A quick status update...
I've come to the conclusion that my technical issues last month were caused by some sort of problem with AT&T's local cell towers, not that I could ever get anyone there to admit it. By the time I worked through all Nine Circles of AT&T Tech Support, network positioning quite arbitrarily began working for me again.
I'm still working on the latest revisions to the Tronique Clock Widget, involving skin support. I'm also trying to create skins that will look good on light backgrounds, which isn't an easy task, given my lack of artistic ability, and the fact that the Tron: Legacy look doesn't really lend itself to glowing colored lines on lighter backgrounds.
"But, dude!", you object, "Flynn's apartment was all white! The Sirens' costumes were predominantly white!"
To which I say, yes, but the glow effect for those environments and characters was rather washed out. And even though Flynn's robes, or the Sirens' costumes were technically white, they effectively transformed into a shade of grey when subjected to environmental lighting and shadows and such, which provided a better contrast for whatever glow effect was in use.
For the most part, the movie's design artists put the iconic glow colors (blue, red, orange, and yellow) against a darker background (Sam and Quorra's suits, for instance) because it allows the colors to stand out more.
In any case, I think I've finally gotten these design issues licked. There are still a few bugs involved with the skin functionality that I have a pretty good handle on how to kill, and one end-user wrote in to describe some problems he's experiencing with weather updates in Korea (as well as some layout issues with the Motorola Atrix MB861).
But progress IS being made on a new release. Be patient. It'll be worth it.
With so much drama in AT&T, it's kind of hard being Snoop Dee-Oh-Double-Gee...
Bah! For the last two weeks (give or take) my HTC Aria has been spazzing out when it comes to network-based positioning. NOTHING is working: my Tronique Clock Widget, Yelp, Google Maps... none of it.
For most of that time, I saw the symptoms manifest themselves in my widget, and assumed there was a bug I had to kill. Only today did I come to the realization that whatever it is, it's more systematic.
I'm thinking it has something to do with all the over-the-air updates AT&T has been making as of late. I know there was a security patch and an official Froyo update, at least. And with my <ahem> rooted and modded phone, I would've missed anything else they slipped in.
Time to grab myself a new (and more updated) mod build, I guess. I hear Cyanogen is nice.
Skin that smokewagon, and see what happens!
In addition to the new color schemes for my Tronique Clock widget, I'm also working on interface-skinning functionality.
The widget will continue to ship with the same four default colors that it currently does (tweaked to be more authentic) but I also intend to release a number of free .apk files through the Android Market, which will give you additional coloration and design options.
Some of these skins will include a "background glow" effect. This is the very same functionality that one of the widget's end-users is currently penalizing me for in the Android Market. Happy, now?
Overall, I think this approach is the best one to take. Not everybody is going to want or need additional colors and designs, and even if they do, they're probably not likely to want ALL of the colors I intend to offer. This approach allows me to keep the widget from eating up too much of your device's memory, while still providing a modicum of design flexibility.
I'm a Rainbow... Todaaaay!
I swear I had no idea who Kira Willey was, until my daughter's ballet school decided that she'd be dancing to 'Colors' in this year's dance recital.
I tell you this not to disclose some deeply closeted love for Lilith Fair and the Lifetime television network, but rather, to segue into a discussion of some changes that I'm considering for my Tronique Clock widget.
I recently found a web site which discusses Tron: Legacy's costume designs, and one of the more relevant passages from the article, describes the tape that they used to give each costume its glow effect. Turns out, this stuff was made by a company called Light Tape UK, which ever-so-handily provides a color chart for the range of tape colors it produces.
Taken with the list of colors that were actually used in the movie (mentioned in the first article), I intend to tweak the color palette on my widget, so it's a little more authentic. Right now, it's just using primary colors, which I didn't realize were completely wrong, until I stopped looking at Olivia Wilde's ass*, and started looking at all the design work going on in the movie.
*Hey, baby. You know Olivia Wilde's on my 'list'. Don't be like that. Sure, I'm attracted to her... but I married you, right? Riiight? That's right.
No, I will not be your bitch for 99 cents (An App Store Developer's Rant)
One of the things that first struck me as I began developing for the Android was that I would not become rich by casually developing software that goes for less than five dollars a pop. Angry Birds is a rarity: the word-of-mouth hit that seemed to tap into everyones' subconscious at the same level. And unless you care to pump out a large number of cheap, easily reproducible crap like some of the Korean app factories (slide puzzles with stolen/copyrighted images, trivia apps, etc.) you're not going to hit any sales records by going for quantity, either.
I blame Steve Jobs. Because nothing sells like controversy. And because it also happens to be true: On the tenth day Our Turtlenecked Lord proclaimed, "Let there be ninety-nine cent apps." and His Will was done.
People seem to forget that pre-Apple App Store, indie software developers were doing just fine on the Internet, setting their own prices, and managing their own sales. And even with early PC app stores (like Steam) the prices were at least "in the ballpark" of retail software.
It's true: I speak mostly of PC games. And it's also true: Phone apps don't typically have all the bells and whistles of their PC brethren, nor are their users quite as likely to sit down for three or four hour sessions with said software. But times are certainly changing.
Now we have PC app stores, that seem to want to set the market prices at the same level where the phone app stores are. The advent of the tablet has created a piece of equipment that invites users to spend three or four hours with it, to the point where laptop sales are down. And end-user expectations, always rather lofty in the first place, are practically shooting for the moon.
This rant comes about because of an encounter with one such user. If you poke around the Robot Commission web site at all, you can't escape the fact that this is my hobby. If I make a few bucks on the side from it, great. If not, I hate you all with the intensity of a hungry lion on a piece of prime rib, but that's okay too. It's not really my intention to complain about App Store prices, because I was well aware of them before I started this venture, and yet I still decided to pursue it.
My bone of contention is in the fact that I should jump to attention for your ninety-nine cents sans Google's cut off the top, as this one user suggested.
His rating of my Tronique Clock Widget started at four stars. And a mere month into its release, because I didn't yet implement a feature that HE wanted (which I was and still am considering, once I knock out the bugs) he dropped his rating to two stars.
I take every user suggestion seriously. If it helps make my software better, I'm all for it! But crack that whip all you want: I move when I'm ready to move. Decrease your rating, and my resolve to work on your problem decreases right along with it. Reduce my (already weak) income on a given piece of software, turn off potential buyers, and the impetus to add new features to that piece of software will dry right up. Why would I want to focus on adding extra features to something that isn't generating any sales or interest? It makes no sense.
Bottom line: if wealth was my sole motivating factor, I'd do more professional software work. My employer bills me out at $100 an hour. If I set that rate on all the hours spent developing the Tronique Clock Widget, then it's a foregone conclusion that I'll never break even on it, let alone turn a profit. But that's not WHY I developed it. I did it because it was fun, because it was a learning experience, and because it was something that I wanted on my own phone, and felt others might like on their phones.
Any income I see is primarily fun money, but also a way of "keeping score" as it were. And if my score's not going anywhere, then I'll move right on to the next project that interests me. I've already started to do this with the Ouroboros game I mentioned in my last post.
So keep that in mind before you start playing 'ratings games': this is my hobby, and negative encounters with customers harboring delusions of entitlement will just drive me to other projects that much faster.
