New Update for LCARS Personnel App (WP7/WP8) Has Been Released!

Our newest LCARS effort, known as LCARS Personnel is a FREE and AD-FREE app for Windows Phone 7/8 that offers a much more exciting (in our opinion!) way to view your phone's contacts. 

Being free means that this app has certainly had a lot of testers, and the responses to it (as well as the reviews in the Windows Phone Store) have been fantastic! We have had a few requests for new features and, as always, we aim to please!

• New in this update you will no longer have to select a contact and then click on a "View" button. Contacts will now pop up as soon as you select it in the list.

Maybe this type of thing is not perfectly canon, but it does improve usability of the app and occasionally we have to cross that line to make it work better. Besides, selecting it in the list with touch probably wasn't canon anyways! 

• Another requested feature is to be able to search your contacts, which you will now find a new button in the middle at the bottom to accomplish!

Besides those new features, we have also added our latest animations to this app, very much like what was released on the update for the LCARS Simulator app a couple of days ago! We are certainly working hard to constantly improve all of our apps, and even this free one is no exception! Turn on the Extra Animations setting, and then click on "Red Alert" to really bring the app to life! We are very happy with the consistency of the interface and animation we have been able to achieve lately with our Windows Phone apps, and we will continue to improve this as time goes on. We want Windows Phone to have the best LCARS experience of any mobile OS and we won't stop until it does! Please let us know if you have specific things you would like to see added.

Think we forgot about LCARS Interface for Windows 8? Think again!

It may seem like Windows Phone has gotten all of the attention lately, and that may be somewhat true, but there is a lot going on behind the scenes for the Windows 8 app as well!

You may have heard that Windows 8.1 is coming in about a month. There are some pretty significant changes that are going into that update which will allow us to do a lot more with the app! That is in addition to all of the other stuff we are already working on.

A couple of the major features in progress are:

• Transporter module
• PDF viewer
• More sounds and animations
• Modules related to sensors (for tablet devices)

This has probably been the longest period this app has gone without an update, but it is coming, and once it starts there will probably be a few that come in succession. We are also still working on converting the whole Windows 8 app to use our new back end framework that all of the phone apps are using now. This means stripping out lots of unnecessary code and going for the most unified code possible with the Windows Phone app. As Windows RT and Windows Phone OS grow closer together, so will our apps! All of the code running the LCARS Simulator app is also being integrated into the Windows 8 app, so the Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and Windows Phone 7 apps are all using the same code base now. What this means is faster bug fixes, and when we add functionality, it's coming to them all at once! We have too much planned for these apps to spend time doing the same thing 2 and 3 times to update them all.

We've already got all 3 Windows Phone 7/8 apps running lean and mean with the new framework...LCARS Interface for Windows 8 is also well on its way. We hope to complete this process in the next couple days. Testing to make sure everything still works takes a bit of time due to how much larger the Windows 8 app is! And it's going to get even bigger soon...

Windows Phone LCARS App Overhaul Complete!

It's been a very busy few days for us as we completely stripped down and re-designed our code base for all of our LCARS style apps. The results from our perspective are fantastic, as the new changes will significantly reduce the time it takes to release updates for WP7 and WP8, as well as being able to more tightly integrate features between Windows Phone and Windows 8/RT! Microsoft is merging the two closer together and we are now taking advantage of that and are in a good spot to go even farther as they introduce more common APIs for us to use.

We are very happy with the state of our Windows Phone projects at this point, as they seem to be up and running perfectly now after the overhaul. Our LCARS Interface app is undergoing some additional updates to bring some new features before we release an update for it.  Read past the break for a lot more info on what we've been working on recently!

Big Things are Happening

After a couple of important releases for Windows Phone, including the brand new and FREE LCARS Personnel app, and a nice update to LCARS Interface for Windows Phone 7/8, we feel now is a good time to do a major overhaul to the back end code being used by all LCARS applications.

If the software development process interests you, read on past the break for more details of what we are doing..

LCARS Interface [Windows Phone] Release 5 is now Available!

Some of you may have already come across the new update to the Windows Phone version of LCARS Interface. Both Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 will have this update!

This update brings a couple of new things to this app. Most notably, you now have the ability to create an icon for each of the modules contained within the app. These icons become pinned to your Start screen and allow much quicker access to each individual module instead of having to go through the main interface each time. It was a little tedious to have to open the app, click "Access" and then click "Calculator" every time you wanted to add a few numbers up. Now you can simply create a tile for the Calculator and with one tap on your Start screen, you are ready to go! Pressing "Back" after that will return you to the main interface. Having this capability will remove the downside of having everything wrapped into one app that previously required you to open the main interface first. Now they can be treated as individual apps, and you can customize your Start screen to have much more of a LCARS feel to it!

Now your Start screen can look like this:

 

 

Every new module that we add will have this capability as well! Adding these tiles is completely optional, so the app will be able to operate normally if you do not desire this new functionality and prefer your Start screen to be less cluttered. You can also choose whether or not you want text to show below the tiles. For the main LCARS Interface tile this is not possible, but for the secondary tiles for the individual modules, it will ask you when you go to create them.

 

How do you create them? Simply open up the "Settings" in the app, and select "Tiles." Then simply tap on the button for the module you wish to pin just as you would select it from the main menu. These tiles can obviously be removed at any time.

 

Also in this update is a revamped GUI for recording Audio logs. Previously this was very basic. Now it is properly LCARS. We also did some more work to optimize and enhance the transition animations. We will be looking to raise the bar even further in the near future to make the whole UI feel more alive! We are in the process of acquiring some new hardware that will allow us to more accurately test lower powered devices so we can make sure the experience is great for everyone. So far we have been "playing it safe" as not adding too much to make sure there were not performance issues. We have quite a bit in the pipeline for Windows Phone, so stay tuned!

 

 

 



LCARS Personnel for Windows Phone 7/8 Has Been Released!

It's been a big week of working on the Windows Phone platform for us. We have a pretty good update coming for the LCARS Interface for Windows Phone app, but first we are happy to announce a brand NEW LCARS app for Windows Phone!

LCARS Personnel is an alternative to the People hub for viewing your contacts and for a limited amount of adding. Windows Phone is fairly strict when it comes to your contacts, and so our ability to replicate every function of the People hub is not currently possible. We have, however, included every function of dealing with contacts that is available through Microsoft's APIs!

The app lets you view the "Starfleet Profile" of any of your contacts, and also to add new ones with a good portion of the properties available. Interestingly enough, some details can be viewed by LCARS Personnel that cannot be added when adding a new contact with the same application. Some properties (including contact photos) can only be done through the People hub. When you go to save a new contact, it will import all of your entries into the People hub where you must confirm the new contact. It is at that time which you are able to enter additional details that are not possible to add from a 3rd party application and this is the same restriction imposed on any 3rd party contacts app you will find in the store.

Oh, and the best part is, this new LCARS application comes to you FREE, and also AD-FREE!

That's right, no purchase price and no annoying banners to get in your way either. While there are some costs associated with creating these applications, we feel that everyone should be able to have a little taste of LCARS even if you don't want to buy anything. This application comes with the same sounds and animations that are available on our other LCARS apps, and is available for both Windows Phone 7.1+ and Windows Phone 8 today!

Windows Phone Store Link: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/lcars-personnel/2e7d23c3-1509-46d1-91aa-6c8172db9013

LCARS App Updates

Apologies once again about the recent lack of activity. There are a number of projects that have been occupying our time recently, but hopefully you all will begin to see some benefit from it very soon!

It's been a decent amount of time since the last LCARS Interface update for Windows 8. There is actually a lot in the works for this app and it is taking some time to get everything right. The next module is another one for the entertainment side of things! Usually we try and wait until things are finished to announce them, but the next module in development is, by popular demand, the transporter! This module is proving to be a little tricky to design, so that is why it is taking some time to finish. We hope it will be worth the wait. One of the problems is getting everything to fit on something that can be as small as a tablet. This is a common issue we've had since the beginning though, so we're getting better at figuring it out. We're hoping to have this one ready to go within the next few weeks. This module is only one of several currently being developed though, so

Windows Phone users will soon be getting a new treat as well. This one will be coming to Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 at the same time. We'll wait until Microsoft approves it before saying anything more though.

Please keep your feature requests coming. We're always working hard to support all of our apps as best we can!