I'm looking for some feedback on a game I'm developing for both WM and Windows. It is written in C# on .Net so the same executable runs on both platforms.

At this point the basics of the game are done, I just need input on the parameters on gameplay, i.e., is it too hard, etc.

The game is called Frantic, and is available to download from http://www.cs.pitt.edu/~jmisurda/ppc/fr ... rantic.zip

Unzip and copy to you WM device or play on your PC. Both will require the .NET (Compact) Framework 2 to be installed.

The game is played as follows:



There are 6 hexagons that surround a center hex in which a colored wedge appears. Your task is to place it in one of the surrounding hexes before the timer bar fills up. A wedge can only be placed in a hex that has that particular wedge empty.

When a wedge fills up, regardless of the colors of the wedges, it is cleared. If the timer runs out before you place the wedge, you lose a life, and a new wedge is generated with the timer reset.

The colors account for scoring and bonuses. If you complete a wedge with a single color, you will gain an extra life. Additionally, if you complete a wedge of the same color in one of the hexes with a bonus button next to it, that bonus becomes available to be used.

The bonuses are: nuke - clears all of the wedges, slow - halves the timer speed for 5 seconds, and trash - discards the current wedge without losing a life.

The other thing that color contributes to is how many points you get for placing a wedge in a hex. If you place a wedge in a hex that is the same color as the previous wedge, you get double the points as for placing the previous one.

For example: empty hex, add one red, +1 points. add another red +2 more points. add a third red, +4 points. If we now add a green wedge, that is only +1 points.

A completed hex is worth 6 points.

A new level happens at 64, 128, 256,... points and decreases the amount of time you have to place a wedge. A fourth color, purple, is added when you reach level 5.

The current version is gameplay complete but needs tweaked for difficulty. I will likely add three levels of difficulty that tweaks the speeds.

I also will add a highscore table.

Right now it won't support landscape or square screen devices. It is VGA compatable though.

I am seeking beta testers to suggest gameplay ideas, and to spot any bugs that might be in the game. You can just post in this thread with your suggestions/bug reports/etc.

Thanks.

Jon

I was enamored with one of the Today Screen plugins on the new WM Treo, of which you can see a screenshot here:
http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/index.p ... ilable.htm

The plugin allows you to search the web from the today screen. This seemed useful, and I wonder why no one ever thought of it before. I've often debated which to leave my homepage on in PIE, yahoo for me to check my mail and the like, or google, to do quick info lookups. Yahoo has won, but now I could have the best of both worlds.

I decided to try to write a clone of such a plugin, and here's my result:



This is a 1.0/beta version that I'd like people to help me test out. It's not configurable, it will only search google. There are some issues with the Keyboard popping/not popping/not disappearing that I need to work on, and there may be some version and theme problems.

Basically, I'd like to hear from you if it works. I'm not sure if it will work on devices that use anything earlier than WM2003SE. If that's the case, I'll work on fixing that.

You can install it via cab here: http://www.cs.pitt.edu/~jmisurda/ppc/Se ... ay.ARM.CAB

Download/Copy it to your device, install, and enable it from the Today settings applet. There will be an improved installer in the future as well. To uninstall, you'll first have to uncheck it from the today settings applet, then uninstall.

Let me know how it works, and give some suggestions for future versions.

Thanks,

Jon

Upgrading my x50v to WM5 has certainly been an experience. There have been a lot of good suggestions to help improve its usability. One of them involves stopping ActiveSync from starting every 5 minutes by creating a fake server to connect to so you can update the synch schedule.

I wondered how it was restarting every 5 minutes, so I looked in one place I know starts tasks at certain times, and that's in the scheduled task/notifications database. I used a tool from PHM PowerToys and saw two entries for replog.exe which is the ActiveSync service.

One of these two was for this program to begin on Rs232 connect. Rs232 is a serial port, so I knew this was necessary to launch ActiveSync on cradling.

The other was a new one: RunAtRndisFnDetected. I thought maybe this was a source of the constant restarting. So I deleted it. Then I discovered that ActiveSync wouldn't start properly when cradled. Oops.

Rather than hard reset I decided I'd just write a program to restore the proper event. That program can be found here:

http://www.cs.pitt.edu/~jmisurda/ppc/FixASRunAt.zip

You don't need this if you haven't done exactly what I did, but if you're an experimenter like me and accidently did this, I'm putting up this program to avoid a hard reset. The notification is added back when you click OK.

Jon