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Game-development on Compaq iPaq
kilaasi writes "Some hard-core game-developers from Finland is making super-optimized games for the iPaq and similar devices, tweaking and tuning every bit of piece there is. These are old Commodore and Amiga-programmers that know the virtues of small-is-beautifull."
ON the very latest 3800 ipaq version the multi-press button problem is finally fixed!
The new Jornada 560 series has the same 206MHz CPU but doesn't have the gay button problem. Also, the battery life on the iPAQs are lousy, so until those new X-Scale PDAs arrive next year a GBA is a better bet (plus, the GBA is getting Tekken and Speedball 2 and that whups any Norse mythology all over the place).
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
This has been fixed in the 3800 series. You can push multiple buttons at once now.
It is about time that programmers realize that embedded systems are not desktops. Hard drives are not an option with these things.
More attention needs to be placed not only on making smaller programs perform better, but getting the program to perform closer to the hardware specs. This is what programming used to do with Assembler.
He co-designed the 3DO and Atari Lynx, plus was an OS guy for the Amiga (note that he did not design the Amiga hardware; that was Jay Miner). And now he's the lead tech guy at Fathammer.
Of course in this case it is debatable whether the best games for a system such as the iPaq should be hardcore 3D. If you take that route, then 98% of the processor time immediately goes out the window.
There still exist people today who write hardcore visual programs that are small and elegant. Unfortunatly they are usually crackers and a lot of them may end up in jail before they are old enough to get real jobs. : (
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Here's an archive of cracking intros:
http://members.easyspace.com/erekose/f_1997.htm
I'm fond of the Paradigm intros myself. Some of them have kick ass music too!
I'm curious to know why this is such a lost art. Could it be due to the fact that most engines are proprietary code?
If you want to find out how to write optimized software rasterizers, you can easily get the information from books and the web. This is old news. Everyone was into this back in 1995 and 1996, and in the end there was one generally accepted, close to optimal inner loop that was used in most texture mappers. It was published in Game Developer magazine and is available for free on the web.
From the article: These are old Commodore and Amiga-programmers that know the virtues of small-is-beautifull.
For their time, nothing comes close to Commodore computers, the C64 sold 22 million units between 1981 and 1987. I started out with a C128 (I rarely ran C128 programs, instead I almost always ran it in C64 mode) and migrated to the Amiga's in 1989. I started out with an Amiga 500 and moved up to the A1200. Those machines were way ahead of their time, they were multimedia machines before the phrase was coined.
They had 4 channel digital stereo sound, could display 4096 colors out of a palette of 16 million onscreen at 1 time (this was when 16 color EGA was the rage on PC Clones). They had a fully multitasking operating system, and it was completely GUI orientated. They were also plug and play too, but they called it auto-detecting the hardware. I own a PC now, but at the time I'm glad I was an Amiga user instead of a PC user, I never had to go through all the troubles PC users were plagued with at the time (remember setting jumpers for ALL your hardware, and praying there were no conflicts?).
Shh.
Future Crew is still kicking ass, yes! :)
I was the group organizer in Future Crew during 1989-1994. My nick was GORE. In addition to me, three of the original FC members are working for Fathammer. The others are either working at my previous company (Remedy Entertainment, maker of Max Payne), Bitboys (www.bitboys.fi) or at some other Finnish high-tech company (e.g. F-Secure or SSH).
Inmar Software ( http://www.inmarsoftware.com/ ) has a similarily optimized 3d engine for the Pocket PC. It has a game ( http://www.inmarsoftware.com/minigolf.htm ) that runs on StrongARM Pocket PCs and uses this impressive 3d engine. With 128 MB CF cards costing only $50 and 64 MB RAM in many new Pocket PCs, storage is not much of an issue, compared to other PDAs. The new Pocket PCs (running Pocket PC 2002, http://www.pocketpc.com/ ) all use the StrongARM cpu, so these sort of 3d games will become more common place and of higher quality in Pocket PCs with the powerful StrongARM as the cpu. The new PPC 2002 devices do not have a problem with multi-button pressing, so the quality of gaming on them will continue to advance. (The iPAQ 3635 only costs $300 after looking for a good deal and getting the $150 rebate from Compaq. I just ordered mine.)
Check out this review. Actual model in hand, retail purchased. Buttons fixed as well as screen dust bunnies addressed.
Here's a download of the demo:
http://www.infosync.no/show.php?id=985&page=3
It's pretty cool!
I was at Eidos headquarters about two months ago and they showed me Tomb Raider on iPaq. I was blown away. (And trust me, I've seen/played a lot of video games.) The quality (FPS, etc.) was better than the original PSX.
t ml
As someone already commented, the controls were... interesting... but nothing that you couldn't get used to after a little bit of practice.
Anyway, for anyone who cares, here is a link I saw about iPAQ TR:
http://www.pocketgamer.org/archives/00000314.sh
--- My dad's political betting