S60 Open to new features

I read over on N-Gage Future Watch that the Nintendo Wiimote controller could be used to control N95 (N95 runs on S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1). Since I have a Wii at home I was pretty excited about the possibility of using my Wiimote with my S60 3rd edition FP1 devices. A group of university students created a Wiimote driver for S60 called WiiConnect, that allows a Wiimote and an S60 3rd edition FP1 device to connect and communicate with the Wiimote via Bluetooth. The students also made a motorcycle racing Java game called WiiRider that communicates with the Wiimote and lets you control the racer using the Wiimote as a steering wheel. The accelerometer in the Wiimote is used to measure the movements and if you hit any cows or logs in the game the Wiimote vibrates. For those of you that are curious how this was done the sourcecode is available for both the S60 Wiimote driver and the Java game. The download and further description of the game are available from Symbian Resources.

I brought my Wiimote into work and tried it out with the N95. It worked really well! In the WiiConnect driver there is even a test mode to activate the vibrate and LEDs on the Wiimote or view X, Y, Z coordinates of the Wiimote. The only part of the Wiimote that I did not see utilized was the speaker. Audio from the game could have been played from the Wiimotes speaker making the game even more interactive. I showed several of my coworkers and most said that it was cool. A couple of guys on the software integration team were especially interested, they said maybe the Java game could be modified to take input from the accelerometer in the actual S60 device instead of the Wiimote. Accelerometers are in many S60 devices (N95, N93i, N93, etc.), mostly used for detecting if a landscape or portrait photo is being taken with the camera. This would mean that you could control the game by rotating the S60 device. I think that using an accelerometer in more games would be a great option, especially in racing or 2D shooting games to control the car or ship. I hope that more game developers look at this project and see what is possible. Maybe we'll see more S60 games in the future using the Wiimote as a controller.

(click to view image on Flickr)

On Friday, September 21st at Tokyo Game Show 2007, Nokia gave two presentations for businesses, developers, and game publications. Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend the presentations but I can pass on what information I know.

The first presentation, entitled "The Next Generation of Mobile Gaming", was about the Nokia N-Gage platform. N-Gage games were demonstrated and the platform's features were described: such as multiplayer gaming, easy network connectivity, and downloadable trial games before purchasing. The presentation also discussed making a better gaming experience for tomorrow's mobile gamer.

The second presentation was titled, "The Global Business of Mobile Casual Games; Case Studies of Successful Japanese Publishers in Connected Mobile Games". The fairly long title is pretty self explanatory. The presentation discussed successful Japanese publishers, such as G-mode and D3Publisher, that have released many connected mobile games. These publishers discussed their experiences in expanding globally with Nokia's SNAP mobile. SNAP Mobile is a set of tools and services that help producers and developers to create networked Java games and host network services.

I hope that the presentations will bring some new Japanese developers, publishers, and gamers to the N-Gage platform and SNAP Mobile. I guess we'll have to wait and see when there are more mobile gaming announcements.

I was excited to read on N-Gage Future Watch that Capcom has been added to the list of Publishers bringing games to the N-Gage platform. Capcom has developed and published some of my favorite games including: Resident Evil (aka Biohazard in Japan), Street Fighter II, Super Puzzle Fighter II, Dino Crisis, Mega man, and Ghosts n Goblins.

I have no idea what games Capcom plans to bring to the N-Gage platform but looking over the games on Capcom Mobile, they have already brought several of these titles to mobiles in some format. I hope to see even better versions of these games for the N-Gage platform that take advantage of the hardware; screen resolution, audio quality, and utilize the 3D graphics processor available in most of the N-Gage compatible devices. I look at the great job that Capcom did in porting the original Resident Evil 1 (aka Biohazard 1) to the Nintendo DS. It would be great to see a similar port brought to the N-Gage platform. It would also be awesome if I could play a loyal conversion of Street Fighter II on S60. I'm looking forward to hearing about what games Capcom decides to bring to N-Gage.

What games would you like to see from Capcom or other game developers for the new N-Gage platform?

First off I apologize for my absence from the blog lately, I've been busy with work and other things in real life.

Now that I got that out of the way onto the thing that you really can here to read about, a free game for your S60 device! Frozen Bubble is one of the best puzzle games around and there is an excellent port of it from GNU/Linux to S60 available on Sourceforge. It has been available for S60 first edition and S60 2nd edition devices for a long while, but it took some time to bring it S60 3rd edition due to issues with platform security and changes in the way S60 works. Fortunately a couple months ago it was successfully updated and released for S60 3rd edition devices!

What are you waiting for? Go download it now and start playing!

Now that the challenge of updating Frozen Bubble to S60 3rd edition has been accomplished there are a couple things that I would like to see work start on:

It's Friday so it's a good day to blog about Mini Friday. Mini Friday is a game made by Sulake that is a mobile version of Habbo Hotel. For those of you that have not played or have not heard of Habbo Hotel, it is a game that takes place in a massively multiplayer virtual world.

In the game you create your own character where lots of customization is possible from your hair down to your shoes. In Mini Friday there are several rooms that you can visit where you can chat, hang out, and dance with other players. The graphics in the game are mostly made up of cute colorful 2D sprites. I occasionally play Mini Friday on my Nokia N93i. If you see a character wearing all green named LonelyBob feel free to say Hi. It's interesting to meet people on Mini Friday from all over the world.

Mini Friday is available for S60 3rd Edition and also 2nd Edition devices. Check it out, and let me know what you think in the comments!

Another essential piece of software, C2Doom makes its way to the 3rd Edition. Still in beta, and I couldn't get it running on Nokia 3250. Anyone more lucky?

(Error message was 'Error: W_InitFiles: no files found'. Something to do with it not finding the WAD file? I put it on E:\wads as instructed.)

-Jukka

It's E3 showtime, and Nokia has opened a special N-Gage E3 site which is also a blog!

Head on to the site for details on next generation of N-Gage games (hence the title), pictures, videos and so on.

Nokia N-Gage E3

-Jukka