AIR for Android (almost) on SD

From Alessandro, AIR 2.7 for Android was released 2 days ago...
The main changement I quickly jumped to was the ability to AT LAST move the runtime to the SD Card.

I was about to post about the real problem of this runtime : its size.
I made a quick stats on the french Android Market and about half of the comment are something like "too heavy and don't know what it is needed for so... deleted!"
On the other half, half (so 1/4 of the total comment) claimed they use a custom ROM (the infamous Cyanogen) to move the runtime on the SD.
You see the point : about 3/4 of the comments are talking about the size of the runtime. It also means 1/2 of users deleted the runtime...and so won't install it anymore even if you publish an awesome (air) app/game.
Note I don't know if it's the same in US or UK, I only talk about France.

So, I was more than happy when reading the news 2 days ago!
Hélàs, my happiness was equal to my sadness when I finally updated AIR on my Desire : of the 16Mo of the runtime, ONLY 5Mo are moveable to the SD card....
Come on! It's better but far to solve the "too heavy" criticism!

I think you could argue Google Maps is almost the same size...but I think you can't compare this because Google Maps is Google Maps (people want it) where AIR is ... what? (1/3 of people don't even know what the need for!)

16Mo for the runtime plus x Mo for any basic app generated with Flex 4.5
The more I use this solution, the more I think it's not the good way....
AIR shouldn't be needed and the apk generated should be (translated) native code.
I finally found a middleware which do so... I'll give it a try next month I think.
Note Adobe is able to do this, look at Wallaby (Flash to HTML5) for example....

All you need to know about icons

If you plan to use AIR to generate Iphone or Android apps, you should bookmark this page ! It will help you to find which size of icons is needed for which version.

Can't use Amazon to generate money on mobile ?!

I'm finishing an application for Android.
Since it's about the Wii, I thought it could be valuable to include affiliate links to Amazon to generate some money.

Unfortunatly, to avoid in legal issue, I (re)read yesterday Amazon's Associates Program Participation Requirements and noticed this point

7. You will not, without our express prior written approval, use any Content or Special Link, or otherwise link to the Amazon Site, on or in connection with any site or application designed or intended for use with a mobile phone or other handheld device, or any television set-top box (e.g., digital video recorders, cable or satellite boxes, streaming video players, blu-ray players, or dvd players) or Internet-enabled television (e.g., GoogleTV, Sony Bravia, Panasonic Viera Cast, or Vizio Internet Apps).

or, cleaned,

7. You will not [...] use any Content or Special Link [...] on [..] any [...] application designed [...] for use with a mobile phone or other handheld device, or any television set-top box [...] or Internet-enabled television[...].

It's just...awesome!
so I have to delete my Amazon lib from my app and find another way (ads again...) to get some money...

AIR for Android, Market and Motorola Droid X

Thanks to great guy at FlashGameLicense.com, I discovered my games weren't available to Droid X users.
Why ? Thanks to a small tweet of suzalex from Motorola in October, I found the culprit :

a <uses-configuration> tag with android:reqFiveWayNav set true market filters your app off

Lesson learned : only set configuration, requirement, permission you REALLY need ;)
Beware, Burrito fills some you don't really need while Flash CS5 don't.

Poulpytris on Market

Following Penguinoid, I published Poulpytris on Market

I hope it will be a success

Penguinoid on Market

It was hard but I finally managed to upload a fully working version of Penguinoid to the Android Market.



If you read my previous posts, you understood my main problem was key handling....
It's now fixed (I hope) so let's the game spreads all over the mobile world...

See you in some months for the full analysis of the results

BUG : changing stage.displayState break key listener

If you ever call

stage.displayState = StageDisplayState.FULL_SCREEN

on your game, this will break any listener you added throught

NativeApplication.nativeApplication.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN,
onKeyPress);

I tried to re-add it listening to FullScreen event, without success...

It's not needed on AIR app, but I share the same code for Web and AIR version.
It's handy when you're online and the player get back to game.

So... only call it if (Capabilities.playerType=="PlugIn") !!