Hi again
My work on the “10.000” game is making good progress, but it not quite ready for the public eye yet. I got the model finished, but the GUI has posed a few problems that I haven’t gotten solved yet.
I’m hoping that it won’t take more than a few weeks to get it done, so that I can put it on Google Play.
Happy Easter everyone 🙂
Hi all
Short update: As you probably noticed the site has been quiet for several months. I can only say it’s great becoming a dad, but it takes a lot of time 😉
I’ve gotten back into coding for the 10k game. I’m making fair progress, but there’s still about half of the development left, before I’ll be able to deliver a decent product to you. With regards to a launch date, I’m hoping for sometime in March. I’m aiming for that anyways 🙂
Hi,
I’ve become a dad. It’s obviously a very important thing for me, hence everything else gets put pretty much on hold. I can’t promise a lot of new content for now, but I haven’t abandoned Neurons In Actions, that’s for sure.
I wish all the best for you guys and gals 🙂
As I dig into the coding of the next app, I’ve inevitably run into the Android activity lifecycle. Initial thought: Wow, that’s nerdy 🙂
The lifecycle pyramid
The picture below shows the “lifecycle pyramid”. Simplified the app transitions through a series of different states, from left to right with the occasional backtracking. This of course depends on how the user interacts with it.
First impressions
What first struck me was the way the different states are reached and how chaotic it seems. Having read a little more from the Android Training classes, it quickly made a lot more sense to me. The app is started, it has a “running” state, it can be paused and eventually terminated.
In the above pyramid there are quite a few arrows between the different states, illustrating the method calls that are being made by the JVM, when each transition occurs. This got me thinking; “Why not try it out and see what and when everything is invoked?”. The guys at Google of course already thought of this and made an example of this, but I’m more of a hands-on guy sometimes.
onResume and onPause?
The lesson I’m trying pass on here is this; When you start up you activity a series of methods gets called per default (OnCreate, OnStart and OnResume) and then you’re good to go. What surprised me is at if you hit the menu button, gets interrupted by a call or even if you rotate the screen, your activity gets destroyed and rebuilt. Of course you can’t be totally sure that it gets destroy on every occations, but you should program as if it did.
You should therefore always save your state when your activity gets paused (onPause), ’cause it might get destroyed. When you return to your activity, you should restore the state in the onResume method. This way you ensure that nothing is lost if your activity loses focus or the screen gets rotated.
When I look at my market definition from a previous post, I feel that it’s time to start working more on a concrete mission and vision statement.
The topic of defining a vision and mission is a bit daunting, but given the scope of making a short vision and mission statement just for myself basically, it should be solvable. After all I don’t believe it should be carved in stone. What would then happen if I reach them?
Vision and mission statements are the two fundamental questions of “what do we want to do?” and “how do we do it?”. There should always be a goal to strive for and when you reach it you set yourself a new one.
What is your vision?
Delivering educational entertainment
What is your mission?
Developing games for mobile devices, that educates and entertains. Bringing original ideas to life, that encourages learning of knowledge and developing new skills.
References
If you’re interested in learning a bit more about formulating a vision and mission statement, have a look at this Mindtools article.