Would a palm port of age of empires even be possib

[natepless]

I was just wandering if anyone would know anything about this subject? I saw that their is one for windows mobile but not palm.

[Tinnus]

Only Microsoft has the source code. Ask them to do it (and they won't, of course).

[countbuggula]

Warfare, Inc is a decent RTS for the PalmOS though, if you need to get your RTS fix in on-the-go.

[natepless]

Oh so the windows moble version was made by microsoft, i thought someone else made it, and that made me think that the released the code, thanks for the info tho

[countbuggula]

It would be nice to have a fantasy RTS game for Palm though, along the lines of Warcraft or Age of Empires. Warfare Inc has a more Command & Conquer feel to it (which is good in its own right, just not what we're always in the mood for). But then, I like Heretic better than Doom, too, so it may just be me.

Warcraft and Warcraft II were SVGA games, right? 800x600 would be tough to reproduce on a Palm's screen - same reason RTS never worked on a console, not high enough screen resolution to view enough of the map at once to be useful, or units too small to be identified. At least the touch screen is mouse-like enough to have an interface problem, but right-clicking is an important feature. Maybe hold one of the hardware buttons while tapping to simulate right click...

Anyways, it's all moot unless someone wants to program something from scratch (not gonna happen on a dying platform like PalmOS) or convince Microsoft/Blizzard/whoever to release their source code. Microsoft's never gonna happen, I'd place slightly higher odds on Blizzard, but not by much.

[countbuggula]

All right, it seems I spoke too soon. There may be a way to do it. It'd be a lot of work, and I don't know if Metaview would be up to the task (or have time for it), and I think we really don't want to take Tinnus away from LJX any more for side projects, but there are some options:

Wargus(Stratagus) - GNU clone of blizzard game engine used in Warcraft, Warcraft II, and Starcraft. Currently only supports fully Warcraft II. Starcraft is playable although the features are limited.

FreeCNC - GNU clone of the original C&C game engine. Unknown state of completion, this would likely need serious work before it could become playable on a mobile device.

[metaview]

I didn't get the Stratagus port runnable. There was a crash and I could find the reason. At the moment I don't have this amount of free time to head for the bug. Maybe I never will. Anyway, you can use DosBox to play Warcraft. It works. you could also use MyUAE to play Dune II.

[countbuggula]

Hmm...I didn't try Warcraft on PalmDosBox - is it actually playable? The big benefit to using a port of Stratagus instead of playing through DoxBox would be a huge increase in speed (theoretically). I'll have to try Warcraft and see how it runs.

[samphex]

Apr 29, 2008 1:08:03 GMT 1 @coder12 said:

Apr 28, 2008 18:53:39 GMT 1 countbuggula said:

All right, it seems I spoke too soon. There may be a way to do it. It'd be a lot of work, and I don't know if Metaview would be up to the task (or have time for it), and I think we really don't want to take Tinnus away from LJX any more for side projects, but there are some options:

Wargus(Stratagus) - GNU clone of blizzard game engine used in Warcraft, Warcraft II, and Starcraft. Currently only supports fully Warcraft II. Starcraft is playable although the features are limited.

FreeCNC - GNU clone of the original C&C game engine. Unknown state of completion, this would likely need serious work before it could become playable on a mobile device.

S.. Star... StarCraft is partially playable!!! Wow, if this really works it would be sweet!

Um...wtf? Isn't starcraft a game that connects online?

[vilmos]

No starcraft is not an online only game.

[countbuggula]

Apr 29, 2008 3:39:06 GMT 1 samphex said:

Apr 29, 2008 1:08:03 GMT 1 @coder12 said:

S.. Star... StarCraft is partially playable!!! Wow, if this really works it would be sweet!

Um...wtf? Isn't starcraft a game that connects online?

While Starcraft has a HUGE online multiplayer portion, it also has a single player campaign (well, 3 of them actually - er, 6 if you have the expansion).

Interest in the Starcraft portion of Stratagus waned and the project was dropped while it still lacked many features. Maybe there's enough interest to revive the project if it was focused on porting to mobile platforms, though. There's just no need for this on PCs though, with WINE working as well as it does.

[natepless]

k thanks ill try dosbox with warcraft, but what do you do about the no keypad or stylest?

[metaview]

Well, I have an on-screen keyboard and the stylus works as mouse.

[natepless]

Oh really so they work now what version of dosbox are you using

[natepless]

Oh thanks Henk after some searching I found your updated version of palmdosbox, THANKS!!!!!!

[countbuggula]

Ok, I got Warcraft: Orcs and Humans installed on my Treo 755 and here's what I found:

It runs. Very excruciatingly slowly. I overclocked to 585mhz, set the CPU to full, memory to 8mb, and disabled sound and music in the Setup.exe config. Even with the game set to run fastest, the units move at a slow crawl.

At least it's something though. You know, Henk, that by pushing us to use DosBox we're gonna start pressing you for more updates

I already have a few bugs to report, I'll do so after I get home tonight.

[natepless]

Hey I followed the steps for palm dosbox, and it wont let me go past 3mb, anything past and it says put somemore realistic settings, I followed the steps on the forum for the fold and config file, I dont really know whats up, any help, and where can I find the the most up to date version of palmdosbox, any help would be great thanks!

[icefire]

Apr 30, 2008 0:28:04 GMT 1 natepless said:

Hey I followed the steps for palm dosbox, and it wont let me go past 3mb, anything past and it says put somemore realistic settings, I followed the steps on the forum for the fold and config file, I dont really know whats up, any help, and where can I find the the most up to date version of palmdosbox, any help would be great thanks!

Get the version from metaviewsoft.de/wordpress/.
Then, run it and set the memory to 3 megabytes. Put your game data files on the sd card: /dos/.
Type mount C:\ /dos/.
Run your games with the appropriate dos command.
The conf file is so you can automate the mount/run step

make it look like this:

[autorun]
mount C:\ /dos/
[game].exe

[natepless]

oh i know thats what I should do, sorry I should have been more clear, should i only be able to go up to 3mb? I have a centro

[icefire]

Yeah, it needs more memory for the emulation itself.

[natepless]

Well thats the thing im using a 2gb micro sd card and ive got like a gig and a half left, or if you mean memory on the device ive got 62mbs free on there too!

[metaview]

What you need is free dynamic memory. Maybe you use a 3rd-party launcher with background images or other background tools. Try a reset and see if it helps.

[countbuggula]

Set up UDMH for DosBox. Even after that, though, I needed a reset to free everything up and give me 8MB.

BTW I got just a little more speed out of Warcraft by setting the frameskip up a bit, and found that it doesn't need Full CPU, it'll run on Normal.

I'll have to see if I can dig up the old DOS version of Warcraft II (I've been using the Battle.net edition) and see if it runs. The UI is so much more cluncky in the first than the second.

[countbuggula]

Warcraft II crashes in the same way Commander Keen 4 does - device resets. Sad!

<sigh>I guess I'll just have to pine for a Strategus port like coder12 does for Clonekeen...

edit: I thought there was hope, I was able to run the setup.exe and set the game to no sound, but the game itself still crashes.

[metaview]

countbuggula: I can send you my Stratagus-folder, you would need CodeWarrior and then you can try to get this crashes fixed.

[natepless]

heres the funny thing it says I have 8587kb/8380kb, DB:14020/12924, That means I should have enough right?

[countbuggula]

Apr 30, 2008 19:36:48 GMT 1 metaview said:

countbuggula: I can send you my Stratagus-folder, you would need CodeWarrior and then you can try to get this crashes fixed.

Hehe...you're trying to get me back into programming. I'm actually tempted to take you up on the offer....but my wife might kill me.

I'll get back to you if/when I get CodeWarrior running.


BTW, Henk, I mean no disrespect to you in my comments, and am sorry if it's come off that way. I realize the difficulty it is getting these things running and that you do it out of your generosity in your spare time. I don't expect you to port any of these requests just simply because I've asked, but bring them up just in case you were unaware of them and can do something you'd want to do anyway. If you have absolutely no interest in a project, I would hope you don't waste time on it on our behalf.

[natepless]

I second countbuggula on that.

[metaview]

No no, I would more then happy to have a working Stratagus port on Palm OS

[countbuggula]

And to be honest, I'd love to help in any way I could, but I dug up the threads in the LJP forums about CodeWarrior and compiling LJP and realized that it's next to impossible to get everything you need to port to PalmOS ARM code if you haven't already been doing it for years. Even the link to the $400 version of CodeWarrior is no longer a valid link...and after spending 1/2 hour browsing around their site I wasn't any closer to finding the right version.

That plus the fact that I'm kinda broke right now anyways - my entire tax refund went toward debt and bills .

I suppose we can always hold out for whatever new OS hits the market soon to replace the aging PalmOS. Whether it's ALP or Palm's new Linux based, or whatever, to be honest my next smartphone purchase may depend largely on what Metaview starts using (assuming he switches - eventually) because Tinnus's LJX will supposedly run on just about anything (at least that's the idea).

However, if we were to suddenly have a PalmOS port of Stratagus working before we all move on to new platforms, I'm sure there are plenty of us who wouldn't complain