Now running FAST on a real java phone!

Thats right! Its running at the same speed of its native counterparts, if not somewhat faster (plausible, considering this is a very modern feature phone and its using some limited acceleration). On my A1200i it freezes =-(

Nokia Ovi store – Maemo left out

** update: with N900 coming fast now, It is most likely that Maemo5 will be supported in Ovi Store very soon…

 

Nokia Mosh was a great distribution channel for me. It had a great Maemo support and was a great hub for making my games available. Now I just logged in to Ovi to fill my registration. Its not that the 770 is old…Its Maemo that is not persona-non-grata in Ovi. There’s no sign of N800 and N810 in the device matrix.  This is quite annoying, since even mom’s crappy phone is in there…

Maybe the finns are about something here…

The Tags: I filled it under “defective-by-design” and “phallacy”, but I hope they have something better up their sleeves for us. Lets pray that I filled the tags wrong.

BZK updates

its been a lot since my last post. Lots of news to tell:

- the render is FINALLY (after two years!) ready!!!!! bring some champagne!!! Now its time to juice it the most we can

This also means that some shelved levels I did for Angstron will spring very soon.

NOTE: there’s a limitation on the rendering semantics. I will fix/explain/”block from conbed” later. For now, make sure you enclosed the level in order to prevent the sectors to connect to the master sector. This is a ambiguity on the rendering system that Im working right now

- The MonoBED editor (until now, my pet project and a well hidden project) is finally exporting some XML. Soon we will be able to export some very optimized BZK maps without those limitations of voxels , like fixed sector size. Voxel will still have its use, specially for games like Angstron, but for some shooters, better to use a more neatty arrangement.

- newbie_x11 got me surprised again: he’s working a game engine full of physics and good OpenGL powered graphics. the fun fact is that he’s using a good deal of BZK components. Some of them with some adaptations that will be incorporated to the mainstream code. (with some adaptations, in the name of flexibility) – http://newbie-x11.blogspot.com/2007/10/prepare-seu-processador-fisica-chegou.html (pt_BR)

- after some good deal of bug fixed that got the render working, I fixed the coodernate system and thus, I got the Angstron’s AI working better

- A College mate got me a good tip for configuring my Dell Latitude 120L’s LCD Painel:

get this on your /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Monitor Genérico”
Option “DPMS”
DisplaySize 338 212 # 1280×860 96dpi
Gamma 0.77 0.64 0.501
EndSection

replace “Monitor Genérico” with “Generic Monitor” if you use EN_GB or EN_US instead of PT_BR.

- Opera mini 4 Beta 2 is out and its almost like the Opera Mobile I had on the N-Gage. It renders the full page and sports a virtual mouse. Its like browsing on a computer

now the not so good news:

- my Cassiopeia A-11 finally is going to retire: one of its touchscreen sensors finally gave up. It still works, but the touchscreen is worthless. Im going to keep it. Its gona be useful when porting BZK to WinCE. (no, I dont plan to run full blown 3D games on it, but I guess I can run the engine core without graphics on it). Im going to buy some new handheld computer. Im still analysing the options but Im very inclinated to PalmOS handhelds. They integrate with Ubuntu very well.

- Im giving up MaemoWizard development. Its current release works well, but there are already some better projects. But the Mono version project is up and it will hildonize stuff too. (I guess).

gosh, I hate posting very mixed posts like this…It become a tag’s hell. (almost all the tags were filled…)

AngsTRON project news, as of 22 th july, 2007

The garage website is up (just as the SVN!):

http://angstron.garage.maemo.org

Now, some information about the game:

the new beta is already on the SVN, but there are some issues to solve before I go and release a .deb:

- Music. Its back to stay. I’ve finished some nice tunes from CidoLoco (it just needed some mixing).

- More speed, of course

- More levels

- The graphics that tell the storyline

- Optimized backdrop blitting

- A nice hildon interface (Maemo-games-startup)

For all that stuff ,I will need a major revamp on MaemoWizard. So the new MaemoWizard 0.4 is due to come very soon!

Maybe im getting crazy, but I will also try to make a new game for the Open C contest…

Maemo is two years old…but not only maemo…

Today (yesterday?) Ferenc announced on Maemo mailing list that maemo is two years old…lets throw some flashback:

the first time I’ve heard of maemo, I was still a monitor student on microcontrollers (8051 mostly) and was still neatly involved with SymbianOS programming. I remember being at the studies room, browsing NewLC (I was a regular helper, translating things to brazillian portuguese) and then I saw about this new technology Nokia was developing. At first, seemed a bit like vapor. But I just didnt gave up instantly (and that paid off. its technogy was amazing and not even close to vapor) for some reasons:

- I was looking to jump into linux as soon as I can. I was getting fed up of windows quickly and althrough I would discover later that Series60 SDK was (after the hassle to make it work) more user friendly than Maemo scheme of things (scratchbox and autotools) it was some piece of chaos (specially in its early iterations, like Series60 1.2, with technologies changing a lot in Series60 2.0). Also, as would freddy mercury would say “I wanted to break free” ;-P

- BZK2 attempt on Symbian was disastrous…I still had lots of things to learn (some stuff Im still learning). I did designed a good framework for simple 2D games. On that it shone gracefully. But on 3D it sucked badly. peaks of 1 FPS on a 10 polygons scene is pathetic. I was ready to start all over (ok, I salvaged a few basic stuff like fixed point math) with a new design. Initially I planned for it run both on Maemo and Symbian, but this was frustrated when some “really nice guys” took my N-Gage on a “friendly conversation” motivated by a gun on of the “nice guys” said we would use on me. Althrough BZK2 is not Symbian ready, it is designed to be easy to port.My brief surveys on Windows Mobile before getting into Symbian (circa 2003) also contributed on building a software around strong limitations. And that effort paid of: Maemo is a UNIX box, but it also has some limitations and I, without knowledge on it,I bended on most of it. Am I getting experienced on mobile programming?

- We cant deny it: Maemo is a charming plataform.While being a UNIX box, it still a very sexy device (specially it2006 onwards) and at the same time , something a hacker can take seriously. After the “nice guys” took my N-Gage, I saw on the 770 a mobile gaming plataform just waiting to happen. And I still think this way. It has more horsepower than Nintendo DS (on general processing. And the N800 has a 3D chip, but is currently missing its 3D drivers) , still having a HUGE touchscreen with almost TWICE the resolution of the PSP and plus, with a open SDK and a open (but not flawed) OS. certainly its rocker is not good for gaming, but “creativity grows around limitations”, right? With such a great touchscreen why one would want to only use the rocker (Angstron only uses it becouse of its simple gameplay). Im planning some cool games for it that may unveil its very versatility.

- It uses SDL for some of its multimedia and built-in gaming stuff. I was very fond to SDL as it was the first thing I used when programming C++, back on 2002. Before that I tried lots of stuff and it was all very clumsy. Even being limited, SDL allows me to do MY application design ,not enforcing any particular framework. Freedom is always cool. Put that on my perspectives on the transition: almost zero learning curve (If I only knew about that autotools hell I was about to face…)

Strange for my first game be considered playable on it right on its
birthday…those things life does…

At that same day, at that room , I started sketching my new pet project. I didnt saw it waiting that long to become something usable, but these things happen. Before all that I needed to swim deeply on the engine design and testing, doing it for a full year. It would take all this time for me to actually see any of my demos running on the device.But I needed to learn a lot, to master the new OS I was using (I’ve been playing with linux since 1998, but until 2003, it was just for amusement) and eventually , create MaemoWizard (I know! I know! its not finished but I will finish it soon!).

Of couse I may have missed some some moments helping and watching the grow of the community around it, but I needed that silent time to get aquainted with all that new stuff. On its beginning I did some translations, but it was not that important afterall. And I still have a lot to learn…Im lost on that Garage stuff!

But take BZK. When compared to everything I designed before, it feels solid. After ToughtFix challenge, I could quickly create a crappy TRON demo. This is what a game engine is all about. many of my colleagues from the BZK community at first didnt understand why to create a engine limited to such great constraints (and some of them still question me about this) but it all had this reason.

Now I feel like a real developer

Still, if you pick the Maemo community, it was a success. It indeed spawned a second device and intel wants to use hildon on its mids…

On the other hand, while BZK succeedded on the technological front, its community was a huge failure. Many people joined the forum in the beginning but not even 5% continued to visit it. Not even the core developers of the project (me on the engine side of stuff and Carlos as the admin and toolman plus Marcos as the IA advisor and of course our internet friend, newbie_x11) do it that often anymore. There is no need for it anymore. My vague promisses of fixing the render drew all the community powers. Handling a open project its not a trivial task…

I can only hope to have fewer pretensions on my projects in the future. Just creating a piece of software and releasing it was about to be enough to do the call for a bazaar, not the inverse order of happenings. But that is something you cant read easily on the internet…

These last 3 months were simply some of the best for the project. Maybe the community is just me right now. But thats enough: Angstron is taking form very quickly and Im already sketching the next games to use BZK. We did it!

This is not a end for the project, but a announcement for a second phase. Maybe in the next years we will see a BZK3, maybe (but probably built around BZK2).

Ok, thats enough for a post. Happy Birthday Maemo, happy birthday BZK, and damn you criminals who took my N-Gage

Nokia Tech Days – Rio – 2007

2 days ago I went to the Forum Nokia event Nokia Tech Days.

Yeah. Forum Nokia rocks as website itself. Even more with such a event.

From start. It was FAR away from home. I slept on my granma’s house, get there faster, but it still took me 3 hours to get there. That was the hard part.

After getting there, I soon noticed what most people praised about the event (aside from its technical excellence): the food. It was great! And there were lots of food. They kept us nicelly fed.

And now, What I was expecting: the speeches.

Lots of technical insights on Nokia plataform, mostly Symbian C++. I felt like “hey…I should have seen this 3 years ago”.

(For those who dont know, I used to make N-Gage homebrew games) . Some palestrants also mentioned Maemo, but only briefly (one of them had a N800 there! I saw it for a moment! live!).

For some, the moment was just like a “developers! developers! developers!” dacing sessions. But I felt (specially on the Browser speech) that Nokia really cares about open source: “take a look at the source. Not only to help improving it or to find bugs. But also to learn how to write one. To learn how to write a XML parser, for example”.This, for me, was the highlight of the event.

Other message that i got is “lets have some sucess TOGETHER”. And it was not just a ceremonial phrase. I could talk later to Jure Sustersic (who seemed very nervous during the speech. Later, I became nervous to have a chat with him in english. My spoken english really suck) and he seemed very cheerful to know that im working with SDL in Maemo and wanted to know the possibilities of running my game engine on Series60 and he replied that he was working (I dont know how officially) with SDL too and the results were great.

The last great surprise aside from the food and the great technical information was to finally meet personally Ivan (yeah…one of the Corporate drones. the one who wrote about java on XGL here) . We indeed took a picture.

In this picture, you can see us just after we were hired as highly ranked nokia executives left the hotel and were about to take our bus’es home.

(sorry. I coudn’t resist the joke. The credentials had the nokia name )

update:

just to debunk an old myth that arised at the conference – Series60 emulation DOES WORK under linux, using wine. (at least with SDK 1.2 for Symbian 6.1 – Borland Edition)

I got this picture using Slax LiveCD kill bill edition some time ago. just to remember: ZERO CONFIGURATION for this to work. even Vacuum1 worked nicely

(yeah…its not the blue thingy. I changed the emulator skin twice. Shame the N-Gage QD skin didn’t worked. It looked so cool!)