AirConsole Game develoment - Control with Sprites? - android

Im working on building my own game for AirConsole. I am using Unity, have imported all relevant assets and have begun my project.
So basically what I want is two different sprites to show up on the users controller depending on if they have not touched the screen, or have swiped up on the screen and are holding. So far all my research has showed very basic controllers with just buttons. Is this even possible?

Yes that's absolutely possible.
The controllers are written in HTML. Javascript and CSS are supported. So anything you can do in a mobile browser can be done in an AirConsole controller.

Related

Android equivalent framework to Apple SpriteKit

I'm actually building an IOS app with a Tab Navigation.
These Tabs mainly contains lists and tables (like a business app), except one which host a SpriteKit view controller with a "mini 2D game" (Single Scene, One background image and multiple small animated images who respond to gesture).
In the future I want to be able to port my app to Android with a native solution :
Rewriting the business part of the app in Kotlin, is Ok
Creating UI views with lists and tables, is Ok
Creating a 2D scene and displaying a 2D scene in a controller, fail ...
Does Android have an engine like that ?
Does somebody have an idea or one alternative to the SpriteKit/SceneKit view controller in Android ?
[EDIT]
My idea is not to convert the SpriteKit scene to display it in android, but to find a way to build the same app from scratch in android.
What would be the best way to go if I had to create a simple 2D scene (with simple animations and gesture control) and to display it in the rest of my android "business app" ?
Thanks,

Android Page Flipping pedals

How does one design an app to work with the page flipping footing pedals for reading pages/pdfs and how does one tell an app from another app to change the "page"? I'm looking at making some apps to do some stuff like foot controlling pdf page changes(page up, etc) and other things and would like
What I am talking about is simply being able to have hands free reading and need either design an app that accepts wireless/remote page flipping and/or interact with another app.
Does android support some simple interface too allow this, and if so, where can I find some more info on it? (there are BT pedals that supposedly work well for this and I want to know how this is done on by the app side and the pedal side)
Thanks.

Can you detect with jQuery (or anything, but C++) if the volume button is pressed?

I doubt it is, but is it possible to detect if the volume button is pressed, by jQuery or any of the web languages?
I want to do some basic user testing, to investigate by which way it's best to call a certain function; either a gesture or a hardware button. I't not a problem to call a function based on a touch gesture, but calling a function based on pressing a hardware button is a bit more difficult.
As I got both an Android phone and iPhone here, it doesn't matter if it only works on one of both devices.
Since I can't write C++, this language isn't an option. Even though this language does support hardware button detection
What I want to create
It's the most basic version of a test: I want to see by which way people would like to switch from round to squared display.
There is a simple round object in the center and it should transform to a square, based on any of the following gestures: A hardware button press (volume), pinch, pinch-out, 4-finger pinch out, 2 finger swipe down.
Short answer:
If you're running this in a mobile browser (e.g. Safari or Chrome), you don't have access to the volume buttons.
Explanation:
JQuery relies on JavaScript which relies on a browser, webview (for native apps), or a node.js server (irrelevant for you). Webviews tend to be like a browser but with fewer features. The main browsers out there do not provide access to the volume buttons. Therefore, jQuery isn't going to solve this for you.
Solution:
You're going to need a native app if you really want to use the volume buttons. On Android, apps are written in Kotlin (based on Java). On iOS, they're written in Swift (or Objective-C). If you know only one or none of those languages, there are cross-platform tools that'll let you write the app once and deploy to both platforms. Depending on the level of control you want, you could use a tool that provides a unified framework or go for a fancy drag-and-drop builder. There are TONS of options out there.
Extra:
Looking at your history, it seems like you're a "web" guy. If you just want to use jQuery/JavaScript for the convenience, you could create a simple native app that basically does just two things: 1) Load your webapp, and 2) Provide an API to the webapp for accessing the volume buttons. This topic will get you moving in that direction: Calling android native APIs from javascript functions of embedded WebView
I encourage other web folks to hack around a little on mobile platforms. You never know when a base level understanding could come in handy.

Is it possible to tell whether a compiled Android app is using a WebView?

For instance, I want to know what part of the Netflix android app is implemented using a WebView, because I'd like to do something similar (the way the rows and columns of movie thumbnails scroll horizontally and vertically) and want to know if it is even possible using a WebView.
One thing I have done is turned on some of the developer tools on my device, such as the one that draws rectangles around all the views. I can see that the Netflix app just seems to have one main view, with no internal views. But that doesn't necessarily mean it is a WebView.
You can use uiautomatorviewer to inspect the UI of a running production app on a device, to see what widgets it uses and where they are located on-screen.

What's the android design pattern for multiple pages?

I'm working on an android app that has a section that feels like an iPhone home screen. There's a bunch of pages that are essentially displaying the same data in different configurations and users should be able to quickly move between them. Generally there won't be more than 4 or 5 pages.
I could just replicate the experience with the iPhone home screen with multiple dots on the bottom of the page, but that doesn't feel very android-friendly. What's the design pattern in android for viewing and interacting with this type of view? I know the android home screen has a variant with dots, but I've never seen it used within an app.
Screenshots or links to existing apps would be great.
The stock Android launcher has left/right paging behavior on the home screen, and it's open source.
This is the Workspace class. Pay special attention to the onTouchEvent and onInterceptTouchEvent methods. The utility classes Scroller and VelocityTracker are used together to define the behavior for snapping to a page when the user lets go from a drag.
https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Launcher2/+/master/src/com/android/launcher2/Workspace.java
Hootsuite uses this design pattern and it works well in my opinion. I don't think it affects the user experience on Android in a negative way. I find that the biggest problem with people porting iPhone applications to Android is the fact that they try to port every single design pattern over. I don't think what you're trying to implement will be an issue.

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