Developing Landscape Game on Nokia Asha 303

[chocoloid]

Hello there, i am a newbie in j2me development.

I would ask some question, are there some way so i can force my game application in landscape mode? Just like Angry Bird for Nokia Asha 303.

I've some ideas actually, like rotating the sprite image 180%, and then transform the x and y position. But then come a problem if i want to use keypad as the control button.

Anyone got some idea regarding this matter? xD

[skalogir]

Hi chocoloid and welcome to Nokia's Discussion Boards,

The problem you would have to deal with, is that there is no accelerometer on Nokia Asha 303, so it is not possible to "grab" the rotation event from portrait to landscape and vice versa. Also the keypad that appears on high level LCDUI Components for typing (if you are using it in your app), comes with a fixed orientation, so the developer cannot modify its layout. You would have to create your own low level Canvas keypad and you would have to ask the end-user to manually change from portrait to landscape with a press of a button/Command/key by implementing low level transformations.

[chocoloid]

okay, so i cannot rotate the GameCanvas just using the SDK? okay. xD

[skalogir]

No I am afraid not. There is no orientation simulation on the SDK 1.1, because catching orientation events is not supported on Asha 303 (Java Runtime 1.1) which is the based-on device for the SDK.

[jeffrey.halimsetiawan]

okay, so i cannot rotate the GameCanvas just using the SDK? okay. xD

That's right,

First you need to decide the supported orientation for your game, i.e: Landscape
Then, you need to transform all of the sprite manually by using this transformation function like

Sprite.TRANS_NONE: Copy with no alteration (default)
Sprite.TRANS_ROT90: Rotate the image region clockwise by 90 degrees
Sprite.TRANS_ROT180: Rotate the image region clockwise by 180 degrees
Sprite.TRANS_ROT270: Rotate the image region clockwise by 270 degrees

Last, you also need to adjust the keypad pressed function, e.g: right = move forward, left = move backward, etc.