Making N900 games
 

Hello, i wanted to know what software and what languages can I use to make MAEMO games? I have a team of friends, and we could try to make something :)

Re: Making N900 games
 

Hiya, this post probably should be in the development area :) - to ask the dev's :)

With my minimal knowledge i'd say
C++, Python or QT? :) - but i'm sure there are many types of the above languages!

Re: Making N900 games
 

You left out C and GTK :)

Re: Making N900 games
 

and by the way, i forgot to ask maybe it's possible to convert *.exe standalone games to maemo playble files?

Re: Making N900 games
 

*.exe refers usually to windows binary so the short answer is no.

Long answer is that it's possible at least in theory. You need to get wine running on maemo 5 and get the windows game sources and recompile them as winelib. Recompilation is needed because wine does not emulate processors. In practice that's not easy to do so again the answer is no :) I'd be more than happy to see someone prove me wrong.

Re: Making N900 games
 

Its not just hard. Getting Wine to run on Maemo is impossible. Remember - WINE Is Not an Emulator.

Re: Making N900 games
 

maybe it's possible like to find game made in... for example game maker, get it's source code, and rewrite it to other lanuage or something?

Re: Making N900 games
 

Nothing makes me rage more than people who use smiley faces AND give out incorrect information. WINE will not run on ARM processors.

Re: Making N900 games
 

It could, though. It would take an awful lot of work, but might actually work pretty well. At that point it would become an emulator of sorts, but all of the windows API calls would execute as native, so it might actually be pretty fast.

Probably more trouble than it's worth, but it would be a fascinating thing to see working.

Re: Making N900 games
 

Hi tdesws,
Sounds like a fun project! The first thing you need to know about making a game for the n900/maemo, is that it's different to your normal PC in a couple notable ways:

1. It's based on Linux, rather than Windows. Which means you'll want to lean towards Linux-style development. This also means you have a very powerful system, and have a lot of choice.

2. It's based on ARM rather than x86. This is talking about the sort of instructions the CPU uses. When making your own program from source, it's very likely going to be abstracted to the point that you don't even notice! However, it will be an issue if you try "move" a program from your PC to your N900 without recompiling it.

But the big thing is, that it's a very powerful environment that lets you do things your way. So if you're familiar with something like C or Python or C++ -- I'd recommend to just stick with that, and focus on your game!

Depending on your skills / ambitions -- I'd highly recommend having a look at Qt (and awesome toolkit written in C++). You can develop your game on what ever system you're using, and then later easily port it to your phone, or even another desktop operating system!

Good luck! The key is going to be persistance and taking small steps. Just do one small thing at a time even if you're not sure what you're going to do down the line, and if you have enough persistance you'll learn a lot and have something great.