Smartgear works great on Touch Pro 2! NES! Genesis!

[bitbank]

Please don't brand me a traitor, but I'm going to be buy the HD2 next week. It may or may not become my main phone. I need to see how well the emulators work on it and it will force me to come up with a better touchscreen control scheme. BTW - I've already thought of an idea for a better touchscreen control scheme. I think the hardware buttons of the HD2/TP2 should be used for A/B/Start/Select, but I can place a movable (translucent) virtual d-pad on the display. In the settings dialog, I'll let you place it anywhere and set it up in different spots for each game system. Without true multitouch, even the HD2 won't be able to have a good on-screen control scheme. HTC exposed a kludgy way of doing 2-finger gestures on the HD2, but they don't give you access to the real touch data yet since it had to be shoehorned into WM6.5 and there's no existing API for multitouch. Anyone have a better idea for touchscreen controls?
L.B.

[Cobaltikus]

Originally Posted by bitbank

... Anyone have a better idea for touchscreen controls?
L.B.

You may have already thought about these things, but how about instead of programming it with a D-Pad in mind, maybe treating it more like an Analog Stick could make more sense. With a D-Pad typically you can feel the 4 separate buttons so you can press and release them without looking and many times you may need to hold down 2 of them at the same time to move your character diagonally or throw a fireball in Street Fighter. But with an Analog Stick you keep your thumb on it at all times and can move in any 2 dimensional direction, not just 4. The skin could still look like a D-Pad it you wanted it to, but act more like an Analog Stick.

Then it wouldn't matter that we don't have true multitouch.

For the interface you could have
no touch = analog stick centered, so the initial state is centered and you can stop touching the screen at any time to re-center the position, resetting the center coordinates on the next touch.
Then you can touch the screen ANYWHERE, the control still centered until you move.
Then you slide your thumb in ANY direction, always using the initial touch coordinates as the center point, so as soon you start sliding your thumb to the right, it sends the right key down message and doesn't stop until you either stop touching the screen, return your thumb to its initial position, or slide your thumb in a different direction. Although you wouldn't need any sort of onscreen display using this method, a nicely designed one might still be helpful.

Actually - that's a lot like that game XTract, have you tried it? Truly an awesome game on the TP2, except that only has an x-axis, we would need an x and a y.

[bitbank]

That's an excellent idea. I'll have that implemented in my next build. I also added a link creation feature. You select a game file and it creates a LNK file so that you can run that game directly. More coming soon.
L.B.

[bitbank]

I just uploaded a new build with the following changes:

1) Added shortcut creation (file menu). Creates the file in \Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Games. This seems to work fine on my TP2, but probably won't work on non-english versions. I will clean this up for international use.
2) Added info to the load/save menu to display the date/time of the files. For now, only NES/TG16 load/save should work correctly. I'll be working on this next.
3) Added touchscreen controls as recommended here (always on). Now it takes a double-tap to pause/unpause.

Please let me know what you think of the touchscreen controls (directions only). Now matter how many different methods I try, I still feel that trying to play these games from touchscreen controls sucks.

www.bitbanksoftware.com/sg.zip
build 2.0.5
L.B.

[bitbank]

New feature idea - soliciting feedback...

This is not a "new" idea for emulators, but probably something never offered on mobile phones. A rewind/replay feature. I can imagine a simple implementation where you are given the chance to roll back the clock a few seconds when paused. I can see a menu item available when paused such as "Instant Replay-> 10 Seconds, 5 Seconds, 2 Seconds..."

Thoughts?
L.B.

[bitbank]

Got my HD2 today. I miss my keyboard already . I'll give it a week, but I have a feeling I'll be going back to the TP2 as my primary device.
L.B.

[roofus3000]

Bitbank,
I replaced my touch pro 2 with a new one, now when I try to upgrade smartgear with your new additions it says the demo is expired?! What do I do now? Once I registered it let me play with the old version, but when I upgrade I get this message everytime now. Any help would be appreciated.

[bitbank]

I apologize for the interruption in service. The timeout was meant to remind me to wrap up the code quickly. For the next couple of days, please use the release version. I will have a new build out in the next couple of days. Some major changes are happening and it's taking a lot of time to refactor all of the code.
L.B.

[roofus3000]

Originally Posted by bitbank

I apologize for the interruption in service. The timeout was meant to remind me to wrap up the code quickly. For the next couple of days, please use the release version. I will have a new build out in the next couple of days. Some major changes are happening and it's taking a lot of time to refactor all of the code.
L.B.

Thanks for the swift response. I look forward to the update.

[bitbank]

I realize I'm taking a while to release a new copy, but I've got some major changes in the works. Here's a quick video of some of the things I'm working on. This is a view of the previously played games all running simultaneously on my HD2.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhsKp0XqaJo