I know, I know – TicTacToe? How useless right? Perhaps, perhaps not! Certainly wasn’t for me, but I did it not so I could play TicTacToe, I did it to see if I could write programs for a device like this. Maybe your kids will like it? lol

I’ve been a computer programmer since the late 70s, but have never attempted to write for anything other than the PC since it came out in the early 80s. My Samsung Instinct got me to try. First, let me say that I didn’t actually write this game, it’s a port of a Java Applet that comes with the Java SDK from Sun.

I’ve run into a few issues in porting this – mainly the Instinct’s lack of true LCDUI support. So many functions are not supported – like pointer events? Wow, of all the phones that need that, the Instinct is certainly one.

So I dumped the LCDUI approach and started down the road with LWUIT – it at least supports pointer events. LWUIT is a real nice package and provides lots of power that I am not using in this port – theming for TicTacToe just doesn’t seem useful to me.

Anyway, here’s my first release of this port. I had to disable sounds in this because Sprint has RESTRICTED acess to a media player that works worth a damn. The one I can use, works, but the volume is so low that it is not acceptable. And Sprint did not expose any way for me to control the volume, so I just removed the sounds for now.

I added a score tally bar – scores are not saved and are only viable for your current game session. I am working on completing the winning line draw – it currently works for some wins, but not all.

Please visit Instinct-Software.com – I now do all the distribution of my apps through that site.

Enjoy! Repeat as needed!

Let me know of any problems please.

Woot! Sprint is trying to out do themselves now, lol. From the Buzz About Wireless Forums here

We anticipate an official Public Release Notes announcement of MR4 when that firmware enters certification test on 10/13 (all dates are estimates and are subject to change with no notice). Unofficially, firmware MR4 will include:

* Java refit to better enable 4-way/OK and text input to LCDUI widget-based applications
* support for native document viewing for many popular office document types including .doc, .pdf, .ppt and others
* resolution to roughly 50 additional open tickets

Oct. 13 is the day it enters certification testing – could be a month after that before we see it – maybe by Thanksgiving then? I hope I hope I hope

I am working on a simple game app (TicTacToe) for the phone – seemed a good way to learn what the phone has to offer. I started out playing with the LCDUI.

LCDUI on the Instinct is far from implemented – mainly in the text input department – but my game is simple graphics, logic, and pen presses. I don’t really need text input abilities, but if I call “GameCanvas.hasPointerEvents”, I find that the device does NOT support pointer events via LCDUI – doh!

Now, I’ve been playing with the LWUIT (LightWeight User Interface Toolkit) on the Samsung Instinct. Not bad – not bad at all. It does support pointer events.

While running the LWUIT demo, the Instinct seems to be way underpowered, but it could be that the demo is just trying to “demo” everything and overpowering the device’s abilities.

Sprint’s Emulator for the Instinct from WTK 3.1 runs the demo fine, but a PC has a lot more power. The emulator is not real accurate in it’s representation of the Instinct – for example, several of the screen transitions work great on the emulator (I really like the “Cube” transition) but are not available on the phone at all.

Theming is a large part of LWUIT and works fine on the Instinct.

Like most toolkits, there is no way to input text on the Instinct, but since LWUIT and LCDUI seem to get along well, this won’t be a problem when the update that provides LCDUI compliance is available (soon, I hope, I hope, I hope).