UPDATE
Since this has become one of our more popular pages I just wanted to update it to say that UPSAT has now launched! If you find this page useful or just want to see some of the cool things we did with OpenFeint, including custom notifications, then please consider supporting us by getting the full version of UPSAT and by following us on Facebook or Twitter!
UPDATE
So you have an amazing Android game and you’ve decided you want to join the 21st century and add social connectivity? Well kudos and welcome to the party!
If you’re reading this then you’re probably at least somewhat interested in OpenFeint and what is entailed in getting this working with your game. The good news is it’s actually really easy. The bad news, since OpenFeint is relatively new on Android, the documentation can be a bit lacking which makes the task SEEM very daunting. I have to admit that I was a little bit nervous about doing this before I started, but in the end it only took me around 5 hours. So, if you have any coding skills whatsoever (unlike myself) then you could probably get it done in less. I’ve decided to write this little tutorial to help future users who find themselves running into the same problems as I did and to begin chipping away at the community support void that OpenFeint for Android is currently experiencing.
IMPLEMENTATION SPECIFICS
Since my game was created using the Android SurfaceView class and not OpenGL, I can’t attest as to the viability of this tutorial in other situations. That being said, the fundamentals should still be the same for any multi-thread gaming environment. At it’s core, Android is just Activities and Views, and both GLSurfaceView and SurfaceView classes are just views that operate on separate threads. So if you’re using something besides the regular SurfaceView class, don’t stop reading, this information could still prove useful. I’m running Windows 7 and using Eclipse 3.7.0. I’m going to focus on Step 4 of the getting started with OpenFeint tutorial from the developer support site, as steps 1-3 are essentially repeated here.We’re also going to assume you already have your project in Eclipse.
GETTING STARTED: IMPORTING OPENFEINT
I’m going to go ahead and skip steps 1-4 on this page because it’s all pretty self explanatory. If you can’t figure that out then I don’t think any number of tutorials will help you. So our first task is actually getting OpenFeint imported into your workspace. You’ll want to make sure you download and extract the OF SDK to somewhere convenient. I put mine in the same location as my Android SDK. To import the API’s follow these steps
Right-click on your project in the project or package explorer Click
Import. On the following screen select
General and then click
Existing Projects into Workspace.. Click
Next.
OpenFeint tutorial Import Window
OpenFeint Tutorial Import Projects
OpenFeint Tutorial Projects Imported
You should now see the two projects in your package/project explorer. If they are not there, try deleting them out of your workspace through Windows Explorer and then following the steps above. If your images don’t look exactly like mine, that’s ok. I have some of my files in SVN repositories so they display a little differently.
BUILDING AND SETTING UP THE PROJECT
Next we need to verify that the projects have been built and that both projects are classified as libraries. This part seems to be the main area of confusion and I had the most trouble here. From reading other forums, it seems as though, depending on how you perform the import, the files may automatically be classified as libraries, in which case your project would be fine. If this doesn’t happen then you will start seeing errors as you actually implement the API into your code. It’s best just to perform these quick verification steps to be safe.
In the top menu bar, select
Project and then check to see if
Build Automatically is selected. If it is, go to the next step. If it’s not, then select
Build All and then select
Build Automatically 
OpenFeint Tutorial Build Projects
OpenFeint Tutorial Properties Setting
Click OK to close the window. Your project is now set up and you’re ready to begin coding. At this point you shouldn’t have any errors. If you do then please retry all the steps and if you are still having issues feel free to comment here and I will try to help you out.
INITIALIZING OPENFEINT IN YOUR GAME
“Ladies and Gentleman, Boys and Girls…. It’s time for the MAAAAAAIIIINNNNN Event!” This is the part you’ve no doubt been waiting for. Before we get started I want to take a minute to explain my setup and how I’ll be implementing the code. Simplifying greatly, my project consists of one Activity (AndroidGame) which is the UI thread and one SurfaceView( Screen) which is the worker thread where I perform all my game logic and rendering. Through some trial and error coding, I found that the OpenFeint methods have to be called from within an Activity class or context and not a view (or SurfaceView for that matter). This means that as far as I know, the calls must be made from the UI thread. I also found some apparent errors in the code given on the OpenFeint developers site and will point these out to you.
The first few steps for editing the Android Manifest file are pretty straightforward:
Edit the AndroidManifest.xml file in your project: Add the following activities inside your <application>tag: <activity android:name="com.openfeint.internal.ui.IntroFlow" android:label="IntroFlow" android:configChanges="orientation|keyboardHidden" android:theme="@style/OFNestedWindow"/> <activity android:name="com.openfeint.api.ui.Dashboard" android:label="Dashboard" android:configChanges="orientation|keyboardHidden" android:theme="@style/OFNestedWindow"/> <activity android:name="com.openfeint.internal.ui.Settings" android:label="Settings" android:configChanges="orientation|keyboardHidden" android:theme="@style/OFNestedWindow"/> <activity android:name="com.openfeint.internal.ui.NativeBrowser" android:label="NativeBrowser" android:configChanges="orientation|keyboardHidden" android:theme="@style/OFNestedWindow"/> read more
