. In this guide, I provide realistic solutions to the frustrations encountered when naming a company. Plus, I’ll have some fun analyzing both good and bad company names.

Investors are also trying their best to answer this question, each with his own vision, but the main answer that everyone will give you once you ask it.. “It is not actually a science, it is rather an art”. At this moment entrepreneurs are left scratching their heads trying to understand the philosophical metaphor given to them, and analyse how this answer would fit their question.

I came from an old school that tries to simplify things, so let me put it in this way.. If you have an idea, your startup will be as worthy as the paper  your idea was written on; if you have a code, your startup will worth value the amount of man days spent on this code, if you have a business that is generating money.. This is when the whole story changes and your startup start having real value calculated by scientific methods. You do the math.

You can spend your life time convincing investors that your idea worth millions, and negotiating with them.. or you could spend your time proving it. This is why we always say ideas are worthless. Cause unless they are executed and started generating money, they are just high risks.

Some would ask, how did all of these entrepreneurs nail good investments with good valuations with just an idea on a napkin? Simply cause they were able to convince their investors with the prospect opportunity and with their capabilities of executing it. If you really see the opportunity clear, you will be always able to have a risk taking investor with you on board, and believe me when he gets on board, it is only because he believes in you.. not the idea. Mostly he is investing in you and valuating you. This is how much money you can make within the next 2-5 years, and he is willing to go into this journey with you.

At the end, if there is no real value coming out of revenue from your startup, valuation will always be built on opinions. You say it worth a million, I say it worth a couple of hundred thousands.. so it is a negotiation game where every party pulls some of his tricks to prove his opinion to the other side and pressure him, and believe me investors have tons of tricks and are always in a better position than you, unless you have a booming business.

So to summarize, to evaluate your company you have the option of making your company worth value by proving it. If you cannot make it without investor money, then show them the opportunity sound clear and accept the best offer given to you, then start building the real value of your company with the investor of your choice. And always understand that equity goes to the risk, the more risk you push towards your investor by asking for big tickets at a really early stage, the more equity he takes. The more risk you pull towards yourself the more equity you keep.

One of the most recent technologies is PlayN, formerly named as forplay, which was presented in Google I/O 2011′s Kick-ass Game Programming with Google Web Toolkit session.

The framework allows the development of one abstracted java game code using its Layers, Sounds APIs and the jbox2d as the physics engine, while keeping the Game Loop concepts.

Here we go into the details of how to get your game up and running using PlayN:

Note: previous maven experience would be of great help. PlayN requires Maven 3.x

Follow the Getting Started wiki page. NOTE:  you need to add android properties of the version and sdk path to the main maven pom file file playn/pom.xml in the <properties> tag

<android.version>2.3.3</android.version>
<android.sdk.path>$android-sdk-path</android.sdk.path>

I recommend developing on eclipse using the m2eclipse (maven to eclipse) plugin,  Google Plugin for Eclipse and Android Plugin for Eclipse and importing the playn folder as a maven project. (This will import many playn-* projects)

For new project creation with jbox2d physics engine enabled, I have been unsuccessful to generate a new project with jbox2d dependency from maven or eclipse using the playn architecture type.

So, I copied the showcase sample to mygame folder and changed the <artifactId> and <name> in the mygame/pom.xml to:

<artifactId>mygame</artifactId>
<name>My Game Metaproject</name>

and in the nested projects (core, html, flash, android) changing the <parent>, <artifactId> and <name> in their pom.xml files.

<parent>
    <groupId>com.googlecode.playn</groupId>
    <artifactId>angryarabs</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
</parent>
<artifactId>mygame-core</artifactId>
<name>My Game Core</name>

After finishing the development of the game on the JVM, you would want to test it against HTML, Flash and Android.

I tried and succeeded testing against JVM, HTML and Android.

Some commands I frequently use (on the directory of the project):

1. ant run-java (Runs the game on the JVM)
2. ant run-devmode (Runs the game in the GWT development mode, so we can see the logs and exceptions, if any. However the frame-rate is extremely low for real testing).
3. ant run-html (Compiles the code using GWT for production).
4. ant clean && mvn clean (clean the project files).

Steps followed to get your Android version of the game to work:

First, I followed the Android Ports wiki page of playn. Again, didn’t seem to be working, as  dependencies weren’t found. I followed these steps to create an Android project

1. Create new Android project with 2.3.3 as the target sdk. (e.g. mygame-android).
2. In your AndroidManifest.xml, put in the <manifest> tag:
   <uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="6" android:targetSdkVersion="10" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WAKE_LOCK" />
   and in the <activity> tag:

   android:theme="@android:style/Theme.NoTitleBar.Fullscreen"
   android:configChanges="keyboardHidden|orientation">

   And in the activity

   package com.tahrir2.mygame;
   
   import playn.android.GameActivity;
   import playn.core.PlayN;
   import playn.showcase.core.Showcase;
   
   public class AngryarabsActivity extends GameActivity {
     @Override
     public void main() {
       platform().assetManager().setPathPrefix("playn/showcase/resources");
       PlayN.run(new Showcase());
     }
   }

   Leave the syntax errors for now, we will fix them later.

3. $ cd mygame-android
4. $ mkdir lib
5. $ cp playn/android/target/playn-android-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar lib/
6. $ cp playn/java/target/playn-java-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar lib/
7. $ cp playn/android/lib/pythagoras-1.1-SNAPSHOT.jar lib/
8. $ cp -rf playn/android/libs .
9. Open mygame-android project’s Properties. If not, click on the Java Build Path selection. Under the Sources tab, you should already have two sources: mygame-src and mygame-res. In addition to this, you will need to add a Linked Source to the playn-android source. Hit the Linked Source… button and browse to the .playn/android/src folder for the Linked Folder Location. Call the Folder Name playn-android-src or something simliar.
10. Do step 8 again: link playn/core/src to playn-core-src and link mygame/src to mygame-src.
11. In your mygame folder create new folder called “assets” to hold the resources your game needs. (OpenGL needs 3 asset files we will copy soon).
12. $ mkdir -p mygame-android/assets/playn/android/
13. $ mkdir -p mygame-android/assets/playn/showcase
14. $ cp playn/android/src/playn/android/tex-fragment-shader.txt mygame-android/assets/playn/android/
15. $ cp playn/android/src/playn/android/vertex-shader.txt mygame-android/assets/playn/android/
16. $ cp playn/android/src/playn/android/color-fragment-shader.txt mygame-android/assets/playn/android/
17. Link to your resources in the path stated above in your activity playn/showcase/resources:
    $ ln -s mygame/core/src/playn/showcase/resources mygame-android/assets/playn/showcase/resources

Tips and tricks:

• Avoid using either java.util.Timer and java.util.TimerTask or GWT’s single threaded timer into your game, If you really need Timer, you need to do your own Timer and updating it in your update method to trigger events.
• Avoid references to device-specific (or GWT-only) classes in your game code.
• Make sure you plan your controls around different input schemes. (e.g. most Android games shouldn’t be working with keyboard input).

–

Authored by: Mostafa Eweda @MostafaEweda

most prestigious technology houses in the region. Prior to joining eSpace, Samer had a couple attempts in building his own startups – and failed – which just fueled his yearn to build something and never give up in the process. Samer is working with many initiatives to encourage entrepreneurship and help building Egypt as a startup nation