What I learned while developing the Lumpy Circles app

[seemack]

Hey guys, I released an app a couple days ago and it was an interesting technical challenge so I wanted to share some details on how I accomplished it. Basically, I needed to generate paths that looked like a lumpy circle. The reason (joke) behind that is that misshapen circles will be the new profile shape after perfect circles have run their course.

So the first step was creating a perfect circle. I used this article by Charles Petzold to figure out how to calculate the origin and control points: Petzold Book Blog - B?zier Circles and B?zier Ellipses

After getting the perfect circles, I simply updated the code so that it would randomly shift the points before adding them to the path geometry and, voila, misshapen circles! I experimented with the number of points and shift amount to get the desired lumpy-ness. In a future version, I plan to allow the user to customize it.
The next tricky part was painting the desired image into the lumpy circle and allowing the user to pan and zoom. I started by setting the image as the image brush. I added a render transform to it and manipulated it via the touch events. This didn't work because the image brush only seems to load part of the image at runtime. .The problem would manifest when I panned across the image towards the edge and before I got to the actual edge of the image, the image brush would display black.

Ultimately, I used the Nokia Imaging SDK method of panning through an image. They have an excellent tutorial here: Memory-efficient Navigation in Very High Resolution Images on Windows Phone - Wiki. Basically, it generates the appropriate image and sets it as the imagebrush source as you pan/zoom.

Other neat things I found:
- You can not save pngs to the camera roll
- The "Me" tile does not respect transparencies in pngs. I saved a png to my device and the lumpy circle appeared with an accent-coloured background
- The OneDrive documentation is not so good
- Dvlup.com featured my app but it surprisingly did not trigger an avalanche of downloaders : )

The app is called Lumpy Circles and can be found here. Feel free to check it out and ask me any questions about it. Lumpy Circles | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United States)

 

[seemack]

Example image for those curious:

 

[anon9169769]

you pan/zoom.

Other neat things I found:
- You can not save pngs to the camera roll
- The "Me" tile does not respect transparencies in pngs. I saved a png to my device and the lumpy circle appeared with an accent-coloured background
- The OneDrive documentation is not so good
- Dvlup.com featured my app but it surprisingly did not trigger an avalanche of downloaders : )

)[/url]

That doesn't sound neat looool appreciate how your developing for windows phone but we can do our own circles with various apps already. Would love to see a take on with a game called siege hero. NOW IF YOU CAN DO THAT THEN MONEY WILL COME YOUR WAY I would happily pay for a siege hero game like they have on android, apple and flash player

 

[loverusham]

Great App with Dedicated Hardwork..I like your passion. :smile: And Dvlup.com is a great site but only for devlopers so it popularizes your App only among developers.And as u may know developers are always busy with updates and devlopment so the avalanche might be just a snowfall. I read about your update on dvlup, it was just 2 steps below my Techify Update.I would have really appreciated your hardwork with a 5 star review but the funny part is I dont OWN a windowsphone :winktongue: Its quite ironic that a developer doesn't have the phone he's developing for.I use Emulators. Anyways, Congratulations for the App :wink:

 

[seemack]

I guess I should have specified that they would neat to devs.

Also, if you had checked the link, you would have seen that the app is free. I'm clearly not doing this for money.

 

[nmercy]

It's a great feeling when you can get that app out there... especially when you've learned something new.

I definitely agree with you on the OneDrive documentation being lacking, though it appears to have been updated very recently so it might be better now. Fortunately ran into some good tutorials online and managed to hobble some OneDrive support together.