Developing for Pocket PCs / Windows Mobile 6

caff

caff

caff

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I use VS.net 2005 at work, but I've heard that .NET compact framework-powered apps and games can be a bit slow on Windows Mobile devices.

This is not a serious work-related thing, more personal interest - I'd particularly like to make small games and brainteaser things like you get on Nintendo DS.

I'm willing to consider C++ and J2ME but don't have much experience with them.

Any tips? thanks
 
Tip 1: Don't consider J2ME if its for PPC/PDAs, if it's for Smartphones then yes.

Tip 2: BASIC! Most of these devices have touchscreens, and people like using their fingers. So make the buttons nice and big! ;)

Tip 3: Not so much a tip, but I have a SPV M700 WM5 PPC, if you need anybody to test the apps, let me know :)
 
blighter has hit some brilliant points. Just to add my 2 pennies:

If you're thinking games wise, then unless it's something like a puzzle, board or any game that doesn't involve fast graphics, then forget .Net. As much as I love .Net it's the wrong tool for that job.

Masking and alphas will be an absolute nightmare, speed will be very very slow (about 18-25FPS even for simple things) and whatever you see on your screen wouldn't be a good indicator on what would appear on someone elses.

Apps wise, .Net all the way, but games, C++.
 
If you do decide that .NET will meet your needs then these MSDN articles should give you a good place to start with respect to graphics on a Windows Mobile platform:

Programming Graphics in the .NET Compact Framework

Windows Mobile DirectX and Direct3D

For something performance intensive then as ~J~ says you'll need to look at C++ to get the most from any device, but I've found C# to be capable of some decent performance on the mobile platform (obviously a lot depends on the specification of the underlying device).

When HTC finally release the P3600i over here then I'll also be happy to help out with beta testing.

cheers
v.f.
 
Thanks - I've heard J2ME is a bit of a nightmare. And that confirms my suspicions about .net being no good for games.

And the fingers thing - I was going to make something stylus operated, but obviously these new HTC Touch-es and co. are mainly used by finger pointing. Hmm, time to put by thinking cap on...

I've also found http://www.arianesoft.ca/
 
Excellent, thanks - some good stuff to read there.

I think I'll have a crack with prototyping on C# / .net compact first and see how that goes, performance-wise. If no good I'll try porting over to C++.

You guys seem to know a fair bit about Windows Mobile, have you developed for it too?

And cheers for the offers of alpha/beta testing! If I get anywhere I'll post up in the new PDA / laptop forum.
 
Well I've developed for WM for about 5 years now, mostly converting POP/SOP systems into a portable format, don't know about anyone else but I'm sure there's a few of us that can help in some way or other.

Just a small heads-up, if you already know C#/VB .Net for Windows, then expect a few changes for the compact framework. For the most, you won't notice much different, but you'll probably get lots of "not CLS-compliant" warnings, and there's a few properties from the controls that are missing, and of course some of the controls aren't available to you.
 
caff said:
You guys seem to know a fair bit about Windows Mobile, have you developed for it too?
Click to expand...
Dabbled a bit with "Windows CE" when it was first released as a beta a good few years back, but didn't really do much proper stuff until Windows Mobile 2003. Compact Framework 2.0 was a big improvement over 1.0, particularly for such things as threading, but you'll probably still end up p/invoking the odd external function on occasion.

Happy to help if I can.
 
caff said:
You guys seem to know a fair bit about Windows Mobile, have you developed for it too?
Click to expand...
Nope, but love the devices and have owned two of them. I also know my way around the OS as much as XP.
caff said:
And cheers for the offers of alpha/beta testing! If I get anywhere I'll post up in the new PDA / laptop forum.
Click to expand...
No problem. I check that forum daily so will keep an eye out.
 
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