Zplet J2ME

**Mikem42** · February 11th, 2005, 21:43

Good news - found the original author and he approves use:

Code:

On Feb 10, 2005, at 9:29 PM, Miller, Mike F wrote:

&gt; Hi, I'm writing on behalf of a developer who has a basic port of your
&gt; rather nice zplet code to the j2me platform. We would like release it 
&gt; to
&gt; a wide audience (mostly for playing IF on cellphones like the RIM
&gt; blackberry), but wanted to double check with you that you have no
&gt; objections to this noncommercial use of your code.
&gt;
&gt; Note: if you aren't the right Matthew Rossotto, I apologize for this
&gt; cryptic email. Google isn't necessarily the best way to find people :-)
&gt;
I'm the right person.  ZPlet is open-source, licensed under the 
Artistic License, so provided you follow the terms of that license, 
it's fine.

In response to other questions - an alx file is the file that the blackberry software loader uses to get the metadata (like .cod file information, app descriptions, etc.) for loading new applications onto the blackberry.

I've found some minor UI issues. Should we discuss them here, or move this discussion to the sourceforge zplet site?

- Mike

**GPF** · February 11th, 2005, 22:09

[quote author=Mikem42 link=board=ngage;num=1093363790;start=30#30 date=02/11/05 at 22:43:29]Good news - found the original author and he approves use:

Code:

On Feb 10, 2005, at 9:29 PM, Miller, Mike F wrote:

&gt; Hi, I'm writing on behalf of a developer who has a basic port of your
&gt; rather nice zplet code to the j2me platform. We would like release it 
&gt; to
&gt; a wide audience (mostly for playing IF on cellphones like the RIM
&gt; blackberry), but wanted to double check with you that you have no
&gt; objections to this noncommercial use of your code.
&gt;
&gt; Note: if you aren't the right Matthew Rossotto, I apologize for this
&gt; cryptic email. Google isn't necessarily the best way to find people :-)
&gt;
I'm the right person. Â* ZPlet is open-source, licensed under the 
Artistic License, so provided you follow the terms of that license, 
it's fine.

In response to other questions - an alx file is the file that the blackberry software loader uses to get the metadata (like .cod file information, app descriptions, etc.) for loading new applications onto the blackberry.

I've found some minor UI issues. Should we discuss them here, or move this discussion to the sourceforge zplet site?

- Mike[/quote]

Well awesome. I guessing that the artistic license is similiar to GPL?

I think we can continue the discussion here, I should probably create my own sourceforge Z2me site for my code.

Thanks for contacting the author, I wasn't able to find his email before that worked

Troy

**Mikem42** · February 11th, 2005, 23:04

Troy, why don't we bring your changes into a branch on the existing sourceforge project. Should be simpler, it's already set up and that would keep all the variants of the code in the same place.

Anyway, after a little playing around with the app, it seems fairly solid although there might be some occasional odd behavior, but I haven't managed to pin anything down in that department yet. I've got a few comment/suggestions for UI improvements. I'm employed as a hardware validator, so finding problems and such is second nature, and I'll mention things that probably don't bother other people. I'll even mention things that don't actually bother me :-)

For save/restore, can we put those options in the menu so that they are quickly accessable? Or, since there is only one slot anyway, would it be possible to do a "save on exit/restore on start" with a "start over" option in the menu?
Performance seemed a little sluggish - was it compiled with optimizations turned on?
Not having a curser for command line editing is mildly disappointing
On long descriptions, there's no indication that there is more text lower than the input prompt.
On long descriptions, the top 2 lines (at least on my 7280's screen) are old text, not new text - one from the previous description + the just entered command
Would it be possible to change the background color of the command text entry area or possibly bold the font on the command text area to make it easier to read and detect typos?

Those are the quickie things that I noticed so far. As you can tell they are all pretty minor UI enhancement kind of things.

- Mike

**GPF** · February 13th, 2005, 04:17

[quote author=Mikem42 link=board=ngage;num=1093363790;start=30#32 date=02/12/05 at 00:04:29]Troy, why don't we bring your changes into a branch on the existing sourceforge project. Should be simpler, it's already set up and that would keep all the variants of the code in the same place.

Anyway, after a little playing around with the app, it seems fairly solid although there might be some occasional odd behavior, but I haven't managed to pin anything down in that department yet. I've got a few comment/suggestions for UI improvements. I'm employed as a hardware validator, so finding problems and such is second nature, and I'll mention things that probably don't bother other people. I'll even mention things that don't actually bother me :-)

For save/restore, can we put those options in the menu so that they are quickly accessable? Or, since there is only one slot anyway, would it be possible to do a "save on exit/restore on start" with a "start over" option in the menu?
Performance seemed a little sluggish - was it compiled with optimizations turned on?
Not having a curser for command line editing is mildly disappointing
On long descriptions, there's no indication that there is more text lower than the input prompt.
On long descriptions, the top 2 lines (at least on my 7280's screen) are old text, not new text - one from the previous description + the just entered command
Would it be possible to change the background color of the command text entry area or possibly bold the font on the command text area to make it easier to read and detect typos?

Those are the quickie things that I noticed so far. As you can tell they are all pretty minor UI enhancement kind of things.

- Mike[/quote]

which version are you running? the Z2me version or the Blackberry version?

**Mikem42** · February 15th, 2005, 01:45

I think I'm using the blackberry version. I'm running the blackberryZ2me.cod file off the site that you sent to me in the personal message. Is that not the right one?

- Mike

**GPF** · February 15th, 2005, 04:06

[quote author=Mikem42 link=board=ngage;num=1093363790;start=30#34 date=02/15/05 at 02:45:15]I think I'm using the blackberry version. I'm running the blackberryZ2me.cod file off the site that you sent to me in the personal message. Is that not the right one?

- Mike
[/quote]

No thats fine, it just there are 2 different code bases for the 2 different ports. Since my cellphone an LG 1300C doesn't have a keyboard , you have to use the number pad to enter characters, I added a little T9 type interface so as you start typing a word, it looks it up in the zcode dictionary and tries to do automatic word detection instead of having to press each letter up to 3 or 4 times for each letter. and also uses the 1 key for all of the different directions. etc.

In the blackberry version I hacked that all out so I could get the keyboard working. I am not that familiar with that code though I hacked it together pretty quick and its been awhile since Iv looked at it. I'v been pretty busy lately so hopefully Ill get the code uploaded somewhere soon, so others can hack away with it if I dont get to it quickly

Troy

**vinniet** · February 17th, 2005, 17:14

Hi Troy,

Do you need help setting up a sourceforge project? Can I help in that area. I would like to see this project move forward. My Blackberry is now upgraded to MIDLET v2 and would like to see if we can put games larger then 64K.

Thanks,

Vinnie

**GPF** · June 2nd, 2005, 22:05

Z2me - Z Machine 3, ZCode Interpreter for J2ME
Version 0.1.0
http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk
[email protected]

Copyright (c) 2004 Troy Davis
All Rights Reserved
Licensed under the The Artistic License

Credits:
===================
Z2me is based in part on the Zplet ZCode interpreter by Matthew T. Russotto
More information may be found at http://sourceforge.net/projects/zplet/
and the complete Zplet code can be downloaded from there as well.

RandomAccessFile class from Firth Software
from http://www.firthsoftware.co.uk/RandomAccessFile.jsp

AdventureCanvas from Paul Rowland
from http://www.geocities.com/wirelessjava2002/adventure/

FastText input from Markku KorsumÃ¤ki , I ported it to J2ME
from http://koti.mbnet.fi/korsu/ft.html

Thanks to everyone on j2me.org who answered my questions as I am learning j2me.

===================
Z2me is a ZCode interpreter for the J2ME environment.
ZCode is the intermediate language that was designed
and used by the original Infocom text adventure games.
Using Z2me, it is possible to package and play a large
variety of interactive fiction on your J2ME mobile device.

Z2me is shipped with the public domain game "MiniZork". This
is a demo version of the original Infocom Zork game. Refer to
http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk for more information about Z2me.

What's New
==========
- Initial release

Features
========
- J2ME MIDP 1.0 or greater, should run on most devices that have enough memory.
- Should run most Z-code programs of versions 3.
- Text completion(Z9) - can be enabled/disabled through menu.
- About screen through menu.
- Save/Restore support for 1 save file.
- key 1 , cycles through all of the directions (NORTH, SOUTH, etc)
- key 0 , cycles through some commands I frequently use. ( ',' , AGAIN , WAIT, AND)
- key * , cycles through the Z9 completed words
- UP/DOWN arrow keys scroll the screen.
- LEFT/RIGHT cycle through the last 10 commands.

Also a different Z3 zcode format file can be added to the jar file(remove minizork.z3 first) and then update the "Zfile" user defined property with the name of the new Z3 file in the jad file. Remembering to watch the file size of the jar depending on your cellphone limitations.

What's Missing
==============
- Multiple save/restore slots

Prerequisites
=============
- J2ME MIDP 1.0 capable device
- Enough memory to load the jar, load the zcode and host the heap.
The amount of memory will vary tremendously from one Z-Code game to the next.

Getting Started
===============
Install the JAR and JAD file to your mobile device.

Disclaimer
==========
Z2me is provided as-is. There is no warranty or guarantee that Z2me will work as advertised and
that it won't cause your mobile device any harm.

I hope you enjoy Z2me.

Midp1.0 version
===============
http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk/Z2me.jad
http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk/Z2me.jar

Source code
http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk/Z2me_src.rar

BlackBerry Version
===============
http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk/blackberryZ2me.alx
http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk/blackberryZ2me.cod
http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk/blackberryZ2me.cso
http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk/blackberryZ2me.rapc
http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk/blackberryZ2me.jad
http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk/blackberryZ2me.jar

Source code
http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk/blackberryZ2me_src.rar

Let me know how everything works or if you get it to work on other phones etc.

Thanks,
Troy

**Mikem42** · October 5th, 2005, 01:50

Hey, it's been a while, but I tried out the latest version posted to Troy's website and it works OK, but I'm not having much luck with using an alternate .z3 file. After some trials and reading up over at other forums (http://www.blackberryforums.com/showthread.php?t=762) I got a .cod file created, but when I load it, the normal Z icon doesn't appear. Has anyone had any luck swaping out .z3 files?

- Mike

**wryun** · January 15th, 2007, 06:41

Or maybe this message is better here (posted in the news thread by accident): Was hacking around with this, fixing up some UI issues and making it work 'nicer' on my MIDP 2 phone. Would it be better me to just put them somewhere, or would you like to upload them on your site?