cliMate 3.8 Animated Weather Widget Released!

Last night version 3.8 of cliMate Animated Weather Widget was released.

This has the long awaited new Pirate Theme, with all the usual weather conditions looking out the porthole of a pirate ships cabin onto pitching and rolling seas. Featuring:

Moving sea
Pirate ships
Seagulls
Swinging lantern with a candle that flickers in night and sunset scenes
Moving steering chain

 

 

Like the Town House theme, this consists of many layers of complex animation, so is a lot slower to start the main screen than the other themes, but the widget itself is just as fast and smooth as always.

 

So what is next?

 

1. First I want to redo the YouTube demo video for the widget, as it is woefully out of date, and doesn't show any of the new features or themes.

 

2. There is a new Android PercentageLayout technology available that should let me speed up the main screen considerably, so I will have a look at that next.

  

3. I want to will take another look at the idea of a 6 hour morning, afternoon, evening and night forecast for a particular day.

 

4. Then after that start on some new themes maybe, not sure yet which I will turn my attention to, but perhaps something that is a bit less complex than the last few, as they take so long to do. Something which is a variation of the existing Countryside theme would be a lot quicker to do, maybe with a cottage or castle in the foreground.

 

Other ideas for themes I have had:

 

• Harry Potter style castle with flying broomsticks
• Sherlock Holmes' study
• Airplane porthole
• Beach Cave
• Isle of Skye 

More pirates...

Work continues on the Pirate Theme... here is the scene for the Partly Cloudy Sunset weather condition:

 

So what's new? First off the foreground is finished, and tweaked so that the forecast animations are clearly visible in front of the table and its contents.

 

Then there is a brand new lantern style on the top left, and at night and sunset times it has a flickering candle, which in turns cast a flickering light on the left corner of the cabin. And of course the lantern still swings as the ship pitches and rolls.

 

In the sea, the pirate ship in the distance now has a smoothly animated wake, matching the white tops colour of the current sea.

 

I can't do a great deal more with the animations, there is already so much going on and so many layers required to create these special effects that its pushing even my trusty Samsung S5.

 

I may consider an island in the distance, but that was pretty hard to get looking nice at first so I temporarily abandoned it.

 

Anyway, still enjoying this, and probably the best looking and most dramatic widget theme yet.

 

 



Pirate Foreground almost complete

Pretty happy with the new theme foreground now.

• Redid the sword, pistol and map
• Made the brass porthole smaller so it fits better into the standard 4x2 widget size.
• Added a sextant and a nice rope on a cleat.
• Added a smoothly animating steering chain at the top, that slides in and out. This simulates the control of the ships steering wheel, that used to be attached via chains or rope to the actual steering board at the back of the ship.

Here is the current widget in Weather Only mode:

And in the main screen:

Now all that remains on the foreground is to improve the swinging lantern on the left, I want something with a bit more realism for the 18th Century period, the current one looks too much like a miner's lamp.

Then I will quickly do a night/sunset variation, to see if it looks good. maybe will give the lantern a flickering candle if possible.

Then on to the sea, coast and ships visible through the porthole! 

More Pirates..

Avast! Work going well on the pirate theme. Changed the map around and added a chest, coins, a goblet, a pirate hat (tricorn) and a different porthole style.

Here is the widget in full size, in Weather Only mode so you can see the full background image..

Here it is in the main screen, with weather details and forecast..

 

 

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:

Pirate style

Ideas are coming on well for the Pirate Theme: