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Show HN: Nebula – Alarm clock where you grow stars while you sleep

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Re: Show HN: Nebula – Alarm clock where you grow stars while you sleep

#141

Post by bert_cwchang »

rocketsloth wrote: post #22
zamalek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see useful repeat options (it doesn't seem to support repeat at all currently), e.g. work days except public holidays.

I've gotten that request from quite a few people now and am looking in to ways to add that functionality to the alarm while preserving the overall idea of setting meaningful alarms with consequences. The reason behind the single button initially is that it forces you to consciously set your alarm which I felt would increase commitment. I completely understand that it isn't for everyone so am working on the multiple a…

Probably like this: let the user set the repeated alarms (like, Mon-Fri at 9am, Sat-Sun at 10am), yet the user is required to "confirm" the alarm each night if he/she really wants that alarm be effective. This way, the user can avoid the tedious "keep setting same alarm" each night, and the "conciously set the alarm" thing is still there.

Re: Show HN: Nebula – Alarm clock where you grow stars while you sleep

#142

Post by rocketsloth »

technics256 wrote: post #135
rocketsloth wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did do it by myself and I really appreciate you saying that. I used/modified a few icons and pictures that I found online though and their awesome creators (who released them under attribution licenses) are credited in the graphics credits section. I struggled a lot with the design and it was by far the most time consuming part of the app.

Nice! Where did you find the icons? Been looking for some for my healthcare startup website. Thaks!

https://material.io/icons/ is great, all open source and you can edit their vectors to make your own variations

https://thenounproject.com/ is also awesome, a lot of variety

https://www.flaticon.com/ is great for colorful things

Re: Show HN: Nebula – Alarm clock where you grow stars while you sleep

#143

Post by rocketsloth »

jacalata wrote: post #112
rocketsloth wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey really sorry about that, there are a variety of dismissal methods you can choose from including shake dismissal, qr scan, barcode scan and a simple stop button as well as this color tap. That dismissal method is just the one I went with for the screenshot, but there is something for everyone. I'm also looking in to giving users the option to change the color combination because I've received this feedback from tw…

http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/colorblind/

thanks!

Re: Show HN: Nebula – Alarm clock where you grow stars while you sleep

#144

Post by rocketsloth »

depressedpanda wrote: post #133
rocketsloth wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The more you clamp down on ways to exploit the system the more player's will respect their achievement." Those are very wise words and something that never crossed my mind. Master Sloth will definitely be making an appearance in some way and I've added it to the Trello board. I do plan on having some form of social interaction, probably something simple to start like sharing constellations you make to social media a…

Before you get ahead of yourself with 'pivoting' Nebula into a gamified social network dating app, let me just say that I like Nebula pretty much as it is, in large part due to its simplicity. I like the narrow scope of Nebula, and would happily pay for the app to remove the ads, once you've ironed out some of the rough edges (you really need to remove the flashing indicators in the tutorial). Naturally, if you want…

I've removed the flashing circles in the next build cause I 100% agree and I'd like to clarify that I don't have any intention of pivoting with Nebula cause I really like keeping things simple too. I was just joking around up there :). I think that (at least for me) it feels better to know that you earned something that you couldn't have taken shortcuts on, but I understand your point about how people are ruining things for themselves.

Re: Show HN: Nebula – Alarm clock where you grow stars while you sleep

#145

Post by rocketsloth »

bigiain wrote: post #104
rocketsloth wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The more you clamp down on ways to exploit the system the more player's will respect their achievement." Those are very wise words and something that never crossed my mind. Master Sloth will definitely be making an appearance in some way and I've added it to the Trello board. I do plan on having some form of social interaction, probably something simple to start like sharing constellations you make to social media a…

Reminds me of one of my favourite Haiku: In matters of love, let the reptile brain decide. Marry based on smell.

this may be the best comment of the thread

Re: Show HN: Nebula – Alarm clock where you grow stars while you sleep

#146

Post by rocketsloth »

jerezzprime wrote: post #140

Is it possible to make it start automatically? I like that generally I don't think about my alarm on my phone, I just go to sleep and it goes off the next day.

I'm considering a few options to give more freedom with the alarm (such as repeating and multiple alarms), but I'm working on making sure they integrate with the overall design and concept before jumping the gun.

Re: Show HN: Nebula – Alarm clock where you grow stars while you sleep

#149

Post by rocketsloth »

zamber wrote: post #130
rocketsloth wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks so much really appreciate your support! I experimented with an ios style parallax effect on the background stars but found that the library really used a lot of memory so I removed it for the time being. It looked super cool though so I'm going to try and write it myself in the near future. I'm also really interested in animations for the stars and a swirling nebula. My animation abilities are almost non-exist…

On a OnePlus 2 with LineageOS 14.1 it gobbled 146 MB of RAM max. How much more did the parallax lib add? Possibly hiding it behind an option with a warning would be viable? Animating everything would also be nice. You've already did an awesome job on the UI overall ;). I've seen much worse stuff from established apps on the Play Store. Worked on one even. The designers had the displeasure of doing glorified skinning.…

I only ever tested the parallax library on a very early build of the app which consumed far less ram overall just cause the app wasn't finished yet, so it's hard to give an exact amount. If ever I did any serious animation work and parallax backgrounds I'd leave the option to disable it for users who don't want it or find it impacts performance. I'd also have to do extensive testing with any third party library for parallax cause it's so vital they release sensors properly and without fail when they are no longer needed to conserve battery. I'd love to work on animations in the future cause I think that's one of the areas the app needs the most improvement in and thank you for the complement on the UI.

Re: Show HN: Nebula – Alarm clock where you grow stars while you sleep

#150

Post by zamber »

rocketsloth wrote: post #149
zamber wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a OnePlus 2 with LineageOS 14.1 it gobbled 146 MB of RAM max. How much more did the parallax lib add? Possibly hiding it behind an option with a warning would be viable? Animating everything would also be nice. You've already did an awesome job on the UI overall ;). I've seen much worse stuff from established apps on the Play Store. Worked on one even. The designers had the displeasure of doing glorified skinning.…

I only ever tested the parallax library on a very early build of the app which consumed far less ram overall just cause the app wasn't finished yet, so it's hard to give an exact amount. If ever I did any serious animation work and parallax backgrounds I'd leave the option to disable it for users who don't want it or find it impacts performance. I'd also have to do extensive testing with any third party library for p…

All I was able to find fast was this:

https://github.com/nvanbenschoten/motion a bit outdated, not sure if it will work

https://github.com/material-motion/material-motion-android a bit fresher, but development stopped halfway through

> I'd also have to do extensive testing with any third party library for parallax cause it's so vital they release sensors properly and without fail when they are no longer needed to conserve battery.

Looking at what's available I'm not sure if it wouldn't be better to re-implement a lib for that. You could pass on extensive testing IF you find a lib that's already used in another project.

Consider introducing new features like Sleep for Android does (a popup with a change list displayed on 1st run after an update). With this you could try moving users to the "Experimental" settings section. Note that having solid issue reporting from the app would immensely help then.

Another approach would be to set up a beta program for experimental stuff. Not sure which one would be more cost-effective, needs more investigation.

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