Archive for the ‘Update’ Category

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Speed improvements coming to OpenSpark

Monday, July 19th, 2010

I mentioned in an earlier post that the Friends list was responsible for a considerable slowdown in Spark’s performance. Today, I discovered that this is a characteristic of the XBox Live website – it requires cookie re-validation every 15 minutes or so, and occurs even on regular desktop browsers; probably to keep applications such as OpenSpark from hammering the servers.

In any case, the delay has been reduced from around 25 seconds to anywhere between 6 to 11. Because this has been a pretty significant thorn in my side for a while now, there will likely be an intermediate release of OpenSpark, based on version 1.1, but with this particular bug squashed. Look for a new release some time in the next two weeks.

I’m still looking for some help from those of you who are getting false authentication errors, and can swing Android SDK.

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Posted in OpenSpark, Update | 1 Comment »

Spark is now OpenSpark. And open source

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

As I hinted would happen several times, Spark has gone Open Source. OpenSpark is the Open and Free reincarnation of Spark; now hosted at SourceForge, and licensed under the GPL.

Other than supporting Open Source and Android, there are several goals behind this:

  • There are various errors that only those that experience them can fix (they seem to be limited to specific accounts)
  • Critical issues noted in the README file (please read it if you’d like to contribute) require attention that I simply cannot currently provide
  • OpenSpark could always use more translations to new languages
  • The constant conspiracy theories about Spark stealing credit card numbers, and other nonsense are getting annoying and need to end

Again, if you’d like to contribute, please see the README file; first and foremost. You can also contact me at openspark-devel AT lists DOT sourceforge DOT net (un-mangle the email address above).

The current stable release is still 1.1 – same version as the one on Android Market. Most of the critical fixes noted in the README apply to this version as well, so if we can get them fixed, there will be another pre-2.0 release (2.0 will include the newer features, such as services, and AppWidgets, when they are completed).

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Posted in OpenSpark, Update | No Comments »

Services reveal cause of the slowdowns

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

It took a while, but Spark now has a dedicated update service, that can be configured to routinely update a gaming account in the background. So far, the feature has been working without a hitch, though more testing is needed, and notifications need to be implemented. I’m also not convinced that the widget is updating as expected.

While monitoring the update service, I noticed something unusual – specifically, that the only time the system re-authenticates is when the Friends list needs to be updated. I tested by removing Friend update from the background task, and saw updates breeze through from that point on.

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Posted in OpenSpark, Update | 5 Comments »

Castaway not happening

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

I’m forced to abandon work on Castaway PSP. I’m consistently unable to get emulation to work in any mode other than monochrome, and having combed through the code five or six times, and having attempted contact with the developer of the other PSP Castaway emulator, there’s not much else I can/am willing to do.

With regard to Spark, I’m working on the service that will implement automatic updates and notifications for new messages. Once that is completed, testing and bug fixes will follow, after which a release is imminent. The Gamercard widget is complete, and you can see a picture of it below.

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Posted in Emulators, OpenSpark, Rant, Update | 8 Comments »

Status update

Monday, May 10th, 2010

It’s been almost a month since my last post, and about as long since I’ve been able to work on any of my PSP and Android projects.

There’s not a lot to report at this point on the PSP front, I’m afraid, though I’ve been considering simply posting the unfinished (and still alpha) version of the SMS Plus Ad-hoc, with the hope that someone might find it interesting enough to finish the project. Real-time networking always leaves a bad taste in my mouth – especially when error correction is completely missing (as is the case with Ad-hoc networking).

Spark has a shiny new Gamercard widget available, though without an auto-refresh feature, it seems almost useless. So it looks like the next feature has already been decided for me – my original plan was to implement auto-updates last. One of the annoying things at this point is Android’s widget size requirement – widgets cannot simply be of arbitrary size, which will require more tinkering with layouts, hence a lot more time.

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Posted in Emulators, OpenSpark, Update | 1 Comment »

Spark buzzing along

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

Reception for version 1.1 of Spark has been overwhelmingly positive – thanks to all of you who left positive reviews on Android Market. My 360 decided to thank me for my efforts by finally RROD‘ing, so while I wait “two to three” of the longest weeks for my console to be repaired, I don’t have much of a choice but to continue working on Spark.  To whet your interest, here are some previews of what may be coming in the next release.

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Posted in OpenSpark, Update | 8 Comments »

On the delay, the freeware status of Spark

Monday, April 5th, 2010

I’ve found a fairly serious issue with scrolling on the Nexus One that’s forcing me to reconsider several things. First, it looks like scrolling works differently on the phone (at the moment I’m not sure if it’s the phone itself, or the firmware) – the ListView is not receiving the IDLE event if the user stops scrolling with his/her finger. End result of this is that if you stop scrolling with your finger (as opposed to waiting until scrolling stops automatically), Spark will not load un-cached icons. The (elegant) solution to this appears to be more complicated than one would hope – after some testing, I’ve decided to completely change how icons are loaded, which is going to take a considerable amount of time (a large number of activities use scrolling lists).

On the plus side, having the phone has allowed me to fix a lot of the issues that Droid and Nexus One users have been reporting for a while now – namely the ‘star’ corruption on the profiles, and the lack of high-resolution icons. The next version of Spark is optimized for medium- and high-resolution screens – the only drawback to this is that it is no longer likely to work on firmware 1.5 – it will require 1.6 or higher (this should be a non-issue for most users).

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