New game from Chompgames – Word Hunt

Hi all,

I first apologise for the long break from blogging. Yes, the last quarter has been busy as an evangelist at Nokia. Recently out of my love for Flash, I re-skinned one of my old keypad games and published it to the Ovi Store. It’s currently available for Free – limited period.

Word Hunt is a keypad version of my own popular game, Happy Sun. Happy Sun made enormous amounts of downloads on the Ovi Store. The game is basically jumbling letters to make meaningful words. You can also request for clues.

Blackberry, Playbook, Flash, AIR….etc.,

I have been quite busy over the last 1 month that I couldn’t spare sometime on blogging. The reason can be attributed to a lot of things

1. Rapid innovations and new toolkits in the Flash platform.

2. The new Nokia Microsoft deal

3. Cricket World Cup  😉

There are a lot of good reasons to develop for the Playbook. One is that, all SWFs that run on the computer / web can be wrapped into an application seamlessly. And Playbook’s hardware and initial showcases have been impressive. The device seems solid. Blackberry has been encouraging developers to code for their platform and have been offering a free playbook upon a successful submission. Blackberry understands that apps in the marketplace are essential for the success of a platform. And to overtake Apple’s iPad, they need to have a launch with a marketplace ready with diversified content. One also has to remember that Playbook is equivalent to iPad 2’s hardware (has dual cameras) and is hence not behind in the race.

Anyways, so I created an app for the Playbook that can be used to watch TED videos. I used the TED RSS and it’s published for free. In future, I will be adding newer features to it. Previously, there were loose ends in the process of testing and signing the content for the Playbook. The toolchain has been improving and we are now seeing more blogs writing about it (one is this by Hemanth). Adobe will shortly be releasing a more streamlined process for development. Additionally, Blackberry was taking quite some time to give any response on the submission of apps. It took me 30+ days for the TED app to get approved. Now the approval times have been drastically reduced to nearly 1 week only. Since, my content has been approved I will be receiving a Playbook after its launch. I shall later attach screenshots of my app.

I must also say about 2 things that has not been highlighted adequately

1. There is a package of UI, media and other components that have been designed and developed by Adobe + Blackberry to suit the Playbook and  the QNX platform. It is better to use these components when targeting the playbook.

2. The community at Blackberry developer site is hyper brisk. I think there are people answering queries with sleepless nights ! You generally get answers in less than 20 mins time. I used these, when I had initial difficulty with signing and packaging and found them to be really useful.

With Nokia going into deals with Micrsoft, it means that Flash Lite’s future in diminishing. Symbian had good support for Flash Lite. But I do believe that Flash Lite is a good platform to target the millions of devices that are today in the market and more that will continue to ship over the next few years. My latest game on the Ovi store, HAPPY SUN has been doing very well. It is also being featured by the Ovi store. Being a Forum Nokia Champion and an avid Flash enthusiast, I hope that Flash soon makes its way into WP7.

I am also attending the Adobe Refresh Singapore event tomorrow. Really hoping to catch up with dev friends.

New Flash Lite game – Happy Sun

My latest Flash Lite game HAPPY SUN is out on the Ovi store. Its available for all touch phones including the S60 5th edition and Nokia S^3 phones. You can download it for free from the Ovi store. Here are some screenshots of the game … Its a very exciting word game and created after working closely with Mellisdesigns.

Forum Nokia Game Development Webinars…!!

Forum Nokia is arranging two webinars shortly on Game development.

Events are on Dec 8th and Dec 13th. Find the registration procedures at http://www.forum.nokia.com/News_and_events/.

Information as follows –

Developing Games for the Nokia N8  If you are a Game developer and would like to learn more about the Nokia Games offering then session is for you. In this session developers will learn about developing their application on Nokia platforms such as S40 and Symbian while understanding which technology should be used for getting the application developed. Optimize OpenGL ES 2.0 Apps for Symbian This session is geared toward developers who already have their mobile game or application running with OpenGL ES 2.0 API on an existing platform and want to port it to the latest Nokia Symbian devices, such as the Nokia N8. After this session, developers will understand how the graphics hardware works within the new Symbian platform and will be able to fine tune their applications to get them up and running flawlessly.

My interview with Nokiadevs

I had the opportunity to be interviewed by Nokiadevs.com last week. You can now read it here.

In this post, I talk about my journey as a Flash Lite developer and developing on Nokia handsets. I also talk on my Flash Lite game Deep Days and some apps I created using Ovi AppWizard. Hope you like it.

N8, CS5, FL4 And Possibilities Around Them!!!!

The last few months have been very tight schedules for me and left quite a few announcements unrelayed. Nokia launched its first Symbian 3 phone N8. Boasting as the first 12 Megapixel camera embedded, multi-touch supporting device, I think it is one more step forward in bringing greater digital experiences to the hand.

Quite in the same time, Adobe launched CS5 toolkit. This release is viewed as an important leap-ahead in creating homogeneous multi-platform experiences. CS5 facilitates the publishing of Flash content in Flash Player 10.1 versions and in Flash Lite 4. This means AS3 is a viable programming platform for the smartphones. In addition, Device Central CS5 provides ways to emulate physical changes like orientation and provides API to access accelerometer, location etc.

The Nokia N8 is the first Nokia devices to be shipped with Flash Lite 4.0 (Read more). And hence, coming to look of it, Flash developers in the Nokia circuit have new waters to test, experiment and develop with.

Thoughts –

• With all the buzz surrounding Flash Player 10.1 on devices, Adobe has not quite spoken on Flash Lite 4.
• Since we haven’t seen much on Nokia N8, Flash Lite 4’s performance is still unknown on it.
• Earlier S60 phones like 5800, N97 etc had troubles accessing the lower device features like Accelerometer and other sensors. Though external packages were available, they were not found to be stable.
• Will AIR come (at any delayed point in time) for Symbian devices (though very much in the roadmap) ? Since Flash Lite 4 has been ported for the Symbian 3 device, an AIR runtime shouldn’t take a long time is my personal opinion.

Also, recently I have released a web-app for Bollywood news. Also featured are tweets from Bollywood superstars. Go ahead and download it from the Ovi store.

Adobe Presenting At NDC, Bangalore

As most of you would be knowing the Nokia Developer Conference 2009 is taking place this December 7, 2009 at Taj Residency, Bangalore. 
And what makes this special is that, Adobe would be presenting at the event and showcase some of their technologies.  Hence this becomes a great opportunity for anybody in the world of Flash Lite to interact with engineers at Adobe and Nokia, face to face.

If you are member of IndiMad ( Adobe Indian Mobile and Devices User group ), you get a 20 % off on the entry to the event.  In order to avail this offer, shoot a mail to Mariam – owner of igamestudio .

Now, Nokia HealthRadar Chasing Disease Down Thru Flashlite…….

Nokia  has designed an application in Flashlite for the tracking of disease using mobile devices here.

1.  Important feature of the software’s ability is data collection. Rapid and precise collection of information, which is then sent instantly to a central server, speeds up what is currently a time-consuming paper-based activity.
2. Actual aggregation of the data which helps to build a picture of what’s happening and where.
3. Getting the information back to local practitioners, as it then enables them to take appropriate action. What marks HealthRadar out further is the ability to consume the data either on a mobile device or a PC, so the gathered data is useful to people in the field and those based in medical centres.

The software also features a Dashboard which enables users to quickly access key information including a daily update, a GeoHealth Map which highlights disease intensity alongside local health centres, the ability to compare current patterns against historic ones and statistical graphs.

Adobe Unveils First Full Flash Player For Mobile Devices And PCs

Today, Adobe Unveiled First Full Flash Player For Mobile Devices And PCs.  Close to 50 Open Screen Project Participants Support New Browser Runtime for Multiple Platforms.

Adobe unveiled Adobe® Flash® Player 10.1 software for smartphones, smartbooks, netbooks, PCs and other Internet-connected devices, allowing content created using the Adobe Flash Platform to reach users wherever they are. A public developer beta of the browser-based runtime is expected to be available for Windows® Mobile, Palm® webOS and desktop operating systems including Windows, Macintosh and Linux later this year. Public betas for Google® Android™ and Symbian® OS are expected to be available in early 2010. In addition, Adobe and RIM announced a joint collaboration to bring Flash Player to Blackberry® smartphones, and Google joined close to 50 other industry players in the Open Screen Project initiative.

Rest of the post here.

Adobe Device Central CS4 Device Profile Update #5 Now Available Online….

Mark Doherty has written blogpost here on Device Profile Update 5 for Device Central CS4 which is now available for download. This latest device update for Device Central CS4 contains 36 new and some updated profiles bringing the total number of supported devices to 738. 

Here’s an overview of the new profiles:

• DoCoMo Fujitsu F-08A
• DoCoMo Fujitsu F-09A
• DoCoMo NEC N-07A
• DoCoMo NEC N-08A
• DoCoMo NEC N-09A
• DoCoMo Panasonic P-08A
• DoCoMo Panasonic P-09A
• DoCoMo Panasonic P-10A
• DoCoMo Sharp SH-05A
• DoCoMo Sharp SH-06A
• DoCoMo Sharp SH-07A
• HTC Hero for testing flash in the browser
• KDDI Hitachi HIY01
• KDDI Kyocera KYX02
• KDDI Sharp SH002
• KDDI Toshiba TS002
• KDDI Toshiba TSY01
• Nokia 5530 XpressMusic
• Nokia 5630 XpressMusic
• Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Flash Lite 3.1
• Nokia E52
• Nokia N86 8MP
• Nokia N97
• Samsung I8910 HD
• SoftBank NEC 930N
• SoftBank Panasonic 931P
• SoftBank Samsung 931SC
• SoftBank Sharp 934SH
• SoftBank Sharp 935SH
• SoftBank Sharp DM004SH
• SoftBank Toshiba 832T
• Sony Ericsson C901 GreenHeart
• Sony Ericsson C901a GreenHeart
• Sony Ericsson T707
• Sony Ericsson T707a
• Sony Ericsson W518a

 All new device profiles would be available through the Online Device Library in Adobe Device Central CS4.  You can check the complete set of devices here.