pocket pc port idea

[artaxerxes]

Hi all,

I got an idea for the pocket pc port of Exult. The main difference between the Sharp Zaurus and Pocket Pcs and the reason why there is not yet a port to PPC yet is the keyboard. Without a keyboard at this stage it is impossible to play Exult. The zaurus has a keyboard but it's more an exception than the rule compared to other PDAs.

However, most PDA I saw have an IR port. With an IR port, you probably could use an IR keyboard. If we could find an IR kb small enough, the whole thing might even be portable (as in "carryable").

What do you think?

Artaxerxes

[RazorBlade]

I think those who got it will love it.

What about a GameBoyAdvance port? Thats the best reason for a flashrom...

[Skutarth]

That would be sweet, but there would also have to be a lot of crap with nintendo AND origin because it's still not abandonware. Too much work for that...

Therefore, GBA is out of the park.

[RazorBlade]

Dont think so. Writing Software for the GBA is legal afaik. And there is no problem with OSI/EA at the moment, this would not change for another system. Why should Nintendo care about a freeware tool to play old PC-games? There is a NES-emu for the GBA, thats far more a problem, but they dont care either.
Ultima 7 is not abandonware, you are right, thats because technically there is nothing like that. Most designers are happy when real old software they wrote is shared, but publishers mostly arent. In cases like Ultima 4 or System Shock they make an exception but "abandonware" is a term of software-pirates as far as I know.
Though I think the sdk they use is not available for GBA.. I didnt considered this earlier because they ported exult to almost every platform

Is there a chance we can see this sometime in the future?

[Ghostface]

yeah plllllllllzzzzzzzzzz

[Stefan0000]

Well, the GBA has 256k of external ram (slow, waitstates) and 32k internal ram (fast) and a 16mhz arm cpu. That's it. A 'port' would entail some serious sacrifices and rewrites I would imagine - having looked at the feasibility of this at one time myself I gave up on the idea...

[Pion]

GBA is not the only pocket pc. There's another one named GP32 ( http://www.gamepark.co.kr ).

GP32 has 8MB (byte, not bit) RAM, 320*240 screen size, 8bit and 16bit color depth modes, and uses SMC as a removable media (there are up to 128MB SMCs around). The machine has ARM 9 based cpu, and could be overcloked to ~100mhz. Hack, even the official SDK is publicly available.

I personally have an experience on porting a DOS game to GP32, and it's very possible. Given some amount of free time, I'd like to port Exult to GP32, but I simply don't have enough time..

So anyway, porting is very, very possible, I believe.

[Stefan0000]

Sure, I've no doubt a GP32 port would not be so difficult, but the GP32 community is very, very small - limited to korea and the few handfuls of ppl who have an interest in development. The sticking point is neither the gba or gp32 are really pocket pc's, tho the gp32 leans more to it than the gba does. Still I think a gba version would be out of the question as far as a port goes.

[suraimu]

A GBA port would be possible, but only if it were a port of the SNES version, which, personally, I think is horrible.

[Stefan0000]

I thought the snes only got as high as ultima 6 ? Or rather, that they did not make ultima 7 for snes... ?

[fliptw]

there was a U7 for the snes. its was a horrible shadow of the original.

Now, what about using the stylus as a mouse?

[Dirty Hairy]

http://www.rainer-keuchel.de/wince/celib.html

"celib.dll is a library providing standard crt, stdio, unix and win32 ansi functions for wince development."

Has anyone considered using this library for porting exult to windows ce? I don't know very much about pocketpc programming, but it seems to emulate a big deal of linux and windows functions, especially file-IO and streams. He already has sucessfully ported a couple of linux tools to windows ce using this library, e.g. latex, emacs, ssh, perl...
As for the keyboard problem: well, there a handhelds with keyboard, the jornada 680/690/720/728 for example.
Unfortunately, I don't have enough experience / time to try porting myself...

[DrCrypt]

Just to resurrect this: almost every PocketPC out there has a keyboard available for it, even if it is just an Infrared one. While that wouldn't guarantee everyone is able to play it, I'd say you could still reach a sizable audience with a PocketPC keyboard port. I use a keyboard for my Axim everyday.

[esw]

Why would a pocket pc need a keyboard to play Exult?

The hardware buttons should be enough to control all necessary functions(my ppc has 6, plus the 4way joypad), and if not an onscreen keyboard could be added: ultima 7 is 320x200, the pocketpc screen is 320x240, so there's a 40-pixel band at the bottom of the screen.

Have a look at pocketScmumm: http://arisme.free.fr/PocketScumm/index_old.html

look at the image 1/2 way down the page.. a bar like that could provide all the buttons needed to play exult.

also check out quake.pocketmatrix.com.

[Dae]

I was just going to post the same thing as the above post, and I hope the guy who did the Zaurus reads this because he is our greatest hope in seeing Exult and "the Guardian" on our little computers. This could be done because its been done already in two other instances I can name:

This would be the most idea setup, clean and a full XT keyboard.
www.pocketdos.com
But probably the easiest way would be some XML wrapper type like this guy did for AngbandCE for WinCE. ( I made a custom keyboard easily )
http://mirrors.mksecure.com/angbandce/controls.htm

Please can someone look into porting this and setting up some sort of keyboard interface. I don't have the skill so I can only help with what i can. I'll make bitmaps and XML config files just someone put it together!

[Dominus]

Dae, porting to Zaurus is a whole lot different than porting to Pocket-PC. Different hardware and totally different OS.
And what most people tend to forget (or don't bother to read up in our old forum posts) is that Artaxerxes ported to Zaurus because he has a zaurus and wanted to play on it. No one on the team has a pocket-pc and therefore the port is very low priority. Colourless has looked into it and started fooling around with the SDK (and built in Pocket-PC emulator) but AFAIK always other things tend to come up that divert his attention.
And honestly I rahter have him code on Pentagram than on a Pocket-PC prt of Exult.

[flohdaniel]

I'd like a Pocket PC Port very much!

I play Ultima Underworld on my T-Mobile MDA (like an Ipaq) flawlessly,
it makes lot of fun. Nothing seems to be cut or let-out. Small virtual Keyboard at the Bottom.

But whatfor do jou need a Keyboard in Excult?
Switching Combat Mode? People......

I dont thin it is too difficult to port? PocketWindows, 32 MB, 200 MHz.....?

[nadir]

>I'd like a Pocket PC Port very much!
>I dont thin it is too difficult to port? PocketWindows, 32 MB, 200 MHz.....?

As has been said by Dominus, nobody on the Exult Team has a Pocket PC, and that seriously hinders development.
Anyone with a PocketPC, the skill and the inclination can use Exult's source and port it there.
The port (as has happened with all other ports) will be merged back in the main tree.
Any developer who demonstrates a serious intention to port Exult will get commit access to CVS.

Have I been sufficiently clear ?

Basically: if you want it, do it. That's how open source works

[flohdaniel]

I'd like to, but I dont have the knowhow and the time

So, praise the developer team and buy them an Ipaq!

[Colourless]

Porting Exult to PocketPC will not be difficult. Just irritatingly annoyingly slow.