Tapwave Zodiac anyone?

[skeezix]

I'm waiting on the release news.. should only be days away I think.

I'm getting a Zodiac day one, as many of you know I'm a Palm OS developer,and since Zodiac is Palm OS, and also a game machine.. well, thats my biznatch.

I'll likely be workign on XCade and my other products first (gotta make aliving), but I'm fully expecting a Castaway/GP port to Palm OS for Zodiac, Sony units, and the Tuingsten T|3 when it comes out... we'll see though. Much harder to port to Palm OS than GP32 for this sort of thing, but shoudl be interesting.

I'm hell bent on Dungeon Master on Zodiac

jeff

 

[bringoutthegimp]

....not another tapwave thread.

 

[khephren]

Hey Skeezix, long time no see! Yeah, i'm considering getting one, I won't have to take my old Psion everywhere with me then! Also, i'm considering getting into hand held game dev (i'm currently an artist/game designer at the mo, working on the bigger machines though) and an old coder friend cut his teeth doing assembly on ARM based acorn computers is interested. so yeah, developing games for the zodiac/palm/GP makes sense to me. I'm just hoping it will pay the bills! I'm still playing castaway btw, still one of the best implemented GP emu's.

How about a review of the zodiac when it arrives? Especially with regards to porting from the GP?

 

[zenjiki]

Does anyone know if it will only be sold online, or will it be also available at electronic stores?

 

[Avigrace]

Does anyone know if it will only be sold online, or will it be also available at electronic stores?

Online first then in stores from the beginning of 2004.


I am going to pull every trick in the book to get one of these when they come out, hearing that my beloved CastawayGP may be ported to it just fuels my desire for it

 

[craigix]

Apparently they are not taking orders from outside the USA.

-Craig

www.gbax.com

 

[skeezix]

Apparently they are not taking orders from outside the USA.

-Craig

www.gbax.com

*blink*

That woudl annoy the hell out of me *so* bad. PErhaps I'll be able to get one in the developer channels and I'm in the dev group for the unit. If they screw the developers from other countries, it'll be a bad sign.. nto to mention the players who pay their bills :/ Is it too much work to sell to other countrieS? Silliness

jeff

 

[skeezix]

Hey Skeezix, long time no see! Yeah, i'm considering getting one, I won't have to take my old Psion everywhere with me then! Also, i'm considering getting into hand held game dev (i'm currently an artist/game designer at the mo, working on the bigger machines though) and an old coder friend cut his teeth doing assembly on ARM based acorn computers is interested. so yeah, developing games for the zodiac/palm/GP makes sense to me. I'm just hoping it will pay the bills! I'm still playing castaway btw, still one of the best implemented GP emu's.

How about a review of the zodiac when it arrives? Especially with regards to porting from the GP?

Been busy with my real-life apps and some real life "Stuff" :/ Devving on Palm OS is pretty easy, though the regular PDA units wont' give you enough RAM to do anythign really wild with.. but the newer units are pretty sweet, and the Zodiac is very slick. Since its Palm OS, you can use free or commercial dev tools, and its all very well documented.

Sure, if I get one before many others, I'll be sure to post a mini impressions.

Porting from GP is old hat; Palm OS doesn't use the standard C library -- theres no "malloc", but instead you use MemPtrNew; theres no fopen() , though GP devvers are used to that. So when you port somethign to the GP, you usuaslly wrap all the normal OS routines into your own GP-ized versions; so you're half way there for Palm OS.. you have to do the same thing, but more of it, and you need to Palm-ify. So not too bad, just takes some work.

I've got a lot of it already released open source; ie: one of my apps is available with source, and it includes a buffered version of stdio for files.. so it has fopen, fread, fwrite, fgetc, fputc, fputs, etc.

jeff

 

[Flack]

Skeezix, if you end up having problems ordering one, let me know. I'd be more than happy to get one here and ship it there (I've paid you with PayPal before).

I'm curious to hear your impressions of the Tapwave. The day you say "it's the best thing to develop for ever!" is the day I go buy one.

 

[*Dc*hardcoregamez]

the zodiac looks really sweet i am going to buy one but i am first going to buy a n-gage because i love the graphics on it and the backlitness plus i need a cell phone then for christmas ill get the zodiak 2. if skeezixs will be making stuff for it you know it will be worth it.

 

[*Dc*hardcoregamez]

the zodiac looks really sweet i am going to buy one but i am first going to buy a n-gage because i love the graphics on it and the backlitness plus i need a cell phone then for christmas ill get the zodiak 2. if skeezixs will be making stuff for it you know it will be worth it.
this isn the zodiac

 

[*Dc*hardcoregamez]

sorry about the double

 

[skeezix]

Skeezix, if you end up having problems ordering one, let me know. I'd be more than happy to get one here and ship it there (I've paid you with PayPal before).

I'm curious to hear your impressions of the Tapwave. The day you say "it's the best thing to develop for ever!" is the day I go buy one.

*g*

A couple people offered to help be zodiac-proxies for me, so I hooked up with one, os I think I'm covered. Credit card already deducated anyway

I'm a big fan of Palm OS as you know; its fun and simple. It historically has a RAM issue, but the new units all do not have that so I expect a lot of great sweaty emu action to come to Palm OS (not just Zodiac, but the T|T3, Sony UX50, etc).

XCade will be on Zodiac within a day or two of my getting one, fear not. Castaway will show up on T|T3 and Zodiac pretty quick too thoguh it'll take a bitas its a much more complex thign to port. Kronos will work already I imagine, but I need to add some fancy widescreen support. Shadow Plan same boat.. work out of box, but need to add some fancy stuff. So I've always been heavy into Palm OS, and I'm really looking forward to Zodiac.

So.. easiest ever? No.. no platform is easy for gaming per se, but Z is up there; the 3d support is *Way cool*, and overall.. its Palm OS, so its *fun* to develop for.

I can't wait to get my Z. I'm hoping it'll change my life

jeff