Suggestions from a Galaxy S II user

[Chris Camfield]

Hi,

I think I reported a bug before but I've been playing with Candy Apple a bunch since then, currently using 1.65, and I have some (I hope) constructive feedback.  I love the app very much.  Being able to play Serpentine or Lode Runner or Karateka on the subway is priceless! :)

1) In portrait mode, the joystick box at the side of the screen is a real limiter on the size of the screen that could be shown.  But I have at least a centimeter of dead space between the top of the buttons and the bottom of the screen.  I'd much prefer it if the joystick box could be configured to be shown at the bottom of the screen or to be hidden, so the Apple screen could fill the whole width of the display. 

2) The Galaxy S II... is just a really big phone.  Where that comes in is in reaching to press buttons - they just feel too big, it's just a bit difficult to reach from one to the next.  I would really appreciate if it was possible to change a keyboard layout page to show 5 rows in portrait mode, and 5 keys along the bottom of the screen in landscape mode, instead of 4.  I don't know if the buttons are currently set to be shown at the actusl same size as the Apple II keyboard but... the phone isn't actually a keyboard.  I'd prefer smaller buttons.

That's all for now!  Thanks for making an amazing app

Chris

[Garnet Ulrich]

Thank you for the email, Chris. I always appreciate feedback. I'll
share my thoughts below.

1. I could get rid of the joystick indicator but that column has
other stuff displayed in it as well. The disk drive use indicator,
download (rom or diskette) indicator, shift and alt indicators for
those with hard keyboards. Even though most of us never see the
shift/alt indicators, they are kind of required for hard keyboard
users. I like having the diskette drive use indicator to see when
data is being read or written.
I had considered trying to use an overlay to display these things or,
as you've suggested, sandwiching them between the keys and the screen.
It varies a lot from device to device but on a lot of device screens,
the indicator column (for lack of any other term) was using what would
be dead space. I've always kept the screen size in pixels to be a
multiple of .5 Apple screens (so 280 wide, 420, 560, etc.) Other
fractions ended up generating annoying artifacts from scaling the
screen. So candy apple looks at your screen width (in portrait) and
figures out the largest .5 multiple that will fit with a sliver for
the indicator column. This can leave up to 139 pixels unused
depending on the width of your screen. That being said, maybe it is
time to add an option for the user to just go with the biggest apple
screen possible with no indicator column. This will take me a while
because any UI changes tend to take me a _lot_ of coding and testing
time to get it looking reasonably polished. You've got me thinking
about it... :-)

2. Any changes that require a change to the number of apple keys
require a lot of work and testing because there is a database on your
sdcard that is keeping track of your key preferences for each
diskette. I can't change the database format because it breaks stuff
for users with an existing database. So I have to add a database
table and then special code to load the new buttons from 1 table, the
rest from another. And your current set of keys are saved to your
device preferences so they come back next time you start candy apple
even without a diskette. And of course that is a UI change with a lot
more testing. It can be done, it will take a while. I'll chew on it
a bit.
I hear you on the big screen and reaching the keys in the middle of
the screen. Have you considered a bluetooth keyboard? :-) My GNex is
roughly the same size and it is a reach. I'll think about all the
options on this one.

Cheers!

Garnet

[Chris Camfield]

Thanks for your very informative email, Garnet. I work with graphics so I
should have figured there might be scaling artifacts.

> I hear you on the big screen and reaching the keys in the middle of
> the screen. Have you considered a bluetooth keyboard? :-)

What, a full size keyboard? That would be taking things a little far :)

Chris