Giant Bomb Android Application, now in Beta! - General Discussion

#1 Edited by harris (847 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

Drew, poserdonut, and I (Harris) are proud to announce that the Giant Bomb Android application is now in beta. The beta includes many improvements, including video search/filtering, vast performance enhancements, and much more.

Stats

As of 8/8/2010 we have 3768 active installs at 4.5/5 stars with 355 ratings.

Getting It

Search for "Giant Bomb" on the marketplace to get the app. Leave a nice review while you're at it ;) If you've already installed the application from beta
If you don't have access to the market, grab it on our Google Code page.

Screen Shots

NOTE: These screenshots are from version 1.3. (OLD)

Source Code

The project is open source. See our Google Code page if you're interested. Please let me know if you'd like to help in any way!

Change Log

See our Google Code page for a detailed change log.

Upcoming Feautres

Experimental Forum Reading Support
Barcode Scanning for game lookup

Donations

If you'd like to donate, please keep the following in mind: we are not Giant Bomb. They are the ones who make the app worthwhile. Before donating, consider buying a Giant Bomb t-shirt. If you decide to donate, donations are split equally between all three of us. Thanks in advance.

Click here to donate.

You'll be asked how much you want to donate after clicking the link. We appreciate any amount. Thanks again.

Notice

A new feature in the beta is error reporting. Whenever the app crashes, a crash log is sent to our servers. This log contains NO personal information and is completely anonymous. This is a mandatory feature during beta, to help us better the app.

Please report any other issues you have with the app, or suggestions. Since the app only reports errors that cause a crash, other errors may go unreported. Please let us know about these errors.

Sorry for the lackluster post, I hope the app will speak for itself ;) I'll improve this later.

Thanks!

#2 Posted by poserdonut (31 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

Drew and Harris are the real heroes of this release.

Great work guys

#3 Posted by harris (847 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

I'm heading to an Android Developer Labs Conference now, so perhaps I'll get to show off the app a little :P

Also, it looks like they're giving out free phones this year, so hopefully I'll have a new device to debug and optimize for :D

The error logging is already helping us out, quite a few crash reports have already been sent to us, so we'll be able to fix those issues now. Also, be sure to launch the app again after a crash, so the crash data is sent. (It's sent on the next launch after a crash)

#4 Posted by SamStrife (1038 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

Im still hoping on the Symbian version that will never come.

#5 Posted by EpicSteve (6125 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

I really want community features or some sort of update to the iPhone app.

#6 Posted by TheGremp (2064 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

Oh boy oh boy oh boy.

Updating apps is like Christmas for me! Thanks duder.

#7 Posted by DanielJW (4914 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

Bump for this thread, Android users should be all over this! :)

#8 Edited by watertails (95 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

Thanks for that bump, JW! I just got my Droid in the mail today, and this is going to be my first Android app.

:o It's really nice having Giant Bomb in my pocket. There went all of my productivity during off hours.

#9 Posted by choffy21 (1376 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

Good update. Very stable, and the name looks good on my Nexus One. One thing though, that icon looks horrible. Not the design, but the quality of the picture. Definitely needs to be cleaned up.

#10 Posted by Luke (1609 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

Awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you all very much for your hard work dooders! :D

#11 Posted by Skytylz (3803 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

awesome, i get a new phone in a week and i'm trying to decide between a droid eris and chocolate touch. This is pushing me towards the droid.

#12 Posted by jukezypoo (3659 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

Not sure if it's worth much, but I'm running a 2.1 rom on my myTouch 3G, and the video is just black (I do get great audio though!).

Not sure that my rooted experience is of any help (on second thought, you should probably just ignore this, because others running 2.1 aren't having any issues), but just thought I'd throw it in there; keep up the good work!

#13 Posted by cspanick (48 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

Yeah, I'd love to see some new updates to the GB iPhone app. One problem i've had is the release section seems to be inaccurate with games released last year saying they are coming out this month.

#14 Posted by harris (847 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

@choffy21: Yea, the icon was a really quick last minute thing. We still need to find a good icon designer who can make a decent one.
Please PM me if you're someone who could make a better one!

@jukezypoo: Woah, didn't know you could get 2.1 running on a myTouch. Not sure what's causing that issue.. sorry duder :\

@cspanick: This thread is about the Android application. The iPhone app is maintained by the GB staff, not us community members.

Thanks to everyone for testing, we're getting tons of very helpful crash reports.

#15 Posted by choffy21 (1376 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

@harris: http://media.giantbomb.com/media/vine/img/white/layout/logo.png

Couldn't you just use that and put a black background behind it? I could help you with it if you need; I'm decent at Photoshop.

#16 Posted by Kurtdyoung (1215 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

I love this app, one question though, I can only get videos, except for one random time where I could change from video, to news or reviews. Is it something up with my phone? Am I thinking of something else or is it user error?

#17 Edited by ChrisTaran (1274 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

Is there anyway you can make it so we can read comments on videos and news stories?

Thanks!

#18 Edited by drew (125 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

@ChrisTaran: Unfortunately, the Giant Bomb API (the set of functions this app and the iPhone app both use to retrieve information) don't include any community features. You can rest assured, if the guys at GB decide to add this functionality to the API, we'll add support for it to the app. This includes things like the forums as well.

@kurtdyoung: What phone are you running it on? I haven't come across this problem before...

#19 Posted by Noxpectius (167 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

Great, I Will check it out now.

#20 Posted by harris (847 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

@choffy21: I think we'd like to design in icon in accordance with the Android icon design guidelines, located here:
http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/icon_design.html

If you'd like to make it, that would be great.

#21 Posted by ch13696 (4582 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

I'm gonna definitely download it. Any chance that the iPhone version will soon have forum support?

#22 Posted by drew (125 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

@ch13696: We don't maintain the iPhone version, that's an official app supported by the GB staff. If they decide to provide a means for adding forum support to the iPhone version, we'll add it to the Android version too.

#23 Posted by ch13696 (4582 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

I will literally pay 20 gzillion dollars if there is soon to be forum support.

#24 Posted by megalowho (828 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

Checking it out right now. Great work guys!

#25 Posted by jakob187 (20685 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

Checked it out extensively last night after I updated. No crashes so far on my Droid, streaming feels good, video searching is A-W-E-S-O-M-E...man, you guys are goddamn champions!!! Thank you so much for keeping up on this as well as making it in the first place. You've done a great community one hell of a great service, gents.

#26 Posted by Kurtdyoung (1215 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

@drew: I am using an Android G1.

#27 Posted by harris (847 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

@ch13696: I would gladly do it for any amount of dollars in the gazillions :D

Seriously though, I'm considering adding basic forum support as an experimental feature.

@jakob187: Thanks for the constant testing and praise :)

#28 Posted by harris (847 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

This weekend I'll be adding experimental forum reading and barcode scanning. Expect a new release around the middle of next week.

#29 Posted by artofwar420 (6169 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

YAAAY! My phone will love this.

#30 Posted by harris (847 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

Forum reading support is coming along nicely... got most of the hard work done. May have a release with some basic forum reading out this weekend.

#31 Edited by harris (847 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

Here's the terrible looking interface for it so far (this will improve GREATLY soon):

I think this has a lot of potential :D I can see myself reading the forums on my phone in a lot of situations.

That's probably all I can do for tonight... I'll continue tomorrow.

UPDATE: Got it looking pretty decent.

#32 Posted by RoyaleWifCheese (427 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

Wonderful updates. Would it be possible to hide the Notification slide on 2.0.1 during video playback? It's a little distracting, but by no means a big deal. I'm honestly just happy this app exists.

#33 Posted by harris (847 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

@RoyaleWifCheese said:

" Wonderful updates. Would it be possible to hide the Notification slide on 2.0.1 during video playback? It's a little distracting, but by no means a big deal. I'm honestly just happy this app exists. "

I did this at one point, but the aspect ratio is such that it just leaves more blank space at the bottom of the screen, at least on the G1. We could add code to detect if the your screen's aspect ratio is such that it would utilize the extra space. We might do this in the next release.

#34 Edited by The_Laughing_Man (12125 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

@harris said:

" @RoyaleWifCheese said:
" Wonderful updates. Would it be possible to hide the Notification slide on 2.0.1 during video playback? It's a little distracting, but by no means a big deal. I'm honestly just happy this app exists. "
I did this at one point, but the aspect ratio is such that it just leaves more blank space at the bottom of the screen, at least on the G1. We could add code to detect if the your screen's aspect ratio is such that it would utilize the extra space. We might do this in the next release. "

I have my brand new droid sitting next to me right now. Maybe I will grab it

Edit..

Got it but I think I might have found a bug.

#35 Posted by harris (847 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

Next release has a MUCH nicer icon.

The current icon is pretty terrible... sorry about that.

#36 Posted by CenturionCajun (1461 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

I've been using it for the last few weeks and it's pretty sweet. I usually listen to the Bombcast while I'm opening up work in the morning and watch various videos on my break. The only issue I've come across is that you can't jump around in the Bombcast or on videos. So, you have to start it up and just ride it out.

#37 Posted by Kurtdyoung (1215 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

I still do not have the tab at the top to change between news, videos, reviews, or bombcast. It starts and says on videos.

#38 Edited by harris (847 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

@kurtdyoung: That's very strange... have you tried uninstalling and installing the latest version from the market? I've never encountered that error before, except for when the app actually was only videos. Which firmware version are you on? Also, if you hit menu, does anything come up? Sorry for the trouble, hopefully I can fix that.

Posted some stats in the first post.

#39 Posted by harris (847 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

Found a major bug thanks to bug reporting. App will usually crash when you change screen orientations during a loading dialog. This should be fixed by next release.

#40 Posted by choffy21 (1376 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

@harris: Did the bug get fixed? Any update on the update?

#41 Posted by Afroman269 (7388 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

Fantastic now maybe they will, I don't know, update the iPhone app sometime? That thing is still kind of janky.

#42 Posted by kidman (438 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

Finally bough the glorious HTC Magic (MyTouch 3G with 288MB of RAM for US folks) and the app is great! One thing that is not-so-great is that the video gets out of sync, looks like it's not able to keep up.. I tried killing all the processes but not much has changed. I'm streaming via my own Wifi. My rom is slightly modified 1.5 with Sense Ui (cursorsense if anyone's curious). Anyone know how i could i fix it?

#43 Posted by harris (847 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

@choffy21: We're working on it, been a bit busy lately. Should be out in maybe a week or so.

#44 Posted by harris (847 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

@kidman: The new patch has quite a few video optimizations, see if that helps when it comes out a week or so.

#45 Posted by kidman (438 posts) - 3 years, 3 months ago

thanks for the response! Anroid at this moment isn't the most optimized system in the world, but i got youtube hd playing pretty smoothly so i think it's possible. Right now i cannot test it on 3G due to outrageous prices in my country (paid 30$ for 30megabytes by mistake) but will get 2GB plan in a week so i'll test again then. Thank you very much for your hard work!

#46 Posted by ToastMan (84 posts) - 3 years, 2 months ago

Would it be possible to add Low, Medium and High video options like the ones in the site's player?

#47 Posted by SpikeSpiegel (6817 posts) - 3 years, 2 months ago

@EpicSteve said:

" I really want community features or some sort of update to the iPhone app. "

Me too. Forum support would be awesome.

#48 Posted by harris (847 posts) - 3 years, 2 months ago

@ToastMan: No, sadly. The videos in the format that play on android devices are (currently) only in one quality. They're the same specially formatted videos that play on the iPhone app.

@SpikeSpiegel: Experimental forum support will be in the next version :D

The update may be delayed a bit, but look for it in the next several days....

#49 Posted by Dr_Feelgood38 (1550 posts) - 3 years, 2 months ago

This reaaaaallly has me yearning for an update for the iPhone app. Get some new features on there. Maybe a video search function, Bombcast tab, forum support... Well, the Bombcast is on iTunes, so I could do without that, but an update would still be extremely welcome.

#50 Posted by Skytylz (3803 posts) - 3 years, 2 months ago

got a droid and like the app, kind of messed up when trying to watch videos and when i switch between vertical and horizontal views the app stops working about half the time.