knight666/blog

On January the 24th I made the first commit. I had decided to finally build a game on my favorite crazy platform: Windows Mobile 6.1. Go take a look at this gaming website.

Windows Mobile is exactly as the name applies: Windows for your phone. And it programs like that too. You create a window with “CreateWindow”, you can render using GDI, DirectDraw or Direct3D and sound is done using MMSYSTEM or DirectSound. Programming for this platform is a lot like programming for Windows.

However, it is a mobile platform so people can play on the go as they do with geeksscan online slots. And it is old. My development device is a HP iPAQ PDA. Remember those? You’d lug them around to keep track of your day-by-day planning and they had wifi so you could check your e-mail. Eventually they would get replaced, first by Blackberries and finally by smartphones in general.

The device has, I estimate, a 300 MHz processor and 64 MB of RAM. It has a 240 x 320 pixel screen without multi-touch. You need to use a supplied pen to get it to actually register a click. And although it doesn’t sound like a beast of a machine, it’s enough to run Age of Empires II and a crappy version of Call of Duty.

So why pick this platform? Because it’s a challenge. I’ve been meaning to make something for it ever since I first got it. I have the skills, all I need now is persistence. Every day, before work, I launch Visual Studio and try to get something done. Last week I worked on level loading. I was using a hardcoded level definition that just didn’t cut it anymore. So I turned to my favorite serialization library: Protobuf.

It was a bit of a pain to setup, but it works! I can use protobuf-lite on Windows Mobile!

So naturally, after finishing the level loader, I converted my font loading to Protobuf too. And my sprites as well…

I got a bit carried away is all I’m sayin’.

My plan is to keep you posted by posting small updates every few days. I have a tendency to write gargantuan blog posts and those take a loooooong time to write. So by keeping it short I hope to increase frequency in posting. ;)