Latest Post

Black Squares in place of sprite images on Mobile in a Phaser Game

NG HTML5, Mobile, Phaser

I am working on a new game which worked fine on desktop but the moment I opened it on Mobile, I was surprised to see black squares in place of sprite images in the game. After some troubleshooting it turned out that the tile sprite I was using in the game was quite long (around 4000 px) which mobile was not able to handle so the fix was to distribute the tile icons to multiple rows (I kept the width around 1200 px this time) which fixed the issue. Now everything looks just fine on mobile as well. Go Phaser..

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Path must be a string. Received undefined

NG Android, How to, HTML5, Intel XDK, Mobile

It has been a couple months since I last used Intel XDK and a lot has changed since. I just tried to compile a demo HTML5 + Cordova Android app which was exported using Intel XDK version 3987 and got the following error while trying to add android platform to the app using cordova command line. To see how compiling is done, check this blog post. Discovered plugin “cordova-plugin-whitelist” in config.xml. Adding it to the project Installing “cordova-plugin-whitelist” for android This plugin is only applicable for versions of cordova-android greater than 4.0. If you have a previous platform version, you do *not* need this plugin since the whitelist will be built in. Saved plugin info for “cordova-plugin-whitelist” to config.xml Error: Path must be a string. Received undefined After this error you wont be able to compile the APK. Some research on google got me to this thread which eventually worked. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46730465/can-not-add-cordova-platform-on-cordova-7-1-0-path-must-be-a-string To fix[…]

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Failed to remove a plugin from Intel XDK

NG Android, How to, Intel XDK, Plugin

In the latest Intel XDK version 3987 I was not able to remove the third-party plugins from HTML5 + Cordova app. Whenever I try to remove a plugin, it failed with the error message Uh oh! Path much be a string. Received undefined I found a workaround @ https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/intel-xdk/topic/733620 Since Intel XDK is no more into development phase, I think this is the only way as long as this works. Steps are simple. Go to development tab and expand plugins folder there. Delete the third-party plugin and all dependent plugins. Also, delete fetch.json. Then go to Projects tab and delete the plugin from there under Plugin Management. Finally restart XDK.  

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How to Move WhatsApp Data to SD Card

Simy How to

With the increase of Video and Photo sharing on WhatsApp there has been a sudden requirement for more data storage space in phones. Phones have limited internal storage which fills up pretty soon with the amount of data being shared on WhatsApp. WhatsApp does not support storing data on SD card as specified on their FAQ page. This has more to do with technical limitations which leaves us only with the option to copy data from WhatsApp Media folders to SD card and then delete the data from the original location which in other words is a simple data backup task. Also, remember once you move the data from WhatsApp Media folder to SD card, the working link to those files in WhatsApp message history is not going to work anymore. You will need to access those files from other Video and Photo Viewer apps. In order to move data from WhatsApp we will need a File Explorer[…]

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Repeating or Tiled Background in Phaser

NG How to, Phaser

Creating tiled or repeating background is pretty straight forward in Phaser by using tileSprite. Let say we have an image or a texture such as  which we want to use to create a background by repeating it in entire game area. Check out the highlighted line in the example below which is all that is required to create a nice tiled background in Phaser. var TheGame = { }; TheGame.Params = { baseWidth: 200, baseHeight: 200 }; TheGame.Boot = function (game) { }; TheGame.Boot.prototype = { init: function () { this.scale.scaleMode = Phaser.ScaleManager.SHOW_ALL; this.game.scale.pageAlignHorizontally = true; this.game.scale.pageAlignVertically = true; }, preload: function () { this.load.image(“background”, “repeatxy.png”); this.load.image(“loading”, “loadingback.png”); }, create: function () { this.state.start(“Loading”); } }; TheGame.Loading = function (game) { }; TheGame.Loading.prototype = { init: function () { }, preload: function () { var loadingBar = this.add.sprite(this.world.centerX, this.world.centerY, “loading”); loadingBar.anchor.setTo(0.5); this.load.setPreloadSprite(loadingBar); }, create: function () { this.state.start(“TheGame”); } }; TheGame.MyGame =[…]

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How to Embed Google AdSense Code inside a WordPress Post without Any Plugin

NG Adsense, How to, WordPress

WordPress does not let you embed PHP code inside the posts but uses a feature to create Shortcode functions which are executed whenever they are encountered within a post. This is pretty handy feature since this gives you capability to add some PHP code in your WordPress files and then call it from your posts. The PHP code can be added to Theme’s functions.php file. We can use this to load ads from within the posts. Go to WordPress administration -> Appearance -> Editor -> By default style.css is opened for editing. Open functions.php by clicking on the file name on right hand side listing. Now copy the following code at the end of the file and change the return string to your Adsense code. Shortcode is defined by calling add_shortcode function and passing two parameters to it. The first one is a given name which will be used in the posts to call this[…]

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Mobile Apps

Responsive Bootstrap and JQuery Game Template for Mobile

NG Bootstrap, jQuery, Mobile

For mobile web app templates, Jquery Mobile has been a popular choice but it comes with its own set of issues when we have multiple pages in the game since it makes ajax calls to load the pages and if there are specific things which are required to be handled on each page then it becomes even more complex to handle those scenarios. The alternate is to have a simple Bootstrap and JQuery based template with multiple pages which is simple and works just like a website. The problem here is that the pages are loaded again and again whenever we navigate from one page to another. This is not an ideal scenario for mobile web apps since all external libraries are required to be initialized on all pages which is not required and unnecessary work for processor. For example, if you compiled your web app using PhoneGap and are using a plugin to play audio.[…]

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Cannot find type: verify that the assembly containing this type is loaded. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131515)

NG How to

Downloaded  HtmlAgilityPack.dll and loaded in Windows Powershell by running the following command Add-Type -Path ‘c:\Temp\PS\Net40\HtmlAgilityPack.dll’ Got the following error.. Add-Type : Could not load file or assembly ‘file:///C:\Temp\PS\Net40\HtmlAgilityPack.dll’ or one of its dependencies. Operation is not supported. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131515) At C:\Temp\PS\script.ps1:12 char:1 + Add-Type -Path ‘c:\Temp\PS\Net40\HtmlAgilityPack.dll’ + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Add-Type], FileLoadException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.IO.FileLoadException,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.AddTypeCommand   HtmlAgilityPack.dll does not have any dependency for the .Net version I was on (use the command $psversiontable to get the .Net version used by Powershell) It turned out that the file was blocked since it was downloaded from the internet. All I needed to do was to go to DLL’s properties and unblock it.

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Top 6 Mistakes That Can Mess Professional Values of Your Business

Simy Digital Marketing, Online Marketing

Whenever you come up with a range of new products or services, you can’t ignore the potential of social media to reach more people and increase traffic. It can ruin your business in case you are unaware of the consequences of social activities. To get the most out of it first we need to take care of the following mistakes:- 1. Posting Similar Content This is a big No No. We can’t ignore the fact that the majority of people go for the content that is demanded by maximum no. of people. As a result they keep on posting the same content repeatedly which is already made/published by others. Make sure that your content is creative enough and niche to keep the followers engaged  and not lose their interest. 2. Posting Without Images Posts without images can be a really bad idea since people don’t go to social media to read a whole lot[…]

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Asp.Net Error: There is no build provider registered for the extension ‘.html’

NG Asp.Net, How to

When you try to map an html file in ASP.net and rewrite the URL to remove .html extension such as the example below routes.MapPageRoute(“myhtml”, “myhtml”, “~/Resources/demo/myhtml.html”); It throws an error as following There is no build provider registered for the extension ‘.html’. You can register one in the <compilation><buildProviders> section in machine.config or web.config The following configuration changes in web.config fixes it. <compilation debug=”true” targetFramework=”4.5″ > <buildProviders > <add extension=”.htm” type=”System.Web.Compilation.PageBuildProvider” /> <add extension=”.html” type=”System.Web.Compilation.PageBuildProvider”/> </buildProviders> </compilation>  

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