Android TV Box - CloudGate Circle - firmware flashing (RK3188)

I purchased an Android TV Box from Takealot.co.za a while ago. This would be the second Android TV Box I own. However I was unimpressed by the initial firmware that was installed on the unit. Let me summarize the issue as follows:

Issues:

• No IR Remote support
• Slow performance (even when just browsing websites)
• Bad Resolution handling in both 1080p and 720p
• Power Adapter did not supply enough power resulting in eventual No-Boot or endless boot cycles

I tried contacting Cloudgate about the issues, however I never received a response, and I also got no responses from their servers when running their pre-installed Cloudgate software.

After some digging I discovered that the board used was from a company called Netxeon, the board code was Netxeon x5ii_V3.1.

Then I did some googling for a firmware that was compatible and found a forum that released a compatible firmware for that board and chip RK3188.

I downloaded and installed the new firmware for my Cloudgate Circle Android TV Box. I then tested the performace by running XBMC and playing a few videos. I was not dissapointed. At first the performance was definitely smoother and snappier, a far cry from the original slow firmware.

Then I tested an IR Remote, Worked flawlessly!

I will now list the steps that I followed to install the new firmware.

1. Power up the android device with an alternate (and stable) 2A 5V PSU
2. Connect the device to your Windows PC and install the ABD Driver using DriverAssist
3. Download the new firmware from the forum
4. Extract the Zip and Use the supplied Flash tool 1.37 to "Reboot into Flash Mode"
5. Then choose "Erase NAND" and wait for it to complete
6. Then choose "Flash ROM"
7. This will start the flashing process by uploading the Image files and rebooting the device (may take a few minutes, the console in the FlashTool will show progress)
8. When it is done and the Android Device reboots with a new Boot screen you will be presented with the Setup wizard. You're done!

Note: read up from the forum or google if you struggle with any of the steps.

Update: I later tested the original power supply, It now worked too as the combined power consumption is less using the updated custom firmware!

First Play Store Game Release - PixelTap

Today I would like to announce that my first game was published on the Google Play Store!

I have been working towards this moment for several years, with several failed starts and given up on too many works in progress. I can proudly say that i officially have a Game on the Play Store, woohoo!

The game started with a simple concept, just tap a pixel on the screen! With that concept, I gave it a deadline of initially three weeks. So I had to be careful of the scope for which to develop the game around.

With the help of willing testers and the MakeGamesSA.com forum members, who I employed to feedback on the initial alpha versions, I managed to gain some insight of obvious features that needed to be added to the game.

Getting time to work on the project was certainly not easy, but I managed to consistently progress and finish it within four weeks.

It is by no means the final version, but from a gameplay perspective, it contains all the minimum features one would expect considering the time that it was produced in.

I hereby give you, free, PixelTap!

Download the game from the PlayStore: PixelTap

BuildX - Make Games SA Competition

I've entered a local Game Jam Competition hosted by Makegamessa.com. This competition runs over a month and the theme was given as "Building beats Breaking", which meas that building things is a better idea than breaking things. Therefore the action word in the game must be "Build X" (example: (Build something). I took this action word literally and used it as the name of my Game. Some screen concepts can be seen below.

 

I have described my entire entry on their competition forums with more details than I would like to repeat in this blog. See My Makegamessa.com Competition Entry Page.

Happy Jamming.

Week in review

I would like to share my discoveries that I feel are most important to me. I will be briefly reviewing what I did and what I have learnt as well as sharing the top websites or blog posts that have been most helpful for the past week.

I'd like to firstly share that I attended the monthly Make Games community meetup held at City Varsity college. It's the most interesting community meetup in Cape Town by far! It's really fun meeting and chatting to local indie game developers, feeding back on their presentations and, when i'm ready, presenting my own games.

I've recently been spending some time investigating the Box2D physics engine with Fluid Simulations in my LibGDX dev environment. The implementation that I found closest to my idea was WebGL Liquid Simulator. The reason why I found that it was closest to what I was looking for was due to my recent research work regarding WebGL Shader programs (GLSL). Particularly, the very prevalent Bloom effect, which is similar to the shaders that are used in the WebGL Liquid Simulator. I will dedicate a comprehensive blog post about the Bloom effect by next week. 

A great mobile game that uses fluid simulation is called Sprinkle, see gameplay video here: Sprinkle gameplay video

Game Jam Postmortem

My first Game Jam, complete!

After a spending productive weekend at the UCT, Cape Town venue for the Global Game Jam 2015, I have some opinions and lessons learnt that I would like to share, especially to those who have not been to one, or who would like to go.

The first night was spent brainstorming and deciding which team to join. I discussed many Ideas, including my own with other would-be team members. Some ideas were ambitious, others seemed simple, yet elegant. After much talk and decisions made, the jammers formed their teams and set about planning their games.

I approached a two-man team, one that I though had an ambitious cause, and that I thought I could contribute my skills to. We assigned our tasks and began putting our ideas into an interactive prototype for proof of concept. We also decided to use Unity3D for the prototype and final product.

On the second day, we felt that our project had a direction and now we needed to come up with interesting challenges to implement in the game. By then we had decided that the Game would consist of a Two-player Split-screen interface and Gameplay that echoes 'The Room'(the game) or 'SAW' (the movie).

We came up with several puzzles for the game and the mechanics of each. And spent the rest of the day implementing the gameplay. Soon after starting, we recognised that our scope was too large and that we would need to cut some puzzles in order to finish the game on time. So we eliminated the non-essentials, or the puzzles that were not fully formed yet, and selected the top Three that we would include in the Game.

By the end of the second day we had fragments of the game that were developed and tested in isolation. We felt that we could finish the game in time by the end of the Third day.

The last day was crunch time, with all the Teams working at full steam, some of them ad worked through the night and only started later that morning. One could sense many of the teams getting their games polished, with shrieks of joy, laughter and odd computer sounds starting to emanate from the venue's room.

The last few hours, before the entry was due, flew by and hardly left my team with any integration testing time. We literally threw the various parts together in the last two hours and patched over some obvious issues as our stress levels were rising and fatigue setting in on all of us.

Many of the teams, especially the larger ones were still bug fixing by the due time and they ran into overtime.

I felt that in final analysis, we had over scoped the project and didn't focus on one single mechanic, instead we spread our skills across many ideas and mechanics which in the end contributed to a somewhat rough final product. We had learn't that the hard way and will likely improve that aspect in our next projects.

Below is a Link to our Game page, judge it lightly, feedback freely:
Escape the Cell

Public Service Announcement

It's already the end of the year! It's been a great one, I have learnt so much. CoffeeScript, Node.js, Gradle, Gulp, Grunt, AdapterPattern, Component Entity System, HTML Canvas, WebGL Shaders (GLSL), a slew of Javascript HTML5 Libraries, the list goes on.

My most memorable experience was working with LibGDX and spending a few weeks creating a game. The practical application of building ones own game has taught me many lessons and made me think about Game Engines and frameworks.

I have also started reading the book on Game Engine Architecture and the Game Dev Postmortems book. Both have provided me with great insight into the mind of a AAA Game Developer and also has given me an overview of experiences with developing a wide variety of games. I feel that both are invaluable reads when working in the field of developing games.

Recently, I have take it upon myself to start developing my own mobile game for the app store. I have started development using the LibGDX framework and have designed it to use the Ashley Component System extension. I am looking forward to releasing it in the coming year and also sharing my experiences along the way on this blog. Hopefully my experiences will be valuable to you too.

That's me for today! Happy New Year!