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"Full source code for "Marv the Miner" released" Discussion |
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 |   jjmontes
Member since: 5/28/2002 From: Spain | |||
Posted - 8/21/2004 7:14:17 PM | ||||
| It's only my opinion but the code is higly undocumented and disordered. Some optimizations are applied but not explained, so you have to guess why some things are done the way they are done. Not a good code to learn from, but at least it shows that a company can succesfully publish software following no methodology. Good if you only want to see a J2ME game. What do you think? | ||||
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| CalvinCoder
Member since: 7/21/2003 From: Oslo, Oslo | |||
Posted - 8/22/2004 5:11:43 AM | ||||
| Yes, I agree and you are of course absolutly right that the code is not well documented and a bit disordered. I should maybe given more background information about the code and the game. However, all this does not mean that its not good to learn from it coz its an excellent game to learn from, even still the code a be a bit complex for new beginners. For those that did not read that in the source code, feel free to contact us at support@digiment.no if you have any questions of whatsoever about the code or any other aspects of J2ME programming or business. Everyone is welcome and we try the best to share our knowledge as far as it goes. Of course code are always much easier to understand when its well commented, but you can of course learn a lot from uncommented code too just by spending some time on the code. No doubt about that. Too many tend to think that they have a source code so in 5 minuts they know all about how to create such game. The code and the game is over 1.5 years old and the game was created over a period of 2.5 months. At the time it was released, it was an excellent high quality game compared to most of the other games in the market. And we had big success with this game (regardless of our methodology ;)). Now you have the full source to such a game, which is rare to find :-) Despite the bad documentation/commenting in the code and that the code is a bit disordered, there are a few things to pick up from the game for some people at least: 1) Its a full source to a good platform game for the J2ME platform. The game contains many nice features which might or might not be interesting to learn how is done, even if many things could have been done a lot better, but what does not do that after its creation? 2) Marv the Miner pushes the memory usage to its limits on the Nokia Series 30 and 40 phones (which has up to ~200 kb heap) and the code is a good reference in some aspects to learn how to handle memory defragmentation problems that appears on Series 30 or 40 phone when you push the memory to its limits and load and unload 32 levels during the course of game. 3) The game contains a very simple scripting system for configuration script A small flaw in the game is that the game creates a quite big backbuffer for drawing the level on, wich limits some of the devices the game can run on. We released only the source code of the game under GPL due to the fact that the game still sells very good. We will still soon release the game too under GPL togehter with its simple level editor. About methodology or not, I am pretty sure that you dont have much knowledge what you are talking about there ;P Coz regardless of that, I can assure you that our success with mobile games goes far beyond that ;) And again, if you have downloaded the source code and have any questions about it, feel free to contact us at support@digiment.no if you like, or of course if you have any other questions. We will be happy to help as far as it goes. Next source code release will be better commented, we promise :) | ||||
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| jjmontes
Member since: 5/28/2002 From: Spain | |||
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Posted - 8/22/2004 11:43:18 AM | ||||
Quote: My fault. I shouldn't have written that, sorry. Of course that issue goes beyond my knowledge. Still I think that the more difficult part is to figure out how some optimizations are applied. I think that everybody appreciates this kind of initiatives, so complaining may sound egoist, but think about a short "code guide" next time ;). And, though my comment may be more or less constructive, thank you for releasing it! | ||||
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| wayneleone
Member since: 4/14/2004 | |||
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Posted - 8/23/2004 8:03:26 AM | ||||
| Thanks for the code. I'm still reading through it at the moment. However there were 2 large issues that I have with the code. Firstly, it's not readily portable as its written for NokiaUI. Secondly, it's not readily localisable as its littered with hardcoded english text. How do u handle these issues? Thanks Wayne. | ||||
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| cdoty
Member since: 7/14/2000 From: Sugar Land, TX | |||
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Posted - 8/23/2004 10:01:07 AM | ||||
Quote: Could you release a downloadable version of the game, so that we could purchase the game, and use the graphics for playing around with the code? | ||||
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| CalvinCoder
Member since: 7/21/2003 From: Oslo, Oslo | |||
Posted - 8/23/2004 1:42:31 PM | ||||
Quote: Nope, the code is not written only for Nokia API. Just uncomment the line with Canvas and comment out the line with FullCanvas and you have a MIDP version of the game. The rest of the stuff, like vibrating etc, the code checks by itself to see what API is present. We have of course a much more extensive and better framework for this which automatically creates Canvas or FullCanvas etc too, however, due to lack of storeage space and memory, that code was stripped away and just some simple parts are left of it in Miner. The game has though one small flaw which limits some of the regular MIDP phone the game can run on, and that is that there is created a quite big backbuffer for drawing the whole level. Quote: Yes, Miner has hardcoded text. Its a very old game and we never localzied it. However, two newest games Racing Destruction and Winter Sports (both multi player games through ghosting) are localized to 7 languages so far. There we store all text in resources files. | ||||
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| CalvinCoder
Member since: 7/21/2003 From: Oslo, Oslo | |||
Posted - 8/23/2004 1:49:37 PM | ||||
Quote: The game is available in many countries around the world through different carriers and content providers, but the game is pretty old now (over 1.5 years old) so it might maybe not be so easy to find. Else the game is available from our WEB page through premium SMS in some countries, credit card and paypal if you want to purchase it. For those that do not want to spend 4 euro on the game, we will within "short" time release the game under GPL maybe together with its level editor. We have demo version of the game, though this is a full version just with some number of play limits created for some carriers and its unlikely that we will release this demo version before we release the game under GPL. [Edited by - CalvinCoder on August 23, 2004 1:49:43 PM] | ||||
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