Signing and zip Aligning Android .apk file

Since I just released a new Android version of Monster Cache, this confusing process is fresh in my mind.  So I thought I'd jot it down for reference later, and for others.

When you want to upload a .apk file to the Google Play store, it has to be signed and zip aligned.  The .apk that Eclipse normally generates and that I send to people for testing can not be uploaded.  Instead, you have to follow these steps to prepare the .apk for uploading

1) You have to set android:debuggable="false" in your AndroidManifest.xml before you can create the signed .apk.  So do that first.

2) In Eclipse 3.7.2, choose File/Export...

3) The first part of the wizard shows a list of folders.  Choose "Export Android Application" in the Android folder

4) In next step, browse to select your project.  At this point, you'll get a warning if your manifest is still set to allow debugging.  Otherwise, it should say "No errors found.  Click Next"

5) This is the confusing part.  A keystore is a password protected file that holds keys that each have their own password.  So if you need to make a keystore, choose "Create new keystore" and choose a location for it and a password for the keystore file itself.  Then you'll create the internal key (aka alias?) and give it a password too.  If you've already created one, then just specify its location here and type in its password.  The rest of these steps assume you had an existing keystore.

6) Once you type in the password for your key store, choose your Alias/Key and type in its specific password

7) Last step of the wizard is to specify the location for your signed .apk file.  I name mine with the version and Signed, like MonsterCacheV120Signed.apk

8) The .apk file still needs to be zip aligned.  The zipalign.exe file is somewhere in the Android SDK folder. Sorry, I don't remember where.  I copy it to the same folder as my .apk file

9) Open a command prompt in folder where you have the .apk file and the zipalign.exe

10) Run this command
zipalign 4 <infile> <outfile>
So for example
zipalign 4 MonsterCacheV120Signed.apk MonsterCacheV120SignedAligned.apk

11) Now you have a signed and aligned file that can be uploaded to the Play store

Version 1.2 Android released

Finally, almost exactly 6 months after version 1 of Monster Cache came out on Android, version 1.2 is out. I devoted most of the day to testing, and I have to admit, I found more issues than I would have liked. Specifically, I would have liked to have found 0 issues, but I found a couple kinda big ones.  Unlimited nets wasn't properly displaying the infinity sign, and registration wasn't properly redirecting people straight to the map.  They were both easy fixes and I did a lot more testing after I fixed them.  So even though it made me a bit nervous at first, I felt better after more testing and went ahead with the Android release.  I'll do the iOS one later this week, assuming their Developer portal doesn't prevent me, since Apple has had parts shut down for a while due to a hacking issue.

Last note, we did hit the 100 mark on the Legend board this week!  We're now at 101.

Version 1.2 Android Beta 2

Unfortunately, did not hit my July 1st goal for release of version 1.2.  Honestly, I can't remember what happened exactly.  I think Kent had a few suggestions, and then I found an issue maybe....not sure.  But the good news is that now we've added even more good features, most suggestions from Kent, including:

-- 2x resolution map icons!
-- more padding on opening instruction text
-- fixed formatting on monster details page
-- store page now shows "YOU BOUGHT IT" if you've purchased special items
-- BUY MONSTER COINS is now green
-- Changed "10 Nets Remaining" to "10 NETS" in header, per readability consultant, Kathleen. She'd prefer it to be white, but I think the caps help enough and are more consistent.

And..... I generated 500,000 treasure chests of 3,7,13,17,23 coins. That was a bit of a funny process. I asked Kent what he thought about a graphic for coins --- maybe a pile, maybe a bag. He suggested a chest, and then maybe we could have other things in them later. That sounded good, so we had Matt draw a chest. Only after tat did we discuss amounts of coins to drop. 50 coins can be bought for $1.00 and we didn't want to be dropping dollar's worths of coins everywhere. So we came up with 5 amounts under 25 coins. I realize now that it seems funny to have a whole treasure chest that has only 23 coins at most, LOL. So I made a couple jokes about it in descriptions for chests of 3 and 7. Also made them visible at level 4 and put in some teasers in descriptions about them being dropped by vampires, which are next level

Hoping to release some time next week.  Then Kathleen will start contacting some geocaching clubs to let them know about it.  Hopefully that will ramp up the registrations again.  We'd been getting one every day or two for a couple months and finally stalled at 96 people on the leader board.  I really think the new version has a better registration experience and will make more new players active players.