Windows CE?

[Cypher]

will there be a version of Exult for Windows CE? i have a Compaq iPaq and playing ultima 7 on that would be really cool

[Adrian]

Wouldn't you need a keyboard?

I don't think there are enough buttons to use the contols.

Still, nice idea though.

[Mungo]

Can't see any technical reasons why this can't be done, in fact part of the reason why I'm converting the Exult audio to use SDL_mixer and MP3 is for ease of porting to devices such as these.

I believe SDL has been ported to PocketPC. Also the screen resolution matches U7 when turned on its side. I use a PalmOS PDA but there is no chance of Exult being ported to that as the OS simply is not up to the job yet, that is until PalmOS 6 is released. So if someone does port Exult to the PocketPC I'll buy one.

[nadir]

We had this discussion once already. Exult is quite memory hungry, and U7's data set is also quite large. Paring down Exult memory usage is a post 1.0 task for those willing to try.

[Cypher]

Buttons would probally not be a problem, use the stylus to drag around the screen for movement, double tap for targetting, etc, the dimentions for the screen are 240x320 if i remember correctly, so turned on its side, that would be ideal for the PocketPC. the buttons could be used as well, menu, inventory, target, combat/friendly, along with the other buttons available. I would probally have a look at doing this my self, but i know diddily-squat about any of this

[nadir]

Actually Ultima VII is 320x200, so the extra 40 pixels could be used as a toolbar area.

[Colourless]

At this stage it looks unlikely there will be a Windows CE version for Pocket PC. It has been discussed in the past, and I could do it BUT the SDK is too big for me to download, so it's not going to happen.

-Colourless Dragon

[esw]

It would really be awesome.. How memory-hungry is exult? You can adjust the RAM available on PocketPCs; mine usually has about 10mb free, on newer models you can free a lot more (20-40 mb)

I think the current hardware is capable of running Exult, keep in mind that Quake was ported, and runs fine (okay.. 10fps)
Another similar-ish program to exult was ported, called SucmmVM. It lets you play old Lucas Arts games, and it rocks!

But, even if it is realistic technically, someone actually has to do it. I'd try but like many people I know nothing about C++ or even C.

[drcode]

I'd do it if EA paid me.

[artaxerxes]

I've just bought a Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 (coming next week... can't wait!)

since it runs linux, and the 5500 is quite beefy, CPU- and memory-wise, and since I would tend to believe the SDL library is also ported to the Qtopia platform, what prevents Exult from running on it ?

No, honestly, what prevents it ? This is not a rethorical question. It is a real question to the dev team.

Please let me know.

Artaxerxes

[Colourless]

Well, pretty much only memory requirements. Exult isn't efficent with it's memory usage. Exult quite regularily pushes about 20 MB or ram. This really shouldn't be a problem for 64 MB ram devices (assuming that Exult and U7/SI is installed on a flash card). On a 32 MB ram device it may be starting to push it a bit, but generally it should work ok.

Other than that, the only problems are compiler/library related issues. PocketPC's for example very much don't have full C/C++ libraries so this makes porting a little difficult. Additionally (also for PocketPC) the SDL Port has some issues.

Of course, it doesn't mean it's impossible, just somewhat difficult. And as such I've already begun some work on porting Exult to PocketPC.

Here are some shots from Pentagram's Mapdisp running in the PocketPC2002 emulator.
Mapdisp 1
Mapdisp 2

I ported Pentagram first since it's much simpler than Exult. Exult is going to take a fair amount of work to get it to run on PocketPC.

-Colourless Dragon

[XxVenomxX]

Whoa. That screen shot looks so right to me.

[artaxerxes]

The Sharp Zaurus is no PocketPC though.

It runs an embedded version of Linux and I do believe the SDL port works ok (even the sound: SDL_mixer works ok). As a matter of the fact, the developers of BugSquish (new breed software I think) have a port to the Zaurus and BS uses SDL only.

Also, the 5500 comes naturally with 64MB of RAM. SI takes 24 MB on its own (without the savegames). That leaves 40MB of RAM. Would that be not enough ? Anyways, I plan to buy either a SD card or a CompactFlash card of minumum 64 MB additional just in case.

Do you know if exult is ported to StrongARM ? Is it difficult ? Can I help ?

Thx again for the encouraging screenshots Colourless.

Artaxerxes

[nadir]

Well "porting" to a CPU as you say should be fairly trivial, especially if you're using GCC. One way to test this would be to install the relevant backend to GCC.

http://www.zauruszone.com/wiki/index.php?BuildingGCC contains tools (gcc, glibc) for the Zaurus, if you don't want to compile them yourself.
It could be fun.

[artaxerxes]

anyone has some benchmarks showing how much memory does exult use ?

Nadir, I'll look into the cross-compiler thing. Maybe I'll have a place in your About Us page as the ARM binaries developer

Artaxerxes

[Colourless]

Since Exult uses no ASM, and uses portable methods when reading and writing files, there should be no problem with any type of CPU. In one place, there 'may' be issues with some non aligned pointers on some platforms, but this can easily be worked around.

As for a benchmark showing how much memory Exult is using... there isn't any. The way to tell is to run an play Exult for a while, and then getting a report of how much memory is being used by the process.

-Colourless Dragon