Jatris Free 1.4 Released

It's time for a new version.

This version contains all the work done to support more display modes (see previous post).

Google play link  : [Jatris Free]

New video modes fully supported in version 1.4 :

HDPI 540x960,600x1024

Playable, no graphics errors, but the game area is smaller than the expected :

MDPI 480x640,480x800,540x960,600x1024

JaTris was not designed for tablets even if now it is playable in 720x1280 and 800x1280 but the game area is very small.




Support for MDPI large modes (tipically tablets) is limited due to graphic resolution; to fully solve the problem new graphics must be created and added to the game increasing the size of apk to download and memory usage.

Still thinking if a new apk designed only for high resolution device is a better idea.

Better support for high resolution devices

Worked a lot to reduce graphics problems on high resolution devices stated in the previous post.

Jatris was not designed to work with high resolution devices (it's native resolution is 480x800 or 480x854 with HDPI density ) so it is not possible to optimize it for such devices without graphics redesign (mainly resize).

Anyway it can run a lot better than the current version :-)

The current version supports these resolutions :

LDPI 240x320, 240x400, 240x432
MDPI 320x480
HDPI 480x640, 480x800, 480x854

Upcoming version improved support for resolutions :

MDPI 480x640,540x960,600x1024

These modes represent the worst case scenario for Jatris, as the MDPI density lead to a shrink in all bitmaps; the game area is smaller than the optimal one
(in 600x1024 a lot smaller).

HDPI 540x960,600x1024

 These modes are fully playable even if the game area is a bit smaller than the optimal.

HDPI 720x1280,800x1280

Jatris can be played on devices with modes but the user experience is not guaranteed.

Checking if an HD version can be done without recoding the game.

Here the pictures of the improvements in MDPI modes

Left   : current version (1.32)
Mid   : first attempt
Right : upcoming version (maybe 1.4)

Graphics problems with a class of devices

A lot of problems emerged in graphics rendering on all devices with high resolution but mid dpi such as Galaxy Tab 7.0 and its variants.

Such class of devices has high resolution display (1024x600 and up) but only
mid (160) DPI, so the automatic bitmap resize of Android try to shrink all bitmaps.

The result is a graphical mess :-(

Jatris will continue to work but the graphics in the game area will be affected by size and position problems.

Working to reduce the problem...but probably to avoid it at all it will be necessary to build a new, high resolution only, version of Jatris.

Stay tuned.

Another bug signaled

 Another bug report, this one is a null pointer in insert high score panel

java.lang.NullPointerException
at org.aciampal.jatrisfree.JatrisGame.drawInsertHighScore(JatrisGame.java:2634)
at org.aciampal.jatrisfree.JatrisGame.doGamePaint(JatrisGame.java:2250)
at org.aciampal.jatrisfree.Panel.onDraw(JatrisThread.java:153)
at org.aciampal.jatrisfree.Panel$GameThread.run(JatrisThread.java:70)

Not able to reproduce at the moment, will try to modify the code at line 2634 to be more resilient to null pointers :-)

Stay tuned.