Blast It. It's not Broke!

Dunno what was up there. It didn't want to work between my n80 and a 6280. However, it did work ok between the N80 and a 3250.

I think the bluetooth was locked onto another machine when I tried to play it against the 6280. I'll give it another try on Monday.

There's a new Motorola version as well. Finger's crossed!

Blast it. Broke It

I've gone and broke the bluetooth again. I was testing between my n80 and a nokia 6280 and it's not establishing the connections properly. I think that's due to the fact I shrank the step time to 10ms. I'll re-raise it to 25ms and see how it goes.

I'll have to change all my builds again, so I've held off the final test of the motorola version.

Hopefully know by Monday !

Motorola Hell.

The love-hate releation ship with motorola's continues.

Just when you think you've got there, something else turns up. I'm overjoyed at the fact I've managed to the the motorola version working ok in single player. Looks and plays fantastic, if a little jerky. It's the bluetooth version that's pants.

As a client it makes contact with the server, the interphace is transfered and then it takes ages rendering the screen. By this time, the server has already moved on to play the game and then the game crashes out with a bluetooth error after 5 seconds of play.
And it won't even act as a server.

Damn, does this mean that I have to go back to putting debug in for this version! Probably, Arrgh!

Bug Fix.

I think it's sorted! I've got the thing sorted! That last map issue was a silly little bug but it was a pain to track down. So I've had to update all six versions (!) will this new code. I really aught to look into automating this process, otherwise I'll be here for ages.

I've also been monitering the memory usage of my game. According to the Sun tools, It needs a constant foot print of 98-150K of heap memory available in order to run it. That shouldn't be a problem for most of the phones I'm targeting.

That includes the new Motorola version. I'm going to test that today, which would open up such a new market. I do have to redesign the Website and the wapsite to handle these different ods. I'll also put together a quick WAP page for the artist. Just so it will be complete.

Testing has yet to begin into the BENQ and LG handsets, and the new Nokia series 40's have to be tested as well. Even though the game 1.15 is complete (kind of), I'm still busy with it.

Oh Bum, Buttocks and Bugger!

So much for making progress.

Instead of fixing the Join split bug, I've gone and broken all the different versions. Especially the Motorola One. Talk about taking one step back.

The first priority it to get the Interphace generation bug fixed. Then it's getting the Motorola version working again. This is getting urgent for me as I wanted 1.15 out of the way by last weekend.

Motorola D-Day

Right the display bug is sorted and I'll be testing the new Motorola version on the handsets today (Gulp!). The next free version (which will be 1.20), I'm looking to include advertising as part of the nag screen.

A Nag screen is displayed after a game is finished, prompting to get the user to look for the comercial version. That nag screen can also include a message and a small image from an advetiser. If I can make a few contacts within the advertising industry it could be a new revenue stream.

The Commercial version is still being refined, but I'm designing the city layouts for the new single player game. Each city is 128*128 tiles wide. That's 2048*1048 pixels wide for each city. That's almost ten screens high by eleven screens wide. Hopefully that will be a big enough playing area. The memory required just to hold the city would be 16K in a 2D array. Each type type being held as a byte.

Motorola Test. - Oh Bugger!

Well, it worked and it didn't. The screen was displayed offset. Dunno why. I guess I'll have to hard code it for the motorola's. However, it did work OK.

The bad news is the Bluetooth multiplayer has thrown up an error. If the game is a client, then it takes too long to render the interphace playing area. By that time the bluetooth connection is lost. I think this is also an issue when a faster phone is playing against a slower phone.

So I'm going to put 1.15 on hold until it's fixed, maybe a Monday Release. Once that's done, then I'll have it working on the "Big Three!" as I call them. However there are new LG, Samsung and BenQ Phones to test against. Also Someone mentioned that I could try Blackberries as well. Interesting....

Compitition Time

Solved the N80 version problems. There was an exception when the graphics had been renamed in one place. At least It's solved. So that's version 1.15 ready. I'll be updating the Website with the new versions by the end of the week.

There's a competition with an entry date of 11 Sept. I've decided to enter InterPhace into it. It's going to be the 1.20 version so I'm going to make it as smooth as possible.

Coding on the Motorola version is continuing I'll be in a position to test that hopefully at the end of the week. I've also got to revise the list of phones that this game will work on. Nokia has released a whole load of new Phones which I think it will work with fine.

Build trouble.

Oh My, I've got too many builds. I'm not sure If I'm updating the right versions. I've got

1. Interphace Slice Version.
2. Interphace NDice Version.
3. Interphace No Bluetooth version.
4. Interphace Motorola version.
5. Interphace Slice Hi-res version.
6. Interphace NDice Hi-res version.

I think I'm overwriting different versions left right and center.

So far I've got as confirmed as working.

1. Interphace Slice version.
2. Interphace No Bluetooth version.
3. Interphace Slice Hi-res version.

It's the NDice versions that need rebuilding but I have had no luck after applying the changes. Could be JBuilder is playing silly buggers but it's gettintg to be very labarious. Maybe this might be the time to learn about ant.

Maybe I should rebuild the Motorola version using the Motorola Toolkit, instead of the WTK2.2. I'm giving the motorola version two extra attempts.

1. Rebuild using the Motorola JDK.
2. Recode the keypress functionality for motorola's.

If the motorola version still doesn't work properly after these two steps, then I'm going to abandon it.

N80 InterPhace.

It's excellent. I've now got a working N80 version of interphace. The Screen looks lovely with the Screen resolution doubled. There are a couple of things that have to be Tweeked. But it should be ready for release by the end of the week.

No. 5 is done

I'm going to release Interphace 1.15 first.

It's the same as the rest but fixes the screen resolution problem for the rest of the other phones. Should be ready by the end of the week.

The Motorola version continues to be a pain. The gamecanvas keypress method doesn't seem to capture anything that I can use and so althought the game runs on a Razr v3i. I can't select any of the options. I'm getting obsessed about getting this game running on that blasted handset. ;-)

I've just got to get the Graphics Right for the N80 and N90 and I can then put that one to bed as well.

New Version?

I'm considering one final version of Free InterPhace.

This will include a new single player game called firewall. It's a case of see how long you can hold out against the CPU and this will be converted into a Single Player points. The Present single player option will be renamed as practice.

So here's the new todo list for Interphace 1.20.

1. Firewall Game.
2. Adding Exit/Back/cancel/Select Options to the menus.
3. Making the Bluetooth menus similar to the rest of the game menus.
4. Update the Bluetooth dialogs to use the game menus.
5. Screen size issue for screen sizes which are 1.5* (208*172).

I've now got a new version to try on the Motorola handsets. It works a lot better on the Emulators but falls over when I try to start a single player game with an out of memory error. All other emulators report that it only uses 200-300k of the heap at the most. That should fit into the 800K without a problem. I've just got to test it with a proper handset or two and see how it goes. The Emulators don't seem to have a good reputation.

And I used to complain about the Nokia's not working well. ;-(

I've recieved the first set of Graphics for the commercial version of Interphace. The artist has yet again excelled herself, the artwork has everything I could have asked for. Clarity and Humor. I'm working on the techniques now to create the single player game and it's taking me into new territory.

Quite exciting really.

N80 InterPhace.

The New Phone Has arrive and wow I'm impressed with it. The only problem is the game's screen resolution is pants. It's also got corruption with some of the figures. I've got to work out a way to get the graphics to scale up.

Mind you it works fine playing against the 3230 so I'm well chuffed. The 6280 has a different screen resolution as well, so does that mean a seporate two builds for each of the series3.

Probably.

Bum.

Still it's good progress.

No word back from the press releases, then again. That's to be expected.