Hacktoberfest 2021 and open source

I took part in Hacktoberfest 2021. I created Customizable OkHttp Logging Interceptor - an OkHttp interceptor which logs HTTP request and response data and allows output customization. I decided to do it because the library authors rejected my feature request some time ago saying that people can write their own interceptors or use a more sophisticated library that already exists.

It was a valuable experience for me. I learned how to use JitPack to publish your library in a public repository. I also learned how to create a good readme page.

I suggest you try contributing to open source as well if you haven't already. It's a bit like having a new job. You work on a new project and with new people so you learn the fastest. Hacktoberfest is a great occasion to start your open source adventure. They help you with the technical stuff and give you prizes (T-shirts and stickers) for completing the challenge.

Learning Jetpack Compose

I'm learning Jetpack Compose. If you're a serious Android developer you probably should too. There's a great series of codelabs and other materials created by Google. You can find it here.

As an exercise, I'll rewrite my Blogger Stats app to use Compose. I've already started. It's good to have your own small project that you can try new things on. If you don't have one yet, why not start something from scratch?

Sandmade and Hidden Paws

I was a bit tired of my regular work, so I took some time off and decided to port two of my friend's games from Steam to Android.

The first one is Sandmade - a puzzle game that challenges you spatial skills.

The second one is Hidden Paws - a game in which you have to find cats hidden on beautiful snowy islands.

The main challenges when porting the games were:
- switching to the Universal Render Pipeline (for performance reasons)
- other performance issues related to lightmapping, shaders and postprocessing
- adjusting the UI so it's big enough (and thus clickable) on mobile devices
- adjusting the controls to work with touch only (Hidden Paws required a virtual joystick)
- removing Steam-related code

Blogger Stats remake

Remember my Blogger Stats app from 2014? It's very old and deserves an update. It stopped working on the latest Android versions as well. I'm in the process of rewriting it from scratch. It's going really slow, because I don't have much free time, but I already have a functional prototype using the newest Google APIs. I'll let you know when I'm finished.

Other than that, I'm planning a very long vacation and I'm hoping to start a new project in that time. I really miss working on my own ideas. I'll share more details with you later.