This version’s a beta which I whipped together last night, so there are a couple of known issues to be aware of which are detailed on Autowhack’s Shinypixel Labs page.

First up – with the help of another enthusiatic coder – here’s a couple of (admittedly as yet unexciting) proof-of-concept applications running under the OpenLazarus (that’s Pascal/Delphi for people old/mad enough to remember) framework for Maemo 5.  I didn’t do much but test and run these, so here’s the results:

OpenLazarus app running on Maemo 5 using standard widgets

OpenLazarus app running under Maemo 5 using Custom Widgets

…and then there’s what I’ve been fiddling with.  Thanks to the frankly magnificent Wonko from the talk.maemo.org forums, we have a working Java/SWT stack for the phone.  That means that my ShinySlots project can run out of the box and look like this:

You can see that the forced window-size has exposed my slightly-cheating repeating background, and sadly it’s not that performant at the moment, but it works as advertised, and improvements are in hand…

Still: dogged persistence, luck and some mild swearing cobbled together the following:

So, this is DownTheTubes rejigged to work in the new SDK, and running in the “Device Simulator”.  The simulator doesn’t simulate the actual OS, hence the incorrect title and the scrollbars which won’t be there in the actual N900 version (that map is finger-scrollable, y’see.)   Still, work can begin again, although I can’t do any performance testing until PR1.2 is released.  The main thing at the moment is that hoofing a massive bitmap around the screen is rather hard on the processor, though I think I’ve worked around that now.

DownTheTubes can be found on Shinypixel Labs too.

Autowhack 0.3 is now available.

(Usual disclaimer applies.  May turn your cat green, but it’s pretty unlikely.)

There’s also DownTheTubes, which is a little experiment of mine in the world of Maemo 5 development for my Nokia N900.  It’s a map for giving you a tube map and status in a convenient little package; it’s kinda working but nowhere near being finished, but it ‘s got its own page now.

(Click for full-size.)

So: that’s Shinypixel up there being rendered as it would be on (an old version of) a N900, in a virtualized Maemo OS, running in a virtual image of Ubuntu, which is in turn running in VMWare under Windows XP.  And after all that, it still renders like it’s meant to.  Look how far we’ve come.

Well, that was probably the geekiest thing I’ll do all month.  I reckon I ought to go and lie down.

It’s a bit of a chore to concatenate and squash Javascript manually – it’s of course possible with some of batch-file magic and the YUI Compressor, but whilst tweaking my 3rd .bat file it did occur to me that computing has moved on since Windows 95, and us client-side developers have enough hassle to deal with anyway.

So, it’s a fairly simple GUI around the YUI Compressor, which will watch any root directory you specify and check at regular intervals to see whether anything’s changed.  If it has, it’ll find all the *.js files in the directory, whack them all together and then minify them into a filename of your choice.  Load it up, choose your directory, click “Start” and you’re away.  Closing the app doesn’t stop it working, but pops it into your system tray so you don’t have to have it hanging about in your taskbar.

It’ll be available for Windows & Linux as they’re fairly easy to put together – sorting out a package for OSX is quite awkward so that’s on the backburner for now.

It’ll be up for download in Shinypixel Labs presently, after I’ve tidied up a couple of bits and bobs.

Now, I don’t need to argue the case for getting one – Genesises Megadrives were awesome, so of course you should – but I’d like to ruminate on the games that come packaged with it.

You too can have oversaturated animals in your pocket for a low, low price!

There’s a copy of the Sega Genesis Collection on my PSP games shelf, so I’ve got something to compare the Portable’s packaged-in listing with.  Interestingly, quite a lot of the games are the same between the two, particularly a lot of the older titles.  Unfortunately what a lot of these have in common is that they’re terrible:  Flicky (Chuckie Egg but with more green and less gameplay), Ecco Jr. (great for kids, not so for late 20-somethings), Decap Attack (a port of Magical Hat Adventure with much worse graphics) and Altered Beast (“wise fwom your gwave” to witness some bone-crunchingly bad game design decisions) languish at the bottom of the barrel.  Alex Kidd, Kid Chameleon and Golden Axe all contain similarly stiff platforming, yet manage to retain enough charm to see the player through to the end.

Other classics have stood the test of time well; Ecco The Dolphin is as enjoyable as ever and Bonanza Bros remains unique, if short.  Shinobi III is one of the best games of both collections (though infinite shurikens are essential, natch.)  Sega have been packaging the ancient Columns with every new system since the dawn of time (I’m looking at you, Mega CD Classics Collection) and the handheld also bundles Puyo-Puyo clone Dr Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine which will no doubt please pretty-square-movers everywhere.

The handheld gets excellent treatment on the Sonic front with both Sonic & Knuckles and the under-loved Sonic Spinball present.   While you could argue that the PSP’s Sonic 1 & Sonic 2 have intrinsic classic value (and better music), S & K was one of the most inventive of the 2D series, and Spinball brought, against all odds, pinball and platform puzzling together, with a rough-around-the-edges feel that was most unlike any of the others, and makes me particularly jealous that the PSP doesn’t have it.

That seems to be about as modern as it gets for the handheld, though – the PSP collection includes on the other hand the excellent Ristar, the Vectorman series and even Virtua Fighter (!)  The average age of the handheld games is higher, which I assume is down to increased licensing costs on newer games.

Still, all said and done, the Portable Genesis doesn’t look like a bad investment; there’s a bunch of other games I haven’t mentioned due to lack of knowledge or opinion, and $50 is half the price that I paid for the full version of Lemmings in the mid-90s* and you’re getting 20 games plus something to play it on.  What’s not to like?  Except that it’s not available in the UK of course…

* I’d just like to say that Lemmings was not worth anywhere near the price tag.  Hate me all you like, but you’re wrong.

]]> http://shinypixel.co.uk/2009/10/04/is-that-a-megadrive-in-your-pocket-or-are-you-just-pleased-to-see-me/feed/ 0 http://shinypixel.co.uk/2009/07/07/well-this-is-embarrassing/ http://shinypixel.co.uk/2009/07/07/well-this-is-embarrassing/#comments Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:36:06 +0000 Rik http://shinypixel.co.uk/?p=367 Not a message I’d expect to get from a web browser.  Still, Firefox gave me this this morning:

(Yes, I’ve removed the actual tabs.  No, they were just a bunch of 90s YouTube music videos.)

I was going to package up the existing Sage-Too .xpi, but while following the discussion around the net I noticed that Sage-Too has been replaced by Sage++ that runs on 3.5, which as far as I can tell is by one of the Sage-Too authors, Higgmer.

I’ve had it installed for the day or so since I found it, and I can report that it’s working perfectly.  So, for everyone that’s been looking here for a decent RSS reader again, it’s a pleasure to send you over there to Higgmer.

Get Sage++ (Higgmer’s Edition)
(Click “Switch To English” at the top-right, then installation instructions are halfway down)

RSS nirvana restored!  Let me know how you get on.

So, I upgraded to Firefox 3.5 RC3 today.  I was disappointed (though not at all surprised) to see that my second-favourite add-on (after the essential Oldbar) had stopped working.  The Sage-Too Firefox RSS Reader extension is packaged to run with 3.0b5 to 3.0.*, it seems.

The good news is that manually repackaging the plugin and reinstalling it with 3.5 does work fine.  As far as I can see the project is orphaned – a real shame in my opinion – so if anyone’s interested in a copy, leave a comment here and I’ll whack a page up with instructions (and perhaps even a copy if I can make sure the authors won’t mind.)

A particular part of said ecosystem is AnyFont, which does for WordPress excellently something that I’ve found myself hacking into various blog systems over the years – replacing headings with nice textual images.  When I installed it I found that it didn’t do multi-line titles – which is why the first few blog entries on Shinypixel have short titles – so I got my hands dirty, coded it in and sent the changes off to the author.

My code has now made it into the 0.7 release, which as well as supporting multiline images now also supports OpenType fonts for your images.  Many thanks to Ryan for being friendly and accepting my patches.  Now you too can have multiline titles as premiered on shinypixel.co.uk!

Questions?  Suggestions?  Just drop me a comment.

I don’t use them as much as I should do.  Why?  Sony’s platform-itis.  Whether it’s MiniDisc, ATRAC3 or UMD, they’re determined to lock people into their own software platforms as far as possible.  Apple do this all the time of course, and although I don’t like them either, I will concede that iTunes does for the most part actually work.

Sony’s SonicStage/Sony Connect/OpenMG Jukebox has always been rubbish.  Various grades thereof, but still rubbish.  OpenMG Jukebox used to crash arbitrarily on any MP3 that wasn’t crafted by flaxen-haired audio angels using anvils of the finest mythical diamonds, Sony Connect was slow and only in recent releases has the experience become anywhere near pleasant.

So it was with some rapture that I stumbled across JSymphonic tonight.  Aside from the usual open-source lack of visual polish, and some minor UI confusion (which reading the documentation fixed) it’s been plain sailing. If you’ve got some nice-looking but irritating-to-synchronize devices hanging around, then I heartily recommend using this to rediscover them – my Network Walkman is happily charging away for the first time this year.