A little J2ME 3D engine i wrote...

[Stage-It]

That's my point. Switch it up a bit

Yeah.  Some Blake Stone style objects would rule.

[Bad Sector]

@Stage-It:
Firecaster (the name of the game ) is gonna be medieval-themed, so a Blake Stone object won't fit . It already looks different than Wolf3D, but generally all raycasted engines are destined to remind Wolf3D to others.

@Hugo:
I've made a custom building system for J2ME which compiles different files for different configurations (MIDP 2.0, Nokia UI API, etc) so with a "bjmake" i can have builds for all versions i want to support.

Using MIDP 2.0 only isn't bad (id Software did that for DOOM RPG... btw, i've saw the game today in my sister's phone - she downloaded it this morning - and it was looking inferior to my engine, buahaha... erm... forget it). With MIDP 1.0 you simply cannot do a fully texture mapped world with realtime image scaling and all that stuff (well, you can, but it'll crawl and MIDP 1.0 devices are already very slow).

Btw, i never said i'll support only Nokia .

...and 64kb for a S40 seems way too little. I think that all S40 phones can support more than that (but i'm NOT sure... i'm gonna check that right now ).

But if a phone is slow for my engine, i simply can't support it: a slow phone will always be a slow phone and i prefer to not support it than provide an awful gameplay experience (i had such an expierence in a game i've downloaded and PAID in my Siemens C60 and i wished i never had done it - i did that twice with two different games and i never got any other game for my C60 because i wouldn't knew if it would be fast or slow... i don't like slow games).

Having said that, i only have a 6600 to test things (6600=fast S60 ). I've just got a 7210, which i assume is a "slow S40", but i can't install things in it (dunno why - it simply refuses to accept files via infrared).

40.000 sounds very good, but a) from where did you learned that? and b) if i get 10.000 (or even 5.000 ) by supporting "fast S60", i'll be happy (i'll be able to pay for fast internet access and fix my partially broken PC... ). But keep in mind that i'm not doing it only for money - earning 1.000 may buy me a cool GFX card, but hearing "your game rocks" from a player will make me very happy and motivated to work on game stuff .

[Bad Sector]

Ick...

Heap size: 195 KB

Shared Memory for Storage: 610 KB

Max JAR Size: 63 KB

That's for Nokia 7210.

[Hugo]

@Stage-It:
Firecaster (the name of the game ) is gonna be medieval-themed, so a Blake Stone object won't fit . It already looks different than Wolf3D, but generally all raycasted engines are destined to remind Wolf3D to others.

@Hugo:
I've made a custom building system for J2ME which compiles different files for different configurations (MIDP 2.0, Nokia UI API, etc) so with a "bjmake" i can have builds for all versions i want to support.

Using MIDP 2.0 only isn't bad (id Software did that for DOOM RPG... btw, i've saw the game today in my sister's phone - she downloaded it this morning - and it was looking inferior to my engine, buahaha... erm... forget it). With MIDP 1.0 you simply cannot do a fully texture mapped world with realtime image scaling and all that stuff (well, you can, but it'll crawl and MIDP 1.0 devices are already very slow).

Btw, i never said i'll support only Nokia .

...and 64kb for a S40 seems way too little. I think that all S40 phones can support more than that (but i'm NOT sure... i'm gonna check that right now ).

But if a phone is slow for my engine, i simply can't support it: a slow phone will always be a slow phone and i prefer to not support it than provide an awful gameplay experience (i had such an expierence in a game i've downloaded and PAID in my Siemens C60 and i wished i never had done it - i did that twice with two different games and i never got any other game for my C60 because i wouldn't knew if it would be fast or slow... i don't like slow games).

Having said that, i only have a 6600 to test things (6600=fast S60 ). I've just got a 7210, which i assume is a "slow S40", but i can't install things in it (dunno why - it simply refuses to accept files via infrared).

40.000 sounds very good, but a) from where did you learned that? and b) if i get 10.000 (or even 5.000 ) by supporting "fast S60", i'll be happy (i'll be able to pay for fast internet access and fix my partially broken PC... ). But keep in mind that i'm not doing it only for money - earning 1.000 may buy me a cool GFX card, but hearing "your game rocks" from a player will make me very happy and motivated to work on game stuff .

I've been working on mobile games since 2003. So I know the deals and stuff.

if you don't support the s40 with 64kb/midp1.0. YOU WILL NOT GET PUBLISHED. Publishers need that version, because distribution chanels
won't put it on otherwise (well the big ones, like jamba,etc).

doomRPG got published because of the big name. But otherwise they won't publish it.

64kb is the max size for publishers/distribution chanels to accept for a s40 game.

[Bad Sector]

Well, i can make a crippled version with double pixels (64x64) and half-sized textures (16x16 instead of 32x32) of the game that runs in low-end s40s... but what's the point on playing such a game beyond bragging to your friends that you have a 3D game in your phone ?

(i did that with my Nokia 3410's default Java game which had a monkey grabbing bananas in a 3D world ... only the first 2-3 levels were playable... the rest were crawling at around 2fps...)


I've just downloaded the 7210 SDK to see what i can do...

Btw, today i ported the engine to the Nokia UI API. Now the engine can use MIDP2 or the Nokia UI API (different builds for each version ). Using my badjp Java preprocessor and bjmake J2ME builder, it was a matter of modifying a few files and adding a new target configuration to the BJMakefile .

[Bad Sector]

Okay, it came better than i expected. At 64x50 (or around like that - i had to reserve some space for the HUD), without extra decoration objects (green things from ceiling, small rocks at the floor, etc) and increased door-close time (because it is harder to navigate without a joystick) and half-sized textures... it can be playable.

It doesn't crawl badly. It isn't fast... not even "normal", but it doesn't crawl. I spend lots of minutes "walking" around in my 7210, trying to see what i can improve. I think i can improve the speed a bit, but unfortunatelly if i really have to support this phone (it's on the low S40 category), i fear that this will have an impact on the other categories too.

I would post a screenshot.... but just take one of the second group, resize it to 64x50, double scale it to 128x100 with nearst pixel (no filtering) and you'll have almost the same result.

[Hugo]

Okay, it came better than i expected. At 64x50 (or around like that - i had to reserve some space for the HUD), without extra decoration objects (green things from ceiling, small rocks at the floor, etc) and increased door-close time (because it is harder to navigate without a joystick) and half-sized textures... it can be playable.

It doesn't crawl badly. It isn't fast... not even "normal", but it doesn't crawl. I spend lots of minutes "walking" around in my 7210, trying to see what i can improve. I think i can improve the speed a bit, but unfortunatelly if i really have to support this phone (it's on the low S40 category), i fear that this will have an impact on the other categories too.

I would post a screenshot.... but just take one of the second group, resize it to 64x50, double scale it to 128x100 with nearst pixel (no filtering) and you'll have almost the same result.

sounds great! as long as you don't use the nokia API, this could be very good. Publishers will love you

[Bad Sector]

I currently have three version of the engine:

1. A generic MIDP 2.0 version that uses only MIDP 2.0
2. A Nokia UI version that uses Nokia UI API. This is for older Series 60 phones that have only MIDP 1.0.
3. A murdered&vandalized Nokia UI version for old Series 40 phones (7210) that use MIDP 1.0. It also works on new Series 40 phones (according to the SDK - i only have a 6600 and a 7210), but the generic MIDP 2.0 also works.

There is no generic MIDP 1.0 and i doubt it will ever exist (although it's a bit challenging). MIDP 1.0 has far too many limitation (no screen pixel access, for good's sake... apps in phones are mostly games, what Sun was thinking?)

Btw, i've found a bug in 6600 (which may exist in other phones): if you make an immutable image with Image.createRGBImage and it contains transparent areas, the phone will crash (totally - you need to remove the battery to reset it) if you try to draw it partially outside the screen.

It took me 2 days to figure out why the engine was crashing when i was drawing the player's hand...