Great RPG Game, EDGE, Finally Released!

Subtitle: A tutorial on running it on a Pocket PC under StyleTap, the great Palm OS emulator There're some handheld games we, Pocket PC users, can't really enjoy in all their glory. For example, the (also great) continuation to undoubtedly the best text-based Pocket PC adventure game, Fade (for more info on Fade, see my adventure game roundup, linked from the end of my roundup of multiplayer games; for a teaser, also see this PPCT thread), Acedior, is Palm OS only. So is EDGE (Extreme Dungeon Game Environment), the latest, great RPG game. However, nothing is lost – StyleTap, the great Palm OS emulator, to the rescue! StyleTap is really great. Some months ago when (with an older version) I tested its compatibility with Palm OS games (alternative here), I already got astonishingly good results (also see this thread on its compliance with other kinds of software). Fortunately, it's also able to run EDGE, and, what is more, almost flawlessly, especially if you have a fast(er) and preferably VGA device. Compatibility, speed As far as compatibility and hardware requirements are concerned, on my freshly hard reset, no-Today-plugins, no-background-tasks 400 MHz WM2003 QVGA iPAQ 2210, the music of the game kept skipping and was, therefore, unacceptable; therefore, it's best NOT to copy the sound files into a slower device (the game will run OK without them) or switching the music off in Preferences right away. On my high-end, 520 MHz, WM2003SE VGA Pocket Loox 720, which played the music without skips – and rendered the game at high, HiRes (320*320) resolution (unlike the QVGA 2210, which run the LoRes, 160*160 version). As far as performance tuning is concerned, I've tested the following: - running the iPAQ 2210 at 472 MHz (with XCPUScalar): a no-go, the music kept skipping - in Preferences, lowering the "Max Frames Per Second is XX fps" value did exactly the opposite what I've thought: when set to 15 (instead of the default value of 25), the emulation speed became even worse and the music started to skip even on the Pocket Loox. That is, do not try to decrease this value, it'll have a controversary effect! Please note that, much as the game supports HiRes+ (320*480), StyleTap doesn't, not even on VGA Pocket PC's. The best way of getting HiRes+ support is, IMHO, getting a cheap, second-hand Palm Tungsten T3 or T5. To install the game, download the trial (and, of course, StyleTap) to your desktop PC. You can download either the EXE installer or the ZIP Archive file at the bottom of the download page. There's little difference; the EXE installer, Edge-Installer.exe , needs to be renamed to Edge-Installer.zip so that its contents can be accessed. In addition, the ZIP file, as opposed to the EXE installer, contains an additional README.txt (and the game manual) with additional information on installing the game onto a Pocket PC. Actually, it wasn't a very good idea to hide it there and not making it available on the game homepage – I've only noticed it right after discovering (and writing a tutorial on) how the EXE installer file (which doesn't have any kind of documentation) should be installed. 1. Decompress the file to a directory with WinZip or Total Commander. 2. Start StyleTap/ StyleTap in the desktop Windows 3. if you don't have a memory card, drag the three .PRC files,

10/27/2005  08:52 PM           996,331 Edge.prc
10/24/2005  05:53 PM         6,327,719 Edge_Data.prc
10/27/2005  05:04 PM           893,415 Edge_Maps.prc

to the desktop StyleTap window: click for screenshot If you, on the other hand, have a memory card, only drag Edge.prc in there, to save RAM – the two other, pretty bulky PRC's will go to the card. 4. click Install all to device there 5. the PRC files will be automatically transferred to the device (to the main memory – it's there that StyleTap stores installed PRC's). 6. now, create a directory \Palm\Programs\Edge\Sound on (any of) your memory card(s) (the game won't find these sound files in the main memory / built-in File Store/BIS, so, you must have a memory card in order to be able to hear the sounds/music!) and copy all the *.ogg files (2135k in total) in there In addition, if you have only installed Edge.prc with the StyleTap installer, copy the two other PRC files, Edge_Data.prc and Edge_Maps.prc, to \Palm\Programs\Edge (that is, the parent directory of the sound/music files) on your storage card. 7. now, just click Start Menu/Programs/Edge to start the game. This will start the game in full-screen mode, which does pixel doubling of every third row and column so that it can fill in the entire horizontal screen estate of the Pocket PC. That's because a LoRes Palm screen is a 160 pixels wide, while a QVGA Pocket PC is 240 pixels (and the Palm HiRes/VGA figures are 320 and 480 pixels, respectively). Therefore, the StyleTap engine must double the pixels of every third row/column to scale up the screen to horizontally fill in the entire QVGA or VGA screen. This may, of course, result in undesirable effects (or, with some games, plain incompatibility – see my remarks on other games in the above-linked threads) because of the uneven pixel doubling (as is with the case of, for example, Pocket Internet Explorer in the standard SE VGA mode, on VGA devices, with images that are larger than half of the available horizontal screen estate but smaller than the entire horizontal estate. You may want to read this also PPCT frontpaged article on this question.) In cases like this (you don't want uneven pixel doubling), don't start the emulation with clicking the Edge icon but Start Menu/Programs/StyleTap Launcher, click the Settings icon, , at the bottom and choose Options/Display Size: click for screenshot Here, just click Restart. After StyleTap has exited, just start Start Menu/Programs/Edge; it'll start in no-uneven-pixel-doubled mode: click for screenshot click for screenshot These were VGA screenshots; for comparison, here're two QVGA ones: click for screenshot click for screenshot What can I say? This game really rocks – it's a must if you have a VGA device. I haven't even seen anything comparable on the Pocket PC (except for, maybe, Ancient Evil; this game is still MUCH better), as far as PDA-based RPG games are concerned. Recommended link: Official forum EDIT on 02/Dec/2005: I've tested the game on my oldish, slowish (144 MHz) Palm Zire 71. It runs really great on it - much better than under StyleTap. It's only at loading non-cahced map data that it's definitely slower at; loading cached data from RAM cache, on the other hand, is already very fast. That is, I really recommend getting an used, old(er) Palm model for cheap so that you can have the best gaming experience.