ScottFree J2ME Mobile Phone Edition 1.18 Beta 1 "The Count" Requirements ------------ Mobile phone with CLDC >= 1.0 and MIDP >= 1.0 (most phones supporting Java). You will also need about 96K of heap which may be a problem on some early phones. Installation ------------ Put the .jad and .jar files somewhere, load on your phone and enjoy. If you need to recompile it you'll need a java compiler, MIDP development kit and preverifier, all of which can be downloaded from Sun although its evil non-free stuff. If you want to install over the air point your phone at http://www.linux.org.uk/~alan/ScottFree.jad This will get you the latest snapshot I've deployed. That may be good or bad depending on the beta state. Please also let me know what phones it works on and how well it works. MIDP UI leaves a lot of things up in the air so some incompatibilities or unpleasant behaviour would not suprise me. Features -------- Adaptive GUI: The dislay model changes according to the display size available. On a tiny display such as a Nokia 6320 the game switches to "dual screen" mode. This displays the top window of the traditional Scott Adams display whenever it updated, and then prompts the user. How well it works varies by game. On better phone sized displays the game engine switches to a single scrolling display containing all the data. The current implementation doesn't support scrollback however. On largish displays such as PDA devices the game uses the original "split screen" display format. Quick Commands: The game engine recognizes 'N', 'E', 'S', 'W', 'U', and 'D' for moving in directions. In addition if your phone has a game controller/joystick type unit that also allows movement. Wide Support: Uses no MIDP2.0 features that would exclude older phones. Strict UI/Engine Seperation: Should allow future support of other Java device types (television anyone ;) like applets without changes to the game engine. Limitations ----------- Currently the game engine has several limitations. The first is the lack of save and load game. This will be implemented later on. The user interface also has limitations. While Scott wrote for machines with relatively limited displays, they are an order of magnitude superior to most phones, and with real keyboards. The "type" button is a result of this limitation. In future I will look at better support of native QWERTY keyboard devices. Compile Options --------------- The binaries included were built with the Sun J2ME environment configured for CLDC 1.0, MIDP 1.0 and no extensions. Licenses -------- ScottFree J2ME Mobile Edition Beta is licensed under the GNU Public License. As a specific exemption due to the way the game engine works you are permitted to link the game engine and game database into the executable as if this combining of the two seperate works was 'mere aggregation'. This exception is neccessary to make clear that the linking we do in this case is a quirk of the constrained J2ME environment rather than linking in the normal sense of the GPL. The Count is (C) Copyright Scott Adams. The Scott Adams original text Adventure games are still copyrighted by Scott Adams and are not Public Domain. They may be downloaded and enjoyed though. For more information on Scott Adams visit http://www.msadams.com, and if you enjoyed his game please bug Scott to add a paypal donations button to his website. Future ------ Save/Restore. Add "Are you sure" to the Exit button. Preferences. Splash Screen. Providing the .jar file will fit graphics are very easy to do on MIDP mobile phone platforms although it is unclear how much use they would be on the smaller "postage stamp" displays. There is a tool for converting games into .java files (I didn't do the database merging by hand). Thus it should be possible to generate the complete set of games once the beta bugs are knocked out. I'd still like to get Colossal Cave into a Nokia 6230...