ArtClient v3.2.3 alpha

With the release of Artemis SBS v1.7, a lot of things changed both for users, and under the hood. For a while, I was pretty much convinced that things had changed too much for me to figure out. But, I persevered, wrote a few utility classes, and finally figured out the big changes---and even discovered some new things, too.

With some help from players on the Artemis forums, I've resolved a bunch of issues and now have a pretty good build. This is still alpha, because I think there's at least one or two unresolved crashes, but it also includes a crash reporting utility (which the security-paranoid can opt out of, though that means I may not be able to fix any crashes you experience) and a bunch of new features.

You can download v3.2.3 alpha here. It is no longer compatible with Artemis SBS 1.661, but IS compatible with 1.7 and 1.701 (the version on iOS).

Changes:

• NEW: Captain's map controls are properly separated from Science controls
• NEW: "Relative" helm display! Enable under Settings
• NEW: Engineering's Warp/Jump systems labeled appropriately by chosen drive type
• NEW: Improved science scanning handling, follows the official client much more precisely!
• NEW: Added (opt-out-able) crash reporting, so hopefully I can see exactly what's causing any remaining crashes
• NEW: Allow connecting to version 1.701 servers (untested!)
• FIX: Radar touch controls now continue to work properly after leaving and returning to the app
• FIX: USFP references changed to TSN to match 1.7 client
• FIX: Various bugs
• Improved helm's tap-to-steer logic. 

ArtClient v2.7 beta

Just in time for any New Year's Eve Artemis parties, I'm releasing version 2.7 beta of my unofficial Android client for Artemis SBS.

You can download it here(See update below) and check out the changes below.

Changes:

• NEW: Helm (finally) will use the correct drive (warp/jump) when joining in-progress games!
• NEW: Station shields shown when selected by science/captain
• FIX: Red alert/Shields status are shown/updated correctly when joining an in-progress game
• FIX: Captain's map selector behaves and looks more like the official one
• FIX: Bearing indicator should never go negative anymore
• Turning smoothing should be better now, as we use the server-indicated turn rate if possible
• Engineering sliders follow updates from the server during a game, now. May not be important, but the official client does this
• Minor tweaks to improve Radar rendering, ship selection, etc.

UPDATE: In response to the request for access to this again, I'm adding the improved, 2.7.2 beta that was posted on the Artemis forums. You can download it here and see the added tweaks below:

• 2.7.1: 30000% sliders bug fixed 
• 2.7.2: Add version check so it doesn't try to play with incompatible servers (causing, you know, crashes)

ArtClient v2.6 beta

Just released version 2.6 beta of my unofficial Android client for Artemis SBS. Since I forgot to post about 2.5 beta, I'll include its changes in the list here, too.

You can download version 2.6 beta here.

Changes:

• NEW: Helm and Weapons can see distance and bearing to nearby ships
• NEW: Heading indicator for Helm, about the steering slider
• NEW: Preference for tilt steering sensitivity, and to choose an alternative axis (for people whose devices report the wrong one, I guess)
• NEW: Neutral and enemy ships should get some smoothing to their turning.
• NEW: Receive and play back incoming audio messages (incoming_message scripting command)
• FIX: More ships on radar (I was treating the INVIS_TO_* flags as always active, but science was showing some INVIS_TO_SCIENCE ships if the "state" bitmask was empty, so I guess they all need to be "active" or something)
• FIX: Further reduce (remove?) "pop" when loading and unloading tubes
• FIX: Changing beam frequencies works properly (IE: Doesn't unload torpedo tubes... oops!)
• FIX: Handle missing .snt files more gracefully (for Mods support)
• FIX: Remove "tilt" menu item from weapons
• Further improved neutral ship parsing

ArtClient v2.4 beta

Recently released version 2.4 beta of my unofficial Android client for Artemis SBS. It adds some fun new features, and fixes a bunch of little issues!

You can download it here, or check out the changelog:

• NEW: Tilt-to-steer feature for Helm, if your device has an accelerometer and magnetic field sensor
• NEW: Tap-to-steer feature, just like the official client!
• NEW: Captain's map! Basically Science without scanning, but had a lot of requests
• FIXED: Inability to select the station you just were after changing ships
• FIXED: Font colors in jump dialog were wrong
• Padding/sizes in Jump Dialog tweaked to hopefully fit smaller screens better
• Improved parsing of neutral and enemy ship packets

Artemis SBS on Android (Unofficial)

Don't know if you've heard of Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator, but it's pretty much the best game ever. If you like spaceships or cooperative games at all, you will be as hooked as I am!

A while ago, I decided that it would be pretty excellent to play this game on a tablet, and having a Nexus 7 and being an Android developer, I set out to do something about it. There's now an official iOS version available, but at the time I started, that hadn't even been announced.

And, I'm an Android guy.

So, I sat down with Wireshark and observed the packets that the official PC client sent and figured out the structure, then began the laborious process of building a packet parser in Java and continued figuring out the packets.

A couple months later, I now have an almost fully-functioning Android client, and wanted to share it here. To be clear, this is a completely unofficial and unsupported version, whose functionality is entirely based on me guessing at the packet structures. They seem to be mostly close enough, but I haven't had any input from the creator of Artemis about the correct structure, so weird things may happen!

You can track the progress of the app from its thread on the Artemis forums, or just check out the latest version here: ArtClient Version 2.3 beta

Follow the break for some screenshots.

DropSpot 1.2

I never got around to posting about the initial release of DropSpot, so I guess I'll just do that now.

If you don't know, DropSpot is an Android app I released recently to easily access and manipulate files on your Android device wirelessly, over wifi, using a modern web browser such as Google Chrome. The key feature of the app, and the reason I created it, is that you can drag-and-drop files from your native file explorer right onto the browser, and have it copy the files to your phone---you can even copy multiple files at once!

I'm posting today because I've released version 1.2 of the app onto the Market (Google Play). This is a relatively small update, but with some (I hope) welcome improvements. First, you can now download entire folders as a zip file. I know I was sometimes frustrated at only being able to download files one-at-a-time, so this should be very useful. Selecting individual files in a folder to download is a feature that I will definitely include at some point, but is not a part of this release.

Next, many users requested that they be able to access their removable SD cards and such. After some research, it seems that many device manufacturers have been including extra SD card slots in their devices---particularly tablets. This is troublesome, because even the most recent versions of the Android API only tell you where the "default" external storage is. Previously, DropSpot hid the internal stuff from you, and only showed you that "default" external drive. This was for convenience and simplicity, since most people don't care about the internals of their device. However, to access some of these alternative external drives, it was important to have that ability.

My compromise is that, by default, folders which cannot be read AND written to are hidden, and when you first open the web interface, it defaults to that "default" external drive. Please see the wiki for more details on finding your external drives.

Last, a handful of crashes reported have been fixed, as well as some web interface bugs. In particular, if your browser does not support the way DropSpot does uploads, it will properly let you know.

Links:
- DropSpot Wiki
- DropSpot Google Play Listing ($1.99)
- DropSpot Lite Google Play Listing (Free)

Using Thinkpad Dock Events

I've been using this for a while, but I always seem to forget to post up my coding stuff, so I thought I'd go ahead and throw this one up now.

If you don't know, I use a Thinkpad T61 laptop with one of their docks, into which I plug my external harddrives and mouse, etc. The nice thing about this is that it's really easy to just take out my laptop when I need it for class -- I don't have to unplug the ethernet cable, the usb drives, etc. one by one. The downside is that when I take it out, all of the entries in the Mediatomb database disappear! (I mentioned this in an earlier post when I discussed my Mediatomb config file.) Since I have the directories saved in the config file for Mediatomb, I need only restart the server to have it add them back in. But, it got to be a pain to call up a terminal and reset the server, so I decided to look into automation. Check out what I found after the break.

Series Tracker

This is the first post about my Series Tracker project, one of my oldest and most updated/redone programming projects.

About:
I watch a lot of Asian shows (http://www.daddicts.com). And, I have a tendency not to pick one series and watch it all the way through before moving on to the next. Therefore, instead of trying to write down what episode I'm on for each series I'm watching, and then have to go through the folders to find it and load it, I decided to write a program to take care of all that for me.

I won't go into the history of this project just now, but I will mention that the Series Tracker is currently in its 5th iteration. More information (and possibly downloads) to come later.