Ongoing......

Right that’s another few things off the list, an about/copyright alert, connection to the Website/Wapsite and a Help Screen. Due to the 6600 layout, it looks quite untidy but it gets the point across.

Samsung have got a competition running with a $10000 grand prize. The competition closes on the 31st of May, so it might be tight, but it’s worth looking into. Nokia have a similar competition but it’s only open to Indian developers (So why advertise it on the World Wide Web).

I’ve got to order the new phones today and hopefully they’ll arrive by the end of the week, so I can test the game over the weekend.

On a Roll.

I’ve now put in all the user error checking and the rolling single player game, which is too hard even on easy, it’s almost complete. Apart from the single player tweaking, There are three major tasks outstanding.

1. Sound - I’ve got to work out a way to get the right sound working across all handsets. This is one of the platform issues I’ve been dreading. There are only two sound effects, a bleep for the clock and the activation of a pathway of which the latter is going to be the problem.

2. Bluetooth Test - Although the Multiplayer works in a fashion over the emulators, I still need to perform a hardware test between two phones. I’m getting a new Nokia and Samsung this week so hopefully by Friday I’ll have it confirmed working.

3. Compression - The Jar at present is 180K in size and I’ve still to add in the sound, I think I can forget the 128K limit I wanted but most of the phones this game is aimed at doesn’t seem to have a memory limit. I might just compress down but I’m not holding my breath.

I think I’ll be mostly working on the web/wap site this week.

I can cross a couple of items off the coding list. There are new graphics on all of the menus which is a couple of items off the development list. I must admit it does make the whole thing look that little bit more professional. Not much coding time due to the new Star Wars film.

I now have a choice, concentrate on the new user modifications or the single player game. I’m also going to have to contact the artist to ask for new Artwork, this time a female character, in pink, who will be used in the standard version of the game.

Bloody Hell. It Works!

The damn thing works. I’ve got twelve different themes working. And it works fast. It must have been the createImage method which has caused the problem. That’s something to file away, best not to use that method in the Game Loop.

This means I’m now free to look at the Single Player Enhancement. Probably Look at that over the Weekend. Still got to test for Interrupt effect that a call or a text would cause halfway through a game though.

Code, Code and Coding

It took two hours just to code up the changes I needed to make and even at the end of this I’ve got no guarantee that it will get the game back to it’s previous performance level. I suppose that over 96 CreateImage commands every cycle would cause a problem but I had no idea that on the 6600, it takes over a minute to perform a game loop. It might be more than just the graphics routines, a bug that hadn’t been seen until now, but the most likely offender is the new graphic routines.

What I’ve got now is a Hybrid of the old system and new. A master image is taken from the Theme Directory and that is used to populate the internal arrays, as opposed to individual PNGs.

I’ve decided on the enhancement to the single player game. The idea is to see how many levels you can beat before the game wins. Each time the player wins against the game, the next time the game gets an extra PU and then it starts over again. The start level is determined by the options you select. For each level of difficulty you start at then you get five bonus levels to start off with.

The player gets an extra PU every five levels just to give them a better chance. The highest level the player gets to is stored within the RMS and the player’s details.

Success and Failure

The graphics worked. I had twelve themes working while playing and you could select the theme by using the relevant option. I was ecstatic, I was over the moon, it was such a big weight off my mind to get this little bit of functionality out of the way. I even crossed it off the to-do list.

Then…

I thought, ‘Oh best check it out on the 6600 just to make sure!’ and built the jar and then transferred it over the Bluetooth connection. Oh Lord, what a downer. It takes too long to draw the screen. It’s almost a minute for each game loop. I don’t know what causes this but I have a feeling that the Create Image method isn’t all that fast on the 6600 and I’m now looking at the issue but it feels so close yet so far.

I’m now designing the single player section enhancement but that’s going to take a little while.

Well, I’m almost there with the new graphics engine. It took a little bit of work and a couple of the animations have still got some work but I’m almost there. This will be a great weight off my mind if it works because it will allow me to cut out almost a third to a half of the jar size, bringing it down to under the 128K barrier. Mind you the sound files might send it back up over that limit.

I’ve managed to get the Website working in XHTML 1.1. This means that some of smart phones can pick up the website and browse it. The only problem is that it looks crap. I’ve got to look at how to differentiate between browsers, which shouldn’t be too hard with ASP.NET

I’ve been also looking at where to take this game. I’ve been looking into publishers or the self publish route. There are several publishers close to where I live, I don’t know whether to contact them and demo the game or just assume they’ll ignore me and try by myself.

Decisions, decisions !

Right, I’ve got the code done for the Initial cut of the new Theme code. I’ll be testing it tonight. I’ve been looking at expanding it to allow Themes to be saved into the RMS of a mobile phone but that will be part of either the standard or the advanced versions.

If I get the new themes working quickly, I can cut down the size of the jar to a more workable size (it’s well over 256 K at the moment) and give the game a more unique look.

I’ve also been looking into the Network update code. To be honest this should be the easiest part to code but until I get the Bluetooth game play sorted I can’t investigate it any further.

Hackidy Hack.

Well work has started on the new theme code and I’m finding is surprisingly easy. As this class handles all the custom game graphics I’m trying to make it as flexible as possible so that porting is easy. Hopefully by the end of the week!

The progress bar didn’t take as long as I thought and I’m quite relieved to see it in action but I’ve still got issues with the emulators not running as well as they should in multiplayer mode.

I’ve also noticed a bad bug. If a client game finishes and the game exits, then the damn thing crashes out this a bad exception. I’m missing a destroy call I think but I can’t see where.
I’m aiming for the Edinburgh Games Festival for a release.

Well, the emulators have screwed me again. The gauge will not work as expected. I’ve had the same problem with the Bluetooth search functionality, it worked when tested on the 6600 but doesn’t work on the Emulator. I’ll just have to have faith when I test it on the new handsets.

It looks like I’ve been completely ripped off as far as the second Phone is concerned. I’m contacting the police and E-bay and hopefully I’ll be able to get my money back via the insurance but this is also causing problems with my bank as well.

I’ll be looking at the new graphic routines over the weekend and I’ll be recoding the theme and display code hopefully by Monday. I’m just going to have to wait for the new contracts to get a couple of new phones.

Progressing

I actually got a bit of development last night to add the map transfer gauge. I’ll be testing that tonight. I am going to have to re-engineer the graphics engine over the next few days and then finally altering the theme handling code.

It’s going to take a little while before I can alter the single player game.