My N9 apps and games now self-hosted and on openrepos.net

As the versions of my apps on Nokia Store grow more and more outdated, I've decided to remove the apps from there and instead self-host them on my web page and/or put them on OpenRepos.net instead. A handful of apps stay on Nokia Store; those are mostly S40 apps or apps for which a Symbian version also exists.

Here's a list of my N9 apps that you can now get for free ("deb download" is as of posting this, for new versions visit the webpage or openrepos.net):

• Billboard Standby Screen (web page, deb download, openrepos.net)
• Volume+ As Camera Button (web page, deb download, openrepos.net)
• Headset Camera Button (web page, deb download, openrepos.net)
• Personal Web Server (web page, deb download, openrepos.net)
• Mustr (web page, deb download, openrepos.net) 
• gPodder (web page, deb download, openrepos.net)

And here's a list of my N9 games that you can now get for free (again, "deb download" is as of posting this; new versions on the webpage or openrepos.net):

• qw The Game (web page, openrepos.net)
• Tennix! Redux Demo (web page, deb download, openrepos.net)
• Petals (web page, deb download, openrepos.net)
• Brain Party (web page, openrepos.net)
• Numpty Physics (web page, openrepos.net)
• Plonk (web page, openrepos.net)
• chro.mono (web page, deb download, openrepos.net)

Of these, the "greatest hits" and most useful apps/most fun games are (in my opinion): Billboard, Volume+ As Camera Button and chro.mono, but also give qw The Game and Petals a try :)

A list of all my apps on OpenRepos.net is also available.

Please note that unless otherwise noted, do not copy the .deb files and distribute them yourself, please always link to the project webpage (the page, not the file) or the openrepos.net page - this makes sure users can always download the latest version and from a known-good source (always be careful when downloading and installing .debs from random webpages). For end users who want to stay up to date and install the packages comfortably, the Warehouse client for OpenRepos.net is recommended.

For some of these apps (not games) that are not open source yet, I plan to clean up and publish the source at some point in the future, so interested developers can have a look, add features and/or port it to new platforms.

Brain Party Git repository, new release 0.5.990

Back in March I've been working on Brain Party for the N950/N9, and since then, I've uploaded it to Apps For MeeGo in May. With Apps For MeeGo being down more often recently, I thought it might be a good idea to upload it to Nokia Store, so more people can discover this nice game.

Before uploading to Nokia Store, some things have to be fixed - a big icon and screenshots have to be made/taken, single-instance launching and being a good multitasking citizen (pausing gameplay when put into background) is a precondition for QA to not fail, so these things have now been implemented.

In order to properly maintain Brain Party for the N950/N9 in the future, and to track changes, I've set up a Git repository in the Collaborative Harmattan Repository on Github (which gets used a lot - as of today, we have 35 repositories and 16 organization members, and you can get yourself added easily).

The Git repository of Brain Party starts off with an initial commit that is just a copy of the 0.5.91-2 source package contents from Fremantle (sans the artwork/music, which got added in a separate commit later), and then has (in a single commit) all Harmattan customizations that I did back in March, May and today. The repository content is quite big, as the images, sounds and music are all included now, but that shouldn't stop you from cloning it and hacking the code ;)

As written in the announcement on TMO, you can get your .deb from the downloads page or wait until it surfaces on Nokia Store as free app. As with most repositories on Github, we have an issue tracker where you can file pull requests, bugs and other things that you notice while using Brain Party :)

Brain Party for the N950 and N9

Nearly two years ago (in April 2010), I ported Brain Party to the N900 using javispedro's awesome SDL_gles library. Having nearly forgotten about it, I "ported" it to Harmattan today - It's even a bit easier with Harmattan's SDL, which includes the necessary changes. The game doesn't pause/silence when put into the background, but the basic functionalities work, including sound.

Download here: brainparty_0.5.91-3_armel.deb (39 MB)
Source here: brainparty_0.5.91-3.dsc / brainparty_0.5.91-3.tar.gz

The game itself has been written by Hudzilla Games, who also published the game for the iPhone and XBox 360 - if you like the game, you can support them by buying the game from there. This port is based on the open source version of the game.

New versions of gPodder and Brain Party out

The news are a bit slow these days, because the summer term really took off after the easter holidays, and the free time for coding has decreased accordingly. Nevertheless: Some updates have hit Maemo Extras-Testing yesterday.

gPodder 2.5 "Knock knock knock Penny" was released and with it another Maemo 5 package rolls into the Extras repository (the Diablo package for Maemo 4 has also been uploaded and promoted to Extras already). Apart from some string changes ("Settings" instead of "Preferences", for example) that we found during the first UX-Week, this version fixes YouTube video downloads - the downloaded files now get a suitable extension (a bug that was introduced by YouTube changing their website a few weeks ago). Another nice feature for those of you with a fast Internet connection: YouTube video streaming. You can now chose to stream subscribed YouTube videos instead of downloading them if you prefer that. Review it and vote for gPodder 2.5-1 here

In gaming news, Paul Hudson (aka Hudzilla) has fixed some bugs in the code of his Brain Party game, and I've now uploaded a new version of the Maemo port for this game. The development repository of Brain Party has now also been opened over at Launchpad: Brain Party on Launchpad, and Paul promised to merge the Maemo patches upstream as soon as I send them to him, which I'll do today :) Review it and vote for Brain Party 0.5.91-1 here

One and a half week ago, we started the "UX Week" sprints in the Forums, focusing on one aspect of third-party applications for Maemo per week. This week, we're focusing on icons, so if you are an artist of want to help out as user or if you are a developer in need for some well-balanced icons, please get in touch in the forums and on the Wiki. And if you don't want to be productive at all, just stop by and look at the great artwork the artists have come up with so far already.

Brain Party ported to the N900

Brain Party from Hudzilla Games has been released as open source for Linux some days ago. A thread on t.m.o suggested somebody port this over to Maemo. An afternoon of tinkering later (and with the help of Javispedro's SDL-GLES library), I've got the game to run on the N900 (see the patch for details on the changes - as you can see, the original source code is pretty clean, so porting was mostly straightforward after being told about SDL-GLES, fixing a parameter for glTexImage2D and doing some math to scale the game to the N900's screen and scale the input coordinates the same way). The package is currently in Extras-Devel, soon to be promoted to Extras-Testing. In the mean time, you can grab binary and source packages from this page (use apt-get -f install afterwards to satisfy dependencies).

Please test it and vote for it on the Maemo.org package page when it enters Extras-Testing (did you know that you can follow @maemoextras on Twitter to see packages entering Extras-Testing and Extras? Now you do..).

It's good to see developers porting their games to Linux and open sourcing them, which makes learning from their code and porting the games to other platforms very easy. If you like the game, please support the developers by purchasing Brain Party for the iPhone (you probably don't have an iPhone, so show the N900 game off to your freedom-hating friends and tell them that they should purchase the game for their iPhone/iPod touch on the App Store). The game is also available for Windows Mobile and Xbox 360.