Page 274 - The Ultimate Palm Robot

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Bots /The Ultimate Palm Robot/ Mukhar & Johnson / 222880-6 / Chapter 10

Chapter 10 Having Fun with Your Robot 257

Play a Few Games
All work and no play makes for a boring roboticist. We’ve rounded up about a
dozen robot games for you to try on your Palm OS PDA. We tested these
games on a shiny new Tungsten T, so most of them should work with pretty
much any Palm model—except perhaps for the very oldest devices that pre-
date Palm OS 3. We’ll point out exceptions when we run into them.

Flying Robots
Okay, to tell you the truth, we’re not really sure why it’s called Flying Robots.
Honestly, it looks a lot more like a variation on the old Space Invaders arcade
game. The idea behind the game, though, is that a slew of flying robots es-
caped from the factory at which they belong (really, ripped from today’s head-
lines, when you think about it), and it’s your job to return them. It looks, feels,
and smells a lot like Space Invaders, so just use the buttons on the Palm or the
stylus to move your character around the screen and fire.

Actually, it’s a pretty neat game because it’s written in Java. That means you’ll
need a Java interpreter to play the game, and anytime you have to install arcane
programming tools on your Palm just to play a game it is a good day indeed. In
addition to the game itself, you need to visit this URL and download MIDP for
Palm OS: http://java.sun.com/products/midp4palm/download.html.
After you download the ZIP file onto your PC, you can extract MIDP.PRC
and install it on your Palm. Throw away the rest of the ZIP file—you don’t
need it. Then start blasting robots.

P:\010Comp\Bots\880-6\ch10.vp
Monday, May 12, 2003 1:22:33 PM