Dust: Offroad Racing

[redmotion]

Great looking game, Makkar. Will see if I can give it a go tonight.

Thats sounds like copy protection, yes. It massively increases filesize.

Does it double the size? My own app is around 13mb right now. Does it prevent piracy absolutely?

[makkar]

It seems like copy protection really doubled the size in our case.

But according to Google you shouldn't use this kind of copy protection, as this solution is going to be deprecated soon, and it blocks SD Card installation.

Publishing options
Copy protection: Copy protection may help prevent applications from being copied from a device. It increases the amount of memory on the phone required to install the application. We expect to deprecate copy protection soon.
If you have a paid application, we recommend that you implement the Android Market licensing service. For free application, we recommend implementing your own copy protection scheme.
( http://support.google.com/androidmarket/developer/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=113469 )

Instead, Google recommends the new Application Licensing service.
In short:
http://support.google.com/androidmarket/developer/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=186113
Technical details:
http://developer.android.com/guide/publishing/licensing.html

Is this feasible to any Shiva based app?

[giggsy]

Nice work!

Regarding copy protection: I wouldnt giva a f#+@ ... at least regarding the deprecated copy protection version. You'll see downloads of the game popup pretty soon (use something like google alerts ).

Also, where's the point if it's free(-mium) anyway? =D

[makkar]

Thanks Giggsy!

This new licensing service is not available to free games, so there is no contradiction. Otherwise, you are right, every protection gets cracked sooner or later.

I was nevertheless surprised to find this game available for download through all sorts of sites outside the Android Market. It is free, so why offer for download, but then why worry about it? Of course if the apk is not cracked in a way to provide unlimited in-game currency, but because of cautiousness, I didn't want to install any of these apk-s to check that.

[makkar]

The game was run on this tablet just to check:
ACER ICONIA TAB A500 TEGRA 250 64GB 1GB 10.0 ANDROID 3.2

The game was not targeted at this device, and we expected it to run somewhat slower, but it runs only 3-5 FPS. That is very large difference to tablets, could only the larger screenresolution ( 1280x800) be the reason for this slow-down? Could it be because this tablet uses Tegra GPU?

I checked some benchmarks, like this below, but it showed similar results to Sony Experia Play, which runs the game quite well:
http://www.glbenchmark.com/compare.jsp?benchmark=glpro21&showhide=true&certified_only=1&D1=Acer%20Iconia%20Tab%20A500&D2=HTC%20Sensation%20Z710e&D3=SonyEricsson%20Xperia%20Play&D4=Samsung%20GT-i9100%20Galaxy%20S2

[NiCoX]

could only the larger screen resolution ( 1280x800) be the reason for this slow-down?

Indeed it can be the reason.

Are you using a 16 bits color buffer? It helps a lot on Tegra 2.

[makkar]

No, the game uses 32bit color buffer. I will try.

I didn't find this feature documented here:
http://www.stonetrip.com/developer/doc/authoringtool/android

What is the use of it?

[peter]

It looks so nice!

[NiCoX]

What is the use of it?

It helps to select the format of the rendering surface pixel format:
- if checked, the surface will be RGBA8888 (32 bits)
- else the surface will be RGB565 (16 bits)

On Tegra 2, you can gain up to 30% just by using a 16 bit surface.

[makkar]

Thanks for the explanation.

The render just seemed to me like a dithered gif, especially the dust particles when I tried it weeks ago. But I will try this setting next time. I'll have to setup the project in the UAT again anyway...

[Fraser]

It looks so nice!

Second that, great work!

[makkar]

An update has been published to this game:

- more initial coins after a fresh installation
- better control responsiveness for cars
- dynamics and other performance optimizations
- some bug fixes.

Here is new link on the Google Play site:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.catmoonproductions.dust

[makkar]

Forgot to post that the game has been published for iPhone and iPad, too:

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/dust-offroad-racing/id520517073?mt=8

[broozar]

nice visuals. i have 2 major gripes with it though, the iAd display is quite big and it pretty much crawls on an A4 chip regardless of the settings.

[makkar]

When you say crawls, about what framerates do you get? I didn't personally run it on iPhone4, but we had it tested by someone and it ran ok.

I think the iAd frames are standard size, it is another question that the banners are almost always visible. That is, until you buy something.