gPodder 3.1.1 for MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan

A new version of gPodder, the podcast manager, has been released, and with it (as always) come some new features for the Harmattan (N950 and N9) version. The most visible on (apart from bugfixes) is the new multi-episode selection sheet, which allows users to select multiple episodes at once to either download, playback or delete. Options for "Select all", "Select downloaded", "Select none" and "Invert selection" are provided by the longpress context menu in that list and will modify the selection accordingly.

And yes (as some people are still surprised to learn that): With gPodder, you can also subscribe to YouTube and Vimeo channels (users) and download the videos to your device for easy offline viewing and archiving. Combined with the N9 Media Pushing plug-in by Georg Jens, you can then even play back your YouTube or Vimeo videos on DLNA devices on your home network. Of course, this also works for the RSS "video podcasts" that gPodder also supports in addition to YouTube and Vimeo.

gPodder 3.1.1 "The Preachification of Convincing John" has been uploaded to the Community OBS (Apps For MeeGo) and to Ovi Publish (Nokia Store), and should be available to users in the upcoming days. As always, enjoy this new release and report any bugs or feature requests at bugs.gpodder.org :)

gPodder 3.1.0 in Apps For MeeGo Staging and Nokia Store

A new version of gPodder has been released, and the package is already available from Nokia Store here, and waiting for your QA feedback in Apps For MeeGo here. This works for both N950 and N9 users. To get access to Apps For MeeGo, go to http://apps.formeego.org/ on your device, and install the Client from there.

The new gPodder version comes with some improvements for Harmattan users:

• Redesigned artwork for the main window and episode list
• Better arrangement of podcast list and cover artwork there
• New preferences menu, containing gpodder.net and orientation settings
• New empty state UI for first-time users
• Various other changes to be more in line with the UX Guidelines
• Context menu item to delete episodes without downloading them

I hope you enjoy this new release - please report any issues you find or ideas you have at http://bugs.gpodder.org/ - and don't forget to QA the package in Apps For MeeGo.

gPodder 3.0.4 for Harmattan

Version 3.0.4 of gPodder has been released today. A new Harmattan package has been built and uploaded to Ovi Store (still waiting in QA) and Apps For MeeGo. You can already get gPodder 3.0.4 for Harmattan from Apps For MeeGo Staging now. Please test this version and review/rate it on apps.formeego.org so it can be put into the non-staging (stable) area of AFM.

While you can look at the complete list of changes in the release announcement, Harmattan users might be happy to know that the episode prefix elimination has been further improved and a play queue (screenshot 1, screenshot 2) and episode list filters (screenshot 1, screenshot 2) have been added.

The play queue feature comes in handy when you have a long car commute and want to listen to several episodes back to back without having to interact with the screen to play the next episode. It is also helpful to queue up several music podcasts to use as background music while working.

The episode list filters help you to quickly find the episodes you want, e.g. only show episodes that have been downloaded. Text search is not yet possible, but you can now hide deleted episodes just like on Maemo 5.

gPodder/QML on the N900 - Yesteryear and today

I just found this pre-feb11 gPodder/QML on a N900 on 2011-02-04 video and someone on TMO recently asked me about the status of gPodder for the N900, so I thought I'd try the current version of gPodder on the N900.

The result is a new video of gPodder/QML on a N900 today, which shows what works and what does not.

If you want to try it yourself, get the latest CSSU for your N900 and enable Extras-Devel (the usual disclaimers apparently still apply). Now, make sure to install all of PySide and Qt Mobility 1.2, and the packages qt-components and qt-components-blanco-theme. The theme package is broken right now, so you need to copy /usr/share/themes/blanco/meegotouch from a Harmattan device or the Harmattan SDK onto your N900 manually. When you have done that, simply checkout gPodder (master branch) from its Git repository.

What doesn't work yet:

• Text input fields are missing their backgrounds
• Screen rotation doesn't work (Qt Components bug?)
• Task switching is only possible with Ctrl+Backspace

Apart from these annoyances (and the problem with the missing blanco theme files), everything else works as one would expect. If these problems get fixed (so that all dependencies are readily available from Extras-Devel), I might be able to make some time to package gPodder 3 for the N900.

Harmattan (N9/N950) users: Have a look at the video to see how the play queue and episode list filters work, which will land in a new gPodder release "soon".

The N9 week: Hack-A-N9, gotoVienna, Camerra, gPodder

While the first week back in Vienna after the holidays was sad for a Maemoista walking around in the city (aka Admazing (sic) Everyday), there was also enough time to release gPodder 3.0.3 (already in AFM - thanks, testers!), catch up with local Maemoistas at the Hack-A-N9 and work on gotoVienna, the Camerra hack and even more post-3.0.3 gPodder goodness. But one after the other..

gotoVienna is a public transport live ticker app by kelvan. In the days after meeting at the Hack-A-N9, we implemented a nice line number input UI that makes it easy to quickly get live information for a given line - the code is in Git, and as a side-product, merlin1991 has implemented a stdeb/distutils extension to inject an Aegis manifest and create the digsigsums file - check it out if you want to build Python packages for Harmattan without Scratchbox/the SDK.

Next up is the Camerra hack, a quick'n'dirty "app" that monitors the Volume+ hardware button and (when the Camera UI is in the foreground) simulates a click on the shutter button, effectively making the Volume+ work as a shutter button. Ideal for all your self-portraying needs! It's called a hack, because it uses the likes of xprop and xresponse directly - a "proper" implementation would use QmSystem, XTest and Xlib from C/C++, just in case someone feels like spending time on rewriting something that Works For Me ;) There's a support thread on t.m.c, the Python and PySide powered code is available on Github, and the package is available on the website and (hopefully soon) also on Apps For MeeGo.

As for the post-3.0.3 gPodder goodness: Episode list filters (bug 1527) are currently being developed, a first patch is already written, and screenshot 1 and screenshot 2 show you how it currently looks. Don't forget to report any bugs and feature requests over at bugs.gpodder.org - don't keep them for yourself! :p

And now for the next two weeks for something completely different (i.e. Uni semester wrap-ups, exams, lab interviews and lab exercises).. ;) Enjoy the newly released stuff!

gPodder 3.0.3 for Harmattan

A new version of gPodder - a podcast and video manager - has been released today. In addition to improvements to the existing YouTube support, this version adds support for downloading videos from Vimeo (so if you wanted to get ahold of ye olde Maemo 5 "Getting Started" video from two years ago, subscribe to metalab on Vimeo, but I'm pretty confident that you can come up with better uses of the Vimeo support ;).

Anyway, the new king of Harmattan repos is Apps For MeeGo, as everyone knows, and so start your Community QA engines and review gPodder 3.0.3 in Apps For MeeGo Testing. If you don't have the Apps For MeeGo Client on your N950 or N9, click here to download the enabler. It has also been uploaded to Ovi Publish, but if and when it appears there is anyone's guess. Don't hold your breath and switch to Apps For MeeGo for downloading (and publishing if you do!) your open source Harmattan apps.

The 3.0.3 version of gPodder packs some long overdue improvements to the Harmattan QML UI (for example, the toolbar has been cleaned up, an about box has been added and you can now check for new episodes from the toolbar) with more to come in the future. In general, 3.0.3 should provide you with a more Harmattan-esque user experience. You can always get your wishes and problems heard at the gPodder bug tracker - make use of it! :)

Maemo devices in movies: 770 and N950

Jukka just posted "No such thing as silver N950 except for Transformers 3 ;)", which reminded me of the movie appearances of the Nokia 770. But first to the silver N950 appearance which I somehow missed: A quick TMO "site:"-search reveals the obligatory thread for the N950-in-Transformers 3 appearance with a frame grab by ro25anav:

As for the 770, it starred in a Harold and Kumar movie, in a Fantastic Four movie and in a Die Hard movie, but you probably already knew that. The 770 appearances are well documented (with screencaps) over at starringthecomputer.com if you don't have the time to watch all three movies. Any other movies in which Maemo devices appear? What about the N800, N810 and N900? Googling doesn't really yield any useful results, with most hits being about "watching movies on device so and so".

Next Tuesday (2012-01-10): Hack-A-N9 Session at Metalab Vienna

After a successful N9 Hackathon in October (where projects like Rodrigo's Forever Alone Hack were started), it's once again time for the local Maemo/MeeGo users to get together and do some hacking in person, so here's the official announcement so you can't say you didn't know ;)

• Event: Hack-A-N9
• Location: Metalab Vienna
• Date/Time: 2012-01-10, 18:00

Among other things, we'll try to get some locally-relevant apps (like kelvan's gotoVienna) in shape for apps.formeego.org, see how far we get with open mode and Christian of Maemo 5 Community SSU fame will probably be hacking on some NFC stuff. If you have time, stop by and say hi :)

Argh Ovi Store and COBS (and stray .debs in Forums)! ..or: I want my Maemo Extras back

Rant mode on (once again). The reason why gPodder 3.0.2, which has been released two weeks ago has not yet made it into Ovi Store is not because I was lazy (in fact, I uploaded the .deb on the same day as the release day, i.e. 2011-12-13) but because it took Ovi Store QA one whole week(!) to realize that the gPodder package isn't optified. Guess what? Optification isn't really needed by Harmattan anymore, and the Ovi Store has passed all previous gPodder releases which have been packaged exactly the same. Apparently they decided it's necessary this time.
Cool, so now I have to modify my packaging, and Marius' maemo-optify isn't in the Madde environment of the Qt SDK (and I'm not even sure if the package would be accepted then).

For some other reason, my gPodder 3.0.2 package hasn't yet been accepted in Apps For MeeGo even though I've submitted two requests already (and one should be enough?). Add to that that the Community OBS is not really easy to understand or use, but then maybe it's just my incompetence and other developers have no problem with it. It might also be overkill now that nobody cares about building against all these dead MeeGo UXes. The only thing I want to build my stuff against is the latest Harmattan release.

Contrast that to the simplicity, ease of use and clarity of Maemo Extras and its fabulous autobuilder. While it had its own problems, it was surely easier to use, and you knew where the packages came out, and the Maemo 5 Extras QA process has been fine-tuned for several months now. Can't we just have the same for Harmattan? :/

Oh, and by the way: I'd much rather trust an Extras repository (or even the OBS if need be) with a Community-driven QA and building on the server (with sources readily available for the interested!) than the Ovi QA - my Calenderr Hack, which modifies .desktop files of Nokia-provided built-in packages was uploaded by somebody else (I still haven't seen the full source of that package, and only found out that it has been uploaded by a post in the forum thread..) to Ovi Store, and it got accepted.

Bonus question: Which is the most comprehensive software directory for Harmattan? Answer: My-MeeGo.com's ad-infested Software Catalog, mixing Ovi Store links with deeplinks to .debs on some random web servers (and doing a very good job at it, they got most of my Ovi apps/games and random .debs listed). They even got lots of user comments that provide good feedback for developers, while apps.formeego.org looks nice and is ad-free, but contains a whopping 10 stable apps in its directory for the N9, with 14 more apps waiting for review. Because apparently it's hard to come up with something like Maemo.org Downloads for Harmattan.

Tedious fragmentation (maemo.org / meego.com)

Rant mode on. It's really tedious to hunt down information about Harmattan. It's not really MeeGo (and MeeGo Is Dead(tm), anyways) and it's not branded as Maemo, even though it's Maemo. Yeah. It's not really Maemo, but it is. And it's not really MeeGo, but it is branded as such.

Wiki. The Wiki pages are split between maemo.org and meego.com. For example, there's the ARM/N950 page on meego.com and the Nokia N950 page on maemo.org. Oh, and if two Wikis are not enough, have a look at the MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan category on Nokia Developer's very own Wiki. Add to that the Qt Developer Network Wiki content for N950 and you have information spread onto 4 different Wikis. So, where are YOU going to add information?

Forums. Next up are the forums. You know the drill. It's called Handset on forum.meego.com and MeeGo/Harmattan on talk.maemo.org. And if you feel more like a Nokia fanboy, discuss on developer.nokia.com. Or troll(tech) your Qt love on Qt's own Mobile and Embedded Forum.

Repositories. Writing apps is supposedly easy. Publishing them is hard. What will it be? Nokia Store Publish to reach the masses? Or the not-so-well-known Apps for MeeGo? And independent of where you publish your packages, if it's an open source package it's hard for users to track down the sources of your package (which you really should make easily accessible).

Hosting. The good old Maemo Garage still provides good service, the MeeGo Garage never materialized, but is still advertised on meego.com. Nokia Developer obviously also has an offering for you: projects.developer.nokia.com allows you to host stuff (but apparently has been down for a few weeks recently). The rest of the projects is spread between private web pages and Gitorious/Github.

Yes, choice is good. But right now, everything is more complicated than it should be. In the Good Old N900 Times(tm), we gathered information on wiki.maemo.org, discussed on TMO (which was Internet Tablet Talk merged into the maemo.org domain - while not without resistance, this was IMHO a good move) and had the Maemo Garage and the awesome Maemo Extras for all our repository/packaging needs. Granted, the OBS might be better suited for building packages than the Extras Autobuilder, but i'm missing a package interface a'la packages.debian.org for Harmattan which is available for Maemo 5.

The other question is: How long will meego.com hosting be funded, and how long will maemo.org hosting be funded? Wouldn't it make sense to deprecate one of them for Harmattan content and try to move content from the deprecated one to the preferred one?

We (as the Harmattan Community, which I would see as the collective of N950 and N9 users and developers) are a small community, so we should focus our energy on one collaboration place/domain instead of splitting everything between maemo.org and meego.com. I don't want to announce new things on two different pages/forums, don't want to check two different places for new content and publish packages to two different repositories.

gPodder 3.0.2 for Harmattan

A new version of gPodder (a free podcast, YouTube and Soundcloud downloader) has been released today. It has been uploaded to the Community OBS (Apps For MeeGo) and to Ovi Store, and is waiting in each QA queue for approval. Some new things to look out for:

• Common Prefix Elimination: A very cool name for a very space-efficient feature. If all episodes in a podcast have the same prefix in their title, the prefix is stripped. This usually gives you more information about the episode on screen without wasting space with repeated information.
• Audio Player Scrubbing: You probably know the seeking buttons in the media player. These buttons now show their meaning in a text popup when pressed and - and here comes the cool part - allow you to "scrub" through a podcast.

What scrubbing means is that you can touch-and-hold a button and then scrub on the screen up and down (or left and right - it doesn't really matter, just the distance counts) and the action of the button will be carried out multiple times. This lets you quickly navigate through long podcasts or mixes if you are searching for a certain passage.

Some bugs (like the YouTube episode sorting issue) have also been fixed, more on that in the release announcement. gPodder 3.0.2 "Agent 99" will be available in Ovi Store and Apps For Meego shortly.

This weekend's releases: Tap Tap N950, qw.py and the IP Address Widget

Over the weekend, I've pushed out some code for your enjoyment: First up is the incomplete but maybe interesting QML source code of the Tap Tap N950 prototype. I probably won't find time to work on this, but it would be sad to let the small piece of code rot - maybe someone wants to pick up the development of it. I'll answer any questions related to the code in the thread :)

Next up is the open source release of the qw prototype "qw.py", which has been developed during the Super GameDev Weekend 2010 at the Metalab Vienna last December (the next one is at the upcoming weekend; stop by if you are in Vienna!) - nearly 1 year ago. This is not the same as qw The Game in Ovi Store, but it's an earlier version, which still contains multi-player support (4 players on one PC keyboard), and it's written in Python, so it should be easily hackable.

And last but maybe not least is the IP Address "Widget" for Harmattan. This small hack (which is inspired by the earlier Calenderr calendar icon hack) makes use of the fact that the Harmattan UX reloads the icon of an application whenever the .desktop file or the icon file itself changes. The details (and a .deb for easy installation) can be found on the website - basically it shows a way to have semi-interactive "widgets" on the app list on Harmattan. I'm sure that creative readers can come up with some cool ideas :)

Plonk (formerly known as Mong) for Harmattan

Plonk (formerly known as Mong, but renamed since) is now available in Nokia Store for the N9 and N950 as free download:

• http://store.ovi.com/content/220976

This is a multi-touch game for two persons, so go out into the big blue room and ask somebody to have a game of Plonk with you :) As you probably already know, this game has been developed at the MeeGo Conference in collaboration with Cornelius Hald and Tim Samoff - sounds have been recorded directly at the hacker lounge by Erik Stein, and Randall Arnold came up with the new name. A real collaborative project, and the source is available from Gitorious! One challenge with Harmattan was disabling Swipe, we solved that with a nifty little class called SwipeControl - it's open source if you want to use it in your game, too :)

Why I love the N9 and things I didn't know about WP7

With last week's Nokia World and today's hands-on event in Vienna, I got a chance to try out the WP7 devices and ask questions about them. Here's some insights that I want to share with you, because they might not be obvious if you haven't tried WP7 before (I haven't until last week, and these things were not obvious to me). I'm comparing the Lumia 800 with the N9 here, because they look very similar from the outside.

As the outer shell is basically the same (or in other words: all hardware features that they fitted into the N9's form factor could just as well be fitted into the Lumia 800 form factor), these things are software limitations that are in WP7 right now (doesn't mean that these will stay in the future). Most basic things that the N9 can do (and the WP7 devices can't yet) can even be done by the N900 and Symbian devices. It's also written from a pure end user experience perspective - I've talked about SDK availability earlier.

• The Lumia 800 has a camera hardware button - the N9 does not. I would really like the N9 to have a hardware camera button (what's the progress on getting one of the volume keys to act as shutter button?)
• If you turn off the Lumia 800, wake-up alarms won't work - they do work on the N9, i.e. with an alarm set and the N9 turned off, the N9 will turn itself on and ring the alarm
• If you receive a call from a number that's not on your phone book, you can't directly add it to your phone book - you have to copy the number, then go to the contacts, create a new contact and paste the number there - on the N9, there's a button for this - and it even allows you to "Add new" or "Merge"
• The N9 has NFC - the Lumia 800 does not (WP7 does not support NFC at the moment)
• The N9 has TV-out - the Lumia 800 does not (on the other hand, some Symbian devices have HDMI out in addition to TV-out - that would have been nice for the N9 as well ;)
• The N9 can be used in USB Mass Storage Mode - the Lumia 800 can not
• The N9 shows the time (+missed calls/new mails/SMS) on its low-power standby screen (like the N8 and E7) thanks to the AMOLED screen - the Lumia 800 has the same screen technology, but (due to WP7 not supporting it, as I've been told) there's no low-power standby screen (the lock screen when the device is reactivated does have more information, though)
• You can send and receive files via Bluetooth on the N9 - I've been told that you can't do this with the Lumia 800 (Update: According to Allan, there is an app for transferring contacts from an old phone to the new one - no info about arbitrary files yet)
• The N9's marvelous virtual keyboard (an open source project, by the way) has very good tactile feedback - on WP7, the only feedback you can get is an audible one (although a long-time WP7 user told me that the virtual keyboard there is very good, even without tactile feedback)
• Swipe. It really makes a difference

What's the point you ask? These are the things that let the N9 really shine compared to its WP7 "successor" (I don't talk about openness, SSH-into-ability, QML, hackability, Python goodness and other things here - that's something that developers like and really, really care about) for end users (it obviously also ignores apps, services, "ecosystems", but I'd argue that the things that I personally need are available on the N9 as well).

It also shows that when a vendor controls both hardware and software, they might be able to put together a more interesting HW/SW mix compared to the situation where someone else controls the software. And it really lets me look forward to the Next Billion(tm) and QML there. But for now, let's enjoy the N9 and create some cool apps (and games) for it, like a FM Radio GUI for javispedro's fmrx app or gPodder 3 (coming soon) maybe?

Comparing Mobile OS SDK availability by platform

Coming back from Nokia World in London earlier this week (thanks to Nokia Developer for inviting me), I've been thinking about the SDK availability for different mobile operating systems given a specific Desktop platform. While leaving out all the other criteria (openness, libreness, licensing, UX, device capabilities, programming languages, toolkits, data formats, annual costs for the SDK/developer account, store rules, target audience, revenue splitting, advertising/in-app purchase options, coolness, etc..) developers can choose their mobile OS by, I want to highlight a specific aspect: The availability of an SDK for a given Desktop operating system.

First up, I'm only talking about native apps here (with "native" being anything that's not just some HTML+JS zipped up or served via the web, i.e. native usually means you need to have some form of compiler, even if it targets a VM). If you are into "web apps", chances are that you don't need an SDK to get started (even though one might help). I'll look at iOS and Android (because these are the strong mainstream OSes today), Maemo/MeeGo (because it's my platform of choice right now), Symbian (because I'm targeting it too with Qt) and WP7 (because that's what MS and Nokia want to succeed). When I write "MeeGo" I mean MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan, which technically is more like a "Maemo 6". Think "the OS that the N9 runs". I have a bit of experience with Android development, no experience at all with iOS or WP7, some experience with Symbian (through Qt) and arguably lots of experience with Maemo/MeeGo (yay!).

Why is that important? First up, if you are a Linux or OS X user, chances are that you don't have a Windows installation, and installing Windows will cost you money (for the Windows license), time (because you have to set it up) and space (because you have to dedicate a partition/VM image for it). If you don't have Apple hardware, getting an OS X installation means purchasing Apple hardware (ignoring Hackintoshes here), which is again costly. At least you would need to purchase OS X and dedicate a partition/VM for it, plus the time it needs to set it up.

Why OS X and Windows? As far as I know, if you want to develop for iOS, you have to use XCode, and that is only available on Mac OS X. Similarly, if you want to develop for WP7, you have to use the Windows Phone SDK, which is only available on Windows (>= Vista according to the website, so your XP install might not help there).

Now, let's look at Android, MeeGo and Symbian. Android's SDK is available for Windows, Linux (x86 and amd64) and Mac OS X. You can compile your apps on all these platforms (using your system's javac + tooling provided by the SDK). For C/C++ Android apps, the NDK is also available for all three platforms. For Qt-based OSes (Symbian and Maemo/MeeGo), the Qt SDK itself is available for Windows, Linux (x86 and amd64) and Mac OS X (64-bit). Using the Remote Compiler (which uses compilers set up on a server farm at Nokia, and you need a Nokia Developer account to use it) you can compile Symbian binaries on OS X, Linux and Windows, although the locally-installable compilers for Symbian are only available on Windows (at least that was the case 6 months ago). For Maemo and MeeGo, cross-compilers exist natively for all supported platforms of the Qt SDK, so without using Remote Compiler, you can build and package your Qt apps for MeeGo on Windows, Linux (x86 and amd64) and OS X.

Now, people can argue that one can set up dual-boot or virtual machines to support all OSes, but that's not the point. The point is that if the SDK is available on all Desktop platforms (note that this is not the same as SDK targetting all mobile platforms), developers can retain their choice of Desktop OS on which they develop on, and are not forced to use OS X or Windows for development of apps for the corresponding mobile platform (I also understand the reason why these companies only provide the SDK for their own Desktop platform, but that is not a good reason from a developer's point of view).

I hope that the Qt SDK will continue to support Windows, Mac OS and Linux for any mobile target platforms that it supports - be it ones named after winds or not - so developers have a choice of development platform.

In other news, gPodder 2.950.15 has been uploaded to Nokia Store (still waiting in QA) which fixes video playback and streaming, so grab the update on your N950/N9 when it becomes available :)

Games (and their backstory) for your N9, N900 and N950

I've recently been asked again about the games I wrote for mobile devices, so here it is: The post with an overview of the games, with some not-so-well-known backstories and information on where to get them for different devices. Plus a little teaser hidden somewhere.

Gaberln (N950, N9 (+Symbian): Ovi Store, N900: Maemo Talk)
This game is a simple soccer ball juggling game - developed using QML, in collaboration with Tim Samoff, who did the great artwork (and who also did the Mong artwork) - we still have to add some more features, and Tim has already done the graphics for a special hacky sack mode, let's hope we get around to finishing it at some point :)

qw The Game (N950, N9 (+Symbian): Ovi Store, N900: .deb on request, @qwgame)
This game is similar to Qix, but has its own style, and the enemies are a bit different from Qix - but it basically is an area filling game. The reason why the game is called "qw" is because it started out as a small Python hack (qw.py) during the Super Gamedev Weekend 2010, and qw were the first two letters on my keyboard. A nicer explanation is that it can be spelt (in German) like Cuvée and a reference to the different blend of different photos (flowers, places, animals) that you have to play through. The photos have been done by vogelvau, the menu structure is done using QML and the gameplay itself uses a QGraphicsView-based drawing engine.

That Rabbit Game (N950, N9, N900 (+Symbian): Ovi Store, @thatrabbitgame)
This is my first game to be published in Ovi Store; it's a "inverse duck hunt"-style game where you control the flying rabbit head, and have to get yourself shot by approaching the crosshairs and keeping steady. Flapping the wings is done by touching (the strength depends on the duration of the touch) and moving left and right is done using the accelerometer. The initial version of this game was developed in Java as an Android game for an OpenGL ES course at our University (PDF). The game for Maemo, MeeGo and Symbian is a complete rewrite in C++/Qt with the artwork taken from the original game, which I did myself in Inkscape. There is also a webOS port using OpenGL ES.

Tennix (N900, N8x0: Extras)
This one is quite old, and is actually based on a really, really old codebase of a school project from 2003. In 2007, I decided to port it to SDL for Desktop Linux, Mac OS X and Windows, and since SDL is available on Maemo as well, I then ported it to Maemo 4 in January 2008. A special "2009 Edition" was created for the N900, with updated controls and a Python-based AI enemy (using the CPython API / libpython). What about Harmattan you ask? Well..

Some of these games are just free and closed source for now. I do, however, definitely plan to release them as open source in the future. The problem is having used non-free artwork in the early prototyping stages (i.e. getting "something" visible in the engine) before replacing them with my own artwork, so I'll have to make sure to remove these things from the repository history before publishing the source. Also, code cleanups need to be done ;)

Download and enjoy the games - I'd be grateful if you could leave some feedback (either via Ovi Store, Maemo Talk, comments here or e-mail).

SwipEout - Python + OpenGL ES 2.0 on the N950 (and N900!)

Last weekend I've been toying around with Open GL ES 2.0 on the N950 after finding a nice Xlib-based Python example on the web for the N900. I modified the code a bit, replaced the Xlib code with a QGLWidget from QtOpenGL (via PySide), which makes the setup a lot easier and (apart from API differences of GL ES 2.0 and Desktop GL) allows me to test the prototype on my normal computer as well.

After I got the hang of it, I decided to come up with some fancy 90s-style hover racing game (only texturing, no lighting), or at least parts of it - right now, the small hovercraft just runs around the track and you can shift it left and right via the touchscreen and switching between normal and bird's view by pressing any hardware key.

As for the GL ES bindings (this is the interesting/useful part to developers who want to access the GL ES 2.0 API from Python), I put together a naive header-to-ctypes binding generator for the GL ES 2.0 API which you can run on "gl2.h" from the Qt SDK's Madde sysroot (too lazy to search for a working binding generator that surely exists somewhere out there already) - or just grab the generated "gles2.py" from the SwipEout source tarball. The result? Video it yourself.

You can grab the source code and miscellaneous files from the SwipEout website. The code was tested on the N900 and N950, you only need Python, PIL (python-imaging), PySide and the Open GL ES 2.0 libraries (libGLESv2.so) installed. Removing the PIL dependency and replacing it with Qt-based texture loading is left as an exercise for the reader. Enjoy :)

qw The Game 1.5.1 is here - for MeeGo and Symbian

Control the white ship to fill areas.

Last December, I started to work on a new game: qw ("cuvée"), an area filling game similar to Qix. Since the tech demo has been released, I've been working on a fancy QML menu, a balanced scoring system, nice rendering effects for enemies and the player's trail and obviously some more levels, which results in this new release, version 1.5.1, with 13 high-definition images that are waiting for you to get their colors back.

The game is now available from Ovi Store for N950 and N9 users, and also for Symbian devices - the advantage of the MeeGo version being that it has higher-resolution artwork (it fully utilizes the higher screen resolution) and sound effects (for some reason Qt Mobility's QML SoundEffect has its problems on Symbian). Both versions use the feedback motor of the device for feedback when you draw, fill or die.

Here's a gameplay video of the first 3 levels, so you can get a feeling of how the game plays:

N9 Hackathon in Vienna (Austria) on October 8th and 9th 2011

For the launch of the N9 (yes, we are one of the countries in which the N9 will be officially available, and at least 3 of 4 operators will offer it with a contract), Nokia Austria is organizing a N9 Hackathon around the N9 on the second weekend of October (2011-10-08 + 2011-10-09) in Vienna. If you live in or around Austria, or wanted to have an excuse for coming to this nice place from abroad for some serious coding, this might be a good opportunity to meet some fellow Maemo/MeeGo community members and get some hacking done. We plan to have some hardware like NFC tags to develop cool stuff with the N9's hardware, so don't forget to bring your creativity as well as skills ;)





Accomodation and food/drinks at the Hackathon will be provided by Nokia Austria, but accomodation places are limited, so please get in touch if you are interested in coming, so I can make a list of people who plan to come, and can keep you up to date on the event. Bonus points if you want to demo and/or talk about one of your apps that you have already written (or are in the process of writing), but interested developers new to Maemo/MeeGo are also very welcome! :)

gPodder QML Mock-ups by wazd, part 2

Here's the second part of our mock-up collection for gPodder's QML UI (part 1 here). Let's start off with two more recent designs: One for the bottom media player and the "tab" to pull it up (the tab would always be visible while something is playing) and the other for the episode actions, which is something that I though would be good to have in addition to the context menu - the episode actions will put the most important actions (download, delete, play, stream, shownotes) into view when an episode is selected from the list:

Next up are two more of these green-ish mock-ups, where one has a different style of playback control buttons for the audio player widget, and the other one is an example of how the settings view could look like in the new style (again, this was before any of the Harmattan UI style guidelines have been published, so the design is very unique and doesn't take into account the availability of Qt Components yet):

And finally, here is a mock-up of a possible "Summary" view, summarizing what's new and also suggesting some new podcasts that might be interesting for you, based on existing subscriptions. This is not implemented yet, but it could be added at some point with a more deeper integration with gpodder.net, which already provides podcast suggestions and a tag-based podcast directory:


Thanks for your interest, and stay tuned for some updates regarding gPodder itself (for N8x0 users, N900 users and N950/N9 users as well) in the next days!