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Handheld gaming fun+ a bit of open source

10 open source / homebrew play things for handhelds in 10 minutes Rain Ashford, November 09

+I <3 handhelds

Love portability

Lots of emulators with all my fav games

Lots of fab multimedia applications

Affordable

All sorts of homebrew games and apps to play with

Cool communities & well supported sites for downloads & tech

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① Malice for Quake

② Lemmings

③ Word Up

④ Meteora

⑤ Setsuzoku

⑥ Pocket Physics

⑦ NitroTracker

⑧ Freedroid

⑨ 9 XROAR

⑩ Nethack

10 open source / homebrew play things

(on the following 2 handhelds…)

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Click icon to add picture

GP2x F200

+Nintendo DSYou need a flash cart + Micro SD

Some of my DS:London friends!

My DS ^

Mario Kart tourney

+Yay Quake for DS – Malice is a complete conversion of the original version of the first person shooter. Malice features totally new weapons, locations, artwork and and was almost unrecognisable from the original Quake the game on which it was based. Some of features in Malice include:

25 new maps

10 new weapons

Various equippable "toyz”

13 new enemies

13 new enemies

Many new features into the Quake engine

Watch out for the green slime and try not to drown!

Installation:

The engine is open source, but the data isn’t so if you don’t have a version of Quake, or you can download and install the shareware version in the root of your card from http://www.idsoftware.com/games/quake/quake/index.php?game_section=demo On your SD card create a folder on the root of your cart called "id1” put the pak0.pak and pak1.pak in this folder (you'll only need the first if you're using shareware) If you’re on a Mac get the pak0.pak from http://quake.pocketmatrix.com/pak0.pak.zip Next get this file and save it in the root of your card http://quake.drunkencoders.com/downloads/config.cfg On using for the first time I recommend you sort out the controls straight away as the help is pretty non-existant.

1. Malice for Quake

+A fabulous old favourite, Lemmings DS is an open-source port of the classic Amiga action-puzzle game. Score by getting a percentage of your Lemmings through a set of barriers by choosing the right skills – e.g. digger, parachute or makeshift barrier – those left behind will be blown up!

Lemmings DS is the result of the LemProject by a handful of homebrew gamers and includes:

* All 120 levels from the original Amiga Lemmings

* All 100 levels from Oh-No! More Lemmings

* All 72 levels from Xmas Lemmings ‘91, ‘92, ‘93 and ‘94!

With all those suicidal Lemmings running around you’d be forgiven for going a little cross-eyed but the coders have included a zoom function which helps using the stylus to grab and select the critters. There’s also a PC level editor if you want to create your own levels and traps, which is spawning all sorts of cross genre /game inspired fun. It also includes automatic progress saving.

Sony hasn’t officially sanctioned this game, so grab it incase the guys behind it have to take it down due to a C&D!

Installation

Check out the LemProject http://www.mrdictionary.net/lemmings/Lemmings downloads http://www.mrdictionary.net/lemmings/lemproject-downloads/ Make sure you keep all the files in the folder and install on the root of your SD card.

2. Lemmings

+A fun and perplexing single player falling block puzzle game. You’re given a grid of letters on blocks that you must clear by connecting blocks to spell out words of three or more letters.

Words can be joined horizontally, vertically and diagonal as well as forwards and backwards. It also offers multiplier bonus scores and bombs to help you get higher scores. It a race against time to read and work out the various permutations of all those blocks.

Unfortunately you spend a lot of time shouting at it for seemingly not having a very broad dictionary to support of all the words it conjures – e.g. ‘Oi ‘ale’ is a word you daftass!

The game contains two game modes "WordUp!" which is open ended, and "Arcade", with level progression

The game doesn’t save high scores, so they’re lost on reboot.

Installation:

Download from http://dl.qj.net/WordUp-for-DS-Nintendo-DS/pg/12/fid/11403/catid/220 and keep all the files in it’s folder

3. Word Up!

+A rather gorgeous looking game. You defend your planet, which is located at the bottom of the DS touch screen and war with unseen entities who are somewhere above the range of the top screen.

Battle is done using a force called ‘mana’, which is slowly repleted as you use it. This mana can be used to fuel other attacks, shields, upgrades, or even materialise as raw shrapnel which can block opposing attacks or be used as a weapon itself. You use you stylus as a magnet for mana and thrust it at your enemy. But your enemy also has it’s own mana to use against you!

There are various weapon modes including one that just goes ‘arrrrrrrrghhh’ at you when selected and another that you blow into the mic to send mana forth like dandelion fairies on the wind.

 The subtitles and instructions have some misspellings that are very cute in a Zero Wing kind of way.

 Installation:

Download for DS from http://meteora.lo2k.net/

4. Meteora

+A totally cute, but challenging puzzle game that’s very addictive. The gameplay centres around matching pairs of blocks with the same shape and colour. The twist is that the blocks don’t need to be next to each other, they can be remotely linked as long as you take no more than 2 turns to do so. There are various levels set within ‘easy’, ‘normal’ and ‘difficult’ modes with 20 different board panels and you don’t get let off on ‘easy’ on the first go! Practice makes perfect and you’ll soon get an eye for matching them up. It’s a lot of fun and if you read the rules you’ll get the hang of it in no time!

You can send your high scores via wifi to the leader board and your current level is always autosaved for next time you turn your DS on. Oh yes , the music is rather nice too.

Installation:

Download from http://www.ds-scene.net/?s=download#middle and put the .nds file in the root of your SD card.

5. Setsuzoku no Puzzle

+The creator of Pocket Physics sums it up thus “It isn't really a game, but more of a physical construction kit for your pocket’ which is quite true – by designing scenes with the stylus you can create rolling ramps, walls, seesaws, buckets, balls, dominos and all manner of elaborate conundrums.

It reminds me a bit of the sort of imagination I applied to the Mouse Trap game when I was little. Once you start thinking about how you can pin things and pivot them against gravity, you then begin to have a whale of a time.

If you like it there’s opportunity to donate a pizza ;-)

Installation:

Download the Pocket Physics .zip for your DS from http://www.tobw.net/index.php?cat_id=3&project=Pocket+Physics

6. Pocket Physics

+A ‘FastTraker ll’ style tracker for DS (meaning you can load MOD files in 6-8 channels), it’s a great music tool for creating music and although technically not a game, I had a lot of fun playing with it so didn’t want to ignore it in my top 10.

It’s great because it supports XM (extended module) compressed music file formats used by many PC trackers and can be played on Winamp and XMMS.

At first glance the interface looks busy, but with a little reading and play it’s not long before you’re composing and messing about with patterns. There’s presets you can experiment with on the keyboard, import your own XMs or WAVS, or my favourite thing, which is record your own samples with the DS microphone!

Installation:

Find out all about NitroTracker here: http://nitrotracker.tobw.net/index.php?cat_id=0

Download, installation and tips here http://nitrotracker.tobw.net/index.php?cat_id=4#installation

7. NitroTracker

+An implementation on GP2X of the game "Paradroid" which was released on Commodore 64 in 1985.

In this game you control a robot residing in an interstellar spaceship made of several decks navigable by lifts. The aim of the game is to clear the ship of rogue droids using an ‘influence device’ and take control of the droids minds and use their guns to destroy others.

Your droid can also take over a rogue droid via a mini-game involving basic circuit diagrams and logic gates. Each droid has one side of the screen, with a series of logic gates and circuits connected together. The droids have a number of "power supplies" that can apply power to one circuit. Higher-numbered droids have more power supplies, basically the droid supplying the most power to the circuit "wins". 

Installation Download FreeDroid Classic from http://download.chip.eu/en/Freedroid-Classic-1.0.2_212613.html

8. FreeDroid Classic

+An eclectic emulator that runs Dragon & Tandy Colour Computer (CoCo) games from the 80s such as Manic Miner, Buzzard Bait, Chuckie Egg, Revenge of the Alien Bongo Beast in Criss-Crossy lines dimension. Ports to both DS and GP32/2X.

Basically, I love retro games so this makes me very happy!

Installation

Download and instructions can be found at http://www.6809.org.uk/dragon/xroar.shtml - you’ll need to supply your own ROMs though!

9. XRoar

+One of the oldest computer games that is still being developed with fixes and new features by the mysterious DevTeam, though as Nethack is open source anyone can write a new patch between official releases.

The player gets to choose a name, character, gender role, race and alignment. You can chose between traditional RPG characters such as wizard or monk, or go for something less trad such as tourist or caveman – these choices affect how the game unfolds. The player is accompanied by an animal character, usually a kitten, dog or pony.

The challenge is to find the Amulet of Yendor within Nethack’s dungeon of 50ish levels and discovering all the tricks, tools and secrets can take years of gameplay. For experienced players there’s always self-imposed restrictions that can make gameplay harder, such as being a vegan!

Installation

There are various ports of Nethack to DS and GP32/2x

http://frodo.dyn.gno.org/~brettk/NetHackDS

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/gp2x.cgi?0,0,0,0,46,1942

10. Nethack

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Thanks! @Rainycat

http://www.mignonette-game.com/