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.

Version 1.2 Android Beta

I just sent Kent and Matt the hopeful version 1.2 for Android.  It has these new features and more:

-- Can buy binoculars that give you increased view range

-- Touching net or monster on Google map gives you an info window

-- 20% of the time on Legends page there is a message asking you to rate the app.  It goes away if you ever click the link.

-- New Rawr sound on startup (created by Matt)

-- New monster catching trumpet sound (purchased on Audio Jungle from same user as New Level sound)

-- Can find chests of coins.  Plays a "magic" sound when you get them (also purchased on Audio Jungle)

-- Better formatting on Monster Details page

-- After you buy silver or binoculars, they'll disappear from the market list

-- Allows for future In app Purchase of Unlimited Nets

-- Some changes to make registration easier

I'm hoping to release it on July 1st.  Then we'll figure out how many chests of coins to generate. Then Apple version can be released shortly after, maybe August 1st.  Then more promotion!

Server release - Badges and View Range

This week I released a new version of server code.  Most changes won't be noticeable until people upgrade to the next phone version, which should be ready in a few weeks.  Even then, you can't force people to upgrade, so there will always be people using older phone code with new server code.  So it seems like there is no harm in releasing the web changes earlier than phone changes.

One change that takes effect immediately though is new badges.  New badges are calculated on the server and their images are stored on the server too (until they are built into the next phone version).  So we've got all kinds of new badges, a few shown below.

But first, here is something funny/stressful that happened with the release.  One of the changes was to return the user's view range from the server.  This is to enable different view range(s) if the user buys Monster Binoculars.  Since the circle on the map has a radius of meters, I made the view range in meters.  But my distance calculations on the server were in kilometers.  I thought I should be consistent and change everything to one or the other to reduce the change of mistakes.  Of course when doing so, I introduced a mistake.

What happened is I changed the pickup tolerance (the range that you have to get within to be close enough to catch the monster) to meters, but I still had the distance in kilometers.  So it was basically checking that if your distance from a monster in kilometers -- say 0.1 kilometers -- was less than the pickup tolerance in meters -- 100 -- than you caught the monster.  So people could catch monsters from 100 kilometers away!  That is, monsters at your level, and it actually only gets them in batches of about 5 KM, so really it was within 5 KM.  But right when I tried out the new version, I caught 4 monsters simultaneously.  I realized what was happening right away and fixed it before anyone else caught a big batch.  Then I deleted mine to be fair in the leader charts.  Thank goodness I caught it right away or I could have had a mess of data on my hands.

Some new badges, below:

Game Sound Effects

We've all been thinking a lot lately about sounds for the game.  The first version of the game has two sounds -- a siren-like noise for catching a monster and a trumpet call for a new level.  One user gave us feedback that the siren is not a great sound if you're in a car, and we had to agree with that.

So Matt made a "Rawwwr" sound that is really good and we were planning to use instead.  We liked it so much, we thought "let's make more monster sounds"!  One per monster is quite a lot, but we started giving it a try.  Matt made some good sounds, but we couldn't really agree on what monsters they matched with.  It was seeming like it might be even more work than we already knew it would be.  So then we thought maybe we could make one sound per level, like a sound for trolls, a sound for vampires, etc.  Even that was tricky because monsters at other levels wouldn't have a consistent sound.  It would be weird if you hear some strange rodent noise when you catch a Vulture, or a bird noise when you catch a rabbit.

Now I think we're going to make a new musical sound for catching a monster and use the "Rawr" sound when the map appears, kinda like a "Hello", which is consistent with our web site.  That should be in our next version, which I hope to have ready in a couple weeks.

In-app purchases so far

We have had three people spend 8.99 on 1000 coins.  That's our most expensive option.   It seems like a good ratio that of the 80 people playing, 3 went straight to spending 8.99.  And we've had a couple 0.99 and 1.99 purchases and a 3.99

The bad news is that one of those users sent me an email that he is "concerned about the longevity of the game" considering he has already spent his 1000 coins and thinks its too much to keep paying. Honestly, I thought the 1000 coins would last longer.  

So we're thinking of a few changes.  First, we're going to make an even bigger coin package. Second, we might make an unlimited nets package.  Third, I might drop the coin price of the special items.  Right now, the Medusa mirror costs 300 and the silver 200.

But anyway, the purchases are encouraging!