[gameprogrammer] Re: Carmack on Java phone games
- From: "Stephan-Frank Henry" <Frank.Henry@xxxxxxx>
- To: gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 09:54:49 +0200 (MEST)
> Frank Henry wrote:
> > People seem to think of mobile phones as mini PSPs or what.
> Yes, it's true, and why not? A better phone has almost the same CPU, and
> newer phones even have graphic accelaration.
Problem is we are still stuck with abstraction layers and horribly
restricted memory space.
Unfortunetly only sticking to the big devices will not turn you a profit.
The market is currently still swamped with T610s and 3510s as they are the
low-price segment and many of our gamers use them.
> > Now you can say what you want about java but it does its job and that
> > quite well.
>
> Well, maybe it does his job, sometimes, but not very well.
> Java implementation on phone sucks!! They are some very insane bugs:
Exactly it is the implementation on the devices, not java.
> 1) GC does not work well: you should run it manually periodically, or
> otherwise you will run out of memroy
Depends on the device.
> 2) Some phones (Nokia 7650, 3650) leak memory (it's quite a nice
> feeling, when you can do nothing about it... )
Actually there is something you can do about it because I think you are
talking about the S60s usage of native heap for images.
(tip: don't load them into native heap, for more info send an email)
Even wierder is the fact that a gc() in the main loop makes the app run
faster..
> 3) On siemens C65/S65 I had the following bug:
> g.setColor(variable ? 0xff0000 : 0x0000ff);
>
> I had to replace it with:
>
> if (variable)
> g.setColor(0xff0000);
> else
> g.setColor(0x0000ff);
>
> (if somebody finds out what is the bug, please let me know ;-) All I
> know is second version works, while for the first version it skipped a
> lot of instructions. I suppose it was a bad jump)
The only thing I know that had such a problem was with the preverifier were
even mundane instructions like
int i = 0; would not work.
> > let's be realistic!
> I am, I'm in mobile development buisniss for two years, I worked with
> about 10+ phones...
>
> > Also java was designed with safty in mind. No java application is able
> > to mess with the internals of a mobile phone.
>
> Hmm, I wonder why my nokia 3650 gaves me sometimes symbian error
> messages, and why my sagem myx5-2 restarts sometimes just out of
> nowhere... and why sometimes I have to wait for several minutes on the
> t610 tog et some response... even from the phone itself when running a
> java app. Oh, and because of safety they are adding filesystem acces to
> the newest mobile phones (eg. 6630)
Siemens has fileaccess for quite some time but it is annoying to use.
You have to constantly get clearance.
> > see the following link for a incomplete listing:
> > http://developers.sun.com/techtopics/mobility/device/device?api=6
>
> And thus different implementation, and we just got back that we have to
> port the java games for each device...
May I recommend using a precompiler?
I know the java geeks out there will probably wanna stone me for the
heirsay. ;)
We have our own toolchain incl. precompiler and it REALLY helps.
> > Not to mention that it is a PHONE and not a gaming device.
>
> Where some people spend more time playing than talking...
No doubt they do but the device was not desinged as a gaming device.
> > I would never dare say anything about John's work without knowing the
> > details and would recommend John not do so about mobile gaming.
>
> Ok, I'm a little bit lost here.
> Until know I see things like this:
> - John said working with mobiel phones is hard
> - You said no, it's not that hard
> - than again you said: but John should't work in this buisness, because
> it's hard... hm... maybe it's too early today for me... but I don't see
> the logic here...
Think you read me wrong then (or I wrote it poorly).
Working on mobiles is a total pain in the bum and never is easy.
Actually it is very frustrating!
> > what we have to live with. Though I do get my laughs when they get into
> > the mobile game dev and fall flat on their faces!
>
> If somebody has a lot of money, and a few good coders and pixel artist,
> then he wont fall on his face :-) I'm sure John has the money, probably
> knows a good pixel artist, maybe all he needs is a good j2me
> programmer... anybody knows his email address ?-)
Depends on what kinda game comp you want to be.
John can probably just make games for the fun of it, and if that is what he
wants, cool!
I could only dream he does just that so we can get some non-mainstream games
out there.
Developing is not that problematic (as long as you can finance it).
The problems start arising when you want to sell them as there are no 'real'
publishers out there.
People compare the mobile to the PC game buisiness and you cannot do that.
Although both sides work on games each side does stuff differently.
Like I said, I really respect John and still concider him THE gamedev-god.
--
Sparen beginnt mit GMX DSL: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl
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