[Android Apps and Games] DMTSource:
I'm a physicist. In English, we call that unemployed. When I graduated last August I decided to take a break from larger, colder organizations. My skills suggested that I needed to work with graphics and challenging programming. So, I decided to revisit my dream of being a game developer.

I decided to venture into creating games for Android. It seemed like a truly easy way to get a product out there since Google Play was so inviting and I already had a android phone to play with. I was familiar with opengl from a couple tiny projects with data visualization, and was a handy programmer in python, c++, or any language I found myself using. So, last August I decided to create "Number Splash (Lite)", a truly simply game for young kids learning numbers. The simplicity of the project allowed me to focus more on the challenges of producing all aspects of the game and the company to represent it. This project took 3 months to produce; my first game & product. I was rather proud despite the slow downloads on Google Play & Nabi(A kids specific android tablet and app store).

My next project was another kid's app, the point of which was to promote my company with a free, ad free game with no external links. Something truly kid safe. This 2 week long project was called "Kids Coloring & Painting" and was a full time workload during the Xmas/New Year holiday. My goal for Kids Coloring & Painting, like with my first game Number Splash, was to offer a product that was higher quality than the myriad of hopeless apps available on Android. These games were created with OpenGL ES, Java, and Adobe Fireworks. Between a couple tutorials and xda/Stack Overflow it was easy to figure out everything. You can find me on google play under the developer: DMT Source.

Google "Nehe android opengl" and you'll come across the Insanity Design website. It contains a port of the older but infamous NEHE opengl tutorials which pretty much rock no matter what platform you are coming from or going to. I jumped right into lesson 8 and had a prototype of my first app working in a couple hours! It was just a gradient blue background with bubbles floating and jiggling from bottom to top heh... Also consider checking out the Lost Garden site by Dan Cook if you need some free game art for any sort of project. I'm using some of it now for a tile based running game I am working on next, cant wait to get it out.

I use Eclipse to program my android games in Java with OpenGL ES for graphics. I create my textures in Adobe Fireworks and use uncompressed 2^n sized png's with transparency to achieve sprites. Color picking and position testing used for UI. I have recently obtained a Nexus 7 & 10 for testing and really enjoy working on both. I also use a Motorola Photon phone and the Android emulator running down to Android api level 8 to stress test my apps on weaker systems. I also made the sites for the company, and each game (appname dot com).

The downloads have been pretty horrid, but that isn't the point...Look at what I learned in 4 months thanks to online tutorials and websites like xda and stackoverflow! Thank you for that.

Number Splash Lite - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dmtsource.numberSplashLite

Kids Coloring & Painting - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dmtsource.kidsColoringAndPainting