Show HN: I built an Android live wallpaper with Scala – now it's free

This is very nice looking, although the initial settings were too fast and made it a bit distracting. I've stuck with the default live wallpaper that came with my Nexus 4 until now.

It'll compile to JVM bytecode. I believe it also compiles to Javascript (I'm not sure if this is still considered experimental — I haven't looked in a while), which is pretty cool. I think it used to also target the .NET CLI as an experiment, but I'm pretty sure that's no longer a goal.

The important thing for me was that it compiles to JVM bytecode that's compatible with Java 1.6, so the resulting code can all be converted to Dalvik fairly quickly. The main downside right now is that you have to heavily prune the Scala stdlib, since it's packed with tons of methods and dex has a 16-bit method limit[1] — and you will hit it if you don't prune it (using proguard or another tool of your choice).

[1]: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=7147#c6

Thanks! I agree on the speed, though it's kind of set in stone for the most part since that was the default when I first released the app. I'd love to go in and make a mess of the project by rewriting things and changing all the defaults, but now that I have a small amount of users, it sort of behooves me not to do what I'd do with my other personal projects.

That also makes it difficult to introduce new features since I can't just switch them on and I don't really want to pester users about it. Not entirely sure how to handle that yet, but I've been focusing on other personal projects and job hunting. Worrying about adding stuff to Ascension hasn't been a huge concern. It does what I want, so I haven't found anything else I'd like to add to it just yet.

Thank you for making this compatible with Android 4.1.2. Because of bluetooth issues, I switched my Xperia T back from 4.3 to 4.1.2, and I've been missing all the cool 4.3 Xperia wallpapers. I'm running "Glitch" Config with "Blueshift" Gradient, all other settings defaulted. Gonna stare at it for a few hours.

Great work nilium. I always wanna try one of these but I worry about battery life - how does everyone find these live wallpapers affect the performance of their batteries?