But a strange fact occurred: when building the .deb packages with my machine (Ubuntu 10.04 + latest Maemo SDK), the language files were included, but when using the maemo.org to Autobuilder the build process went OK but the language files were missing.

Unfortunately, I noticed the problem only after 100 Boxes 0.8.0 had reached Maemo Extras repository, so everybody is still downloading an English-only 100 Boxes. My own quality assurance checks when the package was in Extras-devel were not accurate enough to pinpoint the problem: this is a lesson I will remember.

Likewise, QA tests performed by maemo.org community members when the package was staging in Extras-testing did not highlight the issue. It is fair to say, however, that the issue was almost impossible to notice for people not using Italian as system language on their devices.

After analysis of Autobuilder output, some guesswork and trial-and-error, I managed to spot the cause of the problem. A script was not executed by the Autobuilder, because it was called with an absolute path instead of a relative one.

Finally, I just uploaded version 0.8.0-4 to Extras-testing repository. The only change with respect to 0.8.0 is working language support. Please help test it and vote on the appropriate page, so that it can be promoted to Extras and fulfill the promise of localization support, at last.

Oh, just one more thing. If you want 100 Boxes in your language, why don’t you help translate? 100 Boxes uses *.po files for localization, which is the recommended method for Maemo apps. If you know how it works, just grab the latest revision of template.po in 100 Boxes Subversion, edit it, save it as <your translated language code>.po and send it to me (my email address is in the 100 Boxes Guide, accessible from within the game). If you need assistance, just send an email and I will happily help you help me

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But what are the changes in the new version?

• Added localization support
• Added Italian localization
• Added personal game statistics
• Added automatic saving of game state and statistics
• Nicer game sounds
• Added the possibility to disable sounds
• Added daily and weekly views in the worldwide high score table

Haven’t you been persuaded? Here you are some screenshots:

New game

Playing a game

Game over screen, enhanced with personal statistics

Worldwide high score table, now with daily and weekly standings

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Thanks to Maemo.org community for software QA testing, to people who sent comments, complaints and suggestions, and to everyone who just downloaded and enjoyed the game.

Maemo Extras statistics say that, so far, there have been 9,423,777 downloads of the 278 available application packages, an average of 33,893 downloads per application. Therefore 100 Boxes is positioned roughly in the middle of the ‘long tail’ shape of the typical download distribution of application catalogs. Must-have and wildly popular applications are at the top of the tail, while applications that are useful only for very specific audiences are usually at the bottom. And then there is the bulk of packages that stay in between. Personally I am proud to contribute to this important part of an application software platform ecosystem, and even more for the high quality of applications to be found in Maemo Extras catalog.

And now what? Simple: let’s keep developing new compelling applications and improve the existing ones.

Edit: the number of score submissions was wrong. Now it is correct.

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Today, in computer and smartphone age, we can try to solve the puzzle practically anytime and anywhere. The game has been implemented for a wide range of platforms (actually, most implementations are by yours truly). Some versions even have an online high score table, to compare our own scores with those of players from all over the world.

Let’s list all the games here, so we’ll never miss the chance to try and reach the mythical 100. They are all released as freeware or free software, so read on and have fun!

For me, 100 Boxes has been a sort of pet project since my brother taught me the game several years ago. It is usually the first thing that I try to make when learning to develop for a new platform. It is a quite balanced development exercise, and it is fun to see the game conquer new territory.

A word of caution: this game may give a great sensation of achievement when solved, but also a lot of frustration. I tried for several months version without success, then showed the game to a friend of mine. He solved it at his third attempt.

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Background: I know Linux quite well, but before this project I had never developed anything with GTK, nor I had created a new project with GNU autotools, nor I had created Debian packages. These are my impressions.

•  SDK. It is easy enough to use, once understood the approach. At www.maemo.org there are installation instructions. Recently at Forum Nokia a graphic install wizard has been released. Mature integration with an IDE is currently missing (Eclipse integration is a promising work in progress and future Qt development with Qt Creator should be even better), but scratchbox is a fine cross-compilation environment. Simulation of a Maemo 5 machine is allowed for testing and debugging.
• APIs. There is a very rich collection of open source libraries that have been used on GNU/Linux systems for many years. In particular I used GTK and Hildon for graphical user interface, curl for HTTP connections and libxml2 from GNOME for XML parsing. All in all, programming in C for Maemo is not difficult by virtue of the power of available libraries.
• Documentation. All libraries are well documented, due to their maturity in mainstream Linux distributions. In the developer’s area of www.maemo.org there are links to all needed documentation. Moreover, many useful guides, tips and examples can be found on the Web. Maemo developer guide on www.maemo.org website is a work in progress: some sections are complete and very accurate (the one on autoconf/automake is particularly excellent, I have never seen such a clear and detailed guide), other ones are more superficial.
• Quality assurance process. Maemo community has defined a rigorous policy for quality assurance of hosted open source projects. Basic quality checks are automated. Further quality assurance is provided by a sort of peer review process among community members. A package must receive 10 approval votes by members that have tested software and can assure it passes the quality checklist defined by the community. Therefore the process leading to the approval of an application can be quite long, also due to limited human resources in the community. [In my case, I submitted my first application release on November 6th and three times community members pointed out problems in packaging e documentation. Finally the fourth revision, released on December 5th, received the tenth vote on December 22th and the next day it was published. The next release (version 0.6, the current one) was also submitted three times due to bugs discovered in new features by testers. The third revision was submitted on January 10th and received the final approval on February 16th.] As you may understand, though far from perfect, this process ensures that software in maemo.org catalog does not cause system instability, does not crash often, does not drain the battery too much, is well documented and provides indications on how to report bugs.
• Maemo Garage. garage.maemo.org is the incubator of all open source projects of the community. It provides useful tools, such as a task tracking system, a Web space for the project website and a version control system (either Subversion or Git). A key advantage of open soure projects is the possibility to see code written by other people. This way I was able to learn how to do some things that were not documented thoroughly, such as the use of recursive makefiles and some details on deb packaging tools.
• The community. The heart and brains of Maemo: a community of passionate, competent and helpful people. Without www.maemo.org Wiki resources, Garage projects, the developer mailing lists, the comments in QA stage, it would be much more difficult to create good software for this platform. Let’s hope that, thanks to the success of the N900, more and more people join in with collaborative and constructive attitude. There’s no need to be a programmer: the work of software testers, bug/feature requesters and translators is as much as important. The key is to follow community guidelines and spend some time with goodwill.

All in all, it has been a very interesting and instructive experience in multiple aspects, both technical and organizational. I am very willing to continue Maemo development, both improving 100 Boxes and working on other projects. Finally, I hope that passion, infrastructure facilities and experience in process governance will be transfered into the newborn MeeGo community.

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