Tutorial How-to – Shadowgun On Non-Tegra Devices
Friends! I bring to you Shadowgun! Probably one of the most bad ass Android games to date. It’s Tegra only so if you have a tegra device you are good to go. Nab the game, install, download, done. If you don’t have a tegra device you aren’t left out in the cold. Here’s how you get this epicness working.
- Grab Chainfire3D https://market.android.com/details?id=eu.chainfire.cf3d The free version should work just fine.
- Grab the Chainfire plugins which include the tegra plugin. http://www.megaupload.com/?d=4P9LEW7P
- Finally grab the Shadowgun 1.0.2 APK file. I do not condone piracy. You do this at your own risk. Buy the game it’s that good! http://brockh.at/tiOUcP (google search)
- Install chain fire.
- Install Shadowgun.
- Unrar the plugins(should have 3 zip files).
- Copy the zip files to your SD card.
- Open Chainfire install the chainfire driver(requires phone reboot).
- Open Chainfire again. Choose Install plugins/shaders.
- Install the Nvidia plugin.
- Go to “Per-app OpenGL settings”
- Tap Shadowgun
- Uncheck “Use default settings”
- Check “Reduce texture size” and “Disable MapBuffer emu”.
You can now run the game. If you want it even more buttery smooth and don’t mind giving up a little visual quality you can also check “reduce texture quality”. It’s also worth noting this little tweak could be applied to any tegra game you want to run and can also be used to increase performance for demanding non-tegra games especially if you are on an older device.
Happy hunting!
Netflix On Android First Look
The long expected has finally happened. The gods of streaming video have finally seen fit to bestow uppon us lowely Android users the full fledged Netflix experience on Android devices. Well some of them at least. The following devices are the first to be supported:
- HTC Incredible with Android 2.2
- HTC Nexus One with Android 2.2, 2.3
- HTC Evo 4G with Android 2.2
- HTC G2 with Android 2.2
- Samsung Nexus S with Android 2.3
Luckily I just swapped out my Droid 1 for a Droid Incredible and I’m able to take advantage of the experience. So lets get in to it.
All is not silky smooth but still functional. The bumps in the road started immediately when my search for Netflix on the Android Market turned up 20-30 apps and the official app wasn’t at the top of the heap. At first I thought I couldn’t get the app for some reason but after making two or three swipes worth of scrolling I spotted the app. The download was reasonably fast as the content required is mostly text. The app is nicely laid out and functional but for some reason the UI seems slow and a little unresponsive. Once you get down the point of the app which is watching video you’ll find its a pretty pleasant experience.
I’m at work as I write this so I am unable to test on Wifi but I think most of us are really interested in how well it works while you’re out and about. Video over 3G seems to buffer fairly quickly. 15-20 seconds from hitting play to video playing. Video starts off fairly low quality and as your buffer grows and it adjusts to your connection speed it quickly focuses to a crystal clear image. As expected your quality adjusts as the video plays so if your signal starts to drop you’ll notice the quality go down. Over all it runs great on the go with no hitches noticeable during the two entire episodes of “The IT Crowd” I managed to squeeze in before having to shout to the world how awesome finally having Netflix on Android is!!!!
I speculate that the hackers and devs out there will have this APK working on other devices quite quickly. With in 24 hours if I have to guess. Hopefully Netflix is quick to push this to more devices bringing Android in line with the Apple products.
The Coming ARMs Race
The numbers are staggering. Most folks probably can’t imagine how prevalent the ARM processor is when all the marketing and attention is on the Intel’s and AMD’s of the world. Let me show you some information from the Wikipedia article.
In 2005, about 98% of the more than one billion mobile phones sold each year used at least one ARM processor.[3] As of 2009, ARM processors account for approximately 90% of all embedded 32-bit RISC processors[4]. ARM processors are used extensively in consumer electronics, including PDAs, mobile phones, digital media and music players, hand-held game consoles, calculators and computer peripherals such as hard drives and routers.
While the first number, 98% of one billion plus phones were ARM it becomes even more staggering to think about that second number. 90% of ALL embedded 32-bit RISC processors. Thats cell phones, TVs, mp3 players, calculators, car components, watches, cash registers, networking equipment and the list goes on. We’re surrounded by ARM and most of us don’t even know it.
PC manufacturers have been plugging away hard at bigger, better, faster for a few decades now. Parallel to that progression have been the software developers in particular Microsoft who keep adding features and thus bulk. While this was happening some interesting cultural things took place as well. The growth of smart phones has made mobile computing easier and more powerful thanks in part to ARM. In addition a focus on “green” computing, power saving, and doing more with less. The result was a shift towards ARM’s signature traits of reasonably powerful computing with a low power usage. Software built for ARM takes this in to account and runs fast on minimal hardware.
Of course the old guard of Microsoft, Apple and the Linux community sat up and took notice and are now taking steps to get with the program. Microsoft’s first attempt at rectifying the situation was to streamline Windows on non-ARM processors and the successful result was Windows 7. While that was a good first step Microsoft realized staying on x86 with Intel and AMD alone would not be prudent. The end result is Windows 8 supporting ARM. You can read about it straight from the horses mouth here or you can watch a demonstration here.
While Apple has, not surprisingly, been more progressive than Microsoft in turning to ARM they’ve still kept their traditional desktop computer systems running Intel x86 based chips and software until recently when a leak came to light that Apple plans to go ARM even on the desktop. You can get a little more insight from this ZDNet article.
The biggest question seems to be can these chips muster the performance similar to chips like Intel’s and AMD’s. I think what gets missed by those who ask this question is the fact that development on ARM has this focus of speed, performance and power saving. Finding ways to make the software that runs on ARM more efficient. A sort of desire to not succumb to the bloat that the systems surrounding the x86 architecture had succumbed to. We can see this in many of the games currently available on cell phones like Dungeon Defenders which achieves a PC or console like 3D gaming experience on chips that don’t include a specific graphics processor. So the question concerning performance is less one of “can the chips do it?” but are people going to be ok with “good enough”? The answer seems to be yes, thus far, especially in light of the convenience provided by the mobility and power advantages of the lower power chips.
It will be interesting to see which company brings the ARM desktop/laptop to market first and most successful. To borrow a meme. I for one welcome our new ARM over lords.
Google Android Hacking Common Practices for Newbs
Image by Getty Images via @daylifeFirst things first you need to know where to go to find help for your self. Usually these sources also act as the place to go for help when you don’t feel you can help your self any longer. These locations are filled with experts who donate their time to give you something for free, because they can and because they care. Don’t take this for granted when you communicate with them. That being said here are those places.
Biggest and best is probably XDA.
http://forum.xda-developers.com
You can find a giant list of devices each with it’s own active sub community. Roms and software are usually found in the “development” sub forums. Be sure you use the search tool because some times solutions to problems are sub sets of larger or different problems. You’ll also get a negative reaction from most folks if you don’t say/show that you made a best effort to think for your self before posing your question.
Most comprehensive general forum seems to be Android Forums.
http://androidforums.com/
These forums seem to be slightly less focused on development and more on general usage. They do have their fair share of brilliant folks. Being less specifically development focused they seem to have support for a larger variety of devices.
Getting gradually less technical but still useful threads and information at Android Central’s forums.
http://forum.androidcentral.com/
Android Central is a pretty well respected Android news website and community. Their forums are less technical than the other two but they still have a great group of people willing to help and some good info to learn from.
Finally the Nook Color specific site Nook Devs.
http://www.nookdevs.com
This site is Nook specific but has some pretty clear concise and useful information and how-to on general Android things like using ADB. It’s also the place to go on information about rooting the Nook and Nook Color.
So here’s the breakdown on how Android is structured, as I understand it. I think I’m pretty astute and seem to have little trouble rooting/flashing and fixing things gone wrong on Android but I’m also not perfect so I could have some things wrong. So if you know more or see something I got wrong please let me know in the comments!
Android devices don’t differ a whole lot from PCs. They have a sort of boot loader often refered to in terms of the recovery console or recovery rom. This is a boot loader that lets you do very base level things like installing custom roms and installing things that make changes to the low level, on device file system. They usually also let you do maintenance things like clearing caches and fixing permissions.
Then you get in to what is basically the OS. This is a small light weight version of Linux. Very very basic with the sole purpose of running the Dalvik Java based virtual machine. Generally you wouldn’t need to care about the Linux base except that it provides access to the file system through software like the Android Debug Bridge or ADB for short. It basically provides command line level access to the file system over USB and/or Wifi. I’ll get more in to that later.
Last you have the Java based apps and user interface. Apps come in .apk or Android PacKage files. There are two sets of these. Those installed to /system/app which are the core Android system apps. Gmail, Navigation, Phone, Market etc. and those installed to /data/data/package_name which are apps added after the fact from the market.
So now that you understand this basic structure it should make it pretty easy to get a handle on things. First you need to root your phone. There’s nothing mysterious about this concept. On Linux systems root is the administrative account that can do absolutely anything. So rooting your phone is just what it sounds like. Gaining root access so you can run/do anything you want.
Most rooting processes will at some point depend on side loading applications. Side loading applications is the process of copying a stand alone .apk file on to your device and installing it outside the market eco-system. To do this you need to enable whats called debugging. It’s a simple check box that says you want to install things outside of the Market. To enable this press Menu > Settings > Applications and check the “Unknown Sources” check box.
So first things first is gaining root access. There are too many devices for me to address all of them and it wouldn’t be useful to address just one so I’ll simply tell you that most devices can be rooted via “one click”. Usually this is an application that you can download from the market, side load or follow some set of instructions(possibly requiring using ADB) to gain that root access. In the case of the Nook Color it’s actually a process of flashing an image file to an SD card and then booting off it. Regardless the process for gaining root on Android is pretty simple as long as you follow instructions. Use the above links to find information for your specific device.
Be aware that from here on out you will be doing things that could potentially wipe your phone or destroy data. I’d suggest you have a second SD card on hand to keep your saved Angry Birds games and your backups on. As you’ll see your recovery software has ways to make and restore backups. Make backups before you make any major changes.
Next you need to replace the default recovery with one that lets you do all sorts of cool things. It seems the most common is Clockwork Mod recovery. The easiest and safest way I’ve found to get this installed is to go the Android Market and download the application called “Rom Manager”. There are two versions, a free and paid version. The free version is all you need to get started and get Clockwork Mod installed. Once you have it installed it’s pretty straight forward. Click the first option at the top of the app that says “Flash ClockworkMod Recovery”. It should detect your phone type and prompt you for the appropriate version of ClockworkMod. If it doesnt detect your phone type properly I’d suggest backing out of the install and start doing some searching for the reason. Now you’ll be able to boot in to a custom recovery that will let you do all the awesome flashing you need. Normally you would get in to this recovery by holding down a button while booting your phone but another neat thing Rom Manager does is provide a button that automatically reboots the phone in to recovery.
Now that you have the ability to boot in to recovery you’ll need a new rom to flash to update your phone. At this point you need to know that 90% of the time if you are flashing a custom rom you will need/want to wipe everything on your phone. The only exception is if you are flashing an update to the rom you are all ready running. Make sure to have a backup(this can be done via the recovery menu or a paid copy of rom manager). Virtually all roms come with instructions. Follow them to the letter.
Most roms do follow the same common set of instructions however. Here’s what you usually see. Download a rom and put it in the root of your sd card. To be sure it’s treated like a normal rom/update leave it as a compressed zip file and rename it update.zip. Reboot the phone in to recovery and choose install rom from update.zip. It can take between 5 and 15 minutes, typically, to install the new rom. You’ll then need to reboot in to the new system.
Some roms come with the Google Apps(referred to as GAPPS) pre-installed but others don’t. Again this should be covered in the instructions. Generally you’ll just need to copy the zip file to the root of the SD card, boot in to recovery and choose install from zip file(this is different than install from update.zip), navigate to the file on the SD card and choose install xxxxx.zip.
I’ve run in to problems where GAPPS wouldn’t install properly with out wiping the Dalvik cache and in some cases as extreme as wiping the system cache. The problem with this is that some programs save info in these caches so you might lose settings or information if you do this on a device you’ve been using for a while.
The final tip I have for those getting started in to this awesome world of making your device truly yours is to have patience. There is always something new and awesome around the corner for Android but when you are dealing with development things aren’t always usable on a daily bases. There are some of us more daring than others out there and they will usually try things first and report back. When something new comes out it’s usually a good idea to wait and let the more daring among us try things first and report back when safe.
WebOS 2.0 Beta Screenshot Are Sexy!
Image via WikipediaCheck the link below to peep some of the Web OS 2.0 beta screen shots they’re flashing around.
WebOS 2.0 beta screenshot extravaganza — Engadget
Android Tips and Tricks
Let it be known that I LOVE my Motorola Droid and I love the Android operating system. Both are rock solid and fast. The problem is that I’m a power user in every sense of the word. I’m pretty sure they don’t make a phone fast enough to keep up with me. That said I strive to get the last little bit of performance out of most of the hardware that I get my hands on. This has led to a sort of crusade to find the best performance tweaks for my Motorola Droid which should also apply to any other Android based phones. Some of the stuff is kind of face palm simple but some other tweaks might surprise you. Lets get started.
- Wifi ON. Traditional logic would say if you activate wifi and 3G that you are running twice as many chips so twice as much power usage. As it turns out Android is very very wifi friendly and will re-direct traffic to Wifi when ever it has it and will sort of low power mode the phone radio. I’ve gone from getting just about a day out of my phone to closer to a day and a half. Here’s how on Android 2.0 and later:
- Menu Icon
- Settings
- Location & Security
- Check “Use wireless networks”
- Turn OFF GPS. I’ve all ready found 3 family members who’s Android phones came with GPS on by default and didn’t know it. Obviously if they didn’t know what the little satellite dish icon is about they certainly didn’t know how to shut it off. So here’s how on Android 2.0 and later:
- Menu Icon
- Settings
- Location & Security
- Uncheck “Use GPS satellites.
- Set display brightness to automatic. Android has been designed pretty brilliantly to know when a screen needs to be fully lit or can be dimmed so setting the display brightness to automatic will help extend your battery life. Again it’s pretty easy to get there. Here’s how:
- Menu Icon
- Settings
- Sound & Display settings
- Brightness
- Check “Automatic Brightness”
- Finally get a good task manager. While this doesn’t necessarily save battery it makes your phone feel snappy and “new” which makes you forgive any battery life short comings your phone may have. On Verizon both the Droid and the Droid Eris come with a manual task manager installed by default. Manually running a task killer is a waste of time and seems silly on a phone so grab the “Automatic Task Killer” app from the marketplace. It’s free and will keep you from having to manage your tasks as it sits in the background and does what it’s name implies. You can whitelist/blacklist apps that are to be automatically killed and which ones are untouched. You can also set the time out where the app will wait a certain amount of time after screen sleep then kill your blacklisted apps. I haven’t manually killed an app or worried about app management in at least a month.
The New(Smallish) Hotness in Laptops Toshiba Satellite T135D-S1325
So the current state of my computing power consists of my nice fat hand built AMD powered PC at home, my MSI Wind U100 netbook and my Android phone on Verizon. The Android is holding down the pocket computing quite nicely. There isn’t much I can’t do on the phone. In fact with the exception of one or two e-mails so far all of my management of the video game I’m trying to get developed has happened on the phone. I haven’t used my desktop PC at all in the last month or so. Most of my computing happens on my work laptop or the MSI Wind. I spend huge quantities of time on the work computer each week and the rest of the time I use the Wind. The Wind functions extremely well for doing nothing but browsing web pages and may be watching the occasional SD youtube.com video. However it falls flat on it’s face as soon as a video goes HD or full screen. It also fails in the size of the screen. It’s like trying to watch video or view images with any detail on my phone, which is probably the phones only down fall. Which brings me to the solution.
This is the Toshiba Satellite T135D-S1325. This wee beasty is 13.3″ in screen size and slightly larger over all. It’s sporting a new processor from AMD that is looking to put the hurt on the currently dominating Intel Atom processor. The name of the processor definitely doesn’t do it justice. It’s called the AMD Turion Neo X2. The processor is currently running at 1.6Ghz which is similar to most Intel Atom processors but the key is that it is a dual core processor similar to the larger Intel Core 2 and “i” based chips. So basically you get twice the computing power in the same space as what the current Atom processors take up in a laptop. This is more than enough power to run HD youtube videos and probably even pull off some decent quality gaming. This bad boy packs in all the expected features for a high end netbook with one curious exception. No built in blue tooth for some odd reason. This means if you need bluetooth you have to give up one of your free USB ports to one of those micro bluetooth adapters. That aside I don’t think you can get a better portable computer for the price. Full spec sheet and video after the break.
- Key Features & Benefits
- AMD Turion Neo X2 Dual-Core Mobile processor L625
1.6 GHz, 1.6GT/s, 1 MB L2 Cache - 4 GB DDR2 memory
Enough memory to handle today’s most memory-hungry applications - 320 GB 5400 RPM Serial ATA hard drive
Store your music, videos, photos and documents with plenty of space to spare - Wired Ethernet, Wireless WiFi
Connect to a broadband modem with 10/100 Ethernet; connect wirelessly to a WiFi network or hotspot with built-in 802.11b/g/n WLAN - 13.3″ diagonal widescreen TruBrite LED backlit TFT LCD display; 1366 x 768 resolution; ATI Radeon 3100 Graphics with 256-1919MB graphics memory
Additional Features - Webcam
- 1 x RGB output port, 1 x HDMI, 1 x microphone input port, 1 x headphone output port, 3 x USB 2.0 ports, 1 x RJ-45 LAN port
- 6 cell lithium ion battery
- AC power supply included
Software - Genuine Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (To learn more about the features of Windows 7,click here)
- Microsoft Works and Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 Edition trial
- Norton Internet Security 2010 trial
Support & Warranty - 1-year Standard Limited Warranty
