Ever wanted to know how you can use low-res (176*220) titles on your QVGA Smartphone?

Ever wanted to know how you can use low-res (176*220) titles on your QVGA Smartphone? - Non-Touchscreen Windows Mobile Other

If you have a QVGA Smartphone like the HTC Vox / s710, you know well enough that most existing games and other graphics-based Smartphone apps (Windows Mobile 6 Standard) out there only use a postage-stamp sized screen area. An example of this is PDAMill’s Flux Challenge, which, being designed for the traditional low-res (176*220) Smartphone resolution, only uses part of the available QVGA screen estate:
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There were no widely known solutions for the problem. Some developers announced support for QVGA devices (for example, that of Cell Doom – see announcement HERE), but the most (including PDAMill) didn’t.
Fortunately, an excellent White Russian coder has come up with a generic solution, which not only makes it possible to run MANY (but not all!) games at full screen, but, in cases, also lets for using real (!) QVGA resolution with some titles (for example, emulators).
Downloading, installing
Go to this MoDaCo thread and download the ZIP file attached to the first post. You’ll need to register as a forum user if you aren’t able to access it. If you don’t want to bother with it, I’ve also uploaded the file to my database back-end; it’s HERE.
After this, just unZIP it and start GxQvga Patcher.exe. Should you encounter an error message complaining about the lack of the .NET Framework 2, you will need to download it HERE (note that some stated it only requires 1.1. I haven’t checked whether they’re right. The latter is accessible HERE.)
Using
This patcher app runs on the desktop, NOT on the Smartphone. This means you must transfer the main EXE file of the game / emulator / app you’d like to make use of the QVGA screen to your desktop computer first. To do this, use for example Total Commander with the CE file system patch (see THIS for an explanation of installing it) or, if you don’t want to bother, just the “Explore” button of ActiveSync.
Transfer the main EXE files (but nothing else) of the apps / games you’d like to patch to the directory of where the above-mentioned, just decompressed GxQvga Patcher.exe resides.
Now, start GxQvga Patcher.exe. It will present you a dialog:
In there, click “Select exe file to patch...". Now, select the EXE file you’d like to patch:
After letting it go on, you’ll be presented a message telling you the patching was successful:
Now, all you need to do is:
Copy the patched EXE file back to your MS Smartphone, making sure you overwrite the original EXE file
Go to the QVGA subdirectory on your desktop (just under the directory where GxQvga Patcher.exe resides), and copy XG.dll to the same directory on your smartphone
Start the game / app to see whether it worked; answer Yes to the message.
If the game / app still only uses 176*220 (and not the full screen), exit it and go to the SCALE (NOT the previous QVGA!) subdirectory on your desktop, and copy XG.dll to the same directory on your smartphone and copy XG.dll to the smartphone, making sure you overwrite the previously copied QVGA XG.dll. Now, start the game on your Smartphone. Hope it’ll use the full screen. If it still doesn’t do this, then, nothing can help, I’m afraid.

Examples of the before-after cases
PocketHobbitSP2003 (as of the current, Alpha 11 version) doesn’t support QVGA devices. As can be seen in the following screenshot, without patching, it only uses a stamp-size screen area in Portrait mode on QVGA devices:
After the patch and using the QVGA DLL, it becomes much bigger and, what is even more important, makes use of the full horizontal screen reoslution – that is, 240 pixels, resulting in MUCH more readable text:
Incidentally, with the SCALE DLL, it also fills in the entire screen horizontally, BUT only upscaling the original, 176*132 rendition resulting in a MUCH inferiour real resolution & readability:
This is why I’ve emphasized you MUST give a try to the QVGA DLL first and only give a try to the SCALE one when the former doesn’t deliver any results.
Recommended link
This MoDaCo thread discusses the converter at length. A MUST!

Related

The Guide to Playing Magnetic Scrolls games on Windows Mobile

Many older computer users know what adventure games the excellent folks Magnetic Scrolls have produced some really good adventure games. (See THIS (if the link doesn’t work, THIS) for more info). If you want to play these really excellent games on your Windows Mobile (WM for short) device, I have some very good news for you: yes, they’re all playable – and not only under CPU-hungry and not-the-best-suited-for-the-Windows-Mobile-UI emulators, but also real interpreters.
You may have already heard of “Magnetic”, THE Magnetic Scrolls games interpreter. It, fortunately, also has a Windows Mobile port.
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(another VGA shot; a QVGA one)
There are three main revisions of Magnetic: 1, 2 and 2.2. Of course, the higher, the better (see the three charts comparing them HERE for more info on the version differences if interested). For WM, fortunately, a port of the latest, 2.2 version is available; as with the desktop Windows. Note that there is another version called for WindowsCE-based Handheld Pro and 2000 devices: chiark’s MagnetiCE; you will NOT want to use it on your WM device because it uses H/PC menus even under Windows Mobile.
Installing the interpreter
Download it from here (linked from this IF-Archive page) (alternative, direct download here). Unzip MagneticWinCE.exe and transfer it anywhere on your handheld.
Note that the interpreter is only compatible with WM2003SE and newer operating systems. It doesn't seem to run under WM2003 (tested on my iPAQ 2210), let alone PPC2k2. I had no problems running it on my (several) WM2003SE+ devices; worked flawlessly even under WM6. It makes use of built-in keyboards and landscape modes without problems. It also supports command history (up/down cursor keys), which is very useful particularly if you want to, say, repeat “wait” many times.
Getting and installing the games
Fortunately, all compatible games are available online and you don’t need to do any conversion. Go HERE and go to the bottom, to the bottom-most Game Files chart. Download the “Story files” of all the games you’d like to enjoy. Unzip it to anywhere on your storage card. Make sure you only put it in a direct descendant (subdirectory) of the root of the card and not the second, third etc. one; this, unfortunately, also applies to the \My Documents directory on your card) or in the main storage, under a directory in \My Documents.
If you don't like this restriction because of the standard file selection dialog, you can fix the problem by getting Mad Programmer’s File Dialog Changer , the current WM5/WM6-compliant version of which is 1.66. Get it HERE. You'll also need GSGetfile.
I’ve often elaborated on the installation / usage of this really useful utility (see for example THIS). Just a quick recap (with WM6 screenshots): after transferring ARM\filedlgchg.cpl from filedlgchg.zip and ARMRel\gsgetfile.dll from gsgetfile-i.zip to \Windows on your mobile device, go to the new Settings / System / File Dialog Changer applet and just check in “Exchange Standard File Dialog”. This will make it possible to peek in anywhere in the file system as can be seen in here.
In addition to the (text-only) story, you may also want to download the image repository (see the “Graphics file” column for all the games you’d like to run). Title graphics and title music files are also downloadable (if present); you will need to separately watch / listen to them from a multimedia player and an image viewer. Hint files, on the other hand, are also handled by the interpreter engine; therefore, you will want to download them too if you do need hints.
Then, just start MagneticWinCE.exe, select File / Open and select the game to play.
The menu of the interpreter is pretty straightforward; in addition to the standard Open / Exit functionality, in Edit / Verb, you can select five predefined verbs to speed up input words. In Display, you can set the size of the images displayed (and whether they’re displayed at all).
The Palm OS Kronos emulator
If you have a Palm OS device, you may have heard of Kronos, an emulator for Magnetic Scrolls, Infocom-style ZMachine, and Scott Adams style adventure games. It’s very advanced: as opposed to the original Windows (and Windows Mobile) version, it supports automaps and popwords.
Unfortunately, it (as of the latest, 1.4.7 version) crashes the current version (1.0.025) of StyleTap, the Palm OS emulator for WM, in the 66% screen mode and, as can be seen in here, in 100% mode, on VGA devices, it uses a low-resolution display. However, if you can live with this (because don’t want to enjoy the images), running Kronos under StyleTap may be a good alternative.
Note that as far as QVGA (low-resolution) Windows Mobile devices are concerned, images are almost invisible on them; example screenshots here and here. However, if you don’t need images at all or can play in 66% mode on QVGA devices, the images are, then, correctly displayed (1 2).
Note that Kronos offers autoload/save features. This is missing from the WM version. The latter, however, supports saving and loading the game state (via the save/load commands) any time.

Ever wanted to know how you can use low-res (176*220) titles on your QVGA phone?

It's a cooool tool, I will try it.

yes, I have been using it for half a year ago, cool thing Worms, Flux Challenge... this tool doesn't know any limitations!!

Ever wanted to know how you can use low-res (176*220) titles on your QVGA phone?

Thanks for this!
I think your contributions should be published in the wiki.
Cheers
JockyW

As you said, it was already posted on MoDaCo ...
But great anyway.

jockyw2001 said:
Thanks for this!
I think your contributions should be published in the wiki.
Cheers
JockyW
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wish I had the time to edit the Wiki... the sole reason I don't publish it is that there would be a LOT of manual editing involved as I couldn't create an automated script to convert everything into the local Wiki format (I had special problems with linked images, which just didn't want to work).

Menneisyys said:
I wish I had the time to edit the Wiki... the sole reason I don't publish it is that there would be a LOT of manual editing involved as I couldn't create an automated script to convert everything into the local Wiki format (I had special problems with linked images, which just didn't want to work).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's what I wanted to add, though this was originaly posted on MoDaCo, I like your thread too for the pictures .
What's the point with the wiki? What's the problem with linked pictures???

KevinSephiroth said:
That's what I wanted to add, though this was originaly posted on MoDaCo, I like your thread too for the pictures .
What's the point with the wiki? What's the problem with linked pictures???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have no time to reedit my articles when crossposting - I do everything with automated scripts. Unfortunately, so far, I haven't been able to come up with a script that would convert my articles 100% to the XDA-Dev Wiki - I had problems with the image conversions. Asmy articles are FULL of images, both linked and inline, it'd require a LOT of work to edit them all before submitting. I wish I had the time for that...

Ever wanted to know how you can use 176*220 titles on your hi-res QVGA MS Smartphone?

Excellent, free registry tracker tool RegLogger released!

I’ve dedicated several articles (for example, THIS) to tracking Registry changes. In addition to the WinDiff-based method I’ve explained, there are also other solutions doing the same; most importantly, SKTracker and the pretty new, free, highly recommended CeRegEditor (see the Registry Editor Bible for more info on the latter).
Now, however, an, in some cases, MUCH better, dynamic tool, RegLogger has been released for both current Windows Mobile platforms: Pocket PC (Windows Mobile Classic / Pro) and Smartphone (Windows Mobile Standard – man, I DO hate these name changes and the subsequent need for ever entering both names...).
It allows for dynamically tracking what changes there have been in the Registry dynamically (in runtime). Just an example of creating a subkey called “menneisyys da king” (see the, in the first screenshot, highlighted “Create” action) and, later, setting a String value “yeah” (see ID 144 in the same screenshot):
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(WM6 VGA Pocket PC screenshot. Note that the value I’ve given to the new string can’t be seen; neither can be seen the full registry tree I’ve attached the new subkey to. These problems might be fixed in the subsequent versions.)
(WM6 QVGA Smartphone screenshot)
(WM2003 PPC screenshot)
(WM5 VGA PPC screenshot showing Resco Registry Editor’s reading out all the Registry values)
Availability, compatibility
Get the PPC / SP version HERE. It’s compatible with all PPC and Smartphone platforms starting with WM2003. Just unZIP the file, transfer its contents to your handheld and run REGLOGGER.exe. To start logging, enable Log / Capture. Note that, on some Smartphones (NOT on my CID / app unlocked WM6 HTC Vox / s710!) you might also need to import TestCert_Privileged.cer, should you encounter authentication problems.

Tips
Because of the HUGE amount of Registry access going on all the time, there are two text input fields and some checkboxes in Log / Settings you will need to make extensive use of.
First, if you’re absolutely sure the app you’re running and would like to track its Registry changes doesn’t have any active code in \Windows, which would result in the Registry change you’d like to find out, you can just enter \Windows (feel free to just leave out the leading backslash) to filter out most of the, in this case, unnecessary traffic in the “Exclude processes with this sub-str” as can be seen in the following:
Note that several programs put an executable file under \Windows; for example, Pocket Controller 6’s (the best Windows Mobile device controller app with a brand new remote Registry editor) PCCommLoader.exe under \Windows\StartUp. In these cases, you won’t want to filter out \Windows but, instead, enter PCCommLoader (or a substring of it) to the other text input field, “Include only from processes with sub-str”, as can be seen in the following screenshot:
You can also set which operation you’d like to track; by default, everything is logged, even reading (querying). You’ll most probably want to limit the number of the enabled checkboxes at the bottom.
Finally, you may also save the tracking results to a file using File / Save As. Note that, currently (as of version 1.0), it doesn’t contain the missing for example full Registry tree information either.

That's a really cool program I will use, will enable me to track all those nasty demo version registry entries I have.
BTW do you know of an application to edit .rgu or .hv files, so the kitchen-registry files. Of course you can use the editor but I haven't found any app that shows it in hive-view.

Is there any application for us track our Phone
for family, so we know where the kids are
its for a friend of mine
If someone knows if we can do it on PPC phone
would like to know
Will SmartPhone Tracker do the job
But i think thats just when our phone gets stolen
might jam the phone
Thxs

Database Info

welcome