Well, someone had to do it and since no one has given the specifics as to why DoomPDA may or may not suck, I took it on myself to chase the story. And what a sorry story it is!
Let's start on a positive note: it has a real purdy box; it almost leads you to believe you're going to get a real professional product. But it's a misleading box. On the front it says Pocket PC Devices and a big DOOM title; on the back, in teeny-tiny print, it says ARM processors only. WTF! I can't use my overclocked Casio 125! Okay, so I've got an Ipaq 36xx, but it's got that button problem we all know about and a sucky layout for Doom. Next in the misinformation department: The back of the box says 8mb storage memory required; the also-purdy insert card says 10mb storage required; when you install, the program says the correct 14mb required! Also, the insert card says you can select your installation directory and using the default Main Memory is recommended. Oh yeah! 14mb of my 32mb just for Doom? I think not! So I select the Storage Card and installation completes apparently perfectly.
Nooooooo Wayyyy. There is an empty DoomPDa directory on the storage card. DoomPDA has merrily gone and installed itself where it wanted to all along- in main memory! Being an ornery bastard, I try to transfer everything to the storage card with appropriate short-cuts. Doesn't work. Apparently, they have hard-coded into Doom.exe the destination of Doom1.wad as /Program Files/DoomPDA and nothing will change that! Interestingly, when you try to do something DoomPDA doesn't like, you get a 'Windoom Fatal Error', which gives you an idea what they used as source code.
Now I decide to read the pdf file enclosed on the DoomPDA cdrom. Not so fast Dave, it's corrupted- can't be read by Adobe Reader 3,4, or 5!
Okay, well at least I can sit down and play some Doom. Not for long! It all works as it was meant to, but IMHO that's pretty limited. There appears to be no way to assign buttons. Strafing is only available by touching double-arrow icons with your stylus- that doesn't work at all at higher difficulty levels; you've just got to be able to assign a strafe button. There's no Run button or option. You can call up the keyboard and press Shift to run, but the keyboard blocks the virtual keys and if you get rid of the keyboard, running turns off! By the way, there is no ability to run custom Wads; this is vanilla Doom1. On top of all this, the Ipaq just sucks as a Doom PDa anyway. I quit!
So what have we here: all of the above vs. Jimmy Doom which can be used on mips (the Casio E125 and EM500 make better Doom PDAs); has a button for strafe (in Jimmy's first version); allows placement on the storage card (and runs just fine their even with the relatively slow Casio E-115); plays Doom 1&2 and custom Wads; and is free. I can only conjecture what Rob was creating, but I bet it was better than this DoomPDa um-er....port.
But all is not lost! I get a tremendous idea. I burn a copy of Jimmy Doom onto a CD-R and place it in the purdy box- I didn't blow $20 after all!
ROB YOU'VE GOT TO HELP US!!!!
