REVIEW: great platform game SuperTux ported to the Pocket PC - at last!

http://www.oldray.net/

Today I’ve already reported on the brand new, great Pocket PC port of the well-known Super Mario Bros. clone SuperTux (also see this Wiki entry on the game). Now that, thanks for the author of the Pocket PC port, I’ve received the game, I had the chance to test it. In a sentence: if you have the right Pocket PC (one that runs the game with a decent speed), it’s just great and not at all worse than on the desktop. The same visual and sound effects are present (the sound effects are, for example, stereo! Using a headphone is highly recommended so that you can really enjoy them.). That is, the game is, fortunately, not just a dumbed-down, stripped-down port. The game Again, to get a feeling for the game (and to make sure you fell in love with it!), I recommend getting it from here, installing and playing it. The Pocket PC version is very similar – with some changes. First, the game supports both the Landscape and the Portrait screen orientations. You can’t switch between them in the game itself; the game uses the (system-level) screen orientation it was originally started in. This, unfortunately, also means WM2003 users will need to use third-party tools like Nyditot to switch to landscape mode before playing. Users of WM2003SE or WM5, on the other hand, won't have similar problems. The game must be controlled by the D-pad (there’re no ways to redefine the D-pad left/right keys or use on-screen buttons/control areas, unfortunately – this is bad news for users with lower-quality D-Pads) and with either on-screen buttons (which are, fortunately, pretty big) or (for jumping) the Action button (the latter can’t be reassigned either). In Landscape mode, the game looks like this: You can also disable fullscreen mode so that you see the taskbar - with the clock, notifications, possibly battery level - and can even start other programs); then, the task bar will be visible as shown here. (Unfortunately, in Landscape, with the fullscreen mode switched off, as the entire screen shifts down several (in VGA, dozens of) pixels, the penguin sprite and the opponents on the ground won’t be visible any more, as can be seen in the above screenshot.) Non-full screen is only usable in Portrait mode because, then, only the on-screen button size decreases as can be seen in here as opposed to the “regular”, full screen mode shown here. Please note that switching to Landscape mode may, depending on the actual Pocket PC model, result in a (in cases, considerable) performance hit. For example, on the HTC Wizard (a.k.a. i-mate K-jam, Qtek 9100, MDA Vario, T-Mobile MDA), without overclocking and with enabled music/sounds, the game runs with between 10-13 fps in Portrait (that is, the game is just playable). After switching to Landscape, the speed decreases to below 10 fps - that is, the game becomes unplayably slow. On the Dell Axim x51v, on the other hand, the speed hit is almost impossible to notice (18-21 fps vs. 19-23 fps). The explanation for the speed hit in Landscape is very simple: in Portrait, there're a lot less pixels to scroll than in Landscape because there're "dead" (non-scrolled) regions (the on-screen buttons) in Portrait, while, in Landscape, the entire screen content is scrolled. In addition, in Landscape, the on-screen buttons are transparent; the additional CPU usage of making them transparent may also have a detrimental effect on the achievable speed. Speed and compatibility I haven’t run into compatibility problems on my test Pocket PC's. Note that the game doesn’t support pre-WM2003 operating systems; that is, it won’t run on, say, the iPAQ 36xx/37xx. Some speed benchmarks on my (freshly hard reset) test Pocket PCs (all measured in Portrait mode; with some devices, also in Landscape). The values are all given in FPS (Frames per Second). The larger, the better; anything under 10 fps is unplayable, while values above 20 fps are good. I've played the games quite a bit and tried to find out the average FPS values right into the game, preferably with 1-2 opponents on the screen. That is, don't be mislead by (comparatively) high FPS results right at the start of the first map when no opponents are visible. HP iPAQ 2210 (QVGA, 400 MHz XScale PXA255): 16-20 fps HP iPAQ 1940 (QVGA, 266 MHz Samsung): 25-32 fps (!!!) HTC Wizard: 10-13 fps (195 MHz TI; in Landscape, 7-10 fps); after overclocking to 240 MHz, 15-20 fps. Note that, unlike on any of the other Pocket PC's, the music becomes distorted when the D-pad is used. This applies to both the normal and the overclocked speed. This, unfortunately, means you will need to disable the in-game music - not just because of the speed, but also because of the distortion. Dell Axim x51v (624 MHz PXA270; VGA): 19-23 fps (in Landscape, the performance hit is almost unperceivable - the game runs between 18-21 fps!) F-S Pocket Loox 720 (520 MHz PXA272; VGA): 5-6 fps (the same result with both with and without Picard’s PL720-specific GAPI hack) HP iPAQ hx4700 (624 MHz PXA270; WM5; VGA): 8-9 fps HP iPAQ hx2410 (520 MHz PXA270; WM2003SE): 35-40 fps All these results are measured with the music/sound enabled; by disabling them, the performance gain was about 3-4 fps (checked this on the iPAQ 2210, the iPAQ 1940, the overclocked HTC Wizard and the x51v). The 19-24 fps (measured on the x51v), the 35-40 fps (iPAQ hx2410) or the 25-32 fps (HP iPAQ 1940) is still definitely worse than the 50-60 fps (under SuSE Linux) the game runs on my UXGA (1600*1200) IBM Thinkpad A31p (used to be) high-end notebook; still, it's quite playable. This clearly shows that you must have either a (faster and/or, as is the case with the HTC Wizard, at least heavily overclocked) QVGA device or, as far as VGA Pocket PC's are concerned, the Dell Axim x50v/x51v for the game to run. Other VGA devices will probably be as (unplayably) slow as the hx4700 and the PL720. Note that lower CPU clock speed doesn't necessarily mean the particular device will run the game unacceptably slow. The 266 MHz Samsung HP iPAQ 1940 is the best example of this - it runs the game just great. The 195 MHz TI, while it isn't particularly bad at most games, produced pretty bad results (without overclocking). As the author mentioned he would release a trial version later, you'll also be able to test the title to make sure it runs on your particular Pocket PC model with a decent speed. Pros

1. Everything is here! The music, the (stereo!!) sound effects, everything!
2. The files in the file system are exactly the same as with the desktop version; that is, you can, for example, freely swap your ogg/mod music files of your choice if you want to change the ambient music or freely rearrange the maps
3. Both Portrait and Landscape orientation is supported (this is great news for people having problems with, say, the polarization issues of the Dell Axim x50v/ x51v and, therefore, preferring doing everything in Portrait).
4. The sources of the game are also here (see the contents of the supertux\ qvgadata\ distr\ subdirectory – incidentally, you don’t need to copy these files to your storage card as they aren’t needed for the actual gameplay)
5. There will also be a trial version so that you can test the game before purchasing it
6. Very fast on some devices; for example, the HP iPAQ 1940.

Cons

1. Severe speed problems on the test VGA devices (except for the Dell Axim x51v) (on faster QVGA devices, there're no major speed problems, particularly when overclocked and/or in Portrait mode)
2. Keys not redefinable (you can’t use any other hardware button for, for example, jumping than the Action button)
3. On WM2003 devices, you can’t use the landscape (more natural) mode unless you use a third-party landscape setter tool
4. Non-fullscreen mode (so that you see the taskbar and have access to for example the Start menu) is useless in the more gaming-friendly Landscape orientation
5. There’s no CAB installer (the files must be manually copied) and the number of the files is 820, of which very few files can be left out (for example, the above-mentioned sources). Transferring these files can take ages if copied into flash ROM (particularly if it isn’t optimized for speed – please make sure you read this tutorial on this question)

Verdict If you have a device that runs the game at an acceptable speed (a fast(er) and/or overclocked QVGA device or - as far as I can tell, based on my test results - the Dell Axim x50v / x51v) and want a really good SuperTux port, go get it – you most probably won’t regret it! If you're feeling unsafe about the (possible) speed issues, you may also want to wait for some days for the trial. Recommended links Overclock your HTC Wizard. Note that OmapClock.exe has been removed from the XDA-Dev forum in the meantime, I've made it accessible here. Also, here's the lnk file I used to overclock my Wizard to play the game (it assumes the game is copied to the supertux directory on your storage card and that OmapClock.exe is in the root of the storage card. UPDATE (07/18/2006): upated with HP iPAQ 1940 and detailed HTC Wizard benchmark & overclocking info; Pocket PC Thoughts frontpage. UPDATE (07/22/2006): upated with HP iPAQ hx2410 benchmark info; elaborated on the HTC Wizard sound. Also, in the meantime, a trial version has become available.