FloftBlog

While looking for new pocket pc games i found Game Editor with which you can easily create pocket pc games. It can be used to create desktop games too. I have not created any game with it, but Ressurection team did. Only disadvantage of this editor is that you can’t export pocket pc executables with free version, but you have to pay about $95 for a full version.

These are my top five logical games for pocket pc:

1. Pipes - really addictive logical game, where you have grid of pipes and you have to water flowers. You can only rotate pipes and flowers by clicking on them.
2. Arukone - in this game, you have a game board (size depends on difficulty) and different pair of symbols (number depends on difficulty). You must link symbols with lines without crossing , leaving no empty cell.
3. RushHour - you have to get the red car out of the parking lot, but it is not so simple. The red car is blocked by other cars and trucks and you can move them only forward and backward.
4. TangledBugs - there are lot of bugs in this game and some of them are connected with lines. You must move the bugs so no lines cross.
5. VirusChaser - you must prevent virus from escaping. You can do that by placing walls in the board. Virus will move one cell closer to the exit  after each wall placment.

I found an interesting article on gamedev.net. It is all about creating game for mobile device. Firstly, it was for google android for the Google Android Challenge and then it was ported to iPhone. You won’t find any programming details there, but the story of creation of this game.

To develop games for Pocket PC, we would need some development tools. As we don’t want to pay for this, at least not from the beginning, we don’t have many choices. If we can pay for software we can use MS Visual Studio 2008 (not express edition, they can’t be use to develop Pocket PC apps). Freeware options are MS eMbedded Visual C++ 4.0, CeGCC or others. We will use EVC++ 4.0. You can download it free at microsoft web. We need cd key for EVC++, it can be found at download page or here - TRT7H-KD36T-FRH8D-6QH8P-VFJHQ. We also need service pack 4 for EVC++ 4.0 and SDK for Windows Mobile 2003-based Pocket PCs. And that’s it. Just install these tools and you can start developing for Pocket PCs.

When I wanted to start developing games for Pocket PC, I looked for some tutorials and documentation. I found only a few and most of them were no help. So I searched for open source Pocket PC games and libraries. Situation here was much better. Things I found can be divided into three categories according to the idea behind

1. using GDI
2. using GAPI
3. others (PocketHAL, PocketFrog, …)

Surely, there are more ways such as compact .NET framework, DirectDraw or OpenGL ES but theese can not be used with EVC++.

XFlib is from the first category. It may sound like using GDI is too slow, but XFlib uses GDI only in the last moment, to get pixels on a screen. It is using memory buffer for everything else and in the end it copies the buffer to a GDI bitmap and display the bitmap. Using GDI has one advantage - it is quite universal as GDI should run on every device in almost the same way.

PocketQuake and Game Boy emulator gnuboy CE are using GAPI. This should be one of the fastest ways to draw something but it is quite a problem to handle different devices (screens).

The last category contains libraries such as PocketHAL, which can use GAPI, GDI, DirectDraw or whatever depending on settings and device.

Gnuboy and Xflib are one of the best resoruces for me as wannabe Pocket PC game developer, because their code is very easy to read (on the other hand PocketQuake source code is quite complicated) and it is easy to see, what should be done on suspend, initialization and other events.

Since every website design I paint is really terrible and I wanted to redesign some of my old projects and needed design for my new project, I have to search for some free website templates. I found these

1. www.styleshout.com, I personally like this most, but not suitable for all my projects.
2. www.free-css.com, quite a lot of templates, but they are not divided in categories.
3. www.freecsstemplates.org I liked this more than the previous one, but templates are still not diveded in categories.

I was searching for templates with black text and white background, because there will be a lot of text in these pages. So I choosed this template for one page, but my brother didn’t like it. So I changed
to this template and you can see the result on my slovak(no english) page.

I am gonna try this template for the new project.

Welcome to the new FloftGames.com blog. You will find here news from Pocket PC world, programming, computers and other stuff.

New version of Gimp 2.6.0 was released yestearday, you can download it on Gimp homepage.

What’s new?

1. Toolbar Menubar has been removed.
2. Toolbox and docks are utility windows.
3. CEGL - higher bit-depth and non-destructive editing.
4. Other minor changes.

Gimp without menubar