The flying dead

So I was looking for a crossplatform library to use for game developing and I found libGDX which looked promising. While looking for examples I found a great tutorial by kilobolt. I've been following the tutorial but doing some tweaks of my own and it has been great fun and educating. I strongly recommend this tutorial for anyone who wants to get started with libGDX.

Today I decided to publish what I've done so far on Google Play Store.

 

Please realize that this is not the finished product and a lot can happen before it reaches version 1.0.

I also do not intend to use my newly acquired knowledge to make Flappy Bird clones, it's just a way to learn libGDX and make something fun at the same time.

I made it a bit harder than the example in the tutorial and now my kids complains that it's even harder than Flappy Bird so I might tweak the gameplay a bit in the next version.

Get it from Google Play Store

Watch out for flying pigs

I wouldn't be surprised if pigs started to fly soon, because guess what, Spotify no longer looks like this on my tablets...

...and Google Play can no longer be unsecured by clearing it's data:

The Samsung Galaxy S4 that I first pre-ordered and then canceled after trying a Nexus 4 because I realized how much I missed using Android the way it was supposed to look without any Touchwiz, Sense or other manufacturer added crap^H^H^H^Hmodifications will soon also be sold with an non-modifed Android.

And HTC follows with their flag ship model HTC One making me actually consider a HTC as my next phone (No offense Samsung but having had an S3 recently before switching to a Nexus 4 makes it feel a bit boring to get a new Samsung that looks almost the same as the last one I had).

Now let's hope more manufacturers follow Samsungs and HTCs example...

... and if it isn't to much to ask for, a flying pig? Or at least an Android 4.3 release soon?

The useless PIN code "security" in Google Play Store

Now if you are in the same situation as me and have equipped your kids with Android devices then Google Play Store (a.k.a. Market) provides some "User Controls" options. You can setup content filtering and protect the settings with a PIN code. You can also choose that the PIN code must be used to be able to purchase apps. Very useful because after all it is your credit card that is tied to Google Checkout because they are kids and kids do not have credit cards, at least not where I live.

To be able to change the settings you've setup you need to push "Unlock settings"...

... and enter the PIN code that only you know.

All good so far. This is secure, right? In December last year I started to wonder just what would happen if I cleared the data for Market (it wasn't renamed to Google Play back then) and I gave it a try. Well what happened is that on the next start of Market it started up fresh as expected but what I did not expect was that also the "User Controls" options, including the PIN code, was reset.

So I decided to try to report this bug to Google and found that someone allready had done so and I added my comments to the bug report and starred the issue.

Now 4 and a half month later with several new versions of Market and later renamed to Google Play Store the bug is still present. I just tried with Google Play Store 3.5.16 and all you need to do is push a button...

...and all the protection is gone.

And no, this does not require a rooted device.

If you, like me, think that this bug needs to be fixed then "star" this issue in order to bring Googles attention to it: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=20702

Part 4 - How to get the most out of the Hama Internet TV Box - Adding permissions

For Google Play Store to decide on which apps are compatible with your device it uses a bunch of xml files stored in /system/etc/permissions. These "permissions" tell the system if you have an auto focus capable camera, multi touch screen, light sensor etc...

What we will do is that we are going to pretend we have all these and Google Play will allow us to see and install a lot of apps that would otherwise not be available. Some will not be very useful because we lack the hardware they require (camera apps, sensor based games etc) but many will work fine.

The permissions we are going to install is files I've "borrowed" from an Android 2.2 ROM meant for an Android Phone that has most of the common Android hardware.

Install new permission files

1. Start Play Store and search for "cut the rope". You'll find walkthroughs, clones, etc... but not the real game.
2. Download permissions.zip and unzip it to a folder called permissions on your SD-card.
3. Start Terminal Emulator and request root access. (remember the "su" command?)
4. Remount /system to read-write, this time using the busybox version of the "mount" command: "busybox mount -o rw,remount /system"
5. Copy the new permission files overwriting the ones already present: "cp /sdcard/permissions/* /system/etc/permissions/"

 Make Google Play use the new permissions

1. Enter Settings -> Applications -> Manage applications
2. Select the tab "All"
3. Scroll until you find "Google Play Store" and "Google Services Framwork"
4. For both of these do a "Force stop" followed by "Clear data"
5. Restart the box.
6. Once again start Play Store and search for "cut the rope". You should now be able see and install the real game from Zeptolab. If not, repeat 1-5 above.

In the next part we will enable wifi positioning which makes weather widgets and other location based apps a lot more useful.

Disclaimer: This operation will most likely void your warranty and is done completely at your own risk.

Part 2 - How to get the most out of the Hama Internet TV Box - Adding Google Play

So, now that we're rooted it's time for some more action. While the box comes with AndroidPIT and SlideME markets most of the apps still are only available on Google Play so if we could get Google Play up and running we would have access to a lot more apps.

1. First we need a copy of Vending.apk. I pulled the current version from my rooted Android 2.3 phone using "adb pull /data/app/com.android.vending-1.apk" but for those who do not want to do it the hard way you can download it here. Save it to your SD-card.
2. Download Term.apk and save it to your SD-card.
3. Insert the SD-card into your Box and install Term.apk.
4. Start Terminal Emulator (that you just installed) and make yourself root by issuing the "su" command. A dialog will show the first time asking you to Allow or Deny the Terminal Emulator requesting super user access (root). Push "Allow".
5. Now we need to remount /system/app to read-write so we check which partition is mounted as /system/app by using the "mount" command without any parameters.
6. In my case (and most likely your case) /dev/block/mmcblk0p3 is what it will list as being mounted to /system/app.
7. To remount /system/app as read-write (default is read-only) you use this command: "mount -o rw,remount /dev/block/mmcblk0p3 /system/app" (change mmcblk0p3 if your firmware is using something else).
8. Now we can write to /system/app so we want to copy Vending.apk into it. But since we have no "cp" command we will have to use "cat". So we use this command: "cat /sdcard/Vending.apk > /system/app/Vending.apk". (the cat command prints the contents of a file but we redirect the output to a file)
9. Voila! Fire up Google Play and login.

(Don't worry about remounting /system/app to read-only. Just restart the box and it will be mounted as read-only during boot up.)


You will notice that a lot of apps will not be available or listed as "incompatible". We're going to change some of that in the upcoming articles. However, first we should add busybox to get a lot of usable commands like the "cp" command (cp is the copy command in Linux/Unix). Part 3 will cover installing busybox.

Disclaimer: This operation will most likely void your warranty and is done completely at your own risk.