Frozen Bubble / Maemo

This is going nowhere

2006-02-17T13:42:00.000+02:00

I finally got my 770, so I had some new enthusiasm for this. Sadly, this hasn't gotten any easier -- I had been hoping Perl would magically appear for the 770, like Python already did (thanks INdT), but that hasn't happened. In addition to Perl not being there, working with perl-modules (like sdl-perl) in arm-target-scratchbox is really difficult. So I'm out of my league here, and won't be pushing this forward before at least one the two things mentioned changes...

Getting Frozen Bubble to work on i386 scratchbox wasn't that hard -- especially after I realized that the debian version of sdl-perl is actually compatible with FB (unlike just about every other version out there). . .
I'm sorry I don't have exact notes -- like I said in the last post, I managed to completely lose my /scratchbox/ -- but here goes from memory:

I believe I used sdl-image from indt repos.
sdl-perl and FB were from debian, and needed the usual changes (mentioned in the maemo packaging tutorial), regarding installation path and dependencies in debian/control and debian/rules.
In addition, the file frozen-bubble needed a new
"use lib /var/lib/install/whatever" -line ,and
fb_stuff.pm had a wrong path in the FPATH -variable.

If someone actually wants to do this, I'll gladly try and help. Just let me know.

2005-09-30T00:17:00.000+03:00

Status update: There was an unfortunate accident with my /scratchbox . . . Also, Real Life is intervening with my maemo studies. I expect no progress here in ~2 months.

I'll be back.

Portrait mode?

2005-08-31T20:22:00.000+03:00

I've been wondering wether Frozen Bubble should be played in portrait mode or not... As background info for anyone not familiar with FB or Maemo/Nokia 770, here are the screen/window sizes:

Frozen Bubble: 640*480 (1player game uses 320*480)
Nokia 770: 800*480 (when Hildon UI normal view is visible, the application space is 672*396)

That's a pretty good match (in full-screen landscape mode), but the tight fit height-wise means that FB could be played only in full-screen mode, and the sides would be quite empty. On the other hand, the graphics would need very little work...

As the actual single player game screen width in FB is only half of the whole window width, it would fit quite comfortably on the screen in portrait mode. Here is a mockup:

(the gray area on the sides is "skin graphic area")

This doesn't look all that bad. Menu and Hi score screens would have to be remade for this screen setup though.

Packaging

2005-08-31T20:10:00.000+03:00

It seems that packaging Frozen Bubble for Maemo (as a package that can be installed through Application Installer) would mean packaging all the dependencies with it... Perl-SDL, SDL, SDL-mixer, SDL-image. [edit: SDL and SDL-mixer are already installed, at least on my target machine...]

I can't help thinking that an application installer (in a Debian-based system), that cannot handle dependencies, is a step backwards. Maybe two steps.

Frozen Bubble on Mameo!

2005-08-30T13:50:00.000+03:00

I just got Frozen Bubble to compile on Maemo -- One change was needed in the source, but otherwise game is playable 'out-of-the-box'. I'll document the compile procedure Real Soon Now...

Things Maemo-FB is missing:

stylus support -- currently the bubble gun aiming is done with arrow keys
automatic save game on exit
hardware key bindings
portrait-mode or other visual changes to make FB behave in 800*480

Screenshot of the menu view with the Hildon UI visible:

Screenshot of the actual game (full-screen):