Wednesday, August 29, 2012

I'm going 3D!!!

My next live wallpaper will be 3D. Its style is going to be largely inspired by Animal Crossing - one of my favorite games back in the day. I'm making all the 3D models myself in Blender - but I'm forced to use the 2.49 version since 2.5+'s md2 exporting is terrible and won't show textures.

I'm also continuing to use Rajawali, since I can easily use openGL 2.0 . I'm somewhat more familiar with it than libgdx for openGL 2.0, which I've only used for openGL 1.x. This may still change since I'm still in the process of experimenting and playing with models. We shall see..

I'm also not being very productive this week on the Android front, since I have like 50 bajillion skating dresses to finish in the next two weeks. When it rains, it pours.

-Kimmy

Friday, August 24, 2012

JUST KIDDING!

I'm not actually sure what I'm going to use. Still exploring Rajawali, since it worked really well for my last few wallpapers.

I guess I'll have to decide soon, since I don't have too much time to spend cause of all the dress orders I have to complete this next week.

Back to libgdx for my next live wallpaper!

Welp, I decided to move on from shaders for now after bonking my head on the keyboard a lot this morning. Now I want to make some sort of cute little live wallpaper with 3d models! Since I'm most comfortable with GDX, I decided that I'll be using it. I'm also going back to using my custom preference screen, because I have much more control over it (even if it does take a bit more work to configure)

Anyways, I'm excited. I've made my own 3d models in the past and I'm looking forward to making some more. There's a buncha little blocky guys in the near future!

-Kim

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Liquidity Live Wallpaper available!

Yay! I've completed another live wallpaper in my "shader" series. It's called Liquidity! I can't help myself, I love these things!



It's basically some magical goopy goodness that moves around on your screen. Now that I've got my base for shader wallpapers down, the real challenge is coming up with more interesting shaders!! I think I'm running out and will have to change my theme soon. Booo :(

Here are a ton of cool screenshots of it, and of course the QR Codes. It won't be up on Google play for a few hours though.
QRCode 
QRCode





Once again working on another live wallpaper..

Hey, whats new? Haha. Another live wallpaper, that's what! Soon I'll be releasing Liquidity, which is pretty cool! More details soon.. but for now, I'm going to figure out how to put instagram and twitter on my blog, because it's COOL and HIP.

-Kimmy

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Kaleidoscope Live Wallpaper released!



Yay! After a lot of tinkering, I've finished my 3rd live wallpaper, it is called Kaleidoscope Live Wallpaper.

I've just submitted it to the google play store, so it should be available within the next couple of hours. Download the free version! You've got nothing to lose :-) Also please tell your friends if you love it! (Unless they have iPhones, then just laugh in their faces! Ha HA Ha!)

Here are some screenies:





QR Code to Lite Version

QRCode

QR Code to Full Version

QRCode

Monday, August 20, 2012

Still working on Kaleidoscope Live Wallpaper..

I am very picky with how it should look, so I'm STILL working on the textures for it. Unfortunately I didn't get a whole lot of time to work on it this weekend because I had to go to a wedding out of town. Then the next day I was badly hungover to the point that I couldn't even look at a computer screen without feeling like I might be ill... a wedding done right I must say :-)

I'm hoping to actually finish it in the next day or two, since I just finished all my rush order figure skating dresses. After that.. I want to make a watercolor live wallpaper! I have a long list of cool wallpapers that I want to make. I think eventually I will release a mega pack with all of my shader settings in one, but that will be a while from now since I am really busy. (Did I mention that I'm also writing a novel? There really aren't enough hours in a day)


Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Trials, Tribulations, Kaleidoscope, and Dresses, GW2

Aghh!

So I'm still working on my Kaleidoscope LWP and it's going somewhat well. I just keep having to tweek my vertex shader. I'm also struggling to find the perfect textures to use. I'll probably end up making them all myself which will delay release ~.~. It's the only way I can think to get things exactly how I'd like them.

I'm also getting swamped with orders for custom figure skating dresses. It's my primary source of income while I try to get my android stuff going. I've been making these things for about 6 years now, and let me tell you it really doesn't get any easier - especially when you custom dye EVERYTHING. There is a lot that can go wrong with dye. Ha Ha... But it's also a good thing that I'm getting swamped, because it means I can eat real food this month aka not ramen!

Then, this morning I discovered my guild from World of Warcraft has a bunch of people who are going to be playing Guild Wars 2. Originally, I wasn't going to play it because I thought it might get boring real quickly, but now I think I will just for the social aspect. I miss my gamer friends! It's going to be great fun - I'll play one of those little animal people. So cute... !

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Making my apps under a new name...

I decided to change my app creation name from Kojoba Labs to Kimmy J. (J is my middle initial!). Yesterday my domain for kojobalabs.com expired, and I really didn't feel like renewing it. So, now all my apps are located here!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Kimmy+J.

Also I am working on my new Kaleidoscope live wallpaper today. I will make another post if I finish it! :-)


Friday, August 10, 2012

I released my 2nd live wallpaper!



Yay for Liquid Lines! My second live wallpaper!

My first live wallpaper, Wisp Glitter, was made with libgdx - so I decided to continue using it for my next live wallpaper which would require shaders. It was my first time using shaders EVER, so naturally I went along and started using trig heavy fragment shaders which lagged in gdx. I didn't know better!

Anyways, I tried Rajawali's engine out and it seemed to pump out some better performance. All was going great until I plugged in my ancient, dusty Motorola Droid to see if my wallpaper would pass that "runs on crappy devices" test.

Answer: NO. TEST FAILED!

So, back to the drawing board... I decided to put everything in the vertex shader which only had to run 100x100 times rather than 857x480 times. I was face palming so hard, but happy at the same time because I used shaders on a cell phone! Woo hoo!

Here is the link:




These babies will be up soon.. once Google play finishes adding then ;-)



Monday, August 6, 2012

Using shaders to create live wallpapers.

Well, this weekend was interesting!

First, I started playing with live wallpapers using fragment shaders and Rajawali's 3d engine. I made some pretty cool things, but found that frag shaders that do a lot of cos/sin math etc, run horrible on my Motorola Droid, and excellent on my Samsung Galaxy S. 

Also, I killed my Galaxy S by dropping it into a stream while balancing on some logs on a beautiful hike. I was very very sad :-(. There wasn't much water in it, so I took the battery out and shook all of the water out that I could, and then dried it with a tissue. When I got back home I unscrewed everything until the mobo was visible, dried it a little more, and then dropped it into rice. It'll sit there for a few days until I feel brave enough to turn it back on. *says a little prayer*

Anyways, since I'm stuck with my old droid which is slower than a slug, I've been finding ways to make my wallpaper run faster. I decided to make a mesh (number of sections can be altered by user) and then put all of the math into the vertex shader so that it only has to run maybe 100x100 times rather than 480x857 times. Per-pixel math = death of performance on my droid if I'm using a fullscreen quad. Eek!

I will post the link to the wallpaper when I have finished it. It is pretty neat !

-Kim