Tweet

Want another chance to revisit some of those awesome childhood games?  How about the amazing Warcraft II for Nokia N900?  Warcraft II is brought to you by the Wargus app, which runs on the Stratagus engine.  All the special moments from Blizzards 1995 DOS classic are here in Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness.  In a time where Orcs were truly the evil guys, before they were just misunderstood and simply pawns of the Burning Legion.

If you haven’t played this game before on the PC, then you cant really play this game.  Firstly that you need the files from your old Warcraft II cd, and the other that it wouldn’t make much sense, and a mouse is a little more intuitive to use then the touch screen.  I did find it reasonable to play though, while dragging, tapping and double tapping my stylus.  I wouldn’t want to play this without a stylus and keyboard though, so that’s unfortunate for basically any other phone.
With that, Warcraft II felt right at home on my N900, beyond a few double tap issues everything went rather well…  Oh, and getting eaten by dragons.  There were no major frame rate issues, and it was very easy to install.  All one needs to do is…

-          Copy the Warcraft II cd files (DOS version, battle.net version doesn’t work) to /home/user/MyDocs/WAR2
-          Install Wargus from the Application manager (this will take some time)
-          Run from the menu

I know I have mentioned before that I’m not a huge fan of games that take such a time investment on my N900, but this is an exception.  It plays well, you can save and pickup later and you get to be Orcs!  If you want to look into it in more detail, you can over here.

Now you can relive the glory days, and guide the Horde to victory against those meddling Alliance scum!  For the Horde!!

Tweet

If you’re like me, you want to coax as much power as you can possibly get out of your warp drive, and to do that you need all the tools to do it. One of many systems working towards performance on the USS N900 is Swappolube, which works to change certain parameters in the kernel for maximum speed.  Swappolube can be found in the Extras repository, and once installed, it’s fairly easy to use, just fire and forget.

What is Swappolube?
Swappolube can change up to fourteen different parameters for maximum efficiency from your device, and also lists their default values.  You are free to tinker with these parameters to your hearts content, and see what works best for you.  To make things easier though, there are three options for quick setting selection, found right up the top.  Custom which is for when you feel like tweaking, proposed for preconfigured values that have been proven to increase performance, and current, the current values being used.
The easiest way to go about using Swappolube is to simply hit ‘proposed’, and then tap ‘apply’ down the bottom to put these values to work.  If you don’t want to run Swappolube every time you restart you device, hitting ‘store’ now will make it so these values are used from start up… pretty cool huh? Of course with anything performance oriented, each individual will perceive it in their own way.  You may not see any change whatsoever.  It is only one thing that goes into an array of tweaks that help to make my star ship go as fast as I can get it, either way its not going to do you any harm… now… Engage!

Tweet

Dear nokia N900 website readers, My name is Pang Zi Yang and I am the co-writter here with Maciej. I hope you like my articles. I’d like to start showing you how to install Preenv on N900 so that you can be able to play webOS games easily.
Those of you might get this error when trying to install preenv using the .deb file
“Incompatible application package”
Some may not find Preenv in the App Manager
—It isn’t there—
So to install Preenv is actually very simple.
You will need to activate extras , extras-testing and extras-devel repository in Application Manager
Go to Xterminal and type this in sequence
root
apt-get install libgles1-sgx-img
apt-get install preenv
apt-get install libsdl-net1.2
This would get your Preenv up and running.
Next is to install your webOS game onto your N900.
METHOD 1

First download the *.ipk file
unpack the *.ipk file using e.g. 7zip and extract the /applications/ folder from it
put the extracted /applications/ folder to /home/user/ on the N900 using SSH
Go to X-Terminal and type the following in sequence

sudo gainroot
cd /home/user/applications/ folder
chmod +rwx filename
To run the game, simply type ./filename in X-Terminal (where filename is the name of the executable file. eg. nfsuc in the case of Need For Speed Undercover)

METHOD 2
Download the .deb file and install it through Hildon Application Manager.
You can find on the web where people have repacked the .ipk files into .deb files.
This method is much easier and faster for beginners

Tweet

If you’ve seen my previous game reviews you may know I like logic games. Some time ago I’ve found another nice and good-looking game for Nokia N900 similar to Brain Party, but with few nice features.
First of all you can find SPB Brain Evolution 2 in Ovi Store for free. At first glance it looks like another set of logic games, but I got to like it from the very beginning. The game offers daily training with various games, including simple arithmetics, memory training, visual recognition or stategic planning. Training plan involves few minutes every day, making play more challenging as you advance. You have progress history, high scores for and few difficulty levels for every mini-game. Moreover you can create few profiles, so you can easily compete with your friends using the same N900 to play.
But what I like in this game so much is not variety of games, but pause system. I can play whenever I want and I don’t need to worry that I won’t finish any game, because if I lock screen game pauses, so when I’m on bus or tram I can freely take a break, get off and resume from the moment I’ve finished when I have time to do so. The same situation goes when you close the game (even by accident), when running it next time you can resume playing from the moment you’ve finished earlier.
If it comes to games this one fits most of my needs, doesn’t take much of my precious time, covers my interests and allows me to automatically pause every time I want or when I have something more important to do.
–
MJ

Tweet

Ovi Store for Nokia N900 appeared quite a while ago and offers more and more applications, media and other stuff. Among free games from Ovi Store I’ve found another simple and absorbing time consumer – Xploder for N900.
This N900 game idea is simple, on every level you have small bombs flying around the screen and on every level you need to detonate at least the given number for the level. The bomb blows up when comes to explosion range of previous bomb or initial explosion given by player, the point is to cause long enough chain reaction. Sounds easy, at least for first few levels when you can blow up everything you need with first blow, but gets more tactical and challenging every level, even with more bombs flying around.
Apart from easy rules and really nice and smooth game-play Xploder for Maemo 5 gives really nice visual experience. The best thing is that all of games from Ovi Store are very nice-looking. Full screen theme of game, really nice shading of explosions, well designed and implemented. I’m still grounded around 8th level, but I feel Xploder will give me much more entertainment.
I really encourage you to visit Ovi Store and check applications there, they’re well written, run very smoothly and don’t be afraid of ‘Store’ in name, many of applications available there are free!
–
MJ

Tweet

N900 still awaits automatic portrait mode to take advantage of it’s accelerometer. In the mean time developers are producing applications that show it really works.
You’ve probably seen Bounce Evolution, it was installed on my N900 by default. Very nice 3D game controlled only by device tilt and space for jumping. This was the first application I remember with accelerometer support.
Some time after when Ovi store was opened another applications came, including Level or Angle Meter, small applications that show how exact the accelerometer is, showing quite accurate level or angle in degrees. I think it may be nice replacement for engineering tools, when you need to measure something and you have no proffesional level in your pocket .
Some time ago 3D and accelerometer joined their forces to show another nice application showing 3-dimentional picture of earth depending on phone position. It’s rather a toy to show power hidden inside N900 than useful software but I like the idea.
There are other applications that I’ve never tried, like PlayStation pad emulator, but knowing how bit potential hides in this small device I assume that it’s just the matter of time when something really cool will come. I’ll be waiting for that day, even if PR1.2 update won’t have full rotation support I can still use accelerometer in some way
–
For more info on devel and testing catalogues visit Application catalogues tutorial
Please visit Nokia N900 Forum

Tweet

This time let’s have a look what’s going on all over the world.
N900 with PR1.2 available in Hong Kong!
We’re all waiting for new update but apparently Nokia wants to make us wait for PR1.2 some more time when users in Hong Kong will test it in the wild. During last few days it was released in there and some time after Jussi Mäkinen confirmed that it will be released soon for the rest of the world. I hope that ‘soon’ is a little bit closer than the one mentioned on maemo.org wiki. In the mean time we can watch (below) and get more and more excited.

Motion controlled games on N900
While looking all around the web you may have found johanneskuhlmann’s youtube channel. There you may see some exemplary videos of what can we do with front camera and some software used for face recognition or movement tracking. If games will look at least a little like this I’m really interested. After some productions using accelerometers to control action (for example Bounce Evolution) this will be nice step ahead and I’m looking forward to see at least good demo on my N900. Have a look at videos on youtube.

–
For more info on devel and testing catalogues visit Application catalogues tutorial
Please visit Nokia N900 Forum

Tweet

At last it is here! The well known Tuxracer game from Linux has been adapted to the N900 by Mikko Vartiainen. Long time ago, when it came out to the Linux platform, we implemented the game to a gesture controlled platform which lets you control the penguin with your hands. It was really cool, and people liked it very much. So this is what I waited for.

Now you can control the game with the accelerator of your phone. In this 3D game you can choose from different levels and scenes and improve your skills. Believe me, it is really not easy, to navigate the penguin through the tracks by moving your phone. It has some similarities to Bounce.

Try first to manage the tutorials to learn the tricks you can do with the phone when controlling the penguin. Then start racing which level you like. The high-scores will be stored, so you can compare your progress.

Really a nice amusement game, also to challenge your friends.
- sam | visit our Nokia N900 forum -

Tweet

If you have noticed the numerous Tux Games made for the Linux Platform, you will be not surprised that there are some Tux Penguin Games also for the Maemo OS. Of course there are not lots of them, but maybe it isn´t that hard to translate the existing Tuxers from Linux straight to our phones. If you are familiar with the X-Terminal, there might be a way to install some Linux based games, the so called deb files. I don´t know how this could be done, but in the Talk section of the Maemo site you will find lots of instructions. Still be aware of using X-Terminal for installing, and my advise is, keep your hands off, unless you know what you are doing.

But for those who are common users, like me, there are some very good games ready to install from the Maemo download section. I will begin with Super Tux, a classic 2D jump and run sidescroller, which is similar to the original SuperMario games. Author Valério Valério did a very good job to interpret this one for the Maemo platform. On his homepage you will find instructions, screenshots and more information about Super Tux.

The next game I want to mention is another Tux clone called Wormux. Written by Mikko Vartiainen as a “convivial mass murder” game it can be compared with the well know Worms, which was pretty much the source for this creation. Thank you for this one!

The last one in my list, also from Mikko Vartiainen, is Battle Gweled, a fast action puzzle game. Based on the original Bejeweled, you have to swap the jewels positions to build up rows and get rid of the diamonds. This one can really keep you trapped.

That´s it for this time. If you know some good games for the N900, let us know.
- sam | visit our Nokia N900 forum -

Tweet

The Popular first person shooter Doom explodes its way onto the N900!
Doom is back in the form of prBoom for maemo 5, crossing over from its linux and windows based beginnings and into our palms. The game keeps all of its original graphics and enemies, and is fully customizable through several menus accessed using the backspace key, in which the player can change controls as they wish.
The status bar is also fully customizable, the player can select when to be warned of low health and even how the enemies AI behaves.
The controls are simple the directional keypad controls the player, shift and the z key strafe left and right, the numbers change weapon, the blue arrow key shoots and the space bar is action. All the original difficulty settings are selectable from “im too young to die”, all the way through to “nightmare”. Overall not a bad addition to the N900‘s now growing library of games, although there is one annoyance, prBoom was made using the original id shareware version of the game which only includes the first third of the game “knee deep in the dead”, however don’t let this put you off as the game is free to download from the N900‘s app manager so its not bad for free.