[General Topics] Menneisyys:
Music & sounds; hacking

Music-wise, the game uses tracked soundtracks played back in stereo (with the Hekkus Sound System engine). There is a separate track for in-game and non-in game music. I didn’t find them as good as the ones in some of Herocraft’s earlier titles – they’re pretty short and, after a while, repetitive. They are, however, better than nothing – particularly if you get the cheap Smartphone version of the game.

As all the game resources are all in the “game.dat” file, which is a standard .7z compressed file, you can even easily swap the music files. There are four .MOD files under the \snd directory – just overwrite them to your favourite MOD file. To do this, you’ll need to download the excellent 7-Zip tool HERE (you can safely get the current (4.52 beta) beta), make sure you associate the .7z file extension with it, rename game.dat to, say, game.7z, click it and, after it’s loaded by 7-Zip, just move the mod files you’d like to listen to during the game.

I’ve tested the game with the EXCELLENT modules coming with TapzMania (see the Windows Mobile Multiplayer Bible for more info on this title). It worked flawlessly.

There are some short sound effects; I’ve counted 18 of them (alarm, bomb, success, failure, being thrown in jail etc). I particularly liked the “Yeah” effect.

Graphics

No problems in here: as with most Herocraft titles, it’s pretty good, particularly on VGA devices. As far as the, resolution-wise, diametrically opposed platform, the 176*220 Smartphone platform is concerned, I haven't encountered graphics-related problems on it either.

Languages

The game supports several languages, which you can choose from at startup (screenshot). I’ve, in addition to the English one, checked the accuracy of the German translation: I’ve found no mistakes.

Bugs, problems

Since this is a version 1.0 game, there are some bugs in it. For example, the game shouldn’t be started in Landscape mode (otherwise, screen tap coordinate registration will be messed up). This was a problem on two devices I’ve tested.

Also, the game throws an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException (and, then, just exits – screenshot HERE) upon trying to access the high score list on my WM5 hx4700 and my WM6 HTC Universal (both running “unofficial”, "cooked" ROM’s). On my (non-cooked) MS Smartphones, WM5 AKU 2.2 A12 Dell Axim x51v and on my WM2003 iPAQ 2210, this wasn’t the case; that is, it seems that it’s only devices with popular XDA-Developers “cooked” ROM’s are affected, not devices with official, factory ROMs (or upgrades).

Finally, as with all the other HeroCraft games, it’s continuously running the CPU at 100% speed (even without the sound enabled), meaning it will chew through your battery really fast. Otherwise, the game runs fine on even slower devices – even with A2DP enabled and music (tested on my non-overclocked, TI OMAP-based HTC Vox). Note that, in order to fix the problem of high power consumption, you can mercilessly underclock your handheld. On my, by default, 624 MHz Dell Axim x51v, the game runs flawlessly the device underclocked to 208 MHz. Then, the power consumption is about 60 (SIXTY!) % lower than running the PDA in auto mode (~580 mA vs. 230 mA, using ~40% brightness and running acbTaskMan in normal refresh mode). Quite a difference in battery life, eh? Yeah, this is why it’s REALLY worth reading ALL my articles – this result is pretty close to what I’ve published in my well-known, related article, also published in the printed version of Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine, on these questions.

Verdict

Pretty much recommended, particularly for MS Smartphone users (because of 1, the lower price 2, the lack of good games for the platform). While, IMHO, it can’t beat Orions (on the long run: you’ll, once you learn to play it, will play Orions for months and will really be addicted to it), it’s still a very nice game. Just don't forget to underclock your handheld if you can.