18 September 2009

BUG : lost full screen and crash on S40

NOTE : I only have 1 S40 phone for testing so I don't know if this bug is only available on the 5310XM or on other S40 phones

While testing advertizing on S40, I found a strange behavior :
if you call an fscommand2("Fullscreen", true) on any frame before a loadvars.load or a xml.load, you'll lost fullscreen for ever
+ calling fscommand2("Fullscreen", true) has no effect
+ calling fscommand2("Fullscreen", false) will crash Flash player (White Screen Of Death!)

To avoid this, I needed to make my call in the same frame as the fscommand2 OR on a frame before the one with the fscommand2

If you answer "no" when Flash Player asks you to accept Internet connection, bug doesn't happen.

HERE is a file with source to test it.

I tested on several S60 available on Nokia's RDA but I was unable to get a valid internect connection to fully test it.
At this time, I don't know if this bug is present
only on my phone or
only on the 5310XM or
only on S40 or
only on FL2 phones or
on every phones

17 September 2009

Iphone vs NDS & PSP ? Is it April fool's day ?!

Last week, Apple announced "DS & PSP games are not fun and too expensive...Iphone and its games are better" (or something like that)
Yeah sure...and the coming Apple Tablet will be better than PS3+X360+Wii, for sure!
I don't know if I must laught or cry.....

I'm pretty sure fun factor on pittyPhone games are great....but how many games in the AppStore are REALLY games, not casual games (ie games you end within 30minutes) ?


I also can't resist to compare these 2 speaks of Id Software' Carmarck :
The first is one year old and say how much the "iPhone [is] more powerful than Nintendo DS, PSP combined" (sic)
The second is from 2 months ago where he said the iPhone can't compete with DS or PSP on ' complete, dedicated titles' (so he means on good games?) and is not a true game platform because it lacks button
I also reproduce these lines because they explains why the pittyPhone will NEVER be a gaming platform (just a casual platform)
I mean, you look at DS and PSP titles, and you're talking a $20, $30 price point. But on the app store, a $10 game is considered super-ultra premium. So while the numbers are good in terms of sales, you certainly couldn't put in a Mario or Zelda-like development budget and expect to have a great chance of getting your money back.



Another interesting point of view is from a 'veteran game developper' :
too much people, too much games...no way to make a game on front of others ugly ones (unless big money and marketing of course)


Honestly I was waiting for this announce....since I discovered the pittyPhone had a TV Output, a feature which like some others are in fact present since the pittyPhone2 but not available until you jailbreak it...or buy the pittyPhone3

Wait and see...I'm happy to see pittyPhone lovers suddenly lost their smiles with this announce ("What is Apple thinking ?!!!") but, with no doubt, Apple will fix it soon ("Don't worry, We are genious")

15 September 2009

LG's first Android phone

LG announced yesterday its first android Phone : GW620

As usual with all Android phones, no Flash Lite ?

10 September 2009

New game of GamesPlaza : Underwater Treasure

Gameplaza just announced their new game : 'Underwater Treasure'.



A Puzzle Bubble clone.

On a side, GamesPlaza.net home page announce a coming soon developer website...
We'll need to wait a little more!

Inside the Chumby

From Embedded.com, an inside view (electronic part) of the Chumby...if you don't want to open it, someone made it for you !

03 September 2009

Important AS command on touch devices

I was testing my last game (coming this month), when I suddenly found a strange behavior : pressing the OK key, I come back to the title screen...
It's not a crash since I didn't exit the game.
I tried to make this bug again without success...until I realized I was on a touch device : the N97.
I finally found the reason : OK key valids (similar to a press command) the current selected movieclip.
I didn't notice it before since I set _focusrect to false.

So, the AS commands needed to handle a touch AND a non touch game are

- focusRect = false to avoid the ugly rect around movieClip
- if(System.capabilities.hasStylus || System.capabilities.hasMouse) to handle touch-only stuff, like myfakesoftkey.onRelease =
- myfakesoftkey.trackAsMenu = true to handle touch move while pressing a touchbouton
- myfakesoftkey.tabEnabled = false to avoid movieclip to be 'selected' while using right and left key (and I assume you use them a lot on a game!)
- fscommand2("DisableKeypadCompatibilityMode"); to hide the ugly fake keyboard on Nokia touch devices

02 September 2009

Nokia X and others series

Nokia devices names are becoming more and more difficult to read...not as much as Samsung but ...
Not so long ago, you could say, according the name of the device, if it was a S40, a S60, a entry level or a professional phone...
Now, we have a 5310 (a S40 entry level) and the 5320 wich is a S60 entry (?) level....
I assume it's following Nokia announcement to make S60 for every one and not only professional (sorry, I can't find the link...)

And today, Nokia announced 2 phones
- the X3 : after the E & N series (for professional phones), here comes the X...for S40 6th Ed phones...so not professional phones !?! oh, and why X3 ? not X1 ? because of Xperia1 & Xperia2 of SE ?! ;)
- the N97 mini : do they try to make like Sony or Nintendo with their "buy the same device than 1 or 2 years ago but smaller !!!" ?

I must say I'm very confused...and I'm very happy Nokia helped me to fix my Flash Lite phones browser because I'm totally lost without it (no, it's not a self promoted advertising!)

Maemo day

Sometimes, life plays with you.
It's fun because Nokia announced the N900 the day I received my....Nokia 770 :)
The Nokia 770 is the first (?) device based on maemo. I'm now playing with it (can't wait to play SCUMMVM games on it) for some days and I like it. I'm a little sad to not be able to access anything I want (like a TRUE file explorer) but it's not why I bought it.
In fact, I needed a cheap internet tablet, pdf reader and universal media controller ;)

The N800 is far better (with webcam and SD support) but twice the price of the 700 (on eBay)

Wii with Flash Lite 3.1, free!

Thanks to scott, I just installed the Wii Internet Channel for free and with the last update (yes, even here in France)!
I planned to install it for so long...but I wasn't able to admit I had to pay for it!

It's a very good news (no just for me) because it means almost any Wii player will now be able to play Flash Lite games, for free.
A better stuff would be to Nintendo to include the browser on the next release of the Wii (with system 4.1+)

Now, the only problem is to find how to attract Wii gamers to our site.
All the Wii only websites I found about games are full of all Flash 6 games....