It's huge, it's mature, it's online - TibiaME reviewed
Published by Steve Litchfield at 11:22 BST, July 20th 2007
Krisse explores the TibiaME phenomenon and reviews the new S60 3rd Edition client. Is this, 'the world's first phone-based Massively Multiplayer Online RPG', also one of the best games of the moment?
"John Glenn is sometimes credited as the first person in space or the first person to orbit the earth, which he wasn't, both those records belong to the USSR's Yuri Gagarin. Glenn is more often credited as the first American in space, which he wasn't, he was actually third after Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom. More on-topic, the iPhone's supposed "first full blown" mobile web browser wasn't first at all, as a large selection of previous smartphone browsers prove, not least of which is the S60 OSS browser which uses exactly the same open source core as the iPhone's Safari, but the S60 version also has built-in Flash support.
So, with all that in mind, it wouldn't be surprising if we see a phone-based Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game from a major publisher appear over the next year or so, grandly claiming to be the first of its kind. Well, this reviewer has news for whoever comes up with it: they're way, way behind. The first ever phone-based MMORPG is already available, in fact it's been running since 2004. It's called Tibia Micro Edition, or TibiaME, and is the mobile little brother of the PC MMORPG Tibia."
Read on....
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Categories: Software, Editorial Thoughts
Platforms: Series 60, N-Gage, S60 3rd Edition
News Discussion
krisse
As usual, any questions about the game should be posted in this thread and I'll try to answer them.
chilko
for some reason it fails to start on e61. does anybody experienced the same?
luarvique
Does not work on E70. Gives "System Error -1", that is a "Can't find specified object" error. God knows what "object" it is trying to find.
krisse
Did you make sure you used the S60 3rd Edition?
Did you use the Gold version or the Free version?
If you still have problems, perhaps you could try the Java version?
"for some reason it fails to start on e61. does anybody experienced the same?"
It works absolutely fine on my E61, in fact I reviewed it on an E61!
luarvique
I have followed the link and chosen Nokia E70 as the target device. The site gave me a .SISX file to install, I guess it was the free version.
chilko
luarvique
Unless you enable the system error messages, the application will just quietly quit on errors. So, my guess is, you are getting the same error as me.
luarvique
Ok, I have found the problem. You have to install this game to the phone's memory (C: ) rather than the memory card (E: ). It starts up and runs when installed onto C:. Does not like switching screen orientation too much, though.
krisse
Ahaa... yes, I installed it to the phone's memory, so that's why I never saw the problem. I seem to remember the very first versions of TibiaME did the same thing. It caused a lot of problems on early S60 models because they only had a very limited amount of on-board memory, just a few megabytes.
Well done luarvique, I'll try to tell the developers to look at this thread.
luarvique
You may also tell them to process display size changes correctly and do something about the 416x352 display size - the game comes up as a tiny rectangle at the center of that display. Weirdly, looks ok on the 352x416 display (probably scaled from 176x208).
krisse
As I said in the article, the graphics really should be updated to take account of modern screen sizes and resolutions. The current graphics date from 2002/2003 when S60 was first launching, S60 phones have moved on since then.
The PR person from CipSoft told me they would discuss the problems mentioned in the review at their next development meeting. They also have a public feedback form too so anyone can tell them if the game doesn't work properly on their phone:
http://www.tibiame.com/service/?lang...topic=feedback
There's also a support forum, which CipSoft staff monitor and post on regularly:
http://www.tibiame.com/forum_en/?c=2ebo
The idea is nice, but 176 x 208 pixels shown on center of QVGA screen made this game completely unplayable for me. I couldn't even see all the texts.
Nokia N95 was not listed as supported device, so I downloaded the version intended for N93. It also has a QVGA screen, so the experience shouldn't be any different.
krisse
"The idea is nice, but 176 x 208 pixels shown on center of QVGA screen made this game completely unplayable for me. I couldn't even see all the texts."
Well, that's one of the problems I mentioned in the review. I didn't find reading the texts a problem, but of course that's a matter of taste and eyesight. In any case, I believe the developers are already working on a higher res version of the game.
"Nokia N95 was not listed as supported device, so I downloaded the version intended for N93. It also has a QVGA screen, so the experience shouldn't be any different."
I think the S60 3rd Edition versions are all the same game file, just pick a model you know is S60 3rd.
avithe1
Balinor
Thank you for the feedback. Not being able to install and run the game on the memory card of the phone is a bug that will be fixed with the next client release. After the big autumn update we are going to start work on high resolution versions of TibiaME.
Have fun in TibiaME!
Balinor - CipSoft
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