Quake For The iPaq

hooded1 writes: "Although once considered a utopian ideal, it has now become a reality. Last night on January 20th Dan East released the alpha version of PocketQuake, the first successful port of Quake to any pda. ... Currently PocketQuake only runs on the iPaq." And Jacek Fedorynski points to this screenshot as well. Note that this only works for iPaqs running WinCE, not Linux.

Comments

Cool.

[seirei]

This is a really ambitious port. I noticed it only runs on ARM based PDA's. Which is interesting considering Nintendo's new gameboy variation (called GameBoy Advance) will be ARM based. Specs of GBA: [http://www.gameboy.com/gbadvance.html] I wonder how hard it would be to port to this? I don't think the instruction set would differ too much. (unless they have some kind of custom cpu core) Though getting it on to a nintendo cartridge would probably be the harder part.(?)

Damn ^3

[Ando[evilmedic]]

It will never run on my Palm IIIc.

It would feel more turn-based though. :-)

- Ando

Try one first

[Zico]

The iPaq's got a Sony-made, side-lit passive matrix display which is awesome, despite only having 4K colors. Here's what c|net said about it:

Rather than being backlit like other color LCDs, the iPaq instead has small lights around its edge, which reflect off the screen and make it brilliantly bright, even when outdoors in direct sunlight.

Secondly, how many buttons and keys do you think you need? The iPaq's got a directional control plus four buttons in front, and probably 3 or 4 along the side. So, I don't really buy either of your complaints.

The glaring weakness of gaming on the iPaq is Compaq did a poor job of making sure that the buttons act independently of each other. The Cassiopeia handles this perfectly, though, so it's not some inherent problem with PDAs. If Compaq would quit being stubborn and fix that button problem in their next model, they'd have an even bigger winner on their hands than they do with the current one.

Cheers,

Are you high?

[rjh]

That doesn't mean we should be tolerant.

Right. Tolerance is for weenies. I must've missed that bit of social wisdom when people were teaching me how civilized human beings act.

We, as a community, should demand source releases be timely.

And the code release is not timely how? The fellow just released the code, and he's told people he doesn't want to release the code in this immature state, not that he will not release the code.

Even RMS allows this sort of coding to go on. Take a look at early Brave GNU Worlds. There are references to RMS receiving binaries of a proto-bash, and the author saying "this is just to look at, there are a couple of bugs I want to fix before I send source".

The basic underpinning of the GPL is the notion that individuals can agree to be friends. The GPL is not a legal contract so much as it is a social one; it is a social contract of openness and consideration.

Now, if three months pass and this fellow still hasn't released source, then there's a need to say "hey, guy, I don't care how bad the source is, just send me the tarball". If he still refuses, then unleash the holy wrath of the GPL.

But until such time as the fellow is no longer acting in good faith with the community, we need to give him full benefit of the doubt and believe that he'll be true to his word, with source forthcoming within a week or two.

This is why, after fifteen years of believing in the ideals of free software, I'm beginning to get disgusted with the free software community. Too many zealots who believe that any transgression against the GPL, no matter how minor, is tantamount to treason against the community.

RMS first wrote the GPL because he thought there was something wrong, something morally offensive, in treating your fellow users like serfs or faceless masses instead of treating other users like human beings, like people, like friends.

Are you really living up to the ideal?

Hardware issue with ipaq

[GlassUser]

I believe the most serious issue here is the iPaq's inability to detect more than one hardware button press at a time. Personally, I like being able to fire AND move at the same time. Of course you could use on-screen widgets, but that would get kinda akward, at least for me.

Apparently, this issue has been kind of buried, I didn't hear anything about it until after I bought my iPaq and started looking for accessories. The site linked is already being hit hard (late on a Sunday night, at least in Texas, USA, and we're already taking down servers - ph33r the p0w3r of /.).

Ah, just very slow to load. There's no detail on the page about the hardware issue.

More on the hardware issue - as far as I know, it's a hardware problem, and nobody knows when (if) it will get fixed. Compaq is running around like mad trying to meet manufacturing requirements, so don't expect too much soon there.

Doom's on Itsy

[Bomb Regardless]

Itsy (DEC [now Compaq]'s research PDA, has had Doom for a while. (It's B&W, unfortunately.) Even better, though, is that the Itsy can be controlled by rotation (called 'Rock 'n' Scroll'), so you just turn the machine to move, & press the one button for shooting.

There are some movies that show this, I'll have to find them.

later to night at a Company planing session...

[slashdoter]

hehem...

Note 3 on the agenda for tonight, no quake on the company computers.

*gigles* from table

note 4, would the chairman for the PDA team present there report recommending what model we purchase

________