Final Version 4.0 of Climate Animated Weather Widget released

After announcing that I am no longer updating Climate, I had been working on some updates for my own entertainment only.

Having finished and enjoying them, and seeing as its Christmas, I don't see why I shouldn't release them to all my paid customers, so this will be the last version before World Weather Online gets switched off in March.

1. When the forecasts are shown on the widget, they are now fully animated instead of static thumbnails.

This took me a long time to get right so that it didn't disturb the performance of the widget, and there is a tiny bit more of a delay when the minute ticks over, but overall it works very well and looks just as nice as the animated forecasts on the main screen.

2. Improved the moon details. Previously there was 8 different phases of the moon, there are now 16 much higher quality images.

3. At night time, on both widget and main screen, any forecast animation that showed the sun now shows the moon instead, with the correct phase for each forecasted day. This leads to nice effects as below, where you can see how the moon changes over each day.

 

 

So I hope you enjoy, and a merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone.

cliMate Animated Weather Widget Version 3.9 released and sad news

Today version 3.9 of cliMate was released.

This has a huge performance increase when opening the main screen, up to 30% of the previous time for the more complex scenes, and at least 70% of the previous time for the simpler scenes.

So what could take 4 or 5 seconds to open now takes 1 or 2.

However, unfortunately and somewhat ironically given the recent Pirate Ship theme, cliMate has been pirated. Because I have to pay for the World Weather Online weather data, this means that people using the pirated version are getting that weather data for free, but because I don't get any money in sales to offset the cost of that data, I am losing money.

So, I am giving up.

The existing World Weather Online data will continue to be available until March 2017, after the app will continue to work but with the less accurate Open Weather Map data only. There will be no more app development or new versions.

It is just not worth the time and effort any more, especially if I am losing money. Thanks, Pirates, you have effectively driven me out of business.

It a shame, but I have still enjoyed the development process, and do feel I created something beautiful, and may well continue to develop it privately for my family and friends.

New Version 3.7.2 of CliMate Animated Weather Widget released

The new version 3.7.2 was released today.

This fixes the Current Location issue on some devices, by allowing Google Play Services to be used to get the location. There is a new Use Google Play Services checkbox in the Set Location settings screen.

This will be automatically ticked for Android 6.0+ devices, but you can change that at any time. If its not ticked, it uses the old method of getting the location, which is fine for the vast majority of devices.  Just tick the box if you are having trouble getting the location.

Now I will go back to the Pirate Theme, and see if I can speed that up.

3.7.1 Bug Fix Release

Just released a new version 3.7.1, this was to fix an annoying problem discovered by a correspondent for the new Townhouse theme.

In the Raining and Rain Showers weather conditions, the sunset and the night scenes had been mistakenly swapped rounded, so at night the sunset scene was showing and vice versa. This new version fixes that.

In the meantime, work continues apace on the Pirate theme, I am really enjoying this and it looks like its going to be the best looking theme yet.
Will do an improved porthole shortly and still playing around with ideas for the cabin foreground, as you can see below, the sextant, swords and pistols will be improved once I have the correct placement:

New version 3.7 released!

So the new version 3.7 of cliMate Animated Weather Widget was released on Monday 29th.

What's new?

First fixed a problem with the fonts on the forecast part of the widget, this only occurred when using Next 3D Launcher, due to a bug in that launcher. I finally developed a work around, and the fonts are perfect now.

 

Then there were a few issues when using the Weather Only setting, the idea here being that no text at all is shown. There were two problems, the Refreshing icon was still showing, and the there was a grey background in the forecast area showing for some weather conditions, as it was expecting to use that to make the forecast details show up better. As there is no need for either of those during Weather Only, they are now hidden.

 

The Font on the wind speed units was not scaling correctly to the screen size, that is now fixed.

Then I improved the Rain Shower and and Snow Shower forecast thumbnails, made the falling rain and snow bigger and easier to see, and the sun and clouds more clear.

And finally, there is a brand new Town House theme. This is actually based on the view from my parent's house in England. It features the usual weather conditions, birds and plane in the background, but in the foreground we have an Audi driving up the driveway, cars driving past on the High Street in the distance, and the flag of your current country waving from the top of the tower behind the trees. The cars have headlights at night. Finally, there is a little solar powered flower toy that moves its leaves based on the amount of sunlight available.

This theme was a labour of love and originally just going to be for my parents and nieces, but I decided to share it with everyone as its a lot of fun!

 

 

So now started work on something completely different, a pirate theme!

 

This simulates the view from a porthole on a pirate ship. The whole view outside the window moves and rotates as if the ship is moving in the sea, looks super realistic. There will be islands and ships moving past, seagulls, maybe dolphins or sharks or a whale, and inside the cabin will be lots of piratical stuff, like chests of gold, treasure maps and cutlasses. The below is a sneak peak of a proof of concept to see how the movement worked. Will start in earnest on that next week.

cliMate v3.6 Released!

I am pleased to report that version 3.6 of climate Animated Weather Widget has been released.

What does this new version have, you ask?

• Added Night and Sunrise/Sunset scenes to Chinese Art Theme
• Clock can now be moved and resized
• Improved Clock resolution and readability
• Added Portuguese Translation
• Improved Russian and Hungarian Translation
• Bug fixes for clock refresh
• Simplified settings layout

Here are a few examples of the Chinese Art sunset and night scenes:

 

Then for the clock resizing, this is now accessed via the new Clock settings screen available from the main Settings:



The Size and Position setting now lets you drag the clock to any of 9 positions, and drag the slider to change the clock size, all the while seeing a preview of how it will look on your widget:



This works of course for all the clock styles, including analogue, and gives you a lot more freedom to customize your widget. I currently like the look of a smaller clock on the bottom right:



In order to support clock resizing, I have had to improve the resolution and sharpness of the clock, and that have also given me the freedom to change clock fonts in the future, look for that in the next version.

So what's next? I want to have a morning/day/evening/night forecast for the current day, something like the look below. You would then be able to swipe between this and the usual 5 day forecast. This is work in progress, but I know now exactly how to get that daily forecast information.



Then of course, new themes. Still playing around with various ideas, but I do like the idea of a Jungle theme, even though it will be hard to justify a snow scene!



Other ideas include window style frames that could be added to various themes, and perhaps a coastal lighthouse. Keep your ideas for themes coming in!

 

cliMate version 3.5 Released!

Finally the new version 3.5 of cliMate Animated Weather Widget is released!

It contains the long awaited Chinese Art theme:

 

This theme has an oil painting feel, so everything is a little smudged and blurry, as if an oil painting has come to life. It features a lake with drifting water lilies, mountains and a water fall, a bridge with a horse and rider running across to a temple, and a fishing boat. Cherry tree branches sway in the wind, and flower blossoms drift slowly down.

 

Mostly black and white with a few splashes of colour. Hope you all like it!

 

This version also features a new Transparent Theme, where your chosen wallpaper can be seen behind the widget.

 

Also the ability to hide all the widget text entirely, if you just want to see the weather pictures with no distractions.

 

Finally, added Hungarian and Russian languages.

 

Next up, as always working on new themes, but also want to add a Morning/ Afternoon/ Evening/ Night forecast on the main screen, which would look something like this:

 

 

You would then swipe between this and the usual 5 day forecast. :o) Let me know what you think.

 

 

 

 

 



cliMate v3.4 Released

This was a quick release to fix a long standing issue since 3.0 that I finally got a handle on, as I was getting several reports of the Current Location not working, which just didn't make sense. If the phone returns a set of GPS coordinates, then the weather providers should always return data for the nearest weather station, but this was failing, even though the coordinates had been obtained.

With the help of one user, we narrowed it down to World Weather Online, and to when running under Czech language, at which point I could replicate and fix it.

It turns out that many languages use the comma character ',' to indicate a decimal point, instead of the period character '.' which is used in the UK, US etc. When the phone was running under such a language, it was returning the GPS coordinates using a comma, so -13.48123 became -13,48123. Open Weather Map is able to handle both commas and periods for decimal points, but World Weather Online was always expecting a period, so it was failing and returning error messages.

This is now fixed, and v3.4 should now have the Current Location working fine under all different locales and languages for all Weather Providers.

cliMate Animated Weather Widget v3.0 Released!

cliMate Animated Weather Widget version 3.0 was released today, and features the following enhancements:
 

• New default World Weather Online weather provider
• Improved main screen that matches Widget theme
• New sunrise/sunset information on main screen
• Windmill rotation matches current windspeed in main screen
• Improved animation on main screen when swiping between different locations

 After the upgrade, any existing widgets will remain using Open Weather Map until they are manually switched over to use World Weather Online, which can easily be done by clicking on the Set Location within the Settings screen, then clicking on the Preferred Weather Data setting to choose the World Weather Online provider:

 

It will then search for the original city name or current location via World Weather Online.

All new widgets will use World Weather Online from the start, unless told otherwise.

This should fix the 2nd of the two major complaints about cliMate, firstly that is wasn't resizable, secondly that the data wasn't accurate.

World Weather Online seems just as good (if not better) than AccuWeather, so hopefully the accuracy issue will be laid to rest.

Next up: Adding a moon rise/moon set indicator, and the Stonehenge theme.

Then, working on new themes, all suggestions welcome!

Bug Fix Version 2.6

Almost finished the Motion Detection stuff, but had to release a quick bug fix version, too many Force Close issues popping up which I needed to sort out first.

Version 2.6 is on the Market/Play Store right now. It should fix all the Force Close problems that a few people have reported.

Then on to the end of Motion Detection!

Ready to release Album mode! Lots of work done the last few days, ensuring that everything works nicely when there is no SD Card, and handling the situation where it tries to use images from an Album which no longer exists, because it has been removed or renamed.

Unified the look of the thumbails also, the Picture Settings screen now shows the Album cube as a preview like the Single and Custom mode, but with an SD Card icon:

When I get round to enabling Facebook and Picasa albums in Photo Cube, it will show those icons instead for those album types. I have also speeded up this screen so it doesnt take so long to show the preview thumbnails. Less of the "Please Wait.."!

And now using the same look for the My Cubes, any saved Cube which is set to an SD Album shows that in the icon:

Finally, added a one-off question for new users to ask if they want to choose an album for Photo Cube to use. That should be the quickest way to get up and running.

So just a bit more testing for any last minute bugs and I should be good to go! Will be version 2.4.

Photo Cube now supports Honeycomb and ICS!

Well, I'm very happy to announce this maintenance release of Photo Cube version 1.22, which now fully supports Android 3.x and 4.0, Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich respectively.

The main issues were that the Settings with icons were not appearing correctly under these latest versions of Android, turns out that the custom Setting preferences were being hidden by default, so a very simple switch turned them back on.

There was also a few annoying issues where the settings were not being updated correctly when returning from choosing a new image for a cube side. All sorted now.

And voila! Under 3.2, on my Galaxy Tab 7 Plus:

So all good now, Version 1.22 is on the Market as I write this.

On to the long awaited enhancements now!

New Version 1.20

New version 1.20 is live on the Android Market now. 

Just two things new in this version, a fix for a very rare bug when choosing a background colour, and a fix for a more common issue on some 3rd party Home Screen launchers, such as the Go Launcher, where changing device orientation would on occasion cause the cube to "freak out", as one user delightfully put it, spinning madly fast until you swiped the screen to stop it.

After some investigation I really cant see why Go Launcher is causing it to freak out to start with, but at least I can treat the symptom and simply stop the mad spin as soon as it is about to start, before the user will notice anything untoward.

In other news, working hard on my next project, it is coming on so well I really wanted to get that out by the end of the year then I can concentrate back on Photo Cube and finally get to all the new features I have been planning. The new Widget really is a thing of beauty... and the top secret killer feature works wonderfully...

Photo Cube 1.16 Released

New version finally released. Just a few bug fixes, there was a very annoying issue for some users when the pictures selected didnt cover the entire face of the cubes, just sat in the corner.

I changed the method of selecting and cropping the pictures to that used by the Background Image selector, which is less pretty but a lot more reliable. That seems to have fixed the issue for the users reporting the issue.

I also changed the boring default abstract background to a nice natural scene, a bit more restful on the eyes. 

Then need to do some promo images for launching Photo Cube on the Vodafone App Shop in Europe.

I'm still working hard on the Weather Widget which will be totally unique, literally like nothing else on the market. Watch this space..

New Version 1.14

Thanks to a kind customer who emailed me I was able to fix a very annoying yet rare bug, and uploaded version 1.14 last night.

When running Photokube the code draws the background with the OpenGL command glDrawTexiOES, then draws the cube and panels. However on the Android emulator on my pc, the background has always been displayed in front, obscuring the cube and the floating panels, despite me asking it to be drawn behind the kube.

Since it has always appeared correctly on all the phones I have tested, I assumed that it was some sort of bug with the emulator and Open GL. As no one mentioned the problem in the market, and after searching for similar issues on Google I found a few similar complaints about the emulator I came to the conclusion that it was the emulator at fault.

However, Tim emailed me to let me know he had been having the same issue on his phone, so I was forced to revisit it. Thinking about it again, it was really pretty unlikely that if it was an emulator issue, I would only have found a few references to it, it would have been a known issue.

Anyway, more Googling of glDrawTexiOES and z-order depth brought up quite a few people having issues in general, so I was able to narrow it down to Depth Testing in OpenGL, specifically the GL_DEPTH_TEST.

Previously I had depth testing enabled all the time, which seemed sensible, but what seems to fix the issue on the emulator and also work on phones is disabling Depth Testing when drawing the background, then immediately enabling it again before I draw the cube and panels. This doesn't seem logical to me to be honest, I can see why it is needed for drawing the cube, so the panels appear behind the cube, but I don't see why leaving it enabled also doesn't work for the background. Still, now it works for Tim and hopefully any others who had similar issues.

I don't really have the time at the moment but if I get the chance I will research it in more detail so I can really understand why it behaves this way.

Anyway, hope that solves the issue for anyone else. New version on the Market now.

Photokube 1.9 released!

1.9 is live on the Market!

New features:

Horizontal Positioning
Finer control of Positioning, Size, Rotation Speed and Tilt/Wobble. New range is 0-100.
2.5 times the size of background images, much higher quality.
New quick Size and Position screen, launched from double tapping the Wallpaper.
Quick links to this site and to email Dusk Jockeys.


What's next? Well, a holiday back to England for a week, so not much. After that, here are the next set of planned improvements. The aim is to make this Wallpaper as easy to use as possible.

• Presets: Save your entire current settings as a preset, so you can have quick access to multiple looks. Maybe even make some default layouts, if the image licensing can be sorted out.
• More Quick Settings: Want to add Rotation, Special Effect, Frame Style, Floating Panel count to the double tap settings overlay screen. Wouldn't it be nice to click on the Vintage button and see the cube immediately change colour?
• Shake/Bounce effect. Thanks to David for this idea, if you shake the phone it would be nice if the cube bounced around the screen before coming back to rest in your selected position.
• Movement: As an alternative to the above, actually have it auomatically bounce around the edges of the screen.
• Gallery mode: Choose an album folder on your sd card, and the cube will display random photos from that album each time it is visible. Potential issues with cropping, but would be ideal for first time users.
• Mini-game: Click on the panels to hide them, if you click them all within a certain length of time, the cube rewards you with a little dance or super spin, bounce or something.

Anyway, hope you like the new version. As always, email for comments, questions or help.

Photokube 1.8 released!

Whats new in this one? The new icon for a start, and new promotional graphics:

And to justify a new version, two cool new special effects, Invert Hue and Invert Colour:

Invert Colour gives the classic photographic negative look, whilst Invert Hue swaps the colours round without swapping the brightness or contrast. Gives a cooler temperature look to the photos..



Photokube 1.7 released!

New version is live on the Market now, featuring the new floating panels:

Hope you like it...