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3-D Gaming on Your Cellphone
to_kallon writes "As game devices, cellphones leave something to be desired. Most of the games found on them are rudimentary, with flat, cartoonish graphics and simple scenes.
But that is going to change. Soon cellphone owners will be able to play games with realistic three-dimensional graphics rivaling those on PC's and game consoles."
If you haven't been shopping for a phone latelty, you may have noticed that most of their promotional items are for the phones laoded up on featuers. Cameras, 10 games, 32-bit color screens, PDA options.. It's sickening. If you want one of those plain jane phones it will cost you more than a phone with all the features I just mentioned above.
Hmmm.
Since many cell phones are using Java for the applications and games, I would not be surprised if the next step would be to include support for OpenGL, especially given that Nvidia and ATI are playing part. There are already OpenGL bindings for Java, though the one that is likely to show most evolution, given the backing, is JOGL.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
The reason the GameBoy line has been so incredibly popular is in part because of the design of the unit; it has a screen, controller, and speaker built in. Cell phones already have all of this- except a good controller. Sure, the buttons on the cell phone can sorta-substitute, but I think you fill find the spacing used makes them very close together and small, especially on smaller model cell phones. I think games are a good idea, but if you cannot play them easily, no one is going to enjoy the experience (and the strain it produces on the fingers).
Do you remember the Vectrex ?
I am sure one could develop phones with a small light emitting device which'd display the vector games on a wall. The player would use wifi or bluetooth to communicate around and he would also use a minijoystick, similar to the one on Sony-Ericsson T68i to play.
If it doesn't seem very convenient for old timers like us, but when we were young we were not able to move our inches the same way young SMS-ers now do so I also guess it will not only be about ergonomics but also about adaptation.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
No, it means the harder your plain jane phone will be to find.
I didn't want a full color LCD (drains batteries) or a phone with useless background images or a million built in ring tones or any of that frilly stuff. Guess what, there ARENT any new phones that are "plain"
What's more, for all its frills, it doesn't have the functionality to do a simple thing like vibrate, THEN ring. My old motorola, which is at least four - five years old, can.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
So don't use those extra features.
/. so why aren't you hankering after the P900 or Treo 600? Don't you want to SSH to your server while you're on the bus?
Mobile phone companies will subsidise a camera phone in the hope that you start MMSing - thus driving up their revenue.
If you want a cheap, basic phone, try an independant store where the salesman isn't on commision to sell you a phone and contract you have no need for.
Although, you are on
(Disclaimer - not speaking for my employer)
If a square is really a rhombus, why aren't all triangles purple?
In my experience with mobile 3D gaming so far (Visor, iPaq, Samsung 8100), the only thing that has been truly enjoyable was Dan East's wonderful port of Quake to the Pocket PC. I've been playing it since Beta 0.062 in 2001 and it has really evolved into a very playable game on the iPaq. With a PCMCIA wifi card I was able to walk around a large LAN party fragging to my hearts content. It was especially fun sitting next to my opponents and seeing the look on their faces when they saw that I was playing on a handheld. Hats off to Dan East, you rock.
With Stinger (smart) phones around the corner, and ATI with its latest mobile graphics chips, I expect we might see Quake on a cell phone. I think I saw a demo video from last years E3 of Quake on a 2" LCD for a cell phone, but I remember seeing the Pocket PC interface before the game launched so I'm not sure if the game has been ported.
Dan, if your out there how about some insight?
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
There actually are a lot of those phones. They are just not seen.
Let's have a all-multimedia enchanced phone with a price tag of $400 on one hand that the service provider would subsidize to you with 2 year contract compared to $50 phone with no extra features.
Guess which one is better business for the service providers and cell phone dealers.
I have a Treo 600(PalmOS5) and it works with most palm games I have found. As far as 3D games go, it probably couldn't hack it... But I expect that Palm OS6 will change all of that because it seems to be more graphics-oriented.
Along the same line, I don't expect the N-Gage to go anywhere, because with all that processing power, you still aren't running a widely-supported OS. Don't get me wrong, Symbian seems pretty cool, but I gotta believe that more games would be written for it if it were really a good playform. I find new games for Palm every day, and some are more fun than the PC games I pay twice as much for. It's also cool that you can find any program under the sun for Palm. I can also do maps, e-mail, spreadsheets, word processing, and FULL HTML web browsing on the go. If you have the processor, you should be able to use it for more than games...
Take my word for it... there are great things outside of the Nokia Monopoly.
When getting my contract renewed recently, the provider I was with also listed only feature filled phones on their page of special.
:) So it seems free with those feature packed phones isn't so free after all.
I asked what else one could get and it turned out you could get many low end non colour screen phones for free as well. The only difference between the free feature packed phone and the free simple phone, was the monthly contract price actually wen't down with the simple phone.
BTW this is in South Africa, so I have no idea how the US service providers do it.
Looking at Nokia USA it seems you can get several black and white and thus long battery life nokias.
East Coast Brewers
I'm a proud owner of an N-Gage. If in doubt you should see some of the first person shoot-em ups and other 3D games which my phone hosts. I use it as a pda, come mp3 player, come video player, come radio and on occaison my girlfriend interupts the fun and by calling me. (It is interesting to note that depending on when you recieve a call, I've seen her crash not just applications but also my phone; although that said, it's bloody Ace.)
There's nothing wrong with the screen, small as it may be. I've used shabbier pda's. It's the perfect toy and if, in anyway, it is a sign of things to come, we should all be very happy.
One also has to note that with such power behind a small screen, the next lesson is to come up with better visualisation techniques to make the most of the space available. I've seen poor games and better thought out ones. Once it has been worked out 'what' you can and can't fit on such a screen, without compromising game-play, we will all sit there gaming and wondering how we ever did without.
To be honest, I avoided owning a phone on principle before this. None the less, I've replaced my gba, pilot and mp3 player with one affordable phone. My pockets have more space for tissues and I'm generally a happy bunny.
And you can fit all of 20 polygons on the screen at once! It will be AMAZING!
Proud owner of a Nokia 1100. Small. Not flashy. More durable than a flip phone. Functional.
My girlfriend's flip phone has speed issues, and the games aren't that great anyway. Even if they looked better, the controls suck.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
What? I always thought Slashdot people would be The People who would really appreciate features such as SSH on the phone.
In my time I've owned three phones that have had the possibility of connecting to the Internet. The first was Nokia 9000 Communicator, in 1998. It's nice to know future was invented more than six years ago.
During that time I've used SSH, Web and e-mail on the phone. Let me give you some anecdotes:
Once I was hurrying to the train station and I missed the bus. I had no idea whether I'd make it in time if I waited for another bus. It was early Saturday morning, so I couldn't call anyone at the Commuter Traffic Center. Instead of calling a taxi, I checked the timetables for the bus from the Net. No need for a taxi, so I saved some 20 Euros there.
(I've done something similar countless times on Friday evenings after the regular busses have gone and I don't know how I'll find a night-bus.)
Another time I was picking up some video tapes from the video shop. Unfortunately when I was almost there, I noticed I had left the note with the orders home. Option 1: turn back, face the rush hour, might not even make it today. Option 2: check email for said note. Option two saved me at least two hours, maybe even a full day.
(And again, other similar incidents have happened.)
I have dozens of stories like these. These features can be a real lifesaver at times! I'm not saying a smartphone is an excuse to be sloppy, but it is REALLY useful when accidents happen.
I haven't even mentioned the entertainment benefits. Tending the fire while camping, everyone else asleep? Play Doom. Stuck in a strange city at a late hour, two hours before the bus/train/plane leaves and no way to spend time? Irc or IM with your friends. Need to do something productive? Take out your laptop and copy some stuff from home server over GPRS.
Although 3D on cellphones is nothing near modern PCs, my current phone (N-Gage QD) is roughly as powerful as the PC I owned 4 years ago. (Granted, it was quite old at the time.) It is more powerful than the computer I used to play Doom and Wolfenstein 3D, and can show more colors!
I wouldn't be surprised, if Nvidia had Nokia as their main client after, say, 5 years.
[ Antti Rasinen ]
I immediately thought of the N-Gage when I saw this story as well, but for maybe of a different reason. What I thought of was the reaction I saw in nearly every review I saw of the N-Gage when it came out.
That reaction being that practically everyone played the 3D games and reported that yes, while they found it impressive someone had gotten 3D in a cellphone, actually playing the 3D games made them nauseous. Apparently something about the whole handheld thing and the very small screen just caused 3D on the N-Gage to be seasickness-inducing.
I cannot help but wonder if these upcoming 3D-capable cellphones will suffer from similar problems.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I love FPSs and immersive 3D enviroments as much as the next guy (or FPS loving girl i guess) but people seem to have completly given up on bringing out new 2 dimensional games. ... well... just boring. Far better to have minesweeper, tetris, or snake given that these games are supposed to be short distractions.
Not every game has to tax my hardware to it's fullest to be enjoyable or emmersive. While some gems stand out, there are far to many games that focus too much on being emmersive and non linear and lose any real fun or engenuity.
All i'm saying is, done well, a 3D game can be amazing, but few, if any games, rival Mario 3 or Commander Keen 4 for playability and enjoyment. Unfortunatly, now that we can make things bigger and better, we assume we should. Essentially, we are seeing, video game bloat.
I don't know about anyone else, but the idea of playing a watterd down tomb raider clone on my cellphone seems
Of course, if someone comes up with some cool 3D puzzle game that takes 30 seconds tops a session, i could see it catching on
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
You're on your own with Commander Keen though. There was a movement in the forums to assault id HQ and set the code free like so many cosmetic lab puppies, but they pussied out on that. So you've either got to do it on your own ninja-style (then get arrested, imprisoned, etc.), re-write it for a mobile phone (then get sued), or just forget about Keen. Just let him go man - he'd be there for you if it was meant to be.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato