AndroidGuys

We’re here with yet another Spotlight profile for Android developers. This time around, we’re speaking with a team going by the name of Lightning Toads. They’ve been in the game for a while, even licensing a gaming engine you other developers may already be aware of - Toadlet. We were able to talk with one of the founders, Andrew Fischer, and find out what they’re working on for Android.

Give us a brief description of Lightning Toads and who you are.

Lightning Toads was founded by two brothers, Alan and Andrew Fischer. We wanted to try our programming experience at game development, and we decided that the technology present in mobile devices represented the most interesting chance for innovation.

We assembled a small team to form Lightning Toads, and have published a number of titles that utilize as many of the unique features of mobile devices as possible. From our work we developed the Toadlet mobile game engine, a high performance tool that makes it easy for developers to use take advantage of high-end mobile phone features. We now license the Toadlet Engine and provide consulting services for mobile development.

What kind of developing experience have you had prior to Android?

We’re both from a university research lab, so we’ve gained a lot of experience in embedded programming, simulation, numerical analysis, and advanced graphics. Following that, we’ve been developing mobile games and licensing our engine technology for the Java J2ME and Windows Mobile platforms. Now we’re also doing Blackberry development concurrently with our Android work.

Has writing for Android been easier or harder than you expected? Why?

Overall working with Android has been very, very nice. We’ve only encountered a couple of quirks/bugs that have been frustrating, and we are used to many more on mobile software platforms. In that regard Android surpassed our expectations. However, we’re still waiting to see how closely the emulator matches running applications on the device hardware. We have learned that last step can be a killer in mobile software.

Tell us about your application. Who is it targeted to?

Our application, currently named “Hausbarn“, is a foundation for a mobile network designed to aid people buying and selling houses and properties. It makes an Android powered phone with an internet connection the only device you need to quickly and easily add a property for sale, find properties for sale in areas of your choosing, add and edit information and media (eg. pictures and videos) about homes for sale, and even generate and upload textured 3D models of the buildings; all from your phone.

Hausbarn is targeted toward anyone interested in buying, selling or just browsing real estate, especially the type of family housing that has been hit so hard by the current economy. By letting anyone with Hausbarn and an appropriate mobile device view, edit and interact with the home data, we plan to provide a community driven tool available for everyone to use. Ideally, making the data publicly available and editable should greatly improve the home buy/sell experience, and help even out costs across the board.

How do you plan to market your program? What will be your distribution model?

We are looking at two different approaches. The more traditional method would present Hausbarn to several different 3rd party application distributors for resale, and to distribute from our own site. The second would be to release the application free of charge though whatever means, but charge a recurring fee for modify access to the database backend. Marketing would be a combination of viral and paid advertising. We are considering an ad-supported model as well, though that is still in the planning stages. Of course we are submitting our application to the Android Developer Challenge, so if we happen to get accepted that would provide some much needed publicity, as well as fund the next stage of development.

Did the Android Developer Challenge motivate you at all? Why or why not?

The developer challenge did motivate us. It helped demonstrate Google’s commitment to the platform early on, as well as generating plenty of publicity. Without the challenge, we would not have started working with Android until the first handsets actually reached the market.

How do you see Android stacking up against other platforms?

So far we are most experienced with J2ME and Windows Mobile. Android has been many times better to work with than J2ME, hands down. It’s far more consistent. Windows Mobile is a closer contender, but we prefer Android’s GUI layout system. Of course the tight integration with Google’s services, such as maps, makes Android really slick for certain applications. And Android, from the ground up, is written to use all the advance phone features like accelerometers, GPS, camera, and so forth, which we really like.

Will you be working on any other applications?

Now that we’ve brought our Toadlet Engine to Android, every mobile software project we do from this point on will be ported to the Android platform. We’re even going to brush up and bring some of our older software over. And for anyone who licenses the Toadlet engine, we’ll work with them bring their product to Android as well.

Thanks again to Andrew and Lightning Toads for giving us a chance to get to know them and their application Hausbarn a little better. We look forward to seeing it in action and hope it brings them the success they’re hoping for.

Contact information: http://www.lightningtoads.com/ | andrew @ lightningtoads.com