Alpha Release

With some limited testing, I think I have gotten the app into a state where it is ready for an early release. I've got a small list of minor quirks I'd like to fix at some point, but nothing major. I have a longer list of functionality to add...

I think this link should allow access to it on the Play Store (but I've not released an Alpha app before so don't know the entire process):

https://play.google.com/apps/testing/lhsi.mcd

I think you have to be part of the Magic: The Gather community first

Latest fixes

This evening I fixed an issue whereby the transparency was lost for the mana cost symbols when putting them on cards, giving them an ugly white square background.

A quick Google found that transparency on gif image files wasn't supported as well in 4.4 or later. I saw one solution that involved changing certain pixel colours to transparent, but that seemed like a convoluted solution that had a side effect of making too much transparent.

My solution was to just convert all the images to on png, which does handle transparency OK. Even found a way to bulk convert them which was handy :-D

Image Share

After looking around on StackOverflow a couple of times, I finally got the ability to share an image file working.

This is the code snippet that works - saveCard is a File that I have just saved and checked that it exists():

Intent share = new Intent( Intent.ACTION_SEND );
share.setType( "image/jpeg" );
share.putExtra( Intent.EXTRA_STREAM, Uri.fromFile( saveCard ) );
startActivity( Intent.createChooser( share, "Share Image" ) );

This, on the other hand, is my previous code that wasn't working:

Intent share = new Intent( Intent.ACTION_SEND );
share.setType( "image/jpeg" );
share.putExtra( Intent.EXTRA_STREAM, saveCard.toUri() );
startActivity( Intent.createChooser( share, "Share Image" ) );

For some reason, the toUri method on File doesn't work in this case. In any case, I'm glad I got it fixed :-)

The Gathering

Some of my spare time is spent playing Magic: The Gathering, and some is spent making small Android apps for fun. For the Magic Card Designer, I have combined the two. This started mainly as a way to be able to create cards on my tablet for fun, but I have also learned a little about android development at the same time which is nice.

The app is still in the early stages at the moment, but I can get a card that at least somewhat looks like how it is supposed to, which is probably the most important bit.

I'll release it at some point, but I would like to get a minimum level of functionality first. What that minimum level is, I am not sure yet.