Last year, Mindstorm Studios released their first game “Cricket Revolution” which won recognition for Pakistan and brought fame to the company too. But that was not enough, Mindstorm Studios has taken a leap forward and has successfully managed to launch Cricket Power – an official cricket game for ICC World Cup 2011.
“We are extremely excited about creating the official title for ICC’s Cricket World Cup 2011” said Babar Ahmed, CEO Mindstorm Studios. “Cricket has long been a subject closely linked to our organisation and we are thrilled to take it to the next level, which is a source of pride for our nation on the digital front.”
I can only wish good luck to these guys for their future endeavors and hope they continue to make our country proud. I am sharing here the links where News and Media have proudly presented Mindstorm Studios to the world.
I have officially started Android Game/Application Development. To maintain a simple guide for newbies I am updating this post in parallel to what I am doing for starting development on Android.
First of all, I am developing on MacOS, since I was doing iPhone/iPad application development till yesterday (and hopefully will continue it after couple of days). Following are the steps to get started with Android Development on MacOS:
Android Setup in MacOS:
First step was quite simple and I knew what I have to do i.e. install an IDE for android development. I came across developer.android.com/sdk and it guided me fully in installing Eclipse and Android SDK. It has about 5 steps and once you are through with those steps, you will have android running on your MacOS device. Cheers!
Creating First Project:
Creating an android project in Eclipse is a little confusing. I had an experience in creating sample projects in other IDEs and those were very simple (maybe because they all had C++ or variant of C/C++ language). But this time I need to be clear about JAVA application architecture. Therefore need to follow some steps.
I started creating a project but got stuck in Package name. The wizard did not move further. So I googled, and came across a nice post at devX titled “Getting Started with Android Development Using Eclipse”. There are steps in creating and running first application in Eclipse. [After 10 minutes] Viola! I got my first application up and running in Android Simulator.
Hahahahahaha, some might find this funny. I kept watching at the Android Simulator for about 10 minutes and then clicked on Menu button and then realized that the screen of simulator was locked and is now unlocked; and then I can see the Hello World Application Name on screen. By clicking the return button closes the application. If anyone encounter similar situation, don’t feel ashamed … you are not alone
Adding Coco2D in Android project:
My main goal is to develop an environment for game development so that I can start porting my iPhone/Cocos2D game in Android/Cocos2D. This is first step for my game development since this seems logically the quickest way to start Android Game Development. Now again, I used my lethal development weapon (i.e. googled for tutorial ) and found a blog post titled “Cocos2D Android Hello World Tutorial”.
[After 35 minutes] I have successfully created Cocos2D scene and layer in Android. Here is a snapshot of the application.
Now, I will start with my actual development.
Other useful links:
While searching for required materials/guides I came across couple of useful posts and thought to share them too:
Today I tried to scroll sprites in screen and encountered a lot of issues. I googled a lot and found a couple of different game engines for Android. I shared my RnD as comments to this post. But, I have (kind of) decided to stick with Cocos2D for my first game. Lets see how it turns out.
Besides, I came across a series of Android Development Tutorials by CornboyzAndroid. Their tutorials can be viewed at youtube channel. I am also sharing their videos in my post too.
) and found a blog post titled 
