Tuesday, January 20, 2009

MonolithAndroid 1.0.4 beta is out

It' s been almost two weeks since I released an updated version of MonolithAndroid. But now version 1.0.4 beta is out! I've corrected a few bugs and added some features but there are still some critters in there. So to sum up, here's a small changelog.

1. Switched from using media player for sound effects and music to a hybrid SoundPool / MediaPlayer implementation. Now the sounds are played using SoundPool and the music is played with MediaPlayer. Of course some problems remain. The most important problem is that the music cannot reliably be stopped.
2. Added a highscore table. Now you can find out who is the best player. The highscore table persists, so if you restart the game, your highscore is still there.
3. Added an options menu. Now you can select the type of game you want to play, the level and the difficulty. Two types of game are provided: Classic, which resembles a well known 6 letter game, and Monolith. Monolith introduces special white blocks. If you complete a line with a white block in it, the game grid evolves according to Conway's game of life. The difficulty setting enables you to choose between two settings. Normal is your meat and potatoes game. You can drag the touch screen to rotate the playfield. That may be useful practice for the expert difficulty mode. In Expert, the playfield rotates in various axes (depending on the level you currently play) so if you suffer from motion sickness do not play this mode! Ahhh, you have been warned! The level (1-10) determines the speed of the falling blocks as well as the rotation of the screen in expert mode. In the options screen you can enable/disable the music (not currently working) and the sound effects of the game. When you are happy with the game options go to OK, press right and then choose Play to start your game.
4. Changed the music format from mp3 to ogg because it reportedly causes less crashes on the MediaPlayer.
5. The program now exits if you press the back or the home button.

A bit of a warning... I do not currently own an android hardware device, because they are not available yet in Greece where I live. So if you happen to install the game on a real device I would like to hear your comments and bug reports. You can download a signed apk from http://code.google.com/p/monolithandroid/downloads/list. Choose the monolithandroid 1.0.4 beta apk. You can post your comments here, or you can use the issue tracker found on http://code.google.com/p/monolithandroid/issues/list
Here's a grainy video made from the emulator. You can almost hear me talking in the background...

2 comments:

bvinc said...

Can't you register in the android market and get a developer phone sent to you for $400?

Τάσος said...

I already did, but they don't currently ship devices to Greece.

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