Google's Pokemon Challenge April Fool's joke

Today Google published a video that was a half-joke.  It's April Fool's Day, and the joke is that they are hiring Pokemon masters who can prove their skills at catching Pokemon.


 The non-joke part of it is that they actually put a mini-game in Google Maps so that you could see Pokemon in Google Maps, tap on the monster, and catch it.  The big differences are that

1. You don't have to physically go to the location the monster is to catch it.  You can just scroll your map wherever you want.  
2. All their monsters seem to be centered around Google headquarters

We're going to post a few comments on blogs, and on YouTube, to let people know that Monster Cache is a real game that already does this.  We'll see if we can generate any traffic.  As of today, we have about 800 accounts in the system and 235 players on the Legends board (making 29% of registered users who have ever found a monster).

Google Maps API Circle issue is Android 4.1.1 only

After many hours of making test examples and posting some things online over past 4 days, I've basically confirmed my initial suspicion that the map problem I'm seeing is only an issue on Android 4.1.1.  I assumed that was the most popular version, but now I see that it is only used by 2% of Android users!!

http://www.zdnet.com/android-4-1-jelly-bean-reaches-1-8-percent-market-share-7000005096/

So this maybe isn't *AS* big a deal as I thought, and hopefully they will fix it soon, and it will go away.  I already posted it to a Google Maps issue list:

http://code.google.com/p/gmaps-api-issues/issues/detail?id=4597&thanks=4597&ts=1353784580

Now I'm going to try to detect the Android version and do an ugly flashing workaround for 4.1.1 only.  Then we'll be ready for beta with a nice little bonus from upgrading PhoneGap.

Beta setback - Android 4.1.1 maps

First post on the MonsterCache blog!  I've been working on the game for about 9 months now.  I've always thought it would be interesting at some point to blog about the process.  I thought that the Beta launch might be a good time to start.  I'll probably gradually fill in more details of the past 9 months as I write more.

As it turns out, we were JUST about to launch the beta when I hit a problem.  I was developing with Android 2.3.  Then I got a new phone a couple weeks ago and started testing with Android 4.x.  I found a minor issue with how I was doing local storage, fixed it, and all was good!  Then....here is the email I sent to Kent and Matt:

I was *SO* close to sending out the beta email last night.  I inactivated my old account, decided to do one last registration test, registered a new account and then I found a big problem.  On the Google Map, its occasionally showing two nets and two circles that are slightly offset, so it looks terrible.  Seems to do it about 1 out of every 4 times the map comes up.  It appears to be only on the new Android, still seems fine on my old phone. Sometimes the nets and maps stay on top of each other, so maybe I jut never noticed it last week, but I actually think it started with an Android update a few days ago.  

Anyway, I need to see if I can fix it, or hope that an Android update comes and fixes it.  Already banged my head against the desk for a couple hours last night but couldn't figure out what in the world is happening.  Could also be PhoneGap, so I'll try updating that next.  But probably won't be resolved until after Thanksgiving. :-(  Sorry.

And here are some screen shots of how the issue looks: