[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] first impressions and some reports

[From: Marcelo Oliveira]

The screen rocks. Believe me. There is some weird stuff that eventually 
happens with sdl games, sometimes the pen gets crazy =) but nothing solid 
enough to call a bug.

the problem is, even with buttons you would still having to deal with the 
stylus or only one finger ( not a good idea, to leave you fingerprint on 
screen ).

I´m trying different things for gameplay ( holding device in the side for a 
tetris-games like, or a shoot'em up ) using the 4-way rocker and the stylus, 
4-way rocker and your finger like pressing a button ( but only one press 
point can be used ). But as I told you, I believe the Nintendo-like games 
will be the best way to go.


here goes some issues concerning the use of the 4-way rocker :

1) It´s to close to the first hard button. so holding the device in a 
vertical way, you get a AMAZING screen for pinballs, shot'em up , but using 
2 fingers in the 4-way rocker is impossible

2) it´s not that smooth for gaming, and not that confortable for fast 
movements, so don´t make great expectations for that.

3) it's 4-way =)


My Bests Regards,

Marcelo Oliveira


On 7/8/05, Gustavo Barbieri <barbieri at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 7/8/05, Marcelo Oliveira <handful at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Yes I ran it, and showed the fps on my terminal on my desktop ( 
> connected to
> > the maemo via USB )
> > But as I told you : IMHO, based on my game development experience ( 
> mainly
> > on portable devices) the fps showed on the monitor is not the real one.
> >
> > ----------------------------------
> > But since it was usable refreshing the whole screen every second,
> > it's easy for everybody to write games to nokia 770 with no magic
> > optimisations! ;-)
> > ----------------------------------
> >
> > I don't have any doubts about it. =) We're developing/ porting small 
> games,
> > but we already faced some performance issues.
> > We did a splash screen with whole screen update ( that classic squares 
> with
> > diagonal movement ) and without hardware surfaces it was pretty sloopy.
> >
> > I think optimization should be done when really needed. And my main 
> concern
> > about games is the stylus input, that drives me crazy. For simple point 
> and
> > act games it's just perfect, but for a whole universe of games it's just
> > unusable. Like platform -side scrolling games, would suck with stylus 
> input.
> 
> I don't know how sensible this device's touchpad screen is, but maybe
> we can simulate buttons on the screen?
> 
> 
> > There goes my suggestion : CREATE a small and fast simple gestures
> > detection API, so we can develop Nintendo DS like games. The main focus
> > should be real fun games with stylus input, and not
> > "Look-mom!-I-GOT-60fps-Doom-Like-Game-On-My-Maemo
> 
> Yes, this would rock.
> 
> --
> Gustavo Sverzut Barbieri
> ---------------------------------------
> Computer Engineer 2001 - UNICAMP
> GPSL - Grupo Pro Software Livre
> Cell..: +55 (19) 9165 8010
> Jabber: gsbarbieri at jabber.org
> ICQ#: 17249123
> MSN: barbieri at gmail.com
> Skype: gsbarbieri
> GPG: 0xB640E1A2 @ wwwkeys.pgp.net <http://wwwkeys.pgp.net>
> 



-- 
Marcelo Eduardo Moraes
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