A rapper, a rockstar, and a 12-year old share one passion... - SDC2016
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,304 words · ~6 min read
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a standout theme at the 2016 Samsung developers conference was the how do we
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say uh widening definition of mobile
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developer so we took some time to learn about three very different projects from
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three very different individuals first
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up is Flow Rider yes that Flow Rider
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turns out he's working on a mobile game called speed Gods it's a racing game and
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it's all caps all bold and all italis
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and if that's anything to go by it might be as loud as it is fast so I wanted to
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open with one that's really um actually quite personal for me so would you
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consider putting my car in your game let me see what kind of car this is okay at
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least it has an engine oh man how much you going to pay oh no no it's it's all
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custom man like it's not cheap oh man that's that's custom man look like pep
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the business mall on Wheels all right well I guess that's my answer so why
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don't we get down to the more serious stuff then can you walk me through the
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progression from musician and performer
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to game developer I mean this must be a passion project for you yeah definitely
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but it's very organic because um my guy Chris at im3 gaming you know he's been
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trying to pitch ideas to me you know since the start of my career but I had
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to do something that I felt would be you know um have that wow factor as well as
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my music this game is like I said it's very organic to myself we have some of
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the flyest cars in there you know um with me having a guy who Lov music you
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know we definitely have some of the hottest music and everything in there so I mean that's where it all started from
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I let the guys know and Chris you know he's a great friend of mine so he know I
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I've actually been on out on you know the NASCAR track racing and things like
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that so from from the from I was particular about how fast the cars would
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move how agile the cars was I felt like
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you know being a a guy putting out a game for the first time it has to be
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perfect so I definitely was on those guys you know um every moment you know
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like um this represents me and I needed to be perfect for my fans you decided on
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a mobile game why is that well we all know that you know we live by our phones
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you know so I I can't go nowhere without my S7 and um at the same time with
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creating this game I felt like you know it would be a plus if even if I wasn't a
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part of it this game would be hot so it had to be hot you know whether if I was
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a part of or not what makes speed Gods different from other mobile racing games
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there there's hundreds of them well I speed guyss is a triple take you have
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some of the flyest cars it's so surreal as well as
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you have myself what's a game without Flow Rider but that's not to say that
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every musician's mobile app has to be tightly tied into his or her music
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career and Tommy theer you might know him from a little band called kiss is
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working on of all things a kids
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storytelling app called Earnest hummingbird that's due out in August
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tell me how do you bridge the gap between songr in and Performing and
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creating a children storytelling application for phones you know it's
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it's It's Tricky no it's actually pretty easy bridging that Gap is uh actually a
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lot of fun and I really enjoy it because what I do usually in rock music you know
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it's very defined what we do so when we have a children's storybook app like
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Ernest hummingbird I can be inspired by the imagery and and the aesthetic of it
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uh it's outside of the box so to speak for What from what I usually do so I've
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really enjoyed doing this it's been a lot lot of fun the reason we went with
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doing a storybook app rather than a traditional maybe a television show to
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begin with or whatever it may be is that with new technology New Media and all
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the exciting things that are happening particularly here at this developers conference that is the Avenue that I'm
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interested in and I I think that U because it's really what's happening is
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where the future is going you know with with mobile apps and and like I said New
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Media this is the new form of distribution for music and and
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storytelling and and all the things that we're doing so we're embracing that and
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and uh you know that's the direction things are going for sure which leads us
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then to our last unusual developer
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youngling Young Jun Lee from Korea
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evolved from simple block-based coding in app inventure to Android Studio where
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his plant watering reminder app for Android won him the junior software cup
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and a chance to come and speak at the developer conference he was obviously a
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little nervous but he did an amazing job of walking us through the various
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features of the app app adding plants setting up watering schedules creating
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nicknames and even drawing little avatars for the plants and his
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shockingly deep thought process for all of the features and
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functionality um honestly I wasn't really expecting for a grand prize when
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I attended to the to the cop because the
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grand prize um actually had only one
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prize within elementary middle and high
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school so I wasn't really expecting to get that prize but um being here and
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winning that prize I'll really cherish this moment for for for a long time the
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reason the main reason I kind of gamified it was because I wanted the
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user to be encouraged watering plant isn't really an exciting thing that's
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the same thing with the drawing feature I just wanted to make the user feel
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encouraged and be intrigued to water those plants yeah because I really like
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living things um my career to biologist
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is hasn't really changed but I think I can be kind of a biog grammar so
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something that can actually simulate or
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do some re research on biologist by
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computer programming and so my goal
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dream what I I want to call it um is
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actually biologist and also a programmer
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yeah I actually really love your handdrawn paint inspired icon design do
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you do them all yourself yeah um I just
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wanted some emotional kind of little
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icons because um many people think that
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machine is really something that is cold and something that is really hard but I
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think by that drawing this I really put some emotional contents in my app so
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yeah I think those drawings really represented me my some kind of a goal
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that I wanted to use to feel so I hope
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you guys enjoyed this little Spotlight on unusual mobile development don't miss
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