Pong - a little game

[mhc]

Hi,

please could you try this little game I have attached?
I am interested if it run on different devices.
Myself useing an ASUS A696 on which this App is running well.
Before I waste my time with senseless improvement of the game I want to have a feedback.

The idea behind is not to recreate the xx-version of the old well known PONG game. It's rather a question of user-friendly interface: no menu necessary, no needless buttons. Just start the game and all the required action is done with a simple click.

Thanks

mhc

EDIT:
Attached modified files

[Simontelescopium]

Great job.
The 'pop-up' window was tiny on my device Touch pro HD, so this could be made larger - i couldn;t read what it said - but it kept popping up.

The ball paused whenever i moved the paddle, and my opponent didn't seem that good! At my age a larger paddle would be nice!

You could put a small amount of randomness to the ball direction, if you touch the screen and don't move the paddle the ball will go backwards and forwards forever :-) an alternative might be to randomise the start/serve angle of the opponent.

Game brings back memories of my grandstand video game console :-)

[mhc]

Hi Simontelescopium,

thanks for your reply and your suggestions

- I will create a bigger 'pop-up'
- also I will change the size of the pad
- the 'intelligence' of the opponent is not really implemented yet - that was what meant by "... waste my time with senseless improvement... ". First I want to see if the App works on different devices.
And this is my question I ask back:
When you move your paddle the ball paused immediately? Which kind of device is yours?
On my Asus A696 it runs very well (sometimes to fast).
Thanks again.

mhc

[Simontelescopium]

When you move your paddle the ball paused immediately? Which kind of device is yours?

I am running on an HTC Touch Pro, it has an 800x 480 screen. If i touch the screen to position the paddle there isn't a pause however if i slide my finger on the screen, while i am sliding, the ball stops.

On the User interface I like the use of the whole screen but my finger gets in the way of the paddle - I wonder if you left some space to the right (top in portrate) of the screen to place your finger if this would be nicer for the user? - if this was in full screen mode you you would have a little more space I think.

[mhc]

Here I am again.

I have done some modifications based on Simontelescopium suggestions.
I tested some changes but at least I come back nearly the origin layout.
- Full screen only to remove the title bar. To have the menu bar save the need of additional buttons (i.e. to close the app)
- the mentioned size of the pop-up should be now right. It works fine on my ASUS device.
- Resizing the paddle was not so stunning. Especially in combination to have more space to slide with the finger. The whole look and feel appeared stocky and plumb. And the distance between the to paddles was to short - or alternatively the two paddles faced asynchronous. Therfore I resized back.
-I've got the chance to have a look on a HTC device during the last days. In my opinion there are two possible reasons for the observed ball pausing:
1# sliding with the finger means that we have in rapid succession an OnClick event of the display. Cause the finger covers - in contrast to the pen - an area and totters. This fires all the time an event and effectuates the movement of the ball paused. Maybe one explanation Perhabs I will follow an idea of multithreading in the future.
2# In the program code there was a query to prevent that the paddle runs out of the screen. I solved this with an other algorithm.

Next weekend - if I have more time - I will think about improvement of the "intelligence" of the computer player

Please find in post #1 the changed files.

cu
mhc

[nick2210]

On my Acer laptop it displays an error message "Can't load dll 'coredll.DLL'" every time the ball hits the paddle or the screen margine.

[mhc]

Hi,
coredll.dll is the main dll that windows CE uses, and is roughly equivalent to kernel32.dll on a PC or notebook. The game plays some wav-files. So, if you run the exe file which is compiled for the pocketpc on the desktop the runtime machine of basic4ppc can't handle the required dll.
If you want to try out the game on the desktop please use an emulator. Searching around in this forum will give you some hints how to install and using an emulator.

mhc