LCARS Interface Release 14 Now in the Store!

Well I had a little bit of extra time this week, so I made some updates again! The problem with this app is that it is essentially unlimited in scope! That means there is no shortage of things for me to work on. I work best by request though, and that's where this update comes from.  Another new module has been added that includes an easier to read Time and Date display which can be seen easier from a distance, a Timer (basically a simple Stopwatch) and the often requested Auto Destruct, which serves as a countdown timer and includes audio warnings from the computer! I thought of including an alarm clock as well, but due to the way Windows 8 runs apps, the app has to be in focus for audio to be played. I'm looking into find a way to make this happen, but so far it's not very straightforward to make Windows 8 let your app run forever in the background waiting for a certain time. I don't want to be responsible for anyone being late to work by the alarm not going off properly, so I'm holding off on this part for now until I find a better solution!

There are also quite a few other smaller changes in this update, many of them being visual tweaks and minor bug fixes. I also snuck in the performance update to the Media Player that I mentioned before which should decrease app startup time as well as transition more smoothly between Standard and Full Screen modes. 

Read past the break, or see the Version History page for the full list of changes and an update on what's coming in future updates.

Use LCARS Interface on Android and iPad!

Sorry if you got too excited by the headline, but LCARS Interface has not actually been ported to other platforms yet. However, if you do own an Android tablet or an iPad, you can still have a little bit of fun over your home network! We used to use this a lot with our own testing to make sure that LCARS Interface is actually usable on a tablet interface before we acquired all of the testing gear we have now. I figure I would share what I do so those of you who don't own Windows 8 tablets can pretend that you do sometimes! It's not perfect, but for something that's free it does a really good job! (Your results may vary depending on the speed of your devices and home network).

Read on to get instructions on how to set it up!

International Weather Update (Release 13) Now Live!

Update: Release 13 is now live in the Windows Store!
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It's been a crazy weekend of coding, and the switch from using the NOAA weather database to one that supports International weather is now complete! The coding part wasn't the hard part. The hard part was finding a suitable web service that would provide a reasonable amount of information without charging a ton of money. Thanks to the folks at World Weather Online, I now have what I need to provide weather to those of you outside the United States, which is a significant number of you as of late.

Read on for more information about the new features!

LCARS Interface Release 12 Released!

Update: This update passed certification VERY fast, and is now available in the store!

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I know I've tried to hype up this update, and I'm happy to finally announce that I have completed the update and submitted it for certification!

So, what does this update actually bring? Read on to find out!

Any Windows Phone users out there?

I've had a few requests to make a version of LCARS Interface for Windows Phone. I'm not entirely opposed to the idea, but Microsoft does charge me another developer fee to put things in the Windows Phone store, so I'm trying to figure out if there is a large enough audience to make it worthwhile. I don't imagine it would be as complex as this app, since things like a text editor and maybe the file manager don't make as much sense on the phone, but the phone also has other capabilities that desktops and laptops don't have. Right now I spend most of my free time working on this app compared to my other apps on various platforms, especially these past few weeks working up what will be coming in the next update. I don't really want to split my time, but I can leverage a lot of my code from this app for WP8 so it shouldn't be that bad.

So, Windows Phone users, let me know if you are out there! Either comment here or contact me privately if you would like to see a WP8 version of this app and what features you would like to see included!

Next Update This Week

I made a lot of progress on the new module over the weekend and last night. It's turning out to be a  lot more work than I originally thought, but I think you all are going to like this one. This piece has the potential to be its own app, but it's just being added into the main one instead as I want to make this app the best value possible. The only reason this app costs money is because it costs me money to make it and I refuse to dirty up a LCARS interface with ads to support it. The other reason is that since programming Windows Store apps is not my day job, I just don't currently have the time to support potentially thousands of users who would download this if it was free. I don't like low quality software, and I take every single piece of feedback or review that gets posted seriously and respond to it immediately. If someone says it's not working, I try as hard as I can to figure out why. This app is still young, now just over a month old. It's certainly not slapped together from a code perspective, which is why it takes time to add big updates. I spend as much or more time on design of the interface and code structure than I do actually writing the code itself. I'm also converting this app to use DirectX for the sound processing. The native media elements are not cutting it. I'm sure some of you may have noticed that the sounds occasionally get cut off when performing other actions. That won't happen anymore after the next update.

I do find it interesting that some users think that this app either costs too much or needs more functionality for the price. C'mon people, it's 3 dollars (or the equivalent in your local currency)! If you get more than 20 minutes of use out of it over its lifetime, it's a better value than going to the movies if you consider time entertained for money. After I add this next update, you surely should get at least that much out of it. I'm hoping to wrap up the coding and testing in the next couple of days, and then I will submit it to the Windows Store. I hope it doesn't take as long to approve this update as the last one, but this one adds a whole lot more for them to check I suppose. It seems like I've been making you wait forever for this update, but the last one wasn't even released a week ago. Since it took 4 days to approve it last time it feels like forever to me since I was done with that update almost 2 weeks ago. 

That's it for now. One big update coming next and will hopefully be this week. International weather should be in the update after this one. I've been investigating how to do it, I just haven't had time to code it with this other part taking 100% of my development time. But the next update is going to be the best part of this app in my opinion. I will update again when it passes certification.

In the Pipeline

Well Release 11 is now in the books and I've gotten some good responses to the new features. I've been reading some of the reviews in the store from around the world and I'm happy that Star Trek fans everywhere are enjoying it! Unfortunately I know a lot of you want things like this to be a Start screen replacement but that's just not possible within the Windows Store limitations. There's a reason you don't see any other apps that can do it.

I do want to say that I am working on international weather! Getting access to this information without paying a lot of fees is difficult, but I think I'm close to having a solution. I don't know that I will be able to get 7 day for everyone, but it should at least get the current conditions for a number of cities in a lot of different countries. Getting this to work is a significant effort over what was required for the U.S. weather since I'm dealing with data in much more raw formats that have to be parsed into something I can use. This functionality most likely will not be ready for the next update, but hopefully the following one. Just know that it's coming in some form!  I certainly see that the desire is there so I will do my best to make it happen.

Even after the latest overhaul, the media player still isn't in a place where I'm 100% happy with how well it works, so I think I'm going to look at it again and see if I can't optimize it further. Mainly this will relate to the full screen code and it most likely won't be anything you will even notice as an end user, except that the media player should run and transition more smoothly, along with a reduction in the resource overhead of the app. I haven't seen any performance issues anyways even with Windows RT, but as the app gets bigger I want to make sure it stays running at peak performance so the visuals stay nice.. It's going to be a decent amount of work though, and aside from the occasional user, most of the feedback I've gotten on it has been good anyways. If there are formats it doesn't play, let me know and I will look into it. It's possible I may just need to add the extensions to what the program looks for.

The next update you will see (barring any emergency bugs that may need to be fixed) is a substantial one, but I'm not going to say what it is yet. I've been working on it for a while now since it involves making many new controls and adding new sound effects, and just a lot of adjustments that take time to test. I also want to possibly put a viewer for this website into the app itself so people are more likely to read it. A lot of answers to things get posted on these blog entries as well as on the pages dedicated to features and FAQ. The more feedback I can get, the better this app will get over time.

Release 11 Coming Today!

(Update: I guess I just had to say something, since less than an hour after this post I got word that it passed certification! Look for this update later today.)

I'm not sure what Microsoft's situation is, but I submitted the next release on Sunday night and it's still in certification. Usually they take less than a day, and now it's going on 4. I hope this isn't a new trend because I enjoy being able to get updates released quickly.

Anyhow, this update adds a few useful new things to your main interface. The first is the ability to toggle whether you want to show the Stardate or use the standard date instead. I know a few of you asked for this, and making sense of a Stardate in the 21st century isn't always practical even if it is fun. Also added is the display of time next to the date. This can also be toggled between 12H and 24H display formats (with AM/PM showing for the 12H format)! This gives flexibility and lets you configure your ship's computer the way you want!

So, with all of these new options, how do you set them up? The Configure screen was pretty cluttered already! Well, I've overhauled the configuration module and redesigned it to look more like the other modules, which gives the ability to have multiple views inside the main display area. You can now configure all of your sound, Date/Time, and theme options in their appropriate groups. This new layout also leaves plenty of room for more options later, which will inevitably be needed as more features are added!

Less obvious changes in this update will include fixing the Year display on the media play to not say "0" if no data is given in the file's metadata. I also tweaked the animation selection on the module switches to give a better variety instead of only a couple having different ones from the standard fly out from the corner one that they all started with. There were also some visual tweaks made to the Weather module. See if you can find it (when this update actually hits)!

I'm hoping this release hits soon, as I wanted this post to say it's available a few days ago. But I'm posting it now to let you all know that an update is in the pipeline and will be available as soon as Microsoft finishes their approval process.

I also have a bigger update in progress which will add a bit more fun to the app, as up until now it's mainly been focused on productivity with all of the fun being in the look of the interface and sound effects. This update will take it a step farther and give you something actually geared toward entertainment. I'm not going to give away what it is yet, though! Just know that those of you who wanted a more fun thing to do with this app will have something soon!