This thread is for general discussion for the Android RPoL app.  New features, design suggestions, etc can all start here.  If the topic is discussed, new threads will be started to discuss the topic.

An FYI since I haven't really posted it anywhere.  After entering your username and password, you need to press your menu key and select Register/Unregister.

Sorry, I'm cleaning up the login for the next version (hope to release next week).

I've had a few questions about security so I'll post this here for everyone.

Privacy statement for the app:
http://www.evilknights.com/rpol/privacy.html

At no time do I have access to your password, nor will I ever put a feature in that would require me to have it.  The app logs directly into RPoL and pulls your feed url from your preferences.  The only thing I can see is your feed's URL, your username, the GCM ID (a Google code specific to your install of the app).  Lastly your last fetched feed is saved so it can be compared to the new version for changes.

Basically, if I where for some reason to get curious, I could pull a list of games you play in.  That's it.  I wouldn't even really have a way to know what role you had in the game unless you where the GM.

If you look at the XML source of your feed, you would find entries like this for each game (from my feed):
<entry>
   <title>%5BUnofficial%5D RPoL Mobile App Discussion</title>
   <link href="http://m.rpol.net/game.cgi?gi=55883" />
   <id>tag:rpol.net,2005:1.55883</id>
   <updated>2013-06-02T01:52:17Z</updated>
   <category scheme="http://m.rpol.net" term="Games You Own" />
   <summary>There are no new messages.</summary>
</entry>


The category tag would show if you GM or play/persue.  By even with that, if I wanted to see if you GM a game, I could just do a search from the main RPoL page.

This is why I can't send notifications for rMail.  It's not listed on the feed.  You currently can't check its status without logging in.  :(

New version is looking to just about complete.  For those that know how to install APKs outside of Google Play, The release canidate is available here:
http://www.evilknights.com/rpol/RPoLNotifier-v2.apk

1. Login Screen:  There are several people that have installed the app and were unaware they needed to hit the menu key and register.  I finally made a screen that makes this part work like you would expect.
   
2. Show Password:  Their is a check-box to show your password for those that have trouble typing.  Also, the app no longer saves your password to the phone.  After logging in, it saves the RPoL session cookie and discards the password.
   
3. New graphics: First.. Launcher icon.  It now uses the RPoL "impossible cube" instead of that ugly red d6 filler graphic I had.  The login screen also has the familiar banner graphic (with unofficial stamped across it).  Even more fun... As notifications arrive for each game, the app now looks up and cache a copy of your players portrait.  For honeycomb and newer, it's used as the large icon for your notifications.  Currently it will only download these once, you would need to clear all of the apps data to flush them out if you change character portraits.
   
4. Quiet Hours:  You can now specify a range of time to have Lights, Sounds, and Vibrations turned off.
   
5. Multi-Browser Support:  With a check box, you can force the app to always prompt you to choose a browser (for those that bounce around a lot, or prefer one for RPoL, but not as a default).
   
6. LED Settings:  For those that have hardware that supports it, you can now specify what color your LED should blink.  You enter a hex value, Red (FF0000) Green (00FF00) Blue(0000FF).  http://www.rapidtables.com/web/color/RGB_Color.htm  This site can help you play with the colors.

Bug Fixes:

1. Vibration actually works now.  HOWEVER... you will want to change that setting if you already have the old version.  I put a ridicules vibrate pattern in the initial release, and since it didn't work I forgot to take it out.
   
2. Special Characters in game titles are decoded (actually already fixed for v1 users as well, it was a server thing, I needed to urldecode the game titles from the feeds.)

It looks like Google has finally use dated the store entry.  The new version is available at the Play market.
https://play.google.com/store/...knights.rpolnotifier

Version update 2.00.01

Corrected a minor bug in the Quiet Hours settings.  The app was hushing all notifications, regardless of the time.  It's what happens when you code a new feature at 4am.  You put in && when you mean ==.

It's posted to the market, however it seems to take Google about 4-6 hours to finally get it published.

First up - thanks for building this. Thanks thanks thanks.

You rock.

bug report: all my notifications are taking me to the one game. only one of the last ten notifications was for that game in question.

I'm not sure here.  I've never seen that behavior.  Are the game titles and player portraits loading correctly?

will check on next notification.

but certainly looks like the game is loading normal in the browser.

seems weird...

will try a different browser next notification... might be browser specific.

Could be.  I've only used the default browser that CyanogenMod has.  When I first added the feature to force a browser choice I used Firefox, but I only tested a few notices that are from the same game.

yep, something ifs broken.

tested with chrome and dolphin...

all notifications take me to the one, inaccurate game. :|

how does the app get the game links from rpol?

Its scraped from the XML feed on RPoL.  The game ID is used to identify the notification and pull the portraits too.  That's why I don't get it.  The notification knows what game to take you to.

It just appends the ID to the URL:
http://m.rpol.net/game.cgi?gi=

In reply to Ninthbit (msg # 13):

Ok... Figured as much.

What about caching or storage of notification information?

What happens to the data once I click the notification?

Maybe, for some reason, the app hasn't cleared' it's data properly - and therefore the whilst the notifications text is accurate, the link isn't.

?

Should all be discarded.  The app doesn't log the messages unless its built as a debug version.  Even then, its only in the system log, still shouldn't affect the app.

Hmm.

Are you going to test the app against multiple game thread notifications?

Not tonight.  I'm playing with my kids.  Tomorrow I'll give it a try.  On a side note, do the browsers your using have a tab limit.  I wonder if you're hitting the limit and the new tab can't be created.

Oh, cool. Have fun with the kids :) I have a five year old. Good times.

Yeah - not hitting tab limit at all... I close all browser tabs when I close the app.

Hmm. Let me know how you go with testing. If you want to join another of the games I GM, just to test notifications at your end - let me know.

I havent had this issue. Tmobile's Samsung galaxy sI using AKOP android.

Ive had a bunch of games on my sticky list, just monitoring different things and reading threads. Upon installing the app, I was alerted to every single thread I had on my sticky. Ignore list works well although I had to do some research to figure out where the game ID was located. There is also a small discrepancy with the coma placement but that is easily remedied. Once I had figured everything out, it works gloriously.

Just wanted to give my two cents as a GM here on RPoL... Very awesome app. Good work Ninthbit.

Ignore list is something I plan to tackle.  Im hoping to be able to list all a users games and apply setting per game.  I really want to eventually expand out to a full blown mobile client for the site.  I'm debating if I should fork the app.  One version for simple notifications like we currently have, and a second that has support for reading threads, writing posts, and rMail.

There'd be a tonne of work in replicating the features for authoring posts, surely?? Formatting, colours, private lines, secret to's... I suppose it's all fairly rudimentary though. Hmm.

One thing with app development though: need to ask yourself, Why build an app? Will it improve on the native website?

For the notification app - yes, it certainly improves the native website's notification offering.

But a second app that is an RPOL client? You'd be reinventing the wheel, no?