| Submitted by , posted on 12 December 2004 |

Image Description, by Here is our little game, the first commercial one. ScreenShot1 shows the game in action mode. This game was created to run on the tapwave zodiac (www.tapwave.com) from the ground up using tricks i learned in various programming books. The code uses standard bitblts to draw the backgrounds and menus, it uses color sourced blits to draw the sprites of course, and in this screen shot we can see it doing a graphics blit using a alpha mask(the shooting image) and then it also uses the particular graphics api to draw the cool explosion (pixels that have trails and fade).
Background: You move your little piece around a specific area to destroy pieces of like color that entrench on your area...if they make it into your safe square (the greyarea) its game over man. To destroy other colors, you swap colors by shooting unlike colors.
Technically the game isnt impressive, but the device it was made on was. It was easy to port directdraw code over to the device (cause they both use the same concepts: blitters, and surfaces) and the device itself is a cool pda for gaming: 480x320, 16bit color, analog stick built in , touch screen and rumbler. The api tapwave provides is pretty slick, and this game's core was up and running in a weekend (took us 6 months to polish the game).
So technical break down:
480x320 16 bit graphics
uses most the blitting options the device's api offers.
Uses the rumbler effects
Though it being a 2d game, it doesnt really utilize the analog stick.
Oh it should be noted, all the graphics are loaded into the video ram, cause the device comes with a 8mb 2d accelerated video card!!! :) (making those transparent blits nice :) ) its a smooth device, and runs PalmOS. Though, we built the game from the ground up for the specific device so it wont run on other palm devices, but it means it doesnt "feel" like a palmOS game, which is good... (though I didnt have to learn all the intricacies of the palmOS)
The last screen shot is just a shot from the puzzle mode, where u try to clear the board with only so many shots. In retro spect we should of developed a PC side client to let u make new puzzles and copy them to the device, or better yet write a module in the game lets u make ur own puzzles, and share them wirelessly (the device has bluetooth) via infared, or load off an SD card that may be present in one of its two slots.
I can say creating for this device was fun, especially since using the API was so close to the directX api, that made the learning curve to get a game up and running a lot smaller than I previously anticipated.
Thanks,
Shane
www.viciousbytes.com

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