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Hand Held-Like Games

Started by Drizzt DoUrden Sep 23, 2001 at 4:35 PM 5 replies 1.1k views

Original Post

Sep 23, 2001 at 4:35 PM

I am guessing this is the correct forum to post this question in, if not, I am sorry, but here it goes: Have any of you seen those DigiMon things that you train the monster, and then you plug it into another persons little hand held monster, and you battle? Or that new thing called POX or whatever, where you have alittle hand held-like system that constantly runs the same routine, giving a choice to battle, train, feed, sleep, etc. Or even Tamagatchis would be a good example. Well, how would I go about making something like this? I mean, I could use OpenGL and C++ to make a game and then put it into a little hand held thing like that, right? Another question is: How good can the graphics possibly be for such a small ''console''( if you like to call it that )? Could I make small 3D graphics? Or do they have to be 2D pixel black and white graphics? Can I make it connect to thier computer, and then to the net, and have it display on thier monitor? I mean, could I make it so they port this little hand held thing to thier computer to battle others over the net ( in 3D ) and then they take it out and walk around, training thier 2D black and white charecter, or even allow them to do it all on the computer and the basic stuff on the hand held console? Just a thought for a game idea I had, I think it would be cool to be able to train your charecter through a hand held machine and your computer.. Is it possible, is it really hard? "I''ve sparred with creatures from the nine hells themselves... I barely plan on breaking a sweat here, today."~Drizzt Do''Urden

Drizzt DoUrden

Sep 23, 2001 at 9:01 PM

Noone? .......

"I''ve sparred with creatures from the nine hells themselves... I barely plan on breaking a sweat here, today."~Drizzt Do''Urden

Oluseyi

Sep 23, 2001 at 9:21 PM

quote:
Original post by Drizzt DoUrden
Well, how would I go about making something like this? I mean, I could use OpenGL and C++ to make a game and then put it into a little hand held thing like that, right?

Only if the hardware of the handheld device supported OpenGL, and the development language is dependent on there being a compiler for that platform. If the device does support OpenGL (I don''t know of any commercial handheld that does) and there''s a C++ compiler for it, sure.

quote:
Another question is: How good can the graphics possibly be for such a small ''console''( if you like to call it that )? Could I make small 3D graphics? Or do they have to be 2D pixel black and white graphics? Can I make it connect to thier computer, and then to the net, and have it display on thier monitor?

Again, this is dependent on the actual device. The Journada, I believe has a color LCD display, as does the Palm m100 or so. Most PDAs/handheld devices, however, use monochrome/grayscale displays to reduce energy consumption. As for whether you can/should create 2D or 3D images, it depends on the resolution and resultant clarity of the display. If you create overly complex imagery then the user may not be able to see anything because of the size of the display.

quote:
I mean, could I make it so they port this little hand held thing to thier computer to battle others over the net ( in 3D ) and then they take it out and walk around, training thier 2D black and white charecter, or even allow them to do it all on the computer and the basic stuff on the hand held console?

Theoretically, yes. Doing it in practice , however, is more difficult. All that the above implies is data transfer, and PDAs and handhelds do that well. In fact, that''s pretty much their purpose (giving you a remote data entry interface).

quote:
Is it possible, is it really hard?

Possible? Everything is possible. Hard? Most definitely.

Drizzt DoUrden

Sep 24, 2001 at 2:07 PM

Thank you for your response.

Do you mean to say that every one of those little hand held games is a minuture computer? With a hard drive, CPU, mother board, etc?

I didn''t think they were that advanced...

"I''ve sparred with creatures from the nine hells themselves... I barely plan on breaking a sweat here, today."~Drizzt Do''Urden

Drakonite

Oct 4, 2001 at 4:47 PM

quote:
Original post by Drizzt DoUrden

Do you mean to say that every one of those little hand held games is a minuture computer? With a hard drive, CPU, mother board, etc?
I didn''t think they were that advanced...

No, they aren''t really each miniture computers.

The simplist of these are just complex circuits (technially a computer is just a really complex circuit, but nevermind) and work by having a finite number of states, and the circuit shows what should be in that particular state (take a digital electronics class and you will understand very closly how these work, and could theoretically build your own)
We then move up to slightly more complicated machines, which uses some sort of low complexity proccessor, and tends to have one set of memory that is non-volitile.

EEPROMs are widely used for storing the programming/data for these.

Then we move up to the complex kind, such as a gameboy, which had a more advanced processor (the gba uses an ARM processor for example) and has various types of memory, and a removable solid state memory (cartridge) that stores the program and non-volitile memory.

SeanHowe

Oct 7, 2001 at 2:07 PM

I''d just like to correct some information that was posted by Oluseyi eariler in this thread:

quote:

Again, this is dependent on the actual device. The Journada, I believe has a color LCD display, as does the Palm m100 or so. Most PDAs/handheld devices, however, use monochrome/grayscale displays to reduce energy consumption. As for whether you can/should create 2D or 3D images, it depends on the resolution and resultant clarity of the display. If you create overly complex imagery then the user may not be able to see anything because of the size of the display.

You''re right that most Palms don''t have colour displays (And, it''s the m500 or m505 I believe that actually does as well as some Clie models and some visor models). You''re also right that the Jornada has a colour display. But you missed all the other types of PocketPCs including those from Casio, Compaq, Toshiba, etc. which also have color displays, in fact, nearly every PocketPC that''s come out at all recently has had either 12 bit or 16 bit colour. So, on the PDA end there are actually quite a few with colour. However, what Drizzt was asking about were digimon-style keychain games, of which I don''t think any have color, for a myriad of reasons including the fact that battery life would be totally unacceptable. So, this wasn''t much related to the topic, just thought I''d clear that up.

Oluseyi

Oct 7, 2001 at 2:33 PM

quote:
Original post by SeanHowe
I'd just like to correct some information that was posted by Oluseyi eariler in this thread:

Thanks!

I've worked with a few PDA architectures but really don't pay attention to Tomagotchi/POX/DigiMon-type devices, so I worked with general assumptions based on my knowledge of electronics.

As SeanHowe has said, most of these things don't have any form of display - which negates the need for OpenGL or whatever. In fact, these things depend more on logic circuits and solid state electronics. EEPROMs (Electronically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memories) are a perfect basis for them, because they allow the modification of the suppsoedly "permanent" code.

EDIT: formatting

Edited by - Oluseyi on October 7, 2001 3:44:19 PM

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