Zaurus SL-6000L movement problem

[Jake]

One other thing: I installed Exult itself into the main memory of the Zaurus, but put the BG data files into an SD card. Also, I do not have either of the optional sound packages installed.

[Jake]

I installed Exult on my Zaurus SL-6000L, and I seem to have it working except for one problem. The menus work and such, but after a few moments, all of the keys/buttons become non-responsive (although the game continues to play music/animation). I have not been able to move my character in-game yet. I have the resolution set to 480x640, and it appears alright. I disabled palette fades and the intro. Before I disabled those, the controls stopped working immediately after the introduction.

It's the only program I have running, so it seems odd that it would lose focus. It requires a soft reset to use the PDA again. I've run a search, but it doesn't seem like anyone has posted about using it on this device yet. The keys work up until a certain point, but then everything stops responding. Any suggestions?

Oh, and is the stylus supposed to move the cursor? (probably a dumb newbie question, oh well)

Thanks in advance,
Jake

[Jake]

Just tried a few more things. If I tell it to use a magified screen, the Zaurus will stay at the "Please wait" screen forever. The game runs much smoother at 320x200 (the default?) which isn't surprising, though it only takes up a small amount of the screen.

As long as I don't press the center button, things work fine. If I press that at the menu, it scrolls through the options endlessly and doesn't work at all. In-game, I can move around a bit, but eventually one of the movements "sticks," the avatar moves until he hits a wall in that direction, and then no buttons respond. I figure it's a button mapping issue, but I'm not sure how to solve it.

[artaxerxes]

I think you might want to update your SDL lib. Use the one found on gnurou.org and no other as it is the only one with support for mapped buttons.

Artaxerxes

[Jake]

I am using libSDL 1.2.6cvs-1, which AFAIK is the latest version off of that website. Still no luck.

[Jake]

As far as I can tell, the issue seems to lie with the game losing focus, as no specific button (other than the aforementioned center button) immediately makes it lose focus. I can move around a bit in any given direction, but eventually everything stops responding. I've tried remapping the directions to letter keys thinking that it could be the directional pad, but still no dice. Is there anything that could steal the focus away from Exult in the middle of play?

[artaxerxes]

Definitely use the version from gnurou.org. I don't think any other version can properly map the shortcut keys. If pressing the shortcut key doesn't bring up the green crosshair or the spellbook or inventory or combat, then you are not using the SDL lib from gnurou.org.

Now. it is possible you are running low on memory, which causes a popup to come informing you of that. My recommendation would be to have a SD card acting as a swap drive.

I've noticed what you mentioned while playing SI on the Zaurus, but nothing that frequent.

Oh, and save often!

Artaxerxes

[Jake]

I redownloaded/reinstalled libSDL from that site, still not working. It never works for more than a minute, if that. The odd thing is, the time it takes to freeze up seems to be fairly random. I know this seems odd, but could the clock changing time cause the window to lose focus? The clock's time has never moved once while running Exult (as I've said, I have not been able to run it well with Exult taking up the entire screen).

At least I'm giving my reset button a good workout. How do you set up the SD card as a swap, if that's the case?

Thanks for the help, by the way.

[Jake]

Well, I got everything fixed. Turns out that the version of libSDL at that site has some serious bugs with the SL-6000L. At http://www.externe.net/zaurus/, there's a version of libSDL compiled specifically for the 6000. All I had to do was place the libSDL-1.2.so.0.0.7 file in the /home/QtDesktop/libs directory and rename it libSDL-1.2.so.0.0.6 (placing the old one somewhere else).

Thanks Artaxerxes for taking the time to help. I think I've learned a lot from this, and hopefully this'll help other 6000 owners who may be having trouble.

[artaxerxes]

I'm glad it works for you! And thanks for posting the workaround. I'll take note of this site for the future.

Dominus, maybe you want to put that info in the doc?

Artaxerxes

[Dominus]

noted