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Monday, February 21, 2011

Fleya 2.0 is on the market

Fleya


This is the first update released to the market and, so far, it's a hit. This update brings a slimmer engine, some color options and new settings you can tweak.

The first change is not that visible. It's a tweak in the application logic that fixes a major frame-rate loss while the finger is touching the screen. I still see a hit in performance while touching the screen but it's not so obvious now. If you've never felt it then you're the lucky owner of a device better than my
HTC Magic.

Choose your element
The most visible change is the color option. Now you can choose from a variety of fluids. You could call them colors but they behave differently to orientation changes.

  • Plasma is basically the same as the previous version but now it's more sensitive to orientation.
  • Nytro is a cold fluid that tends to sink to the bottom; the opposite of plasma.
  • Hot & Cold is a simulation of both plasma and nytro, competing on the same screen. Odd gestures generate plasma and even gestures generate nytro. Make them swirl around each other or cancel each other out.
  • Cloud is a white fluid that swirls on a sky color background.
  • Smoke is just smoke.
  • Ink is a dark-blue fluid on a white background

Here are some screenshots of the different fluids in action:

Plasma Nytro Hot & Cold
 
Smoke Ink Cloud

Options menu
Another visible change is in the settings menu. You can now pick the speed at which the fluid dissolves into the background and the rate at which phone movements influence it. You are encouraged to experiment with these settings to get a wider variety of effects.
My favorite for the past few days has been Hot & Cold fluids with maximum realism, fade set to minimum and no accelerometer. Combine these with slow swipes and get a bunch of wide colorful swirls that, after a while, turn into silky blue or bloody red.
Then you can turn up the accelerometer sensitivity and watch the fluid race around, reacting to movements.


Another idea that's been nagging at my brain is to make a live wallpaper version of Fleya. There is however a major drawback... Fluid computations are very very expensive and a live wallpaper might eat through your battery pretty fast. It's not impossible and I guess it would make your phone look pretty awesome.
I'm not totally dismissing the idea so keep in touch with your favorite RSS reader and get it as soon as it will be available.


Last but not least, thank you all for the great comments and ratings. Since Fleya is totally free and built in my very little spare time, it's the only satisfaction I get as a developer. Any kind of feedback is also very welcome. Use the comments section below or send me an email to tell me what other options or features you would like to see implemented, any issues you may have had, or maybe just to say Hi :)
I'm also very very curious to see  how Fleya behaves on an android tablet so if you own one, I'd really like to see a video of it in action.
I'll do my best to try and make Fleya into an even better app.

Enjoy!

P.S. If you've read this and have no idea of what I'm rambling about, scan the picture below with an android phone and give it a try:


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