TamsPalm – the Palm OS / web OS Blog

When I first purchased the Palm Tungsten E2 to aid me in testing, I expected hours and hours of gaming fun in boring English lessons – after all, both the Palm Tungsten T3 and the Palm Tungsten E2 had Bluetooth.

However, I was heavily disappointed – and now I also understand why. The probability that two Palms meet is very low, and thus developing multiplayer games that require multiple Palm OS handhelds is no especially fruitful business.

Nintendo, on the other side, has created a nearly perfect “game world” based on two tiers:
Automatic “game sharing
Nintendo has apparently realized that it is very rare that gamers meet who have the same console. When those gamers meet, the probability that they carry the same game along is even smaller – so, requiring both players to have a module in order to play is a bad idea.

Instead, the Nintendo DS has some kind of “shadow memory”, from where programs can be executed. Now, when a multiplayer game begins, the “host” who has the cartridge shoots out little “images” to the clients sort of like PC’s booting from a network.

Hotseat mode
As already said, the probability that two gamers with the same machine meet is very, very low. So, what about returning to an old concept of the 80’s – turn based gaming.

I won’t say more about this now(be tuned, more on this is…umm, said too much; lets hope my Tamoggemon buddies don’t read this); but as you see, Nintendo really did everything possible to make sure that multiplayer games are a nice experience…

Stay tuned-next part coming soon!

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Game design
Game development
Nintendo

The PlayStation had a CD drive back in 1995-the Nintendo 64, its main competitor, never really got away from its ROM cartridges(lets leave the 64DD alone, for now). But why? ROM cartridges cost much more than CD ROM’s, and have a much lower storage capacity…why did Nintendo stick to them, then.

A few of you may still recall the battle that I had with the PlayStation portable a few weeks ago-the incredible loading times just drove me mad. The loading times were caused my two things-first of all, by the PSP developer’s idiocy, and secondary, by the UMD CD media used.

The data of the ROM cartridge directly goes into the system memory, sort of like a RAM upgrade directly sits itself on ‘top’ of your system’s memory region. Thus, the data contained on a cartridge can be read immediately(as if it were in RAM, or almost as fast); while data on a CD needs to be searched slowly(the head needs to find the track, and the data needs to pass by it).

The impact of speed is direct. Imagine our pyjama party once again. Joe Schmoe currently waits to duel Patty in binge drinking, and wants to waste some time gaming. For him, having to wait 2 minutes for loading is not acceptable, just as advertising pauses in TV movies are annoying.

Of course, this isn’t true everywhere. A gamer who expects to fight his buddy for three hours(Warcraft 3 matches, for example) has no problems waiting for a minute. But a gamer who just wants to kill off a few minutes of time feels definitely feels a minute of loading time.

Casual gamers usually don’t play for more than a few minutes btw-and as we already know, one doesn’t live especially well off pro-gamers!

Stay tuned-next part coming soon!

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Game design
Game development
Nintendo

Many times, the japanese company Nintendo was declared dead. When the PlayStation 2 came out, one said that they were dead. When the PSP came out, one said that they were mincemeat. When people first saw the true Wii…analysts said that Nintendo was on its way out…and so on.

But why is Nintendo still alive, then? A TamsPalm series starting tomorrow will take a good look behind the curtains of Nintendo’s offerings-why they are successful, and what keeps them alive.

For now-just one last thing to keep Nintendo’s legal department peaceful-this series won’t contain anything secret. We’ll just look at Nintendo’s offerings with open eyes…and no one can prohibit that!

Stay tuned!
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Nintendo

Recently, a few analysts bickered about how mobile application sales are getting weaker and weaker.

All About Symbian now joined in the train of moaning, and published an article called Survival of the Killer Apps.

In short, the author believes that the mobile application space is divided into three classes of applications; and that users don’t know that they can add extra applications to their mobile phones(this is not a Palm OS site, so I believe them). Last but not leastm, he also mentions Series 60 piracy as a problem for developers – thats definitely true, there are way too many Palm OS warez sites still online!

Overall, this makes a great read(IMHO)!

I recently attended the vienniese LinuxWochen for the second time, and was scocked by the amount of fanatism I saw there. Yeah, I am writing about fanatism, and I really mean it. To get started, here are a few ideas which were seriously considered(!!!!):

Every end user donates loads of cash for free software that he uses

Every kind of DRM or copyrighting scheme is evil and unneeded(shareware too)

All kind of binary driver is bad, its better to have just 1% of market share and no closed source drivers than 50% market share and a few closed source drivers in the kernel

The sale of indidivual software licences will be totally dead in a few years

At the last LinuxWochen, people were generally open and understod the issues of commercial micro-ISV’s. But this time, most has radically changed.

First of all, most users don’t think about donating even a cent for software that they use. Don’t think of Linus Thorvalds now, think of Joe Schmoe who uses his handheld as a calendar only. Joe Schmoe won’t ever think of donating for software…

Secondary, harmless “DRM” systems like the expiration of Binary Clock for Palm OS harm nobody, but motivate customers to purchase the licence that finances further development of the product. But one of the presentators couldn’t stip flamingf about how every user gladly donates loads of cash for good software…back to point one.

The third point, binary drivers, is a bit difficult, as it indeed is not an ideal solution. However, having high market share IMHO is better than having no market share; and if the binry modules were given a standardized API for docking in, all compatibility issues would be solved, too!

Indeed, I am not the only one noting radicalism growing in the opensource scene. InfoWorld’s Neil McAlister says that the movement is starting to turn into a crusade, and GoogleSystem says that user’s don’t want open soure, but rather good software.

What do you think?

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FSF
Linuxwochen
Radicalism