Virtual World 3 Live Wallpaper
Turn your phone into a interactive 3d Landscape.
Virtual World 3
Targeted Towards 2.3+ native devices.
The live wallpaper that transforms your phone into a virtual window into another world.
Completely Redesigned from the ground up. The new version of Virtual World supports some amazing features to showcase the powers of Android.
Features
- 3 Included Levels
- 3 Included Skymaps
- 2 Additional Textures
- 2 Glsl Programs for Ground Rendering
- 3 Camera Modes
--- Scenic
--- Wandering
--- First Person (Sensor Enabled)
- Support for Addons to enable dozens of visual options while letting you manage the size of your install.
History
Virtual World 3 is the cumulative effort of a year and a half of android development. I believe in a evolution based development methodology and continually work to improve my applications. A brief history is outlined below.
Virtual World 1
Early in my android development years, while I was unemployed I decided to write a game. The concept of the game was a 3D Tank Game and it may even be something I revisit shortly in the future, but alas that project never saw the light of day. That did not sway me though, the code for the game got ported to a live wallpaper, and that live wallpaper garned a fair amount of attention, and that was Virtual World 1.
Considering I was fresh back into OpenGL after years of not touching it, and only recently taking up android, the first attempt was pretty decent. It had a few flaws though.
- no paid version
- large install meant that people were very annoyed by updates
So to address these concerns, the version got kicked up a notch.
Virtual World 2
I had lost my keystore, and couldn't upgrade my VirtualWorld 1 Users, so I created a new Project and bumped the version number so that users could hopefully figure it out. I developed a addon model, and I experimented with dozens of visual effects and configuration options. In the end I had a pretty flexible LWP that was split into Free/Full versions, but the Full version didn't seem to be enough to entice users, and the graphics were aging and needed improvement.
On top of that, Vw2 was confusing, way to confusing to get your average user to the purchase gateway. The purchase model was confusing, (the full version had additional maps that would only load into it, but it wasn't clear or easy for the user to sort through).
On sales and downloads it did OK, it was probably my #1 selling app, buying me approximetely 1 six pack a month, however this just wouldn't cut it for my most successful app, and as the Android Api's grew there was more features I wanted in order to make this the most awesome app that I provide to my users.
Virtual World 3
With my realizations as to the flaws in VW2 being that it was confusing as hell, and a necessity to make more money from the project (it's not a charity), I started to implement a new menu system. Over the last six months I've become very proficient in other types of Android development, such as writing "normal" apps, having written the Apps for the Canucks and Flames, so it was a breeze to drop the PreferenceScreen in exchange for a fully formed and easy to use menu system that would allow users to easily preview and assign contents and customize the application.
On top of that, the new goal was to enable in-app purchases. No more free/full version, but a license to use some of the addon content delivered to the app, and organize content delivery in a way that even the most basic users could understand.
There was also the audio visualizer api's that came with 2.3 that I really liked, and had actually been using in a custom build of Virtual World 2 for some time. So the initial goal was New Settings, Inapp Purchases, and bringing the audio-visualizer support to the people.
Somewhere half way through development though I got that itch, that it wouldn't be enough, and that's when Gl ES2.0 Came in. I migrated all the graphics code to a new rendering pipeline that will let me add all sorts of Visual Magic in the Future.