TamsPPC - the PocketPC Blog

Each and every .NET CF developer is perfectly aware of the pains involved in obfuscating applications in order to keep their source code safe. ArianeSoft’s Pocket Programming Language is another development solution for PocketPC (it IMHO has quite a few advantages over .NET CF) - here’s what they have to say on security:

Please tell us a bit more about yourself
My name is Alain Deschenes, I live in Montreal, Quebec, Canada with my wife and daughter. I have been programming for the past 20 years. I started on an Apple IIGS in 1986 in Basic, then Pascal, Assembly, C and C++. I am the president of ArianeSoft Inc. and the author of PPL (Pocket Programming Language) and DataMite.

Do you consider piracy an important issue in the mobile computing space?
Yes. Most, if not all, mobile applications and games are cracked these days. It is a big problem. If a little company wants to stay alive and healthy, it needs to work on anti-piracy features in their programs.

Has ArianeSoft itself ever had piracy problems?
Yes, we are always working on tightening our security. We know we cannot win this game but at least we try. It is very unfortunate that people, even today, don’t realize that the sales we are loosing as a small company, really impacts on our future. The mobile community is like when I started on the Apple II, they were mostly small companies developing softwares. We have to work harder and protect our softwares better without causing too much troubles to our customers.

What does ArianeSoft do to help its customers stay safe?
We follow the warez scene closely and make sure our products stay protected, we have multiple methods for protecting them and change them every once in a while so that cracks only work for one version.

.NET CF has recently gotten under fire because applications created with it are easily disassembled. Is this possible with PPL, too?
Not unless you know how to. There are encryption, compression involved and then you need to know how the undocumented PPL’s bytecodes works. We are not saying it is impossible but until PPL really becomes a major player with critical applications developed with it, there should be no worries.

Does ArianeSoft plan to offer a “signed app” program in the future; thereby hindering pirates to run unsigned code on their machines?
No plans yet, maybe in the future.

Some developers have considered virii an effective deterrent to piracy. Do you think that their idea could work out theoretically?
I don’t think so. We need to protect the customers. We need to make sure the program is not going to think you are an illegal user and do something bad to your device or your data. The only thing your program should do in the event of piracy is stop functioning.

Do you think that device manufacturers are interested in reducing piracy?
I don’t think they care and they have no reasons to. They should care about making better devices and the software developers should worry about piracy. Unless they find a hardware solution to piracy, then that would be an amazing feature.

Will ArianeSoft ever offer a “disassembler” or release the specifications for its intermediate language to the public?
No.

Anything else you would like to add
We are starting work on version 2.0 of PPL. There is still a long road ahead but PPL 2.0 will bring major improvements to the visual form builder with a complete object-oriented control library. Thank you for considering us for an interview.

Resco Defender(aka tower defense for Windows Mobile) recently scored a rave review from TamsPPC. Due to our long-standing cooperation with Resco, I am proud to present you an exclusive interview with the game’s creator - enjoy:

Please tell us a bit more about yourself.
My name is Juraj Mojik and I am a game developer & programmer at Resco.net.

Have you designed other applications/games for mobile devices before?
I have designed and programmed these games for Resco - Seal Ball, Table Soccer, Diamonds and Defender. I also participated on Resco Brain Gain.

Where did you get the idea to create Defender?
Tower defense games are quite popular lately. It is because they are simple and very addictive. We have tried it on ourselves here at Resco so we know what we are talking about

After some research we found out, that there is no remake for Windows Mobile which fits our needs. So we decided to make our own concept.

What were the main issues you faced while bringing Tower Defence action to the PocketPC?
The issues are almost the same with any game idea that should be played on so many devices - how to make it look good on so many different display resolutions and orientations. We decided to make the whole game map visible all the time instead of scrolling a larger map. We had to layout the information and control elements in such a way, that the game view is maximized on every device.
- square screen

- portrait mode

- landscape mode

Also we had to think about the controls - stylus and keyboard - to make the game as easy to play as possible. The main goal was to keep it simple and fun.

The game’s enemy hoardes sometimes have really astonishing capabilities. How did you work out the balancing?
This is the work of my colleague Michal, who is also a graphic artist - he has spent hours playing Resco Defender and setting the stats for the enemies and the towers. He has set the Medium difficulty to be challenging for him and derived the other difficulties by weakening or strenghtening the enemy stats. He tried to set the game to be entertaining from the beginnig to the end so you have to build and upgrade towers at every level from 1 to 100. I think he was quite successful.

Why didn’t you include a dedicated set of levels/missions? A terrain editor?
We thought that the most entertaining way how to play tower defence games is the creative one - where you do not have a set of levels, but everything is up to you - how you build your maze.

What is your favourite ‘tower layout’? Why?
I prefer long horizontal lines from left to right. Only in the middle I create short vertical lines (arranged like teeth) so the enemies have to go around every top of a vertical line, where I position a boosted black magic tower - very effective for destroying ground enemies. I use almost every type of tower possible to create maximum efficiency:

What is your favourite tower? Your favourite creep?
My favorite tower is the Teleport tower, because wisely used it can have destructive effects. Also the overall graphic effect of this tower is nice.

My favorite creep is the pink one - which we call cloner - the one which when destroyed falls apart into four small ones. I like it because there is a lot of money for this one.

Can we expect a sequel?
We have a lot of interesting ideas, but only time (and success of the first one) will show if we make a sequel. But we would love to.

Anything you would like to add?
We love to hear from players that Resco Defender is entertaining and fun. Thank you for your support.

The Austrian Games convention recently offered us the opportunity to get a little interview with Thomas Kritsch from Microsoft Austria. Thomas is the marketing manager for the XBOX platform - and spoke a bit about the XBOX 360 and a lot on mobile devices/gaming - enjoy(picture courtesy of abc texte/Dr. Doris Maria Kohrs)!

What should my readers, who own an XBox 360, do now?
If the console is defective, contact customer care. The console will be picked up, fixed and returned for the next 3 years in Austria…

Should consoles be sent to service preventively?
Not every console is defective. If you have a console at home, it can work well. If it breaks, see above…

As far as I know, the XBox and the PPC both run in the same department at Microsoft’s. Is there any collaboration?
No. The XBox is in Entertainment/Devices department, a department responsible for Games4Windows, the XBox and Microsoft’s mice/keyboards/… . As for the PPC, no idea to whom that belongs…but it isn’t in my department.

Why doesn’t Microsoft attempt to converge Games4Windows to PPC?
We license our games out, but have no own development for mobile games. Stuff like Ages of Empire can be licensed.

How are these licenses given out? Flatfee or profit cut?
Sorry, this is not my department. Out licensing department can decide what’s best on a per-game base, and the results are not being published!

So a house can just walk up?
Yes. Go to licensing and tell us what you want to do…

As for the Zune, will there be games?
No! The Zune is a dedicated media player that is NOT programmable. It is a media player and does nothing else.

Do you plan such an interface?
Can’t say as of now (giggles).

Do you plan to integrate PPC and Zune somewhat? Where is the difference between a 16GB rx4240 and a small Zune? Won’t they converge as SD cards get bigger?
The difference is, that the Zune is intended for people who do NOT need the PocketPC UI. They want media and that’s it - and that’s what the Zune UI is developed for!

Will Zune maybe converge in an “iPhoneish” fashion?
The brand Zune will remain independent. However, we can always expand the Zune functionality later…

What OS is the Zune based on? WM or another RTOS?
No idea. This is information that also won’t be released. The UI needs to work - and that’s it.

ArianeSoft managed to create quite a splash with its recent discount on its PPL programming language. However, little was known about PPL except its price - and this is where we dug in. Read on for an interesting interview about PPL’s history and its future roadmap!

Please tell us more about you and your company
My name is Alain Deschenes, I started programming at the age of 12 around 1986. I started on an Apple IIGS with AppleSoft Basic and 65c02 assembly. I then moved on to a Mac IIvx and worked with it for a couple years learning Pascal, C and 68000 assembly. In the early 90’s I started working on the PC and moved from there to Borland C and Borland Delphi.
From my early days of programming, I was passionated about programming languages. I wrote a few basic interpreters back then, I had a facility learning all kind of new languages from Lisp, Python, Forth, Cobol and so on.

In 1995, I started working for a company called Megadata Group Inc. in Montréal, Québec. They just started working in the EDI (Electronic Data
Interchange) field. The main bulk of our business was with accounting packages that we wrote modules for in Cobol. Then in 1998, they offered me to write a custom EDI software that we’ve called MegaEDI. As of today I am still working full time at this place and still working on MegaEDI.
I wrote the whole thing in Borland Delphi 5.

ArianeSoft Inc. was officially in business in April 2006. The main motivation behind ArianeSoft is to provide people with great softwares at an affordable cost. I also do custom programming for business of any kind. I haven’t put much effort into this aspect of the business yet since most of my time was dedicated to PPL. I have done a few contracts for a medical clinic and am looking forward doing more custom programming in the future.

What was the motivation to create PPL? How do you position yourself in comparison to .NET and native C++ development?
In January 2004, I started working on PPL as a side project. I have had a few Palm’s and PocketPC’s at that time and they were either hard to programmed with or require expensive softwares. The solutions offered were either very slow or required big runtime libraries. PPL was a great opportunity for me to learn programming on the PocketPC’s and put my knowledge of writing compiler/interpreter to use. The idea of programming easily on these little devices and be able to do so on the road was one of the main goals of PPL. In April 2004, I released the first beta of PPL on PocketMatrix.com and kept on releasing more and more betas until September 2006 when I decided it was time for PPL to hit 1.0.

I have always dream about writing my own RPG one day and having a nice Ultima-like RPG on the PocketPC/Smartphone is still one I cherish to this day (I know I am old school for games). There are no programming language that offers an easy 2D game creation toolkit in a professional development environment for the PocketPC, Embedded Visual C++ is the only solution for some serious game programming but it is not easy to learn and you need external graphic libraries. Game programming requires way more than just a graphic library, you need physics, sprite functions, particles, music and so much more. PPL combines most of these into one small package.

PPL has not been put together to compete with the likes of Microsoft because it simply cannot. It is mainly a one man’s project. I simply wanted to offer a nice complete all-in-one alternative to the big programming environments.

Another goal of PPL was simplicity and the small size. PPL is small, very small. In one 1 mb file, you get a fast compiler, interpreter with no variable types, object-oriented syntax, garbage collection, complete graphic engine, particle engine, sprite engine, music engine, cross-platform easy assembler, hundreds of built-in functions, encryption and compression functions and I forget so much right now.

I believe PPL offers the easy the simplicity of .NET. .NET seems like a nice platform, I have never gotten into it much because C/C++ offers what I need, I need speed of execution. I don’t like the idea of having runtime libraries (VB) when I program. Now that most WM devices will include .NET frameworks I am starting to like the solution a little more.

How fast is PPL compared to .NET and C++ apps?
PPL is an interpreted language written by a small company. It won’t ever compete the likes of .NET and C++. Yes, .NET is interpreted too but the the amount of people behind this project is huge compared to PPL. C++ is extremely fast. On the other hand PPL compares favorably to Perl, Lua and most smaller programming language. PPL offers an easy cross-platform assembly language called PASM which dynamically compiles to machine bytecodes to help you when you need raw speed. I plan on using PASM to build version 2.0 of PPL.

Do PPL apps need an extra runtime library? If yes, how big is this library?
No, it is all included in the executable files you created with PPL. One of the main goal of PPL was to stay away as much as possible from external runtime libraries. The nice thing about PPL is the fact that you can create very small .ppc files (compiled bytecodes files) that you can use directly with the PPL.EXE program. You can always compile pieces of code and attach .ppc files together when you need it at runtime. You can distribute PPL projects as either an executable file or as a group of .ppc files along with the PPL.EXE file.

Do you need to pay a license fee on a per-pcs basis when applications created in PPL get sold?
No, PPL is license free for shareware and freeware softwares. Commercial applications of PPL are subject to licensing but this is on a per case basis.

Could you maybe name a few ‘big’ apps written in PPL? Which PPL apps are you especially proud of?
PPL is still young, it will take a little more time until we see something big coming out but there are a few that have made the news.
The iPhone “emulator” for the PocketPC was written in PPL, the original one, the one you first saw on Youtube in April 2007. The best examples of what can be achieve with PPL are the Editor and Visual Form Builder that were written and maintained by Brad Manske. People are starting to come out with some nice applications written in PPL and cannot wait to see what will be coming out in the future.

Many developers were recently left sitting in the rain as AppForge went belly-up. What can you offer developers to ‘migitate’ the single-source problematic?
PPL is growing every month. More people are moving to it and even big companies are starting to find an interest in it. I am working hard on creating a community behind PPL. I think this is what will keep it alive through the years. Customer service is our top priority, our forums are a live proof of this. I have invested so much time of my life into PPL that there is no turning back for me, I will see PPL become an official alternative to the big names. I have some big plans for future versions that I am very exited about.

Do you plan to support any additional platforms? Symbian or Palm OS maybe?
I am focusing on WM platforms for now. The Smartphone is a huge market right now, I want to concentrate on it. In version 2.0 I plan on adding more platforms.

Which mobile OS do you expect to dominate the market in 5 years?
I am not in a position to predict things but from what I see, Windows Mobile is gearing up to be a leader if Microsoft put the efforts needed into it. It has the potential but still need some work. The diversity of options you find in these devices is what will remain attractive to customers.

Anything you would like to add?
I hope programmers will give PPL a try, join us at http://www.arianesoft.ca/forum.php. We are very dedicated to our products.

It’s vacation time finally…time to chill out, relax and have fun! For me, vacation time always means looking at loads and loads of new apps for my handhelds - after all, nothing beats a few rounds of a cool game after work.

Anyways, the discount code HOLIDAYTIME gets you 20% off all Palm OS and PocketPC software in the TamsShop for a week from now - have great fun shopping!