070529 | Processing / Java
Tags: No Tags
Tags: No Tags
I’ve got my hands on a Nokia N93 and am trying to see what I can do with this beast using Mobile Processing. It’s got a nice big screen and supports Java / MIDP 2.0, so there should be some potential, right?
Well, so far I feel like I’ve been timewarped back to 1995 and old-skool Java 1.0 AWT graphics: No transparency, no floating point math, no 3D. It doesn’t help that Mobile Processing only comes with a bare minimum of example code, and that at least some of the contributed libraries are outdated. At this point I wonder if I’d be better off ditching Mobile Processing and using regular Java with Nokia’s custom SDKs.
If any readers out there have experience creating eye candy for cell phones, input would be appreciated.
I had my go at Mobile Processing a little while back, but saw no future in it for serious mobile-developement.. So if i were you, i would go for the regular Java.. There’s also another alternative.. J2ME Polish, which is an advanced build tool and GUI for J2ME applications.. Might be something worth checking out.. Support preprocessing so you can support multiple devices in one project etc. (although I realize that is not what you are aiming for with your new Nokia) It also has a great overview over what most of the phones out there support.. (http://www.j2mepolish.org/devices/devices-vendor.html)
And if you don’t want to use java at all you could always use Symbian or Flashlite..
http://www.aniway.com/flash_lite_for_mobile_game_developers/?p=114
best of luck,
Yonas
take a look at tinyline.com. there are also lot of jsr’s which the n93 should support, for example a 3d.
btw can’t follow you, when you mean “using regular Java with Nokia’s custom SDKs”. Thought they are just for MIDP as well.
cheers!
tim
Thanks for the input, guys. I’ve downloaded the Nokia SDK and Carbide.j tool, I’ll see how far that takes me. The N93 has hardware accelerated 3D, so using that would be cool.
I’ve made a few things in Mobile Processing - it is a bit of a pain to use, for all the reasons you describe (the fixed-point maths is particularly nightmarish), but it does have some fun possibilities. My things are oolong.notlong.com (let me know if they work for you?).
I haven’t really tried using the official J2ME, so I have no idea how it compares, but to be fair I found it pretty easy to get started in Mobile Processing, where there seemed to be a lot of new stuff to learn to get working straight in J2ME; the only really awkward bit was the fixed-point business already mentioned. I see there is also a 3D library now, M3D, but I haven’t tried it out yet.
Hello There
Well, i began working with Mobile Processing in september 2005 when the first version was release, i’m a Java developer and i work a lot with J2ME but i found that mobile provide a easy way to create midlets without require all the J2ME knowledge.
I started writting some libraries for Mobile Processing and now we have 13 libraries in a lot of differents fields (M3d, MAudio3D, MBluetooth, MLocation, MFiles, MGames, MMessaging, MNokiaUI, MPush, MQRCode, MRest, MSound, MVideo, MWebServices) but the fragmentation of the J2ME makes imposible writes bulletproof code.
Right now the J2ME platform is much better than two years ago and i think we are going to see some beautiful phones like the N93 or the K790 with excelents implementations of Java and i hope some developers use the Mobile Processing to prototype their application or develop high interactive, multimedia midlets.
Finally to create big object oriented with a lot of data manipulation application using the WTK or the Mobility Pack for Netbeans (cool visual design). To create some simple things i use Mobile Processing.
You should give a try at flashlite, there are very cool graphical things you can do with it. I am not sure if 3D in java will please you.
I wished to find some kind of app like wefeelfine.org for mobile, gathering feeds and streaming data into visual form is very nice application.
Good luck and keep up the good work.
ok, so ive just begun learning mobile processing and have a very basic issue at the moment. i can only use two screens/containers because i only know how to use a boolean rule to switch between them using a button. i have multiple buttons on a screen and i want each one to goto a different screen. i know i have to use the int() function and define each Pcontainer as a new int but i simply cant get it working. any example of how to do this would be HUMUNGOUSLY appreciated.
[...] is much earlier in development than the other tools we routinely mention here. On the visual side, Marius Waltz (of Code & form fame) was recently seen in shock at how alarmingly primitive phone programming [...]