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move game from handheld to expansion card?
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Gary
Developing Poster
Joined: 24 Mar 2004
Posts: 13
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2004 7:24 pm  Post subject: move game from handheld to expansion card?

How can I move the game from handheld (Palm OS) to an expansion card? And still keep the saved games as well?

Thanks!
MegaManXcalibur
Developing Poster


Joined: 06 Mar 2004
Posts: 17
Location: Minnesota
 Post Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2004 10:44 pm  

All you have to do is move the following files to the expansion card (you'll probably need a program like Filez, which is a free download, unless your Palm has a file manager like the Sony Clies do)....

Warfare Incorperated
htsfx
htdata824

and leave the saved games on the PDA itself (even when I have the game on my expansion card it still saves files to the PDA like most programs do).
Gary
Developing Poster
Joined: 24 Mar 2004
Posts: 13
 Post Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2004 2:06 pm  

Okay thanks.
blackshadow
WI Forum Novice
Joined: 30 Mar 2004
Posts: 5
 Post Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2004 7:20 am  

Main problem with this approach is that, the launcher will copy all these files back to memory everytime you run it.

I am looking for something different, like the palm dictionaries do. Use VFS and access the files ON THE CARD, just like a database, loading only what is necessary. This way, you don't need to have lots of free memory to have ALL loaded.

Is this possible? If not, will it be ever possible?
scottlu
WI Founder


Joined: 15 Aug 2003
Posts: 1773
 Post Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2004 2:46 pm  

Warfare can't do this because storing that data in VFS is too slow. Warfare needs to access it all the time while playing (graphics data is stored there) so storing it in VFS would cause the game to run too slowly.
blackshadow
WI Forum Novice
Joined: 30 Mar 2004
Posts: 5
 Post Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2004 5:46 am  

That's EXACTLY the same situation on PCs. I may be wrong, but I bet you don't need everything from the file to play a level. So, even if you need 50% of what is in the file, just load all THAT IS NEEDED at the start of the level in memory, and play. Performance will be same as before but, just half of the memory will be needed. Then, you will have plenty of room to expand the game.

The way it is today, you are restricted to what you can put on the game by the standard memory a Palm user will have, and this is going to be shared with other usage the pda has. A standard is about 16Mb, with arounf 13MB available. After installing day-to-day apps, it will have around 3-4 MB free tops, considering that all non essential apps/games are moved to a card. Installing Warfare will eat almost it all, and lots of apps that will be on the card will not have enough free memory to run.

The game is great, but, most users are not prepared to almost dedicate his pda to just one task.
Verdagon
Veteran Member
Joined: 05 Oct 2003
Posts: 1047
Location: San Luis Obispo, CA
 Post Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2004 8:12 am  

blackshadow wrote:
That's EXACTLY the same situation on PCs. I may be wrong, but I bet you don't need everything from the file to play a level. So, even if you need 50% of what is in the file, just load all THAT IS NEEDED at the start of the level in memory, and play. Performance will be same as before but, just half of the memory will be needed. Then, you will have plenty of room to expand the game.

The way it is today, you are restricted to what you can put on the game by the standard memory a Palm user will have, and this is going to be shared with other usage the pda has. A standard is about 16Mb, with arounf 13MB available. After installing day-to-day apps, it will have around 3-4 MB free tops, considering that all non essential apps/games are moved to a card. Installing Warfare will eat almost it all, and lots of apps that will be on the card will not have enough free memory to run.

The game is great, but, most users are not prepared to almost dedicate his pda to just one task.


get a new pda :D
blackshadow
WI Forum Novice
Joined: 30 Mar 2004
Posts: 5
 Post Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2004 2:01 pm  

Funny. Instead of buying a new PDA, I would just wait a little bit and buy a FlipStart (previous know as Vulcan).

Owned buy Paul Allen. See the specs and look at the size of this thing:

Microsoft® Windows® XP Home/Professional operating system
Dimensions: 5.8" x 4" x 1" (148mm x 101mm x 26mm)
Weighs 1lb (450g)
1 GHz processor
256MB system RAM
30GB internal hard drive
3D graphics w/ 8MB video RAM
Full-function, QWERTY thumb keyboard w/ hotkeys for commonly used commands
5.6" HDTV-quality display (1024 x 600)
Lithium-ion Polymer battery (2-6 hours battery life*)
Integrated 802.11b (11 Mbps) /g (54 Mbps) Wi-Fi
USB 2.0 port
Internal microphone/speaker with headphones and ear bud jacks
Integrated 1.3MP digital camera

Then, I can just play any regular Windows game.

http://flipstartpc.com/default.asp