Friday, January 19, 2007

Tips & Tricks: Change the Display Size of Java Games

Please note that this blog is no longer active because it has moved! Please be sure to visit the new blog at:

http://news.mobile9.com/s60apps

 

 

Have you ever found a game that you really wanted to try on your S60 3rd device but when you run it you find that it only takes up one third of your screen? Or perhaps the game resolution is too large and you can only see half of the screen. Maybe some of the games that you purchased for an old phone aren't the proper resolution for your shiny new S60 3rd device. No problem! There's an easy fix that anyone can perform and you'll be running games at the proper resolution for your phone in no time.

Notes: This will work about 95% of the time on S60 3rd edition devices. I am fairly certain that this will not work on phones with a landscape-perspective display. I have not tested it on other Nokia models but feel free. This will work with many MIDlets by the way, not just games.

1. Using an archiver such as WinRAR, open the jar file.

2. Once you have opened the jar, you will see a folder called META-INF. Open this folder.

3. In the META-INF folder there will be one file called MANIFEST.MF. Drag this file onto your desktop and open it in notepad.

4. Now you must know 2 things to edit the file. First, you must know the original resolution of the game. Usually this information can be found on the author's website. Second, you must know the resolution of your screen. Then type the following two lines at the end of the text at the end of the MANIFEST.MF file:

Nokia-MIDlet-Original-Display-Size: www,xxx
Nokia-MIDlet-Target-Display-Size: yyy,zzz

In the example above 'www,xxx' represents the original resolution of the game. 'yyy,zzz' represents the resolution of your phone's display.

In the picture example below, the original game resolution is 176x208 and the target resolution of my screen (N80IE) is 352x416.

5. Now save the changes in the MANIFEST.MF file and drag it back into the META-INF folder in your jar file to overwrite the old one.

6. That's it! Now install the jar to your phone and enjoy your full screen game.

One last thing to note is that when you increase the resolution of a MIDlet it will run a bit slower in some cases. Hey, at least it's running! Also, this is for private use only. Please be fair to the developers who put their hard time and effort into creating these games and do not post edited MIDlets on the net.

Posted by EchoZulu at 16:02:06 | Permanent Link | Comments (20) |
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1 - EchoZulu, fantastic article. Keep up the good work! (Comment this)

Written by: Rcadden at 2007/01/19 - 19:09:03
2 - Man, where do you come up with this stuff? Ur just unbelievable.

BTW, it worked on my N80 but not on my E61. So i guess it doesn't work on landscape displays, as u said. (Comment this)

Written by: Salaah at 2007/01/20 - 10:33:46
3 - hey man, great work. I have one problem....if the resolution isn't found on the website of which i download the .jar file, is there any other way to find out the resolution of a game?

appreciated greatly in advance.

DJ (Comment this)

Written by: DJ at 2007/01/23 - 00:14:33
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4 - DJ, have a look on the developer's site for phones that they list as being compatible with the game. Then check out the resolutions of those phones on a site like gsmarena.com. (Comment this)

Written by: Zach at 2007/01/23 - 10:24:26
5 - Uz a legend bro, well done.. (Comment this)

Written by: jimi at 2007/01/31 - 08:32:47
6 - brotha how do yu do this for sony erricson fones.. or is it not possible? (Comment this)

Written by: help at 2007/02/13 - 00:42:33
7 - i try this on my nokia 7370 and it doesn't work. any sugestions... i've tried Prince of Persia - The Two Thrones (Comment this)

Written by: Bush at 2007/02/18 - 05:52:46
8 - i have SonyEricsson w810i... how i should edit MANIFEST.MF file? (Comment this)

Written by: LilMell at 2007/03/11 - 18:00:15
9 - hi guys, can i know how to install those games with .zip extension ? if i unzip it i get lot of files and a meta-inf folder only and there isn't any .sis or .jar/jad etc for me to install it thru the pc suite. thanks : (Comment this)

Written by: sinestra at 2007/04/13 - 07:50:17
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10 - Hey sinestra, it's actually quite easy! All you have to do is rename the extension of that file to ".jar" instead of ".zip".

If you can't see the extension, you can do one of two things:

1. Go to the website you got the file from, download it again, and as you're choosing a location to save he file on your PC just rename it from "xxxxxx.zip" to "xxxxxx.jar" and save it.

2. Open any folder on your PC and go to Tools -> Folder Options... -> [View tab] and uncheck the box "Hide extensions for known file types". Then you'll be able to rename it on your PC.

As a side note, please note that this blog is no longer active!! It has moved several months ago to the new URL:

http://news.mobile9.com/s60apps/

Hope to see you over there! :) (Comment this)

Written by: Zach at 2007/04/13 - 11:21:59
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