Get Info: #palmos

Fixing bugs using Bird on Palm OS

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Tenohira Hanafuda Kai (掌花札 kai) is a koi-koi card game for Palm OS, created in 2001 by Hiroki Takahashi. It’s a fun game with varying difficulty, stats tracking, and lovely high-resolution (for the time!) colour graphics.

But, it has one serious problem: sometimes it will forfeit the current round when you choose to continue!

Analysis

After repeated play I figured out that the game would continue as intended only if I pressed the right half of the こいこい (koi-koi) button.

But if I pressed the left half of the button it would not behave as expected and forfeit the round. More on that later.

The Plan

One of the beautiful things about Palm OS is that apps and their resources are viewable, and even editable, right there on the device itself! It’s a lot like Classic Macintosh in that regard, which is no surprise as Palm took a lot of inspiration from the original Mac.

And much like ResEdit on Macintosh, Palm had it’s own equivalent app in RsrcEdit by Quartus, though I preferred to use an app called Bird by Philippe Guillot. You can view strings, bitmaps, menu bars, and other user interface elements (organised as Forms).

Let’s do this

So I launched Bird and loaded up the contents of Tenohira Hanafuda Kai, and went through all the forms until I found the one that displays the continue prompt.

Interestingly the form is dual-purpose. It contains the continue/stop buttons (a List of two items) and also a single button (了解; confirm) used on a different prompt. It’s overlaid on the continue button in a close enough position to be suspect. Perhaps it’s moved slightly at run time?

We can easily change the order of the controls on the form by cutting and pasting, so we do that with the List and it now comes below the button in the order and will be drawn last on the screen. Presumably the things drawn last are the first to capture interactions? Let’s see.

Result

I apply all changes and they are saved directly into the app data. Launching the game again and playing enough to trigger another continue/stop prompt, I tap the left half of the button and… the game continues as expected. There is no strange forfeit. The problem has been solved!

Addendum

I figured this out back in 2019 and edited the app on my Sony CLIÉ device. Recently I’ve been using CloudPilot to run Palm OS apps and games on my iPhone. So to play Tenohira Hanafuda Kai I had to either find the old modified game file, or do it all over again from scratch. I chose to do it again to test my memory and so I could document the process.

Playing Hanafuda on Palm OS in a web browser

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 03 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I recently found out that it’s possible to run Palm OS in a web browser, using cloudpilot-emu.github.io which is optimised for use on iPhone and Android, so you can use old Palm apps and run old games and apps on your smart phone!

Koi-Koi

I play a lot of video game hanafuda and out of all platforms Palm OS has three of the most interesting games. To play these games I carry around either an old Palm OS device (Sony Clié PEG-SL10) or an Android phone (Galaxy Fame Lite S6790) that runs an old Palm OS emulator.

So it’s great news that Palm OS Hanafuda games can now be played easily on modern devices.

Preparation

We’re going to use CloudPilot to create two Palm OS devices, both running in Japanese, and install the games we want to play. You could create English devices, but there will be issues with some text displayed in the games as they expect Japanese text support.

Sony Clié N700C (Colour, Japanese)
Palm V (Greyscale, Japanese)

You can source alternative Palm OS system files from PalmDB. You might choose to add an English device to run other Palm OS games and apps.

Support files

Download Palm OS Hanafuda games and required support files

Installation

Steps to play in Japanese, carry out twice to create one device each of Grey/Colour:

add new device and pick the respective .rom file
go through first launch setup and touch screen calibration
top right button to add the .prc files to device
top left button to reset, normal boot
launch and play the games
switch devices using the Sessions button in the website toolbar

Games

Koi-Koi (1999, by Keisuke Mitani/Palm Boarderz)
- fudawiki.org/en/hanafuda/video-games/palm/koi-koi
- my favourite
- cards can be picked from the field as well as your hand
- only works on old greyscale devices
Tenohira Hanafuda Kai (2001, by Hiroki Takahashi)
- fudawiki.org/en/hanafuda/video-games/palm/tenohira-hanafuda-kai
- low and high resolution support
- multiple opponents/difficulties
- tracks play history and win ratios
palm Hanafuda (2001, by Oruge/e-frontier)
- fudawiki.org/en/hanafuda/video-games/palm/palm-hanafuda
- has 5 game types, including Mushi
- I could swear this displayed in English on my real Palm OS device
Catch-A-Bird (2003, by Juergen Bermann)
- fudawiki.org/en/hanafuda/video-games/palm/catch-a-bird
- similar to Go-stop
- no idea how to get it to display in colour
- doesn’t work on old greyscale devices

Interest-specific Search Engines

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

One of my favourite Google products is their Custom Search Engine (CSE) feature. It allows you to create walled-garden search engines that return results only for chosen selection of websites. This is ideal for creating interest-specific search engines.

These days they seem to be calling the feaure Google Programmable Search, though I’m not quite sure where the programmable aspect comes in? Back in 2006 the feature was introduced as Google Co-op, but whatever. I mention those only for SEO purposes! Cheeky.

I’ve been using CSEs for years to help with finding files related to my various hobby interests, mostly retro gaming and computing. Heck, for a few years a decade ago my way of downloading music files was through a CSE I called “one click wonder”. They work really well.

Given the nature of the web, and the fact that CSEs benefit from continued maintenance, a lot of mine have gradually withered away. But a few of them have survived the test of time.

Listed below are a handful of what I would consider are the most useful CSEs I’ve created, I won’t list the domains involved because the information would need to be updated over time, but you can try each one and use the top tabs to get a handle on exactly which sites are being indexed.

Classic Macintosh

Software and PDF books downloads for pre-OSX Macintosh systems.

bit.ly/searchclassicmac

PalmOS

Software downloads for PalmOS-based devices.

bit.ly/searchpalmos

Japanese Software

Software downloads for vintage systems: Windows, Macintosh, Sharp X68000, PC-98, Palm, etc.

bit.ly/searchjapansoft

ROM Finder

Classic/retro video game ROMs, ISOs, disc images.

bit.ly/searchroms

Manuals

Consumer Electronics operation manual or user guide PDFs.

bit.ly/searchmanuals

Ace Answers

Vintage FAQs and repair guides for the Toyota TownAce and Space Cruiser vehicles.

bit.ly/searchaceanswers

Recovered: Forgotten SEGA Exclusives on Palm OS

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

As part of my ongoing efforts to uncover lost gems from Japan, I recovered two exclusive games made by SEGA in their brief flirtation with Palm OS back in 2002. These games were presented by their Smilebit division at PalmSource Japan Forum 2002. This was around the time SEGA were abandoning consoles and Palm OS seems to have been part of an effort to figure out “what next?”.

My journey to these games started with the my purchase of a GC10 game controller adapter and playing its bundled games, one of which featured an old website URL. I then fell deep down the archive.org rabbit hole and managed to find mention of the two games—one had screenshots but neither had downloads—on an old SEGA website. From here I managed to find the PRC files in a set of just over 100 on chip.de, a German computer magazine and software download website, the only place they still resided and where they had been long forgotten for decades. Finally, I used the Mu Palm emulator and my Sony CLIÉ SJ22 to try them out and take some screen grabs!

Triangle Magic トライアングルマジック

Use the stylus to position triangles on a grid, the aim is to deflect a ball to the goal and collect coins on the way.

This one feels quite familiar today, I can remember several games with a similar concept. Edit: Sega’s 1990 arcade game Borench features a very similar concept.

Borkov ボルコフ

Use the hardware buttons, or stylus, to make an overweight red-haired man eat chunks of chocolate to match the goal shape.

It’s reminiscent of COMPILE’s 2001 GBA game Guru Logi Champ, in that you rotate the play field and shoot/suck blocks from the middle. Pretty cool.

Columns for CLIÉ

The only commercial result from this particular period at SEGA was a version of Columns bundled only with a game controller accessory for Sony’s CLIÉ range of Palm OS “personal entertainment organisers”.

Download

You can grab Borkov and Triangle Magic at palmdb.net/?s=sega

Columns for CLIÉ can be found in the All Games or GC10 downloads at sonyclie.org/drivers.html