Droid and Device Drivers

This weekend (it feels like I've been working a lot more on the weekend than during the week) I've been getting my computer to work with the Android development kit. Well, it doesn't actually work yet, but the good news is that I did play Germ Wars on my phone.

Gamemaker has export functionality to basically everything - HTML5, Android, iOs, Steam/Windows. This is pretty awesome, and one of the reasons we're using Gamemaker. It also has some nice debugging tools; once I get it setup, I should theoretically be able to just plug my phone into my computer, and compile the game directly from Gamemaker to my phone. Unfortunately, my computer has a lot of issues with my phone’s drivers. So I’ve way too long going through a bunch of help files and resources trying to fix my computer, which also has issues with Windows Update and other stuff...

I was able to run the game on my phone by exporting the Gamemaker file to an apk (the eventual end product that will be on Google Play), but it took a little longer than I would like. There were obviously some issues, the most prominent being the resolution of the screen is way too wide, but it actually worked pretty well. There wasn’t any noticeable lag, despite my never having optimized for the phone before. And apparently Mouse Click translates into Press on Screen automatically.

Finally, I also set myself up a ticketing system on gitHub with tasks and priorities to get them done. While I did write done some stuff for what I was going to do this week last week, I ended up being a little lost and switching gears mid-week. That's now how I'm setting the goals you see here, and hopefully it'll keep me on track and I'll always know what I should be working on. The biggest priority now is still getting android to work properly – I might give up on the drivers but I’ll still work on some of the other changes like the aspect ratio. Then a back button out of the app & to the main menu using an Android specific button. And my stretch goal is a dash feature by tapping far away from you or something.