XXIth RGDC: mission complete

While the drumbeat of another game development event is fading out, let’s bottom-line it and share some impressions.

Everything the community wanted to know about game development and were interested to learn from the industry swamis was there, at the XXIth annual Russian Game Developers Conference, aka KRI 2013. Over 1400 seasoned game pros, from developers to artists, animators, and VX/SX specialists, gathered in Russia's capital city last week to discuss best practices, trends, and recognize some of the brightest achievements over the previous year.

Softeq’s Mobile Game Dev troopers, equipped with 5+ year experience of mobile game design and a bunch of cool iOS and Android games in the portfolio, moved their boots to Moscow to take an active hand in the event. Our game designer was among the top speakers side by side with reps of Microsoft, Mail.Ru, Nival and others.

Zeptolab, the author of the renowned Cut the Rope game, voted our Game Designer’s presentation of the Pong World Project one of the best of Day 1.

Pavel Shtangeev unveils the tangs of iOS mobile game design 

"All in all, it was a great gathering of game professionals, a much more diverse audience than in previous years. Great people to share experience and learn from… and to have fun with!” commented Pavel Shtangeev, game designer at Softeq. Check out our photo report here.

KRI Awards found their winners as the curtain fell. Why not nominate one of our new games to the Awards next year? We surely have an ace in the hole!

Smart and trendy: the new www.softeq.com is here!

Two months of tight-knit teamwork have swept by and today we are ready to reveal our baby to the wider public. Ta-dah – fully revamped www.softeq.com.

Having put some thought and effort into contemplating what makes us tickle design-wise and how the embedded software market’s been doing, we’ve figured out some key principles to lay down in the future site redesign:

• - it had to be modern, fancy, and nimble;
• - the content was to be organized in a clear and comprehensible manner, showcasing our worth across the embedded, firmware, and mobile fields (don't miss our portfolio with featured project case studies!)
• - the website was to provide same high level browsing experience when accessible on a PC, MAC, mobile or tablet devices with various screen resolutions.

So we’ve incorporated some pops of color against clean ‘canvas’ of black a white, arranged the content in thematically congruent blocks utilizing a good bunch of infographics, images, and videos. The drop-down main menu and sliding inner page side bar menu, which can be minimized to hide, add to the design cleanliness and user convenience in digesting the information.

The web-site is developed using PHP and Drupal CMS. These technologies and minimalist design gave us a lot of flexibility in optimizing it for mobile devices. So now we can reach out to much wider audience than before, including those busy chaps who are always on the go and prefer to use tablets to laptops.

We are still working on further updates, adding some tweaks, but are already happy with the result. So we encourage you to browse around and provide your feedback, if any.

Happy surfing!

Shine bright like a diamond with BlinkFX

Wow, we did it! BlinkFX, the wearable LED blink clipped onto a bracelet, made its first public appearance last week at SXSW! The technology inside the BlinkFX Wink was cooked at Softeq, and we are so happy to see how much enthusiasm everyone showed about it.

Our booth at the trade show was almost as crowded as a mall on a Black Friday morning :) It was located on a prime spot at a busy crosswalk, so the blinking winks attached to the booth backdrop and on the corner scaffolding drew inquiring minds into the booth to ask "What do they do?”.

There were several television stations and many reporters who came by and interviewed BlinkFX’ CEO Joel Carter, examined and eventually expressed utter delight about how this small LED device can brighten any entertainment event with an interactive, perfectly orchestrated light show that engages all attendees.

Be it a Rihanna’s concert, the NFL’s Super Bowl, or a high school theatrical performance, with BlinkFX the audience will lose themselves in the spectacle and virtually shine bright like a diamond following the pre-programmed creative routine put together by the show/VX director. 

The climax was the live interactive concert at the Boldstage of the Austin Convention Center where the BlinkFX Winks had their debut. With LL Cool J and Ice Cube as the headliners, it lasted until the wee hours in the morning ;-)

It was amazing how technology, again, brought entertainment to a whole new level enabling not only the audience on the dance floor enjoy the performance. Fans could watch the concert from anywhere on the globe via a mobile app Doritos, the concert’s sponsor, had available for download via Apple's App Store which provided a real-time 360 degree view of the show. Very cool! 

At the end of the day, BlinkFX was featured in a dozen of TV news casts, articles and blogs, and was called one of the Top 5 coolest things at the trade show. Check out the ZDNet and NY1 pieces. We’ll be posting more multimedia stuff from the concert on our Facebook page, so keep an eye on the newsfeed. And surely, follow us!

P.S.: Do you recognize this big guy?

Shaquille O’Neil appeared at the trade show out of the blue and walked by our booth!

High five, Shaq!

Mobile games? Ask Benjamin!

What do you normally do when you are at a boring meeting, on a bus, or elsewhere and need to fill in time? I guess 90% of us reach out for a mobile phone to throw some birds or smash some zombies :)

Next week will bring another milestone for the European game development community: Hamburg will hold Casual Connect Europe 2013. It is a first-class event in the industry, and Softeq, traditionally, participates (read the news). Softeq’s zGames, mobile game development division, with a handful of proprietary game products as well as those developed for the company’s clients, has a lot of experience to share. 

Meet Benjamin Groiss. If you see him around in Hamburg next week, don’t hesitate to ask how we can help you build an awesome game on iOS or Android with beautiful art and clear backend. 

In case you skip Casual Connect this time, shoot an email at ask@softeq.com to request a quote for your project. Benjamin will be back to you within 24h.  

Softeq offers end-to-end mobile game development services, including casual games, RPGs, action, adventure games on iOS and Android  

Join Softeq at Casual Connect and enjoy the amazing atmosphere with all its fun, technology innovations, aliens, guns, plants, and efficient networking!

Using a Pre-Populated SQLite Database in Android

Most Android code samples and manuals assume that a SQLite database is created at runtime. But what if we want to use an existing database—for instance, a database created and populated on a PC?

Creating the Pre-Populated Database

To make a database on a PC, you can use the SQLite Database Browser, which is available for most platforms. Let’s say you have already created a simple database in the yourdb.sqlite3 file with one table called friends, which contains a list of your friends and has two fields: id and name. To make your database work correctly on an Android device, you have to make two modifications.

1. Rename the id field of your table to “_id”. It can be easily done by clicking the Modify Table button, and then choosing the necessary table and field names.

2. Add the android_metadata table. To do that, open the Execute SQL tab and paste this simple code into the SQL string field:

CREATE TABLE android_metadata (locale TEXT);

INSERT INTO android_metadata VALUES ('en_US');

Click the Execute query button—and the database is ready. The database is now created and located in the assets folder. We'll show you how to use it in your Android app after the jump.

Read more »

Describing the Great Outdoors

Our Durateq Division has been busy helping the National Park Service (NPS) provide an immersive guest experience at NPS locations across the United States --and even as far away as Guam! One of our more prominent NPS Durateq ATV (Assistive Technology) installations this year was at Mount Rushmore National Memorial. Did you know that over 90% of Mount Rushmore was carved using dynamite? Dynamite blasts removed approximately 450,000 tons of rock from the mountain. Mount Rushmore is visited by nearly three million people each year, located in the majestic Black Hills of South Dakota. The DURATEQ devices provide assistive listening (AL), audio translations (Spanish and German), and audio description (AD) in two theaters of the Mount Rushmore visitor center and in the outdoor amphitheater.

The Durateq ATV system is helping the National Park Service (NPS) to comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and to meet the Title II and III ADA Requirements while providing an immersive guest experience for all NPS Visitor Center guests at locations from coast to coast.

We are adding more locations all the time, so ask for a Durateq ATV unit at an NPS welcome center on your next visit! 

Animal Alphabet Featured on BestAppsforKids.org

We are very proud to share the news our zGames' educational mobile app, Geoffrey's Animal Alphabet, is featured today on BestAppsforKids.org website as one of their approved apps for kids! The article features a very favorable review of Animal Alphabet and several of the bright and colorful screen shots from the app, along with a photo of some familiar faces to us here at zGames, the Animal Alphabet mobile development team who worked diligently to bring this fun and educational app to life.

BestAppsforKids.org's mission statement is a commitment to publishing reviews on only the best apps for kids. It is their goal to provide all kids with enticing, educational apps that will enhance their progress throughout life. BestAppsforKids.org provides a place for parents and caregivers to see the app in action and to know it has been carefully chosen.

Special thanks to BestAppsforKids.org for their time to review our Geoffrey's Animal Alphabet and we feel honored to be recognized on your site!

Read complete Geoffrey's Animal Alphabet review>>

zGames Wins Top Prize in Atari's Developer Challenge

zGames, our mobile game division, wins the top prize in the Atari Pong Developer Indie Challenge for their original game title entry, Pong World! Special thanks to the entire zGames Pong World team for their hard work and dedication to the project. Pong World is a game to be proud of and is true to all the key qualities of the original PONG - "innovation, creativity, fun and originality". We hope everyone enjoys playing Pong World as much as we enjoyed creating it!

Read here for the complete details and Atari's official press release.>>

Marvel Comics Makes A Difference in Boy's Life

An inspiring story. Marvel Comics, a company known for their superheros, makes a big difference in a New Hampshire boy's life. Kudos to Marvel Comics! Read more>>

Softeq participates in Mobile Optimized Conference 2012

Softeq will take part in the Mobile Optimized conference, an event aimed at creating a community of mobile technology specialists and sharing knowledge about the latest trends in the mobile world. 

Mobile Optimized will be held tomorrow, Friday, May 18^th in the National Library of Minsk, Belarus. Stop by and meet Softeq representatives from our HR, Marketing and Engineering departments. During the conference, Artyom Vorobjov, a Softeq engineer, will give a presentation about the game engine Cocos 2d-x.

We look forward to seeing you there! Read more>>