102 replies to this topic

[muff]

just a quick question.

are any of you, who say these games are easy, programmers?

[okocha10]

how a bout some sort of football management game, dont know if u'd be able to get champs because of all the writing, but something similar?? or a pool/snooker game?? i dont know what you guys can do, so they're just some suggestions.

[midnight]

hell, even i could program battleships, thats why i said it was easy, i dunno c++ tho, more a vb programmer, and microsoft left that out of smartphone 2002 unfortunately :wink:

[fraser]

GPRS Battleships won't be that easy! The game engine will be, but how do you send the message to your opponent? I don't think you can run a server on the SPV to listen for input, you'd have to have a web service somewhere to do the exchange between the users.

Can user designed software on the SPV open IP sockets? That would be a minimum really for this, unless you used a HTML interface with IE, but then you would need to poll the server for updates, as you can't "push" data over the web.

[spacemonkey]

For GPRS battleships you could at the minimum use something similar to what snake2 uses for highscores.  On the server store an id of the game.  The oponent would have to choose to look for a play by you (unless it just polled every 30 seconds or something.

[midnight]

exactly, all you need is an online server
you could even make battleships just using php and mysql, it would be clumsy, but would work
and cos its turn based you dont have to worry about lag problems etc.

[fraser]

You would midnight, that's my point. You cannot recieve incoming connections to the phone, so you have to poll for them. This either amounts to a long delay between your opponent moving and you getting the update, or it's expensive data charges for consistent polling.

Mind you, I'm not 100 % sure that you can't actually receive incomming connections. Obviously when you aren't dialed into GPRS you can't, but it may be possible to do so once you are connected.

[midnight]

well, the consistent polling wouldnt be expensive, its either a blank page for no move by the oppenent, or actual co-ords if they have made a move, thats using php of course.

basically, i thought of it this way, you set up your ships, your oponent sets up their ships. the data is sent to each (that way as soon as incoming co-ords have been sent you both immediatly know if its a hit or miss and less data sent in the long-run), then when you send co-ords its sent to the server. While you are waiting for the opponent to make their move you check the page every 2 seconds or something, if the page is blank it means your oponenent hasnt sent any co-ordinates, and as soon as co-ords appear the game can stop looking at the server, you then make your move, sending data to the server and so on until all ships are sunk.

thats my theory anyways :wink:

[HugoCode]

Hello everybody, I know that this post doesn't belong to suggestions for games, but I want to remind you about some things to consider when writing games for devices like the smartphone:
You *could* use a GPRS Connection to exchange data between clients, but:
GPRS Access points are very limited (As far as I know from Austria), so in the range of one point only very few connections are possible.
Because of this, a permanent connection would be a must, else you cant ensure to obtain a new connection when you need to update data for the next game-round. Also the opening of a new connection can take severall seconds.
But a permanent connection would be very expensive for the user.
A Webservice may be a option for round-based games, but for realtime purposes forget it.

In my opinion, single player games are the only ones that would make sense until UMTS.

[Dave.Burn]

wouldn't there be a way of doing it via infra-red(like snake2 on nokias) for a close range game, or is that to difficult to program?

[midnight]

urk, hehe, nah, IR sucks for gaming in my opinion, and i'm sure not many people know others in real life with spv's (i could be wrong of course, but i personally dont know anyone else with one, even tho a lot want one :wink: )

[Dave.Burn]

just a thought that was all

if you could do battleships via GPRS? would you then be able to do games like chess, checkers, reversi(othello) as well? most ones out there now are single player i think

[midnight]

Hugo, that may be true for austria, but for the uk GPRS is widespread, and so is a very viable option for games on the SPV (hence multiplay games such as Worms coming soon), also, dont forget, some people play games on their spv while even connected through the cradle or other usb cable, so again, multiplay is an option, and why play with yourself when you can play with others (female of course) fnaar fnaar

[JaToAc]

a liitle off topic, but an interesting read...

click me

[Sim]

I'd be very interested in a simplified clone of "micro machines". tiny car sprite, texture floor and simple objects & collision detection  

Then you get to worry about adding ai....

[Carsten Schack-Eriksen]

Hi

I think that battleships and other board games, where the speed of communication between the players aren't important could be programmed easyly using sockets on GPRS. When I made the Snake2 with highscore, i just made a few changes to my socket based chat server, so it would be very easy to use that for games like battleship.

But I need a way for people to select an oponent, have you any idears?

I think I will start on battleships via GPRS in the near future.

/Carsten Schack-Eriksen

[midnight]

if you need gfx just let me know :wink: its one i could knock up in no time

[HungrySPV]

It would be really nice to see Dungeon Master or Chaos Strikes Back on the SPV.  

Not sure how many of the old timers have played it but it was(is) one of the first and best 3D Dungeon games around.

If you want to see it there is a ported Java version (and source code) at this site.

Dungeon Master Java Web Site

There is also a PC and linux version (and source code) here Chaos Strikes Back - Linux

Really was the best game of its time !  Back in 87 when it was released on the Atari I am sure I failed one of my exams because I just kept playing it !!!  But it was worth it

[Raify]

What about some sort of 10-pin bowling game?
I second a vote for Frogger!
Super Hang On? (i think that's what the primitive motorbike game was called)
Out Run.
R-Type?

Nathan

[SirGaz]

OK, my 2 peneth

First off I would love Chuckie Egg, Defender (screen rotated) and Time Pilot.

Regards Battleships, I game came out sometime last year that was herelded as the first on-line game that could be played in the office.  Basically all "moves" were transmitted using emails and the game engine loaded the email and reported on what the opponent did to the player.  So that the game screen was only visible for a short time and the firewalls didn't detect lots of web traffic.  Couldn't something similar be done with the SPV, maybe using SMS?  In a months time GPRS will be expensive but most of us have free text bundles.  just a thought.