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Games Entertainment

Dreadling Released 112

Posted by emmett from the rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat dept.
halxd2 writes: "Dreadling has finally been released. It's like Quake for Palm. The site says Handspring is not working yet, but they promise to work on it. This is really fun. The shareware version plays very well on my Palm III. I think I'll be buying more batteries."
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Dreadling Released More

Dreadling Released

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  • yah no kidding.. Im afraid.. Im at work,.. and was gullible enough to click..

    ick ick ick ick
  • The gameboy market is for 6 year olds. I don't even want to think of what could happen to one of those fragile toys in the hands of such a reckless monster. Nintendo spent alot of time to make those things as durable as possible.

    A bit too expensive too.

    Palm has more number crunching power by far (I'm a gameboy developer...I know *exactly* how many cpu cycles you have to do something useful, and it ain't all that many).

    Color gameboy displays are better than the palm, refresh wise, and they have color (limited, lame ass, backward compatible color, but color nonetheless).

    Gameboys are designed to be cheap: 1 chip for everything, a SRAM chip, lcd, some resistors and transistors for an amp and joypad. Palms are not.

  • Ever notice how the slot in the back of the handspring visor looks like it could fit a game boy cartridge .... The possibilities are endless.
  • Game Boy is based on a Z80 CPU clocked at just over 1.0 MHz. The graphics in FaceBall were like Wolf3d without the texture mapping
    You forgot that faceball was slow slow it was barely playble. Granted, it was a great technical accomplishment, but a 3fps (no joking) Wolf-3d clone is no great gameplay accomplishment.

    That there now exists a Wolf-3d clone for the Palm is no great technical accomplishment, to be sure, but a great gameplay accomplishement? Perhaps...
  • where a horde of monsters called 'users' keep trying to install defective and bloating software on your trusted production machines because they keep falling for the ads, and you have to quickly go around uninstalling them and scanning for virual trojan email attachments before it takes your whole business out. That'd be a cool game.
    Wait, it's real! Arrrrggggghhhhh!!!!!
  • The site also said (before it was /.'ed) that they would have a fix "within 6 hours." It also doesn't work on the Palm IIIe. Somethign about a missing hardware identifier?
  • You know ... this would be absolutely *perfect* for that. Too bad it'd gross most people out, though =:) And I picked the wrong time to eat lunch today. Lesson learned --- Thou shalt not eat thy lunch while reading slashdot.
  • More along the lines of my taking a few shots at the game. From having seen moderation in action, I was more or less sure that I'd get marked as flamebait for going against the norm and criticizing this wonderful new game that got mentioned on /.

    Excuse me for being paranoid.


    Raptor

  • Did you actually read my comment, or just the subject line? My point was that the author released his previous game under the GPL, so I was hoping he was going to do the same with this one.

  • This is an amazing feat for the palm pilot platform. I've seen more critiscm than support and I think it deserves some amazing props.

    James McCombe had to port a complicated and processor intense game to a small and limited platform. Even with the limitations (slower then expected refresh rate, difficulty of play with buttons) it's still fun (and nostalgic) to use. Remember, the pilot was meant to be a powerfull organizer, not a gaming platform (although sometimes I wonder).

    Remember, this is the same guy that brought us Vexed for the palm, an extremely addicting and sometimes complicated game.

    Good work, James, can't wait to see what else you come up with.
  • Mindless violence for kids to become obsessed with? At age 10, I was violent, I planned to kill people, and what games did I have? Frogger, and the like. at age 14 these plans became more realistic. i knew how to make bombs, even made a few, and had plenty of places where i could get guns for free/cheap (read: Local gangs). At that point, i was playing descent and terminal velocity. doom didn't interest me... it was too... 2d... the other 2 were true 3d, and a lot more fun. I didn't end up killing anybody all through middle school or high school... got in plenty of fights and mutilated a guy's face with a pair of scisors, but since i was a little scared white kid that wouldn't hurt anybody unless i was backed into a corner, i got off free... truth be told, i flat-out attacked the guy... Games don't effect us. Some are born... different. I've always had a morbid sense of humor, at parties, my friends and I fight... sometimes nicely, but we get hurt sometimes, too... I'm not an angry person anymore. I've gotten mad probably 3 times in the past 4 years... counseling? no. i hate shrinks... I've just changed myself. Forced myself into a different outlook on life. I still want to fight every asshole i walk past on the sidewalk, but i don't.
    I live off of adrenaline. Be it fighting, nearly getting into car accidents (not intentionally... i'm not STUPID...), stealing (don't do that nearly as much anymore...), rappeling, etc., nothing gives me a better feeling than adrenaline. maybe sex, but that's a completely different feeling...
    my point is, kids are not altered by the video games they play. we are born how we are, and in this rapidly expanding, overpopulated culture, we as a species feel a need to "clean it out" a little bit... so we raise killers. i am a killer. i have never killed, and i don't plan to kill. but i have the urge. i want to. any time i get angry, i'm not sure i'd stop at killing somebody. that's why i don't get angry anymore. i don't want to kill, so i control myself.
    nowadays, i play violent games, and so do many of my friends. oddly enough, the best player i know is an ultra-do-good-pacifist. he's everybody's friend, and everybody loves him. once, a guy decked him, and broke his glasses and his cheekbone. he found out who it was, and we were all ready to go fuck the guy up, but he wouldn't let us... he forgave the fucker; didn't even turn him into the cops... go figure.
    also, who's kids have palm pilots, anyway?

  • DON'T!! connect the batteries without a load on them!! They will overheat, causing damage to the battery and possibly your house if a fire results. A better idea would be to get a battery holder, and a lightbulb socket with wire terminals. Radio shack sells a nice one. Alternately, you could use a resistor of a couple kohms (dunno what the ideal discharge rate is.. 1V / 1kohm be about 1mA, kinda low).

    Kudos..

  • How does the GBC's first FPS compare to Dreadling? Anyone tried both?

    On another note, my greatest problem with games on the Palm are the controls. The palm's buttons (especially the IIIc, where there's more room) should be, from left to right, a direction pad, a wheel and a set of four buttons. Kinda like (+ | %).

  • It's nice to see people scrambling over a black and white game running on a processor that was being taped out twenty years ago. The "GeForce kicks Voodoos a$$" nonsense and driver compatibility crap gets really tiring after a while. Now if we'd only see something original, instead of clones of the same old games, then we'd get some life back into the game biz that once seemed so promising.
  • There is one -- it was posted here actually. It wasn't released due to legal action threatened from Nintendo. Called 'Gambit' I believe.

    An early version was leaked -- it played Tetris, although a little slow and laggy, it actually worked. Only Tetris so far though... (don't know if work is actually continuing or not)

  • a 3fps (no joking) Wolf-3d clone

    More like 6fps (played through Super Game Boy, recorded on VCR, and played back in proportional slow-mo. I counted physical screen refreshes per logical screen refresh). If you get a few speed powerups, the game becomes quite a bit more playable.

    I should know; a while back (before I learned how to code my own wolfengine) I was thinking about making my own faceball clone: Faces Loaded.

  • It looked like the Editor was done on Windows...I don't think you can edit levels on even the Palms...or maybe I just read it wrong, but it appeared you couldn't.
  • It has everything to do with Scooby. Did you know ScoobySnacks are standard issue on the Space Shuttle?

  • For those looking for a download place that's not (yet) ./'ed:

    Try Palmgear [palmgear.com]

  • There was a Palm-based shooter called Raygin that made quite a debut on Palm in the beginning of 1999. It was more simple, but the functionality was all there. You can download it from ZDNet [zdnet.com]

    Also, remember that Faceball 2000, a rocking 3D shooter for the original Gameboy (where you ran around mazes and shot 3D smiley faces) ran on a 4.19 mhz processor. That makes the 20+ mhz Palm III processor look like an Athlon. :)

  • Aargh ! Not again.. Palm is productivity tool, not a game machine. Why do you keep making these.. great.. games for my little organizer ? I can remember the countless days of perfectly good work time I used on playing Ackeron.

    It's a good thing that I don't like Quake-like games. That is why I'm not even going to download it.

    That's right, I'm not. (Damn, slashdotted already..) Now, I am not going to sit here and wait for the moment the /. effect wears out. Really. Then I'm not going to install it on my Palm and play for two straight days. I did not get these rechargable batteries so I wouldn't have to worry about the costs of hardcore gaming. Really, I didn't..

  • Productivity Disruption Accelerator

    Devil Ducky

    Devil Ducky
  • Someone please explain why this is news ? Is QUAKE (or some clone) the future of every piece of hardware out there ? I can't even imagine a reason why someone would want this on their palm pilot (of which I am a proud owner) except maybe to say you have it.
    Why not get a gameboy color, it's cheaper, the graphics are better, and the refresh is faster.
    Oh yeah, it's not cool.

  • Works on Visor and Download link (Score:4)

    by doomy ( 7461 ) on Tuesday May 09, 2000 @09:55AM (#1082896) Homepage Journal
    Hello,

    I can confirm that this works fine on my Visor Delux. Very nice. Indeed, small and fast.

    You can download it off Palm Gear [palmgear.com]

    PS: Would be nice if the author included a mini-icon (I use launcher3)
    --
  • I don't know why its said that the visor doesnt work. I downloaded dreadling for my visor and it works great. Go ahead, d/l it!!
  • Whoever modded that up obviously had not clicked the link. You better not either if you're at work or your mom is in the room.

    -JD
  • Looks cool, but after about 15minutes, my pilot locked up, and I needed to reboot (paperclip).

    Anybody get by the guy with the shotgun on the second level?

    Can I play online..... someone host a game.

  • Orthogonal *and* 8 feet thick.

    I'm pulling that almost directly from the old DOOM FAQ. At worst, I forgot a comma. Sorry :-(


    Raptor
  • From the website, it says that the full version won't work on the palm e or the visor, because this game needs hardware ID. Why is it needed? To stop people from beaming this game to each other? What if people just email the game right after they buy it, then it'd be just as easy to transfer...

  • But then, Wolf3d on a 3.5 MHz 65C816-based SNES was impressive too.

    If you thought that was impressive, how about Wolf3D on the AppleIIGS [sheppyware.net]?

    The AppleIIGS used the same (65C816, 3.57mhz) processor and same clock speed as the SNES, but it didn't have half the graphics chips SNES did. SNES had "Mode 7" effects that allowed for some limited scaling effects of 2-D sprites! Of course, the AppleIIGS had 256KB of RAM, so that's an advantage over SNES I guess.

    -John Booty
  • Why? Because after about a year or two, the batteries are no longer made by the manufacturer. They rechargers are often specific to each kind of battery, forcing you to buy *another* charger and set of batteries. If you bought enough rechargable batteries to last for 10 years, then they would pay for themselves. I'm all for saving energy, but if it comes down to $20 worth of batteries for a year vs $75 for charger/batteries/spare batteries per year that you'll wind up throwing out anyway, I'll stick with the $20 batteries. As it is, my palm lasts for 30+ days (about 24H runtime) off two AAA batteries.

    The closest I got to good batteries was the Millenium that was around in '93 or so. But they're not being made anymore, and I have two chargers gathering dust in the basement.

    If you're going to get a battery-power whatzit, make sure it has the batteries (and charger) built into it. Palm V, cell phones, laptop, UPS, digital cameras, Minidisc, etc all have batteries built in that can be recharged easily and last for a while.

    -Mark
  • DREADling download @ FTP.CDROM.COM [cdrom.com]

    btw, for some reason a direct link to the file would not work...so this is a link to the directory where I stored it. Just thought I would tell people ahead of time before they decide to flame me.
  • What happened to the good ol' days when games weren't compared to quake? I remember when Doom first came out it was "like Wolf 3d...but better", then quake took doom's spot: "...it's even better than doom!". Now anything remotely like a FPS is compared to quake. dang kids. -Hitecher-

  • Re:ahhh (Score:2)

    by Danse ( 1026 )

    Sure. There's already a Tiger Woods Golf cartridge for it. I'm sure others will pop up soon if they haven't already. I have a Visor. I'd like to have a game or two for it to pass the time when I'm stuck someplace boring.

  • Ah, but wait until Bluetooth is out in force. Then you can communicate with more than one Visor/Palm at a time, and not worry about line-of-sight issues. The Visor will be getting Bluetooth [visorcentral.com] soon, and Palm made an announcement of putting Bluetooth in their organizers as well.
    ------
    James Hromadka

  • True, you make a lot of good boys (gb cheap, durable, better display (in some ways)).

    Sure the palm costs more than the gb, but if people already have them, why not? The concept works well for PC owns, why buy a psx when you already have a computer (even though it is for boring stuff like work) sitting on your desk with more cpu?

    Durable, yea, this would really be bad in the little kids market, wonder how they do in "I am a grown up and take care of my stuff, but still am immature and play video games" (I would fall into this category)

    Grey scale lousy refresh lcd has got to suck (haven't even looked at the palm, so I will take your word on it (after all it was said on slashdot so it has to be true))

    But for the 20-26 year old "kids", most of us could justifice buying a palm "Yea, it is for business purposes only, uh huh it will be used for purely proffesinal reasons only" then we turn around and load quake, final fanasty and zelda on it as we walk away and say "sucker"

    If my freinds walked in on me with my pants down and a game boy in my hands, they would get a little freaked out. but sitting naked with a palm is understandable, because it looks more like an adult computer than a kids game machine.

    Uh Riiiigggght, I think that is a bad example...

    Ok, in a business meeting, you can either take your palm or gb, which would it be? Ok that is a better example, but after the meeting, on your lunch break, who should care if you get some head counts in quake?

  • You'll be waiting a while for Quake on a 16/20Mhz Dragonball.

    The Palm simply *doesn't* have the horsepower to do anything like quake at an acceptable framerate (say, 10+ fps), and i'll eat this post if proved otherwise.

    Some subset of OpenGL might have been ported to the Palm, but that doesn't mean it can render several thousand polygons per second in a multiplayer environment.

    When the StrongARM Palms become available, then you might see more true 3D apps, but don't hold your breath.

  • Mirrors (Score:1)

    by rf0 ( 159958 )
    There is a mirror at www.rf0.co.uk/dlshare.zip www.geo597.demon.co.uk/dlshare.zip www.rf0.com/dlshare.zip
  • I don't know you guys, palm are nothing more than a glorified organizer. They are excellent at that, but if you want a real pocket pc go for the WinCE 3.0 new machines. This version of CE is actually streamlined and less buggy than its predecessors.

    Aaaand, you can run quake on it. On full color, around 30 fps, with sound, and any of you favorite WAD levels. Sure, it takes a 500 bucks piece of hardware (plus a 100$ flash mem card to hold many levels) but it is the best in mobile gaming for me.

    To sad the platform lacks so much in software. To sad it is Windows, but it works pretty well for me.

    Dont believe me?

    http://www.conduits.com/ce/page.php3?apps/doom

  • I always use cheap NiCads from Radio Shack. If you use them properly, they can last for over a year, or longer. The trick is to make sure that they are *competely* dead before charging. You can do this by putting them in a small cheap flashlight and leaving it on for a few hours, or some simple closed circut made from a battery holder and a some wire should work.

    The only problem is that they don't last as long (get a extra set), and when you use them in a walkman, they cut out quickly instead of gradually loosing power.

  • For more pictures, check out the ultra cool and fast (200mhz strongarm cpu) iPaq from Compaq. Look here:

    http://www.iolnm.net/dcoffing/Casio/index.htm

  • Hey, how about a Bard's Tale clone for the Pilot? I'm not a big fan of 3D shooters but I'd play an RPG.
  • I'm not real familiar with the Palm Pilot. Is it's only means of communicating with an infrared port or is there some sort of Lan adapter?

  • OK, funny, but there is a grain of truth (Score:3)

    by guran ( 98325 ) on Tuesday May 09, 2000 @10:20PM (#1082916)
    The whole point of a plam as opposed to a Pocket PC (sooner or later MS *will* make something that works) is simplicity.

    If games above the level of solitaire becomes common, the handhelds will get caught in the same "upgrade every year, forget compatibility" spiral as the PC.

    It will be all fun and games, but I'll miss the days, when you simply pressed the green button and made a note, instead of waiting for a reboot (checking sound card... done, checking 3D accellerator,... )

  • Oh *Great* (Score:3)

    by PopeAlien ( 164869 ) on Tuesday May 09, 2000 @08:43AM (#1082917) Homepage Journal
    As if I don't waste enough time on my palm throughout the day.. 20 or so Websites on Avantgo, Solotaire, and now this..

    I'm gonna have to go back to pencil & paper..
  • all we need at the tilt and motion sensors and make it a real 3D experience
  • Okay, my boss has official declared that I am not getting a palm after seeing this! Arghh!!!!!

  • The whole point of the Palm is simplicity. A previous post mentions that if we keep adding stuff to the device, it will take longer to "boot". I agree with that. KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid!
  • The blast of the shotgun won't be the same without my subwoofer. However, if I aim my Palm III in the right direction and use the infrared beam, maybe I can get some satisfaction when another player's Palm explodes...

    Palm-frag-o-rama-fest

    WebWord.com
    Usability, information architecture, and all that stuff [webword.com]
  • This is excellent, now I can Frag from the road. I just hope they get that visor version running soon. And I thought my productivity dropped when I fisrst got a PDA, now it will reach all time lows.

  • umm it is not possible to play the game without the hardware ID...this is in the code of the full version.
    It has now been changed, to allow users of Visors and Palm IIIes to register the full version!

    thanks

    Andrew Mulholland
  • Anyone who had downloaded the program care to mirror it for the rest of us poor schmucks?

    Thx,
    -- Mid

  • This is exaclty the sort of temptation I DON'T need making me want to get a Palm. I have no legitimate need for one, my Powerbook 180 takes care of all my mobile needs.

    But damnit, I want one anyway!

    Gadget lust strikes again...

    -carl
  • I'm getting a storming 107 bytes/sec on an E1!! Comprehensively Slashdotted!! Imagine the commute - with all these suits playing this on the way home.... Great stuff! Tim
  • Informative? ARGH! Please, moderate that one to TROLL. Thanks.

  • This is an unGodly "innovation" (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09, 2000 @08:53AM (#1082928)

    I for one am dead set against this kind of thing appearing on this sort of machine. The Palm Pilot and other machines of its type are meant as tools for increasing our productivity, not for wasting time gaming. The time that we do not spend glorying God and all of His works is time that we should be spending working, not "playing", an activity which encourages sin and leads to damnation.

    People that pervert Godly tools like this into machines which allow Satan to corrupt us through the unclean ethics inherent in "games" are themselves tools of the Devil, and we should rid ourselves of them at any cost in order to save the fabric of our society from the ravening hordes of darkness which threaten to overwhelm it.

  • dreadling is dreadful (Score:3)

    by tuffy ( 10202 ) on Tuesday May 09, 2000 @08:53AM (#1082929) Homepage Journal
    Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I didn't keep it on my Palm very long. The refresh rate of the LCD screen just isn't there, the only way to tell if you're shooting is to watch the ammo gauge decrease and the only way to tell if you're doing damage is when your enemy explodes. I won't even get started on the nasty Palm buttons for control.

    Dreadling is an interesting maze demo and the 3D effect isn't half bad, but I can't imagine playing it for any length of time without getting a massive headache.

  • IIRC, the Palm can only establish an IR link with one other device at a time. So it would be two players at most.

    -JD
  • You really don't want to...
  • There are already tilt sensors for the Palm Pilot - heres a link to the instructions on either how to build or buy them. This is the site with the sensors:

    http://www.ibr.cs.tu-bs.de/~harbaum/pilot/adxl20 2.html
  • I test software for Visor Insider. I loaded dreadling up this morning on my Visor Deluxe and haven't had any trouble. admittedly I've only played for a few minutes, but it works.

    It says at the web site that the shareware version works fine, but the registered version needs hardware ID which the Visor doesn't have.
  • d00d0rz!!1! 1 am 0nly 63771n6 200 fram3z a 53c0nd!!1!!! j00 mu5t hav3 j00r Pa7mz OC-z0red!!! 7311 M3 H0W!!!! It's cool that this game got made, and I'm *really* impressed, but it's not really playable, is it? Snort: "It's like Quake for the Palm." Er, it's almost like Wolf3D for the Palm, maybe.

    --
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • It doesn't work on the Palm IIIe either. It's not the shareware version that doesn't work, just the full version. The shareware works on Visors and IIIes. The problem is that the Visors and IIIes don't have "hardware identifiers." The site (before it went down) said that they'd have it fixed "within 6 hours."
  • Only the shareware version works on Visors and Palm IIIes. The full version doesn't because neither have a "hardware identifier" (according to the site). It should be fixed "within 6 hours" according to the site (before it was /.ed).
  • I *LIKE* Pokemon =(. Ten bucks for Poke-red turned the bookend original GB that's been in my closet for 6 years to into a fun and simplistic (I mean that in a GOOD way) game I can play on the couch =).

    --
  • Would it be realistic to write a Gameboy emulator for the Palm Pilot?
  • Read the site silly. The COMMERCIAL version won't work on your Visor right now (estimated time to fix: 6 hours) because the Visor doesn't have a hardware identification number. The shareware version never claimed not to work.

  • Seems like it works on the equivalent of Pentium III's :) I'm lucky my hardware doesnt haven an identifier.
    --
  • You're right when you say you don't get damage feedback. You can't tell when you fire and with the sounds, it feels like I'm throwing little pebbles at best.

    A suggestion to the guy who wrote it, put some kind of flash that looks like a weapon has been fired, and put a "hit" animation to tell the monsters are being hit.

    Also, for the love of God, do the same in reverse. I can barely tell that the monsters are shooting at me. The only indication is the health. In addition, are the monsters firing at me or just staring me down ?

    Sorry, but it needs lots of work before you can charge money for it.
  • From talking with the author about open sourcing it, particularly for the use of color and 16 color greyscale, which he doesn't have time to do, he would like to open source it, but earn some money for the really hard work he's put into it. This winter we may well see it open sourced.

  • How is this news for nerds?

    I mean, nerds play games, nerds have Palms, but I have neither...so what's it matter?

    ;^)
  • Your boss reads Slashdot?! Lucky bastard.
  • Sorry to spam, but this is really cool, and y'all should know about this (and I want one). go to http://cgi.ebay.co m/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=328635800 [ebay.com] for information... its on ebay, yes, but you don't have to bid... i just put it on ebay to get a broad market...
    but ya gotta hurry... deal ends soon.
  • Ditto. I had too much fun playing Breakout in matrix algebra classes. It's a wonder I didn't fail I played so much.

    Unfortunately I lost all my games a couple of months ago somehow. Couldn't have been a battery change, since I went through two or three of those no problem. Oh well.
  • What I have been seeing a lot, is people comparing Dreadling graphically to Quake/Quake III, and while it is nice to be considered in the same ballpark as those games, graphically it is impossible to compete!
    The dragonball processor which is ideal for normal palm applications and excellent battery life, would be limiting any significant improvements to the graphics of Dreadling. The only way I can see it working, is when the next generation Palms are launched using a different processor, which will provide much more processing power, and similar battery life. However the problem then would be backwards compatibility. :-)
    hopefully soon everyone will be playing dreadling on the Palm though!
  • Couldn't help but notice the similarities... How long before we're playing Quake III'ish games on our Palm XXXX's???
  • Thanks for the helpful hints guys, we are working on provide decent feedback, as it seems to be a requested feature. During the testing phase, our testers had a vote on whether it was an important feature or not, but it was generally agreed that it wasn't.
    Sound wise we are somewhat limited though!

    As for the buttons on the palms, well email palm if you want them changed! During the development of Dreadling we tried many different configurations of the buttons, and this seemed to be the only one that worked well enough to use. You can change what each button does to improve control if needed too.

    I also feel that many people are comparing Dreadling to games currently available for the PC.
    To be honest, dreadling is not in their ball park, as there is nothing like the nVidia GEforce available for the palm yet :-), so we can't have many clever features.

    In creating Dreadling, James McCombe and the rest of the Dreadling Team have done what many people thought impossible, and have created an enjoyable, playable, 3D Shoot 'Em up for the Palm platform.
    We obviously realise that we can't please everyone with our game, but critism (both constructive and destructive), is appreciated, so we can make this even better!
  • The Palm Platform was intended initally afaik as a replacement for filofaxes and the like, but thanks to 3Com's (and now Palm Inc.'s) excellent PalmOS, and the nature of programmers worldwide, it has also become a great way to while away long journeys...last week I was delayed on the EuroStar (under the English Channel), for 4 hours, but I had my Palm V, so I was able to get some work done, and also mess around with what was then the latest build of Dreadling, looking for bugs. What is amazing about Palms is that their battery life is almost nonstop, especially for the lithium ion powered ones... there was another guy on the train, a French Gentleman, I may add, who had a Casio Cassipeia (I think the spelling is right!), with WinCE 2.11, and Colour screen, and anyway I was talking to him about it, and he said yes it was great, and it was quick... anyway after about 3 hours he had to stop using it, as the battery was flat... Even though I hadn't charged my Palm for the week I was in France, my Palm V still has 40% battery life left! That Rocks! sorry, was drifting off topic. What I mean to say, is that the WinCE platform has potential, but for the truly mobile user it isn't there yet. The Palm Platform, is truly mobile, but lacks some of the (excellent) apps that the WinCE platform has. Imho, in the next year or so, the 2 platforms will move on, with the Wince platform becoming more mobile (with better battery life), and the Palm platform becoming more advanced, whilst remaining mobile. Doom on the WinCe machine doesn't last for long, but one of the tests carried out on the Dreadling was how long it could run for without the battery on a PalmV becoming flat. It lasted 34hours!! (this was non-stop playing, with people taking it in turns to sleep)! /the end! best wishes Andrew
  • I agree. If you read the "whys" of the Palm, this game clearly doen't fit. I think the model is a good one; however, it really shows what the pilot _can_ do if it needs to!
  • The Palm has a com port on the bottom, which has a proprietary connector. This usually connects to a cradle or a hot-sync cable, which has a normal 9-pin connection at the other end. This may be plugged into your PC, notebook, cell phone, or other device. You can do TCP/IP through this COM port and make the palm a real host on your network fairly easily. Having said all that, I have no idea if this game supports multiplayer, or if it supports the com port.

  • Re:ahhh (Score:2)

    by Danse ( 1026 )

    Yeah, but Visor's suck for gameboy-type games because they don't have the cross-pad type button setup. That makes most games all but unplayable. There will be some that will work ok, but it might not be worth the effort.

  • Yup.

    It's not that I don't like cool games, but I'd rather buy a separate console, than have a PDA feature war.

  • Congratulations to the Dreadling people for a nice piece of work.

    I noticed some comments here about the speed and interface; you may want to check out Escape, a demo i wrote in 1997. I believe it was the first real-time texture mapping program ever created for the Pilot.

    Get it from http://www.lfw.org/pilot/ [lfw.org].

    It has about twice the frame rate of Dreadling; its graphics are simpler (no monsters, no greyscale) but i think the maze looks nicer, and the faster response is a big win.

    Steer by dragging the pen around the screen, rather than using the buttons.


    -- ?!ng

  • ahhh (Score:3)

    by jbarnett ( 127033 ) on Tuesday May 09, 2000 @08:55AM (#1082958) Homepage

    You know the stock market crash everyone has been hyping about, it is coming, and this is going to be a big part of it. Think about, all the tech stocks are over rated, now we call all these people in the tech market playing quake say "Yea, I will get right on it, first though I must FRAG some people in my address book, I mean call some people in my address book about venture captial... yea that's the ticket"

    Seriously though, quake on the palm, this is cool and all, but seriously do you have a Quake tic-tac-toe game in your paper address book?

    If I had a palm though, I would be so totally on this man.

    It would be cool to fit the palm into the Game Boy market, it is small, portable and can do a lot more than the gb, just wondering which one has the most cpu crunching power, palm? How are the displays on the palms?

  • You might be able to play Quake in wireframe or something. Or ditch the texture-mapping and just have solid coloured walls. Combine that with some simpler-looking weaponry and opponents (a big rectangular blob would be just as fearsome-looking :-) and you might get something Quake-like running at a reasonable frame rate.

  • The author of Dreadling had previously released an awesome game called Vexed under the GPL. I was rather hoping that would be the case with this game as well, but alas, no such luck.

    I know it's his choice what to do with his own game, but I'm still disapointed.

  • I test software for Visor Insider [visorinsider.com]. I loaded dreadling up this morning on my Visor Deluxe and haven't had any trouble.

    admittedly I've only played for a few minutes, but it works.

  • Reminds me of Physics class, playing poorly coded games on my TI-85! Um, yeah, I'm working on that vector now. Honest! Man, its a good thing I can't justify spending the money on a PP!
  • I'm definitely looking forward to this one - but I'll wait for multi-user capability first before I buy it. Virtually all my geek friends have Palms, and we could probably have quite the I/R fragfest with these puppies.

    From what little I can see, it looks kind of like a cross between Daleks, Wolfenstein 3D, and the old Mac classic Maze Wars. Cool little app for a Palm.

    - -Josh Turiel
  • You've obviously never been dragged to the mall by your wife before...

  • Game Boy is based on a Z80 CPU clocked at just over 1.0 MHz. The graphics in FaceBall were like Wolf3d without the texture mapping.

    But then, Wolf3d on a 3.5 MHz 65C816-based SNES was impressive too.

  • Physical UI Problems (Score:3)

    by algae ( 2196 ) on Tuesday May 09, 2000 @09:29AM (#1082968)
    In general, I've had problems with just about every PalmOS game that uses the buttons as an interface. They're just way too slow. If you compare the tactile response on a GameBoy pad versus the Pilot, you'll notice that you can get a lot better reaction times on the GB. Also, the layout of the buttons on the Pilot is truly dreadful for gaming; I can't even really play tetris.

    What would be a welcome piece of hardware for people who are really serious about this would be a gamepad that plugs into the serial port. But at that point, you may as well just get a GameBoy.

  • Agreed, well at least from checking out the screenshots, anyway (I'm away from home and don't have my Palm with me to actually try it out). I think I'm too spoiled after the sweet sound and graphics of DoomCE (Splashscreen [jimmysoftware.com] and aniGIF of different screens [jimmysoftware.com]) -- Dreadling just looks so blocky and drab now. Plus, I really gotta give Casio major props for their cursor control, which I wish Handspring or some other Palm knockoff would steal -- I'm surprised that HP didn't catch on to their usefulness and steal 'em for their new devices. Now if only the MAME-CE guy would hurry up and come out with version 0.3 already! >:-(

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • An alternative download place: PalmGear [palmgear.com] (the site in the aticle is slashdotted.)
  • This game might be great, but I'm wary of anything that tries to make the Palm OS a gaming platform. I can see the bickering beginning already over Dragonball vs ARM and color versus monochrome. In my mind, computing speeds advance only for scientific and gaming needs.

    Gaming on the Palm will demand faster, more intensive resources (not to mention batteries) until the bloody thinng forgets it's supposed to be a neat little replacement for pen, note pad, address book, and all the other things we keep in our cargo pants.

    The only productivity device I have left is about to start chipping into my productivity. Help!

  • Is this really that impressive? (Score:5)

    by Raptor CK ( 10482 ) on Tuesday May 09, 2000 @09:07AM (#1082982) Journal
    OK, OK, so I know I'm setting myself to lose some karma, get marked as a troll, etc...

    But seriously, It's not Quake. It's not even DOOM. It's Wolf3d. Orthogonal 8-foot-thick walls, no height differences... It's the engine used on a 286 back in the day. Granted, it could be countless fun, but even that's a problem.

    I'm on my second warranty-covered Palm V, and I just had a repeat of my old problem. The app buttons come loose far too easily. Play too much of this, or Reptoids, or any other shooter for the Palm, and your Palm V is almost guaranteed to get a button (or two) loosened up.

    And forgive me for sounding a tad jaded, but wasn't this also shown off on the TI-85 calculator as the Daedalus engine? Nearly acceptable framerates there, too, and that's a Z80 at around 6MHz or so, and only 32K of RAM.

    Lots of fun to be had, but it's a little overhyped, and well... it's been done. Now, when that OpenGL setup for the Palm can handle a true Quake clone, I'll be all over that. This is just proving that a Palm can do something that it's had the horsepower for since greyscale was first hacked.

    Just my $0.02. Moderate at will.
    Raptor

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