Database Info

Windows CE

Hi all, hope u had a nice week-end
I have resuscitated an old HP Jornada, and I was wondering if one can still find softwares for windows CE. Especially games, even basic ones since it is intended for use by my kids.
Thank you and take care

i believe that games for the cpu will work
as in if it have an arm cpu arm based games will work
and if it's mips mips games will work
games are typicaly written in asm directly for the cpu and the os dont mean that much

Redugar - I don't mean to be rude but are you leaving in the 80s?
No one has bee writing games or anything other than drivers and other OS / basic components using assembler in over a decade and a half!
It's way way too much work and not at all necessary.
But you are right about one thing - I've seen on some freeware sites like www.pocketpcfreeware.com apps that were compiled for CE2.11 so yes I do believe there is a good chance to find a few games.

Thanks folks for your replies.
I've tried very "basic" games like ICBM, but they won't run.
Visual basic stuff works provided one downloads the appropriate dll.
Will keep searching.
Take care,

well i may still look like this
http://thor.mirtna.org/features/titular_movie_themes_limahl.jpg
but my dukenukeem3d and warcraft2 are just in dirs on my sd card and they run under wm2002 to wm2005 3.5AKU without even a reinstall
so they are not really taking advantage of any newer features of the os
same with this doomCE port
http://www.revolution.cx/DoomCE.htm

levenum said:
Redugar - I don't mean to be rude but are you leaving in the 80s?
No one has bee writing games or anything other than drivers and other OS / basic components using assembler in over a decade and a half!
It's way way too much work and not at all necessary.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check out SmartGear (see my emulation-related articles) and the new Pocket QuickView ( http://www.modaco.com/Pocket-QuickView-40-looking-for-ideas-t255364.html )
The mission-critical sections were all written in assembly. This is why it's WAY faster than any other, C-based emulators / image viewers.

maybe using gcc for arm to some some nativ arm code would also have less overhead then win32 stk
though not sure how many libs would be required to be linked to so could end up a drag

Ok, I know when I am bitten but I am just no willing to quit!
(Just to reiterate - to 80's remark was meant in good fun and not intended as an insult, plus this was written late at night after a long work day)
Any way it does make sense that for high speed some graphics rendering routines will be written in assembler (note that unfortunately eVC tools do not include inline assembler so modules have to be compiled separately and then linked)
I do remember taking a peak at the DOOM port and it is mostly C. (Though I am sure it has assembler sections).
What I was trying to say is this:
a) You can't write a whole game like DOOM in assembler only in reasonable time.
b) Even assembler modules need to be eventually linked in to an executable so the OS (what ever it is) can load them - and here is the problem. Every exe has a header that states what processor and what OS it is designed for. Even if your app does not use new OS features, but is linked using a higher OS SDK settings the exe header will contain a version number unknown to the OS and it will refuse to load stating that it is "illegal file".
A less prehistoric example would be files compiled with WM 6 SDK refusing to run on WM 5 despite the fact that there is almost no difference in the OS.

"(Just to reiterate - to 80's remark was meant in good fun and not intended as an insult, plus this was written late at night after a long work day)"
dont think anybody took it any other way at least i did
what i should had said maybe rather then that they were in pure asm
then maybe that they were not that depending on the os and version of the os itselfs
and maybe of those fps like doom and nuke3d and such
are ports of old dos games where that was more the custom then later on when windows gaming took off

does any one remember CHIPS challenge

does any one on here remember the game Chips Challange??? if not i have posted a copy of the game is there any way that some one can tell me how i can get it on my phone to play...

Of course I remember it
But, it's a very old game now (was originally made for Windows 3.1), and also, normal Windows apps don't work on Windows Mobile. Unless someone makes a clone of it for Windows Mobile, you won't be able to get it on your phone
Good idea, for any game developers reading this.

i love that damn game and it always seems like it changes everytime i play it

had it on the atari lynx, think it was the game that came with it, quality tho!

[REQ:] [3D] OpenGL Demo Competition and Developer Support

Seeing all the buzz'nfuzz about the OpenGL capabillities of this phone,
I pledge in this thread to ask developers to write a small howto on OpenGL
programming for this device. Not gamers per definition, but demo's.
A "demo" means an application that shows the skill of the programmer, and the performance of the device.
Looking at the work of vanKurt with his "tea-app"
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=588650
and other openGL projects , I wonder if we can re-live the 80's in highres this time, hence,
I vote to start a demo competition !
Would like to hear from the pro's, the amateurs and the users if there's
any momentum to be gained here.
EDIT : poll question should read: "you are <20 years old"

I'm thinking this might be pretty cool... I have a base set up for OpenGLES 1 programs that I can release the code for if people want?
It's bloody slow on the HD2, so I'll see if I can make it work using a different setup, but it is at least a base for people to work from.

That would definately be interesting. The sad thing is: so far I only developed OpenGL ES 1.0 stuff. And for reasons I don't understand it all runs slow as hell on my HD2 (as mentioned above).
Thus I'm a little stuck at the moment. I have no clue how to migrate the code to OpenGL ES 2.0 (which is hopefully the solution???), so right now I can't contribute anything running > 10 FPS
Strangly there are some 3D game demos (XTRACT, Experiment 13, Electopia) which run absolutely smooth on the HD2. So as soon as this "miracle" is resolved we can get started....

OK let's jumpstart
If you both could post your work and your devsuite tools we can try and see if we can get started. Having a few users try, fail, ask and succeed seems a good idea.
Thanks for helping out.

VanKurt said:
That would definately be interesting. The sad thing is: so far I only developed OpenGL ES 1.0 stuff. And for reasons I don't understand it all runs slow as hell on my HD2 (as mentioned above).
Thus I'm a little stuck at the moment. I have no clue how to migrate the code to OpenGL ES 2.0 (which is hopefully the solution???), so right now I can't contribute anything running > 10 FPS
Strangly there are some 3D game demos (XTRACT, Experiment 13, Electopia) which run absolutely smooth on the HD2. So as soon as this "miracle" is resolved we can get started....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Experiment 13 is using OpenGLES1, not 2, as is Manila, so clearly the hardware and drivers are up to it...

It might be worth having a look at the Silvermoon UI code over at codeplex. It was written using OpenGL and is open source, so could prove useful to people.

evorgevol said:
It might be worth having a look at the Silvermoon UI code over at codeplex. It was written using OpenGL and is open source, so could prove useful to people.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's also very smooth... Will take a lot at the source code and try and work out why...
Will also film it when I can get a camera, and do a comparison with a Diamond and a few other applications...

Hi guys
I've tried getting the 3 games mentioned above ... but can't ... they've either been pulled from the XDA threads or they are on rapidshare which says I can't download because I'm downloading something already ... and I've not downloaded anything from it for months.
Cheers
Paul.

Has anyone tried OpenTK (Open Toolkit). Using their OpenGL ES bindings?
Or is pure c++ the way forward?

It's a great idea! I won't be joining myself though, as for all my driver patches for various platforms and such, I still struggle with drawing a rotating triangle
(I really should get into that, but time is always a restricting factor)
Looking forward to what you guys can come up with!

Why does so much crapware exist for Windows Mobile OS?

I never understood it because it seems to contradict itself.
One thing I hear a lot of is how hard it is to program for Windows Mobile devices. That it just isn't developer friendly as long as graphics and commands go. Can't say I know much about this since I'm not a developer.
Still at the same time I see a lot of crapware. By this I mean programs that are just constant repeats of each other and sometimes it's just a crappy do nothing program. Don't get me wrong I know developers take time and work to do what they do, but OMG some of the programs are complete crap. The games are sometimes nothing more than sprites taken from other games with a simple jump/shoot interface added to them. Apps that make fart sounds. 20 apps that schedule tasks. 100 clock apps. 1 millions custom UIs. etc. Constant same things that in the end don't really make the Windows Mobile OS anymore appealing. What confuses me is if programs are really that hard to develop then why are so many people able to create and recreate the crapware that we see nowaday?

I think one of the main reasons is that
1) Windows Mobile has been around for so long, the crap just build up
2) (no idea about this) I'd guess that if you can write a program for Windows, Windows mobile is not that much harder, so a greater number of people know how to write ****ty programs.
The one nice thing about iPhone is the market place is so crap free, though I'd rather have to wade through the crap to find the priceless gems then have someone else decide what I could and could not have on my device.

Moved as not software release.
Even with just reading topic header all that came to my head is least you don't have an iphone as then there's a amazing amount

As someone with experience of what it's like to develop apps for Windows Mobile I can shed a little light on it. One of the problems is what Microsoft provide to developers - called the compact framework - i.e. it's toolkit for building program interfaces. The interfaces it produces are very basic at best, and if you want to do anything clever (e.g. gradients, transparency, iphone style animated menus, image buttons, etc. etc.) you have jump through a lot of hoops.
Developers should be able to concentrate on writing what makes their app good, and not worry about having to make the interface looking good - that should be Microsoft's job. Unfortunately Microsoft have only provided very basic looking stuff. That'll change with windows phone 7 though.
Of course (and to defend Microsoft slightly) the iphone is easier for apple to support developers as it is one phone - whereas windows mobile is multiple screen resolutions, multiple OS versions, different processors, different manufacturers.... etc. Again why Microsoft are moving to a more defined hardware platform with windows phone 7 specs.
But it is possible to right really good/fancy interfaces for windows mobile - I like to think I do - but that's not through any support from Microsoft. To write a fancy animated menu with nice blending of colours and animated zooms and swishing left and right etc. etc. on the iphone takes 5 minutes. To do the equivalent on Windows Mobile took me about a month of writing my own GUI toolkit.
When it comes to games there's no excuse - the fact I can run playstation games such as Tekken 3 on my HD2 shows that it's capable of amazing things. The games companies need to stop shunting rubbish.
Ian

stylez said:
Moved as not software release.
Even with just reading topic header all that came to my head is least you don't have an iphone as then there's a amazing amount
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd consider this to be true too, but the only thing I can say is that at least they have a considerable amount of games and apps that are new, newer looking and some more useful than others here. I personally don't like iPhone and own an HD2, but I just notice how useless so many apps are whenever I look through the apps section in Handango, PocketGear and WM Marketplace. Not to mention how outdated most of them are too.

you guys forget that there are alot of windows ce 5 devices still in exsistence and they are still alive and kiking.... sort of...
as for the newer devices i love what they have done with htc hardware... altho the OS updates culd be readialy available to us mortals
as for the crapware.... you can allways uninstall the program or never run it if it came with your phone....
id like to say that the sence ui is mostly a bothersome resorce hog that i shut down every time i hard reset or try to get a rom that dosent have it cooked in, it culd also be considered as crapware....

[Q] Anyone working on a Gameboy Advance emulator?

Let me preface this by saying I already suggested this idea in the DEV POOL sticky of software development. Unfortunately that thread receives very little attention and my question would be better placed here.
Anyways: Currently WP7 has two emulators (at least that I know of) and they are for the NES and classic Gameboy. Unfortunately, we are missing some really great ones like Gameboy Advance (I still have all my Pokemon games from it), SNES, and N64. You may not be aware, but the Zune HD actually had a partially working Gameboy Advance emulator. The Zune HD possess far lower specs then new WP7 devices, even the first generation devices. The original iPhone 3GS can also emulate Gameboy Advance games and its specs are also a lot lower then current WP7 devices.
I'm curious as to why this hasn't been worked on (at least talked about). I understand that code could be a problem, but the Zune HD I'm sure had similar problems on a far lesser known platform with even less developers and still had some form of Gameboy Advance emulator. Also, native code of some kind is achievable now, correct?
Anyways, I'm just curious if anyone else would like to see this/know if something is in the works. If it is of any help, here is the link to the Zune HD Gameboy Advance emualtor; they even have the source code listed: http://code.google.com/p/visual-boy-zune/

Currently there are several issues with emulation on WP7.
1) The lack of hardware access (XNA)
2) Managed languages and the inability to remove excessive runtime safety checks (like bounds checking) makes it very hard to have efficient rendering and sound generation.
3) The lack of native code access and not allowing for unsafe code in managed languages
While technically you can run native code through COM, it would be a huge amount of work porting an existing emulator over that way and it would be limited to fully unlocked devices.
I do know a few people that has been toying with SNES or even GBA emulation for WP7, but in the end they've given up, because of the inability to have it running at any reasonable speed. Which is very understandable considering how slow it is to run an interpreted emulator inside an VM when u have no way remove safety checks or compile code on the fly.
I honestly don't see any of these things changing for WP7, considering how little to none extra API access that we've been given since the Mango SDK.
But looking at Windows 8 and the Metro style API's, Microsoft would be complete idiots to not bring the same set of languages (native/managed) c++/c# (with unsafe code!)/js to WP8 and native access to directx etc. So none of the WP7 issues would be present.
N64/PSX...that would require a whole set of even lower level hardware access.
So in short; The lack of native or unsafe code access is why u don't have a gba/snes emulator on wp7

Nudua said:
Currently there are several issues with emulation on WP7.
1) The lack of hardware access (XNA)
2) Managed languages and the inability to remove excessive runtime safety checks (like bounds checking) makes it very hard to have efficient rendering and sound generation.
3) The lack of native code access and not allowing for unsafe code in managed languages
While technically you can run native code through COM, it would be a huge amount of work porting an existing emulator over that way and it would be limited to fully unlocked devices.
I do know a few people that has been toying with SNES or even GBA emulation for WP7, but in the end they've given up, because of the inability to have it running at any reasonable speed. Which is very understandable considering how slow it is to run an interpreted emulator inside an VM when u have no way remove safety checks or compile code on the fly.
I honestly don't see any of these things changing for WP7, considering how little to none extra API access that we've been given since the Mango SDK.
But looking at Windows 8 and the Metro style API's, Microsoft would be complete idiots to not bring the same set of languages (native/managed) c++/c# (with unsafe code!)/js to WP8 and native access to directx etc. So none of the WP7 issues would be present.
N64/PSX...that would require a whole set of even lower level hardware access.
So in short; The lack of native or unsafe code access is why u don't have a gba/snes emulator on wp7
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well that is mighty unfortunate. I'm assuming the current emulators work because they don't need much power to run? Also is it XNA that allowed for the Zune HD to emulate the Gameboy Advance?
I thank you for your time in answering my question, hopefully Windows 8 will change this current situation.

ErikWithNoC said:
Well that is mighty unfortunate. I'm assuming the current emulators work because they don't need much power to run? Also is it XNA that allowed for the Zune HD to emulate the Gameboy Advance?
I thank you for your time in answering my question, hopefully Windows 8 will change this current situation.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know much about the Zune HD, but from looking at the GBA project, it's using native code (OpenZDK?) and not XNA.
Current emulators work because most run at 20/30fps and the emulation of 8bit consoles is less demanding. Also most emulators are written in native languages, making it much harder to port over to WP7.
If WP8 is anything like W8 and Microsoft continues to allow emulators, I'm sure we'll see a lot of emulators for WP8.

The ZuneHD was never hacked at all. If I remember correctly (and I was big on the Zune scene), the Zune devices had far superior security software that was never cracked. Not saying it wouldn't have been possible if more people cared about development for the Zune (it had nowhere near as much following as iPhone and iPod).
Microsoft never gave out a full SDK for the Zune, only access to limited functions in XDA. There wasn't even support for 3D games...
But Zune fanatics were able to find a more "back door" method to hacking the Zune. They created OpenZDK, which allowed for more access to what the Zune can really do. It was almost like a partial hack (which you'd be used to if you're in the PSP hacking scene).
Through OpenZDK, you were able to develop software that better used the Zune's potential (that MS never tapped into). Developers could make 3D games, and even make an emulator. Now my ZuneHD crapped out on me before I could try the GBA emulator, but I used the crap out of it when it was just GB/GBC. I still prefer it over anything I've used on iOS and Android. The only downfalls were that you had to save the normal way, no fast forward, and no sound.
If Microsoft had given more freedom for developers in XNA, then they would have used that to make VBZ and it'd probably be easier to port to Windows Phone.
Microsoft just really messed up with the Zune.

whats the best open source GBA emulator? it would be interesting to use NFC and the Local Wireless to emulate Link functionality. I tried to port a GBA emulator to WP7 XNA but it failed, now with native code, i want to try it in metro.

No$GBA, but I'm not sure
Please try it to make a gba emulator for windowsphone

MaryJane420 said:
No$GBA, but I'm not sure
Please try it to make a gba emulator for windowsphone
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm going to make one for windows 8 metro, then I can attempt to port it over.