Testing a free game

[cdsmith]

I've just released the source code to a mobile phone RPG at http://autrealm.sourceforge.net. I'm interested in hearing if it works ona variety of (MIDP 2.0/CLDC 1.1) phones. If you would be willing to check it out and post a bug report or write to the project mailing list if you have problems, it would be appreciated.

If you're interested in the game, it's all free software. There's nothing commercial here; just having fun writing a game, and hoping it'll interest others as well.

[shmoove]

Sony Ericsson K700: Worked OK.

Nokia N90: Worked OK, but the graphics really don't fit it's big screen. That the character's (swordsman and archer) icons look small is understandable, but why shouldn't the game world take up as much screen as possible if it can?

Nokia 6280: Same problem with the size of the graphics, the game world doesn't render to the whole screen. In the battle screens I always get an "IllegalArgumentException: The current screen is an Alert" error.

And those gnomes sure are pesky. Too pesky IMHO, it takes away from the game being fun.

shmoove

[cdsmith]

Thanks for looking it over. For the battle screen on the 6280, when did the error message occur? Is it at the beginning of the battle, or later? Do you know if there's an emulator I could try it on?

Sorry about all the gnomes! Is it in the cave that you didn't like them, or outside. If it's outside, then I shudder to think what'll occur when you get to the hidden cave...

My goal in limiting the size of the board was mainly to be able to write mazes where I'm sure that a player isn't able to see too far and thus give away the challenge. Perhaps I'll rethink that choice. If there are phones with that large a screen, I may also add a larger potential tile size to help make up for it as well, though that means more art. Ugh, I hate art.

[balagopalks]

For the battle screen on the 6280, when did the error message occur? Is it at the beginning of the battle, or later? Do you know if there's an emulator I could try it on?

6280 is a Series 40 3rd Ed device, you could find the Series 40 Platform 3rd Edition SDK here in this link
http://www.forum.nokia.com/info/sw.n...form_SDKs.html

Regards
Gopal

[cdsmith]

Thanks! So it appears that the phone is complaining any time Display.setCurrent is called while an Alert is the current Displayable. This certainly seems to violate the MIDP spec, which says "If the application calls setCurrent() while an Alert is current, the Alert is removed from the display and any timer it may have set is cancelled." Has anyone else noticed this? Any workarounds?

[cdsmith]

Answering my own question... it works when I replace this:

display.setCurrent(alert);

with this:

display.setCurrent(notAnAlert);
display.callSerially(new Runnable() {
public void run()
{
display.setCurrent(alert);
}
});

It's not terribly important what notAnAlert actually is... except that it's not an alert. It will be shown for a fraction of a second before the alert is shown; a little ugly, but at least the application doesn't crash, and it actually has other benefits in my case, since some other phones failed to make it terribly clear when they switch from one alert to the next if too identical alerts are shown in sequence.

The game is now fixed at autrealm.sourceforge.net, if anyone is interested in it.

[shmoove]

Tried it again on the 6280 and the problem is fixed. And yeah I meant the gnomes outside. There were just too many of them. I only played for a minute or so this time, but it seems that you changed that, didn't you?

shmoove

[cdsmith]

Glad it works. Thanks for the feedback!

I didn't actually change the numnber of gnomes. There is a 0.03 probability of a gnome per step, just like there always was. I now really shudder to think what you'd feel about the underground gnome cave, with a 0.10 probability per step. Anyway, the actual game design and plot is just sort of a placeholder at this point. I'll work on it.

From looking at the screen sizes at jbenchmark.org, it looks like I'd gain a lot of traction on the higher-end phone market if I include 30x30 tiles (right now, the game chooses between 16x16 or 20x20 based on the screen size). That should make the game more playable on most large-screen devices; the screen would then take up 240x240 pixels. I can also let the game choose a screen size within reasonable ranges, but I don't want the size to grow to something ridiculous and give away the mazes.