Flash Lite World

Generate your own PKCS12 certificate for AIR

2012-01-05T22:26:00.000-08:00

I know... it's another one about certificate but perhaps you'll need this like I did.
If you follow this blog, you know I'm in need for a +30years certificate.

Problem
Flash Builder wizard generate 25 years certificate only

Solution
generate the certificate myself!

Again, thanks to keytool :

keytool.exe -genkey -keyalg RSA -storetype pkcs12 -alias <your_key_alias> -keystore <certificate_file>.p12 -validity 12000

Enter your password when requested only and fill the questions to complete

Note the -validity value is waiting for a number of days (not years!) so 12000 is about 32 years

Check the certificate of an APK

2011-12-28T14:13:00.000-08:00

Following previous post, if you lost your certificate file, you have 2 problems
1/ you won't be able to update your APK on the market anymore
2/ you are unable to retrieve details about the certificate used

While there is NOTHING to do for the first problem, there is a way to retrieve the certificate information.

Coming with jdk, you should use jarsigner :

jarsigner.exe -verify -certs -verbose <app>.apk

For each file of the apk, it will give you something similar to

X.509, CN=WillNa, OU=, O=, C=FR
[certificate is valid from 19/12/10 08:38 to 19/12/35 08:38]

this is the certicate details available.

Retrieve information from your p12 certificate

2011-12-28T14:08:00.000-08:00

Some days ago, one of my distributors asked me a package with a 30 years long certificate. I was pretty sure my current package was long enought but I didn't remember how much so I looked for a way to get it from this cryptic p12 file.

Be sure you have a jdk and not a jre installed else keytool won't be available.
The command to read information from a .p12 certificate is

keytool -list -keystore <certificate_file>.p12 -storetype pkcs12 -v

the magic option is -v
This way you could see the full informations

My p12 was 25 years long, it seems Google asks 30 years long now

Warning : it's not possible to update the certificate, the only way is to create a new one with the same informations and 30 years validity.
Sadly, doing this cancels the update system of Android.
Current users won't be able to update your app with the previous certificate, they have to delete and redownload it.

So backup and double backup your certificate !

Monetize 'cheap' apps

2011-12-23T09:38:00.000-08:00

Interesting post on InMobi's blog

It tries to explain you how much you could win in releasing ads based apps vs paid apps.
Of course, you shouldn't forget it for CHEAP apps only !

The side note of this post is that you have 2 ways to monetize your apps : ads or update your sell price ;)

Another even more interesting thing of this post is the linked Excel sheet : it allows you to quickly find if you will earn more advertising your app.

I made a test myself:
* for apps will a small number of downloads, the answer is defintly "NO"
* for 1M+ downloads, the answer is "YES"
Like for money, the more download you have, the more download you'll get !

Android Market v2 not for publisher

2011-10-16T01:35:00.001-07:00

I'm using the new Android Market for some weeks now...
Google successfully made a market...worst than the previous one!

I won't talk about the (un)usability (category on left, search....) but only of a point which affects publisher :
I'm still looking for the old 'new free app' and 'new paid app', I only found top and best value

I don't see how your new released game/app could be a success if people don't even know it was released !
Does it mean you have to made some advertising ? Does it mean you have to rely on (very badly working) keywords, users will so 'discover' you app by chance/mistake ?

So yes, I dislike the new market. The only option I see is to use AppBrain to browse apps and Market to buy and update them....
It's a solution for myself as an user, not a solution as a publisher

Adobe did again...sadly

2011-10-16T01:26:00.000-07:00

Some days ago, Adobe released Flash Player 11 for Android.
Great, no ? Enhanced player, 3D support etc....

Well, yes and no, Adobe made (again) the mistake to release an heavy app without App2SD support....
On my HTC Desire, it needs 17M of internal memory, almost as much as AIR (which at last support App2SD now)....
It's not a problem on my Nexus S but I had to remove 2 or 3 apps on my Desire to install FP11...
At this rate, for the next version, I'll finish with a Desire with bundled apps + AIR and FP only...
(yes, Google Earth, Map and Market are just too heavy also)

Does it mean my Desire is now a obsolete smartphone ? Does it mean Adobe optimized their player for speed nor for size ?
I don't know but if you read the comments (at least here in France) on the market, it's only complaints about the size, not the new capacities... Not very good....

Poor fill rate for Asia, sadly

2011-09-10T17:45:00.000-07:00

While working on AIR's UserAgent bug, I noticed a LOT of Korean are actually playing my games...

It's a good news and I'm happy I recently was able to sign an agreement with a korean market to distribute Penguinoid.

The bad news is I'm currrently not winning a penny from Korea : the several ads network I use don't support Korea or very poorly ( 1 or 2% fill rate, even with a working user agent )

He! Advertisers! What are you doing ?! I could tell you korean are using Android a lot RIGHT NOW!
And it seems Taiwan is coming too....

Learn Dari on Android thanks to AIR

2011-09-10T17:35:00.000-07:00

Some weeks again, I finished an app I personnaly use : Dari AlefBe
This app help you to learn the Dari's alphabet.
What is Dari ? Wrongly called Farsi or persian, tt's one of the 2 main languages in Afghanistan.
Mainly in the north part of Afghanistan, including Kabul.

This app was made using Flex 4.5 and its mobile version.
It's my first app using Flex for mobile since my games use pure AS3.
I must say I'm not totally happy with Flex 4.5 Mobile.
The way they defined the skins according dpi, the default navigator, the buggy BACK key handling are some of the reasons why I not totally like it. I probably blog about these soon.
You could also add the fact they changed the defaut mobile skin from the beta : it is no longer Android-like, so I had to redefine almost every skin of the component I used.
Hopefully, gesture and effects are working very well. It was easy to make the Flash Cards !

How to (not) win money with AIR for mobile

2011-09-10T17:24:00.000-07:00

Last week, I analized the ads fill rate for my games on several market.
I was very surprised to find a poor 8% max for my Android games while almost 25% for the WillNa website and Poulpytris Flash Lite.

So I tried to find the difference, using my own ads request log....and found it:
This is the UserAgent I receive from some guys on Poulpytris
mozilla/5.0 (android; u; en-us) applewebkit/531.9 (khtml, like gecko) adobeair/2.7
When you look first, nothing strange...but then I looked at my log about WillNa.com and found this one
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.2; en-us; Nexus One Build/FRF91) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1

Well, it seems there is a lot of differences, no ?
For whatever reason, AIR use its own UserAgent.
It wouldn't be a problem if it didn't use a partial UserAgent!
In AIR default UserAgent, no android version, no device ID.
These 2 points are a MAJOR problem when you monetize your app throught ads : Ads network use these info to give you the ads ! No info, no ads or a basic one times to times.

Hopefully, there is a solution : you can override the defaut UserAgent with URLRequestDefaults.userAgent = newUA;
Now, we need to find a solution to detect the AndroidOS version and device ID.
And again, AIR failed to help us to make money : there is NO way to get these values using AS3 !

After some googleing, I find someone who made a fantastic discovery : these values are available on an .ini file !
Using his NativeDeviceInfo class, I updated my apps everywhere, hoping users will update them quickly.

It's been a week and about half of them update it.
For them, I saw a BIG increase of the ads fill rate which confirm the problem's origin : user agent !

A big thanks to Sidney for his class so !
and another buggy feature for AIR to report, helas ...

AIR for Android (almost) on SD

2011-06-16T21:40:00.000-07:00

From Alessandro, AIR 2.7 for Android was released 2 days ago...
The main changement I quickly jumped to was the ability to AT LAST move the runtime to the SD Card.

I was about to post about the real problem of this runtime : its size.
I made a quick stats on the french Android Market and about half of the comment are something like "too heavy and don't know what it is needed for so... deleted!"
On the other half, half (so 1/4 of the total comment) claimed they use a custom ROM (the infamous Cyanogen) to move the runtime on the SD.
You see the point : about 3/4 of the comments are talking about the size of the runtime. It also means 1/2 of users deleted the runtime...and so won't install it anymore even if you publish an awesome (air) app/game.
Note I don't know if it's the same in US or UK, I only talk about France.

So, I was more than happy when reading the news 2 days ago!
Hélàs, my happiness was equal to my sadness when I finally updated AIR on my Desire : of the 16Mo of the runtime, ONLY 5Mo are moveable to the SD card....
Come on! It's better but far to solve the "too heavy" criticism!

I think you could argue Google Maps is almost the same size...but I think you can't compare this because Google Maps is Google Maps (people want it) where AIR is ... what? (1/3 of people don't even know what the need for!)

16Mo for the runtime plus x Mo for any basic app generated with Flex 4.5
The more I use this solution, the more I think it's not the good way....
AIR shouldn't be needed and the apk generated should be (translated) native code.
I finally found a middleware which do so... I'll give it a try next month I think.
Note Adobe is able to do this, look at Wallaby (Flash to HTML5) for example....

All you need to know about icons

2011-04-05T12:20:00.000-07:00

If you plan to use AIR to generate Iphone or Android apps, you should bookmark this page ! It will help you to find which size of icons is needed for which version.

Can't use Amazon to generate money on mobile ?!

2011-03-17T12:55:00.000-07:00

I'm finishing an application for Android.
Since it's about the Wii, I thought it could be valuable to include affiliate links to Amazon to generate some money.

Unfortunatly, to avoid in legal issue, I (re)read yesterday Amazon's Associates Program Participation Requirements and noticed this point

7. You will not, without our express prior written approval, use any Content or Special Link, or otherwise link to the Amazon Site, on or in connection with any site or application designed or intended for use with a mobile phone or other handheld device, or any television set-top box (e.g., digital video recorders, cable or satellite boxes, streaming video players, blu-ray players, or dvd players) or Internet-enabled television (e.g., GoogleTV, Sony Bravia, Panasonic Viera Cast, or Vizio Internet Apps).

or, cleaned,

7. You will not [...] use any Content or Special Link [...] on [..] any [...] application designed [...] for use with a mobile phone or other handheld device, or any television set-top box [...] or Internet-enabled television[...].

It's just...awesome!
so I have to delete my Amazon lib from my app and find another way (ads again...) to get some money...

AIR for Android, Market and Motorola Droid X

2011-03-10T12:56:00.000-08:00

Thanks to great guy at FlashGameLicense.com, I discovered my games weren't available to Droid X users.
Why ? Thanks to a small tweet of suzalex from Motorola in October, I found the culprit :

a <uses-configuration> tag with android:reqFiveWayNav set true market filters your app off

Lesson learned : only set configuration, requirement, permission you REALLY need ;)
Beware, Burrito fills some you don't really need while Flash CS5 don't.

Poulpytris on Market

2011-03-06T17:00:00.001-08:00

Following Penguinoid, I published Poulpytris on Market

I hope it will be a success

Penguinoid on Market

2011-03-06T16:54:00.000-08:00

It was hard but I finally managed to upload a fully working version of Penguinoid to the Android Market.

If you read my previous posts, you understood my main problem was key handling....
It's now fixed (I hope) so let's the game spreads all over the mobile world...

See you in some months for the full analysis of the results

BUG : changing stage.displayState break key listener

2011-03-06T02:27:00.000-08:00

If you ever call

stage.displayState = StageDisplayState.FULL_SCREEN

on your game, this will break any listener you added throught

NativeApplication.nativeApplication.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN,
onKeyPress);

I tried to re-add it listening to FullScreen event, without success...

It's not needed on AIR app, but I share the same code for Web and AIR version.
It's handy when you're online and the player get back to game.

So... only call it if (Capabilities.playerType=="PlugIn") !!

Really Intercept Back key

2011-03-06T02:21:00.000-08:00

Following previous post, it seems this way is not fully working on Flex app
It works on AS mobile project but not fully on Flex mobile project.
To make it works, you need to follow the steps defined in SWFHead's post

To resume, you have to override backKeyHandler and provide your own back handling (throught popView)

Grrr.....

NEVER use Count with SQLite

2011-02-08T13:46:00.000-08:00

Let be honest, Flex on Android isn't synonym with "Speed"
Even with a paged array (I won 10sec with it), I was fighting for 2hours with a 15 sec(!) delay before filling a list.

FYI, I'm using a 3000 rows table and id is a key...

If i use
(sql) SELECT COUNT(id) as count FROM mytable
and
(as3) return stmt.getResult().data[0]["count"];
this tooks 15 sec...

If I use
(sql) SELECT id FROM mytable
and
(as3) return stmt.getResult().data.lenght
this tooks 0.4 sec

so NEVER use COUNT!
Google it, you'll find COUNT isn't optimized at all on SQLite

My games were stolen !

2011-02-05T16:56:00.000-08:00

I today discovered a new kind of piracy...

1 month ago I published my (android) games on GetJar.
I planned to publish them on Android Market later (because of the fees).
It's just now impossible :
someone (Jasminstory or his clone integrixx) published my games (which he downloaded from GetJar) on the market, using the same name, the same screenshots, the same icons and even the same UIDs !

Yes, Jasminstory was able to publish air.com.willna.poulpytris from his own...
So, in the future, publish your game ANYWHERE you want to publish them at the SAME time...else someone could do it for you...

You could say "what's the matter? he paid the fees and publish it for you"...but
1/ he was SELLING my free games
2/ he was discovered and so I can't publish my games now, even if they were removed from the market
3/ the air.com.willna.xxx are now with a low profile on the market, few chances to be on the "Top" or "Try them" list now ....

I hope Google will help to solve this issue but it's now clear I won't earn a cent with these games...
so bad...
Nokia bullshit (more on this soon) and now that...
It's not my year, it seems...

Intercept key event on Android

2010-12-20T13:52:00.000-08:00

To exit your AIR android application, you need to call
NativeApplication.nativeApplication.exit();
when user press the BACK button

I see a lot of post on blog/forum which give this line of code
stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, onKeyPress);

I must say it doesn't work on every use case.
For example, when I change screen, I remove my main sprite then add a new sprite.
If I do that, I 'lost' the input focus. I had to touch the screen to give the focus back.
Unless someone could tell me how to give the focus back (post a comment!), the solution is to use this line of code:
NativeApplication.nativeApplication.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, onKeyPress);

EDIT : this works for AS Mobile project only.
You need to make it like this on Flex mobile project.

Test touch game w/o a real device is a pain

2010-11-28T00:36:00.000-08:00

Some weeks ago, I finished my Poulpytris port for Android (using AIR for Android).
It's pure AS3 so I would like to port it to Nokia's FL4 devices

I think it works, but how could I seriously release a game for a device without real touch tests ?
I tried with Remote Device Access but I don't know if my game is slow or if the web is slow ;) Emulate touch throught Web is almost impossible....

So I think I'll keep this version for me until I got, perhaps, a FL4 enabled device (which I doubt since I'll soon receive an Android based one)
Plus I can't release it since I need to package it in a .sisx file and, so, need a valid IMEI....
why don't they support .nfl on S60 devices ?!!!
It's been so long we're asking for... :(

Flash Builder Burrito available

2010-10-28T17:21:00.001-07:00

At last, a Flash builder dedicated to mobile !

This week, Adobe released the beta 1 of Flash Builder Burrito....just when I finished my ANT script to handle Android publication on Flahs Builder 4 ;)

I must say a "Flex mobile project" is very easy to create !
I can't wait to test the "Actionscript mobile project".
They still included their boring help system using AIR but else, you'll be surprising how easy it is the make an AIR for Android application : this article on DevNet will help you (don't miss the videos at the end!)

Note this one is dedicated to FP10.1 output, not Flash Lite so...no Device Central!
It currently supports Android but Iphone/IPad & BBery will be added in a future release.

FlashLite Phone Browser v1.3

2010-10-27T12:46:00.000-07:00

I updated FlashLite phone browser to the new Sony Ericsson API.

For some times now, Sony tab didn't work anymore...sorry for that.

I also added support for newest Flash Lite and touch screen useful info.

Update througt Help > Check for update... or install from the launcher on the right.

How to produce an app for iPhone/iPad

2010-10-21T12:57:00.000-07:00

If you ever want to make a Flash game/app for iPhone/iPad, this post is the main one !
All you need to know in 6 links.

Does AIR runtime's size matter ?

2010-10-17T02:30:00.000-07:00

Before I port my game to AIR for Android, I tried to install the runtime on my buggy HTC Desire.
It's always interesting to read comments on this kind of 'important' release.
Unfortunatly, I mainly read comments on something I thought for the beginning : "what ? 16Mo ?!!" or "so big and can't be installed to SD!"

I still can't understand this size, I just can't imagine how long it would take to download and install it OTA...
Now, imagine this :
a gamer download your 200kb game
since it's an AIR game, the game's install process asks the gamer to also install the runtime
what do you think will be the reaction of the gamer when he will need to download a 5Mb file to play your 200kb game ?
and I can't imagine the nightmare if he paid for your game : "I paid for your game but I can't play because I can't/don't want to install an additional 5mb file"
It's EXACTLY what I thought when I downloaded a Polarbit game which asks to install the common lib for all their games

I still think there is a problem there....

It seems there is a trick to install AIR on the SD card but for developers only, not the common gamer!