy.

I met many people, they complain of everything. Their job, family, girlfriend and social status are not what they want, they always said if big money can help them to do something they can’t do right now. At first, I take their complaint to the symbol of ambitious,  I thought they want do something big to change. And I found I was wrong, they love spending big money instead of making it, that means they want reap without sowing.

Making big money always accompanied with some risk. Only brave man dare to take the challenge. Most people said they want want to make big money just means they want to enjoy the experience of spending money. They just want the result not the process, so they deserved to complain.

Android Game Untitled Week Three

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This weekly report is a little late, my weekends are busier than weekdays, can you belivie that?

Last week I refactored many classes, most of them are related to Scene and Role, now I have factory class to build them. There’s some sprite in my game can change their size, not scale themselves but looks like openging a scroll. I implement this feature with changing the region size I applied to the texture. Although it doesn’t support circle, it’s good for me right now.

I also add real contact handler and a boundary. I found a JVM crash after colliding many times, I’m not sure whether my fault or something wrong else where. I will put it to debug period to handle.

What will you do if you have a chance to begin another life style

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In China, there are three important thing for one woman. One is be born in a good family, Second is marry a good man, Third is have a very filial son/daughter. So in my age, 26 years old,  I can’t get back to my Mon’s womb and pray to birth in a good family. And I also have no idea whether I will give birth to a super star children. And so, it seems i need to marry a good man as soon as possible.

Ah~ you may guess that from the title of this page, i might explain something about the “another life style” is the “marriage life”.  No~no~no, my word here is totally not relate to the marriage.

In my childhood, I dream to be an artist. It’s seem the artist is always living in a fantasy without thinking about how to cook for lunch or seeing the mean face of the superior. They can paint a world which is not so real to our human being but it seems touch another mysterious world.  But when I grows up, life makes me live on an totally different life, it’s not so easy as I need struggle every step in this society. 4 years ago, the first year I begin the work, my salary is 960 RMB/per Month in the 5 star hotel sales department, can you believe that? Yes, it’s real, and I nearly spend all my money when I went back home for the Chinese New Year.  I have to get up at 6 am in the morning, and eat as much as possible in the hotel because it’s free. I live in a house which is belong to my relatives, it’s good as it’s in the University. It’s really very hard, and I began to thinking about why I lived such a poor life while so many people can sleep happily and sweetly  in  1080-1888 RMB/ROOM/Night. It did make me think a lot and what I insisted to do  was to kept on reciting the English word during the low season. I know there must a way to change the life and I want that so much. Though it’s not so distingue reason but I did real want to change the life and then I meet a chance to work in NAVO.

NAVO is a small company, and when I first came here 4 years ago, I even doubted I made  awful  choice. But the busy work gradually stuffed all my time, I became love the office and feel like it’s my home. I was set free in this field and  i’m very much suitable for this. The English department from zero till now has 5 people and stil expand, it’s a good sign that I make a very good choice. But if I’m not good at English or have a full consideration in life, even this chance can’t come to me, I also can’t make it.  

For now, I can live a better life in Chengdu and now what I do is just keep on running the same style advernture tour in China. Someone told me that I’m do a very meaningful job and I should be happy and satisfied with that. However, I know that I have already prove my ability to earn a better life, the next thing is to change to another life style. Finally, i back to my Title ” What will you do if you have chance to begin another life style”

So what will you do? Here i share some of the idea in my mind. Imagine you are now in a desert oasis, there has food, you don’t have to worry about how to live. But it just you there, no one else. It’s a disaster for the normal people when you get use to switch the mobile phone and computer and have a cup of coffee and tea in the office. You might cry or curse the fate whicle you still eat the food God favor to you.  Then day after day, you seems get use to this simple life, and you may scare the outside life might comes to you. Take it easy, this chance have rare possibility come to you. It’s the same when you get into jail and once let you out, you will lost your direction.

Now above is talking about compulsive matter and you will not take it as a chance. But it’s do real the chance, at least, we can call it possibility of another life style.  People always complain about the life they lived and after that, nothing~ so they always say, they have no change to begin another life style. Or if they begin to thing, the precondition is they win the lottery and become a millionaire. Yes, i do have the same day dream but now it fade as I know it’s not possible in China. Here i want to say is, there are many chance that you can begin another life style, it depends on what you will do. So i think the main things here is what will you do but not the ” if you have  a chance” . The chance is always depends on what you will do, so please think about whether you want to bring you life good or bad of your favor.

Now i want to back to my childhood dream, that is become an artist . This artist is defined by myself, I will paint what pleausre me.  And I believe what i’m doing now will give me many chance to begin another life style which i can’t imaine before, and that’s the the key point. Mysterious world is full of unknow things and I’m very glad to step into that area.

Android Game Untitled Week Two

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Well, another week passed, how fast the time is. The LibGdx engine has another awesome feature I forgot on last post, and this is most important feature besides  the speed. LibGdx allows you programs on desktop and debug it, and later run it on Android only need change several lines of code. That’s really speed up my development.

This week I add sprite animation function which LibGdx not support it. And some physic manager class to associate Box2D body with my sprite, and because Box2D not support radial gravity so I made my own with apply force to body.

Beside the programming stuff, Karen is watching the Painter tutorial video, beginning pain with her. I made a draft of  the game play and some basic idea of the background music. A lot of stuff need to do, fortunately I enjoy it.

Calibre Makes My Kindle Fly

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I just bought a Kindle 3. The horrible moving house experience on 1st January makes me so desperate for the paper books. I love reading, and I bought many books. I don’t know how heavy they are until I moved house. I have to say holding a paper book and smell the ink perfume is really good, but after years finding the paper yellowed and have no room for them is also a nightmare to me. So I want a book need not too much space and never went old. At the same time I can search the part in it and make notes on it don’t worry my ugly handwriting dirty the books. Kindle seems like the best choice.

I can read pdf on Kindle 3, that’s very convenience. However the text size is so small, I have tried many ways to make pdf has better reading experience on my Kindle and none of them works very well. Finally, I found Calibre, a free software who dedicated to eBook stuff on all platform. I can use it directly on my Ubuntu, and convert the pdf to mobi or other eBook type, then send to my Kindle. The whole process only need one button push. Calibre saves me a lot of time, makes me loves my Kindle much more. :-)