Question about SmartPhone

[fzammetti]

This is either a really stupid question or ... well, ok, I expect it's a really stupid question no matter what, but here goes anyway...

If I write a game for PocketPC, and I then compile it for SmartPhone, will it run as-is in terms of graphics? What I mean is, I don't know much about SmartPhones, but I think I know that the screen doesn't have a 240x320 resolution... So, will GD, or the GAPI implemenation for the device itself maybe, automatically resize my images to fit the screen, or would I have to have separate resources for the SmartPhone build and use the preprocessor to compile in the correct ones (or have them all externalized in the file system, then it's just a simple file swap)?

I've been trying to get the SmartPhone emulator to run so I could find out for myself, but it hasn't been working. I figured why not come ask this question before I put any more work into it because I'm suspecting my game isn't going to run unchanged anyway. Am I right?

As soon as you stop calling me an idiot to yourself, stop laughing and reply!

[Pejo Software - Per]

OK now I can stop!
You are right! You need to resize your graphics.

[fzammetti]

[Johan]

[fzammetti]

Yes, true enough, and I didn't think of that. Good way to know what it would look like. And it even lets me calculate the percentage to downsize everything by.

The problem is that all my coordinates are still based on a 240x320 screen, and going through to deal with all that could be an absolute and utter nightmare.

No, I think I'm only going to be supporting devices with a QVGA display, with this game anyway.

Does that mean no Palm and Symbian as well, or do those devices have QVGA displays?

[jonasb]

[fzammetti]

Well, there goes that idea too then

Eh, I guess I can look on the bright side... Less support issues

[fzammetti]

[Johan]

[fzammetti]

Yep, that's exactly what I was thinking... I'd probably want to center it of course, 40 pixels of black on either side, and that's a lot less daunting because I could blit to a tempoirary surface in place of backbuffer and then just blit that where it should be. I know there's already a performance hit moving to Palm, so maybe that's not freally an option, I'd have to see.

Even putting it in the upper left-hand corner as you suggest, I'd still have to add some clipper settings because parts of my game rely on the default clipper clipping blts to a 240x320 screen, and I'd get overlap on a Palm with this approach. But that's not a big deal either.

In any case, it sounds like Palm is still an option for me, which is great news. I'm not going to touch that until the game is out for a few weeks though, give myself a much-needed break, aside from whatever support issues come up. Is there a FAQ anywhere dealing with what kinds of porting issues PPC-to-Palm work might face? I know it's been discussed around here before, but anything solid to look at? If not, is that planned by anyone?

[Johan]

[muff]

[brendan]