[MUD-Dev] Pocket PC Development

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

> From: Peter Tyson [mailto:ptyson at datamonitor.com]
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Matt Owen [mailto:MOwen at Channel4.co.uk]

>> This is where the relatively new arena of Pocket PC gaming comes
>> in. Now that these devices sport colour displays and fast
>> processors, expansive Elite type games become possible. I have
>> actually spent the last few days musing over a 'Space trading
>> game' for the Pocket PC,

> Would love to see something like this myself. There's a couple of
> PocketPC games out there already which are space-tradey but you
> kind of get the feeling they are more testing the technology by
> the designers.
 
> In particular almost no PocketPC game has exploited the fact that
> the people with PPCs also have internet access and regularly sync
> their devices (ok, Rocket Elite does with scoring, fantastic game
> btw).

Have you ever done much pocket PC development? Its actually tricky
to get really good performance as the GAPI games api doesn't utilise
any of the cpu blits etc. that each CPU can offer. All GAPI does is
give you the offset into the display buffer, so a lot of the flashy
games have been written by that one company, whose name escapes me,
facilitated by this portable graphics library they wrote.

I had actually thought of implementing a play by mail type thing on
the PocketPC, but lost interest when I discovered that the input
controls on my ipaq have a firmware bug in the multiplexer. This
means that it can't detect buttons being pressed in combination,
which is why all the ipaq shoot-em ups have autofire keys... Anyway
this crippled control interface annoyed me enough to stop me doing
any more pocket development :)

Dan

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