Android Publishing: Testing on an Android device

November 10 2011, 12:28pm

To help introduce our community to the world of Android publishing, we’ve prepared a series of Tutorials and Reference Guides for the Android Market. What follows is a part of that series, focusing on setting up your Android test device and installing the GameSalad Android Viewer.

Preparing the Device On your Phone

Settings > Manage Applications and check the box next to Unknown sources option After that go to Settings > SD Card > Phone Storage and uncheck the box next to USB storage. Finally you will need to go to Settings > Manage Applications > Development and check the box for USB Debugging Installing the Viewer on Device There are 2 ways to get the Viewer.apk on your device.

Via email Via USB

Via Email: You will need to have Gmail setup on the device you wish to install the Viewer on.

Download the Viewer APK on your machine Email the APK to yourself through Gmail On your Android Phone, open the Gmail application When you view your mail message, there should be a link for you to install the APK Click the install button

Via USB:

Connect your Android Phone to your system Open a Terminal To Verify if your device is registered with the Android Debug Bridge (ADB)

a. adb devices

To install the viewer to the device

a. dab install path/file.apk b. Where path is the full path from ~ to your apk and file.apk is the actual filename of the viewer apk

If you have problems running these commands the most likely issue is that they were not properly registered with your path variables (see steps above).
If they continue to not function you may wish to execute these commands via the Terminal directly from the Android SDK/platform-tools folder, ~/sdk/[android sdk folder]/platform-tools/ , if you chose the recommended folder setup from above. You will also need to preface each command with ./ in order to tell your system that the commands you wish to execute are in the current folder. Previewing the Project from Creator on Device Viewer for Android can communicate with your device both by USB and Wi-Fi. Via USB:

Plug in your device

a. Make sure that the device is set to charge only and does not mount the SD Card

Launch Creator and open your Project Go to GameSalad > Preferences For the Android Device Bridge choose Select and browse to the [sdk]/platform-tools folder find the dab binary and accept Click on the Preview on Android Select your device from the dropdown ENJOY!!

Via Wi-Fi:

Start GameSalad Creator on your system Ensure that your Android device and system are on the same wireless network Start GameSalad Viewer A Preview on Android icon will appear in GameSalad. Click it and select the name of your Android Device ENJOY!!