Oh Blast.

I’ve just been reviewing the specs for J2ME and there’s no ArrayList class. I’ve been looking at the overhead of the alternatives and I think it will kill the game. This leaves me with an additional option. Re-write the ArrayList class for J2ME. I’ve been looking up some articles and I think that it won’t be that hard to do, but I haven’t written this deep kind of code for years.

Not much progress has been made with the game, apart from some of the generation code. However it seems that some of the game logic has creeped into the display of the frame. I’ve got to look at ways to extract it and place it elsewhere.

I’m quite impressed by the J2ME community around the world. Thankfully I don’t think anyone’s come up with my idea for the game yet, but it’s only a matter of time. For the first time, I’m really beginning to feel that I have to get a move on in order to take advantage of this.

1. Map Generation. - Complete, but there seems to be bugs
2. PU Graphics. - Complete, but not displaying correctly
3. Clock Graphic and counter. - Code complete, display code still to do.
4. PU Keypress Capture. - Complete
5. Pathway Activation Animations. - Complete, but not displaying correctly
6. Pathway Activation Code Checks. - Complete.
7. Player PU Collection - Started but display code has yet to be written
8. Display extraction - undecided whether to do it.
9. 4 Animations outstanding.

Activation success.

Well, I've manages to get the Activation process to work. There was a bug in the map generation code and hey presto. It works. Now the next stage is implementing the countdown style clock. This will hopefully be done by the end of the week. I have noticed that a couple of items on the Map are wrong, so I'll have to be looking into that.

Nokia have announced a new N-gage. It looks a lot better than the old one and some of the design faults have been removed. This and the Nokia 6600 will be the initial launch platforms for this game. Still months away of implementing it though.

1. Map Generation. - Complete, but there seems to be bugs
2. Process Unit Graphics. - Complete
3. Clock Graphic and counter. - Still to start
4. Process Unit Keypress Capture. - Complete
5. Pathway Activation Animations. - Complete
6. Pathway Activation Code Checks. - Complete.
7. Player Process Unit Collection - Still to start.
8. Display extraction - undecided whether to do it.

Activation.

Well, another bug has arisen. It's to do with the Activation Animation. It might be that a null image is being passed to the screen. Difficult to see what's happening really.

One of the things I've been wondering is, should I remove the display functionality into a separate class. Presently this program will fit maybe 10% of the phones due to screen size. If I extract the display routines then each phone screen size will have it's own display routines and graphics. This potentially means that every Java and Bluetooth phone could have this game running. Nice to think of most phones with the game on.

More work Done

1. Map Generation. - Complete
2. Process Unit Graphics. - Complete
3. Clock Graphic and counter. - Still to start
4. Process Unit Keypress Capture. - Complete
5. Pathway Activation Animations. - Complete
6. Pathway Activation Code Checks. - Working on.

If I can keep this up, then the main game will be finished inside this month, but then I've got to get compress the whole code in order to squeeze it into the phone. I've just found out that there is a class size limit of 32k. I'm going to have to check that because I think the class that handles all the graphics might be pushing it.

However, getting time to continue with this is getting difficult. Might have some time this weekend, but I'm not holding out much hope.

A week later.

What a difference a week makes, The new graphics are working a treat and I've put in the player's sprites. What's even better I've got them moving in response to keypresses so I've managed my first bit of Interactivity. I've also downloaded the bluetooth tutorial from Nokia. Takes a lot of the scare out of what I'm planning to do, however I did see who the three finalists were in the competition I was going to enter this game for.

They are very pretty and all are bluetooth compatible, which kind of gives me a kick up the rear. This game is still not in the state It would have needed to be in in order to enter it but the progress I'm making is very uplifting for a first attempt. When I think about it, I'm glad I'm not tied down to a particular platform. It's an opportunity if this game will run on different phones and allow the users to interact. It does seem that you are limited to a particular phone type in the market today, so there might yet still be a hole I can exploit.