Marcelo Oliveira Interview

First could you give a little introduction to yourself?

My Name is Marcelo Oliveira, 25 years old. I work now as a Team Leader ( Gaming & Usability team ) for a technology institute located in Brazil. We do some development regarding open source technologies. For the last couple of years I've been working with mobile games development, and when the chance to work on this new device appeared I knew it could be a lot of fun to work it. In my spare time I play lots and lots of Counter strike source, and I try to move away from computers!

Edit: The company I work for is ( INDT )
Here is a link to the main repository for Maemo applications
www.indt.org.br/maemo

What programs you are working on or finished for the 770?

We are developing some small games for the 770 :

MaemoSweeper : Mine Sweeper - Ported, ready

MaemoBlocks : based on gpe-tetris like game, but due to 4-way pad problems we needed to come up with another way of interaction, so the user can play either moving with the 4-way rocker or grabbing pieces with the stylus. Ported, ready

TuxPux - ported, ready

MaemoDoom - Ported, new GUI , arm specific texture loading bug fixed - Done, we will add network gaming now

Crazy parking : based on the popular rush hour game. Developed, ready

MaemoDrac - based on Drac : solitaire games, ported ready

Lbreakout - Ported, some Gfx work and tweaks on the UI needed.

IceBreaker - Ported, ready

BattleGweled - multiplayer bejeweled game, based on the GPL gweled. Players have avatars*, and making sequences increases attack power. Uses Wi-fi.

*Avatars are not ready ( needed the gfx ) and bluetooth support is on it way.

The other guys here are working on :

- AbiWord - ready, first version

- Gnumeric - ready, first version

- Python + pyGtk + PyHildon - ready , it's on sourceforge.net

What non 770 projects have you worked on in the past?

Most of my working projects were related to mobile games, so I did some mobile games development, process research, optimization, and lots of consultancy for third part developers in the Brazilian mobile scene.

Why are you developing for the 770?

The company I work for is a non-profit organization founded by Nokia based on some Brazilian laws. Those laws assure certain amount of money to be invested in R&D ( research and development ).

What is it like developing for the 770? Do the hardware limitations get in the way?

Well, I have a mobile phone background, so I can't say "limitations". The 770 is almost a small desktop so is not that hard. Obvious that important lessons from the mobile phone development still valid : Save battery, usability matters and casual gaming.( the 770 can obvious change the last one )

For the 770 I'm not directly developing, but my team had a strong C game programming background, so it was no problem at all working with this new platform. It's just a matter of getting used to the cross platform development ( under scratchbox ).

What is your favorite program you are working on?

Well, some of them it can not be announced right now, but working on this new platform is so exciting that any applications is a " favorite". Actually I'm really pleased of being working with some usability topics for pen based devices.

I was really impressed watching the Doom videos, were you surprised by the amount of coverage you got?

First, let me give the honors to whom deserves it : first of all the all mighty john carmack, that not only created this masterpiece but also released the code many years ago so we developers could learn more. Second : my co-worker, known as the Assembly-Guy: Cidorvan. I defended the idea of trying this game on the device even before I was in the team, and thankfully Cidorvan worked around a nasty bug that made all the textures wrong on the Arm platform.

About the coverage : It's the Doom power not ours =) But I was really impressed ! The news just ran the World in 1 day! Incredible! I wish I could have quake running fast too just to see it happening again. We actually tried to, but for now.. it's impossible =) maybe with some advanced assembly and DSP tweaks!

Being a Palm user I am very interested in BattleGweled. Did you have a Palm device and did you get hooked also? My girlfriend will still take my Zodiac from me to just to play that game.

BattleGweled! People on my team were a little bit worried when I placed the suggestion to it, but when it was ready to be played through wi-fi, it was a sure shot! =) Everyone liked and we expect to improve it very son, using some Hardware abstraction layer to ease the network configuration inside the game.

I don't have a palm, but I'm a hardcore fan of bewejeled like games =) they are SO straight forward. The simplicity and fun of it's the kind of thing I really admire on games.

Do you have any plans for future development on the 770?

Well, I hope that the Maemo platform really comes to stay, it has been a great fun to work with it, and from a developers point of view this platform has incredible possibilities. It's not a simple mobile device, its almost a small desktop on your hands!

For my personal goals :

I have a small pool of ideas to great software on the platform. But the one that I really wanted to do depended on the existence of a line-in. It is a Guitar pre-processor with a incredible GUI. Some one already commented on the Maemo Developer list that the line in it made with some soldering =)

To spread the ease of development for the Maemo Platform games ! If you did something with SDL in the past, you already have what it takes to develop to the platform, and if you aren't a C programmer you can now use Python, a simple but powerful language ported by some co-workers that brings Pygames a module that lets you build games pretty pretty fast! check it out! http://pymaemo.sourceforge.net/

That's all folks! The best Regards from Brazil to everyone
and sorry for my poor english! I swear I'm trying to improve it =)


I would like to thank you for your time and I can't wait to try your programs. I personally think your english is great. Marcelo Oliveira is a mobile developer and can be found at http://www.marceloeduardo.com. Many of his projects can be found on the Maemo wiki at http://maemo.org/maemowiki/.

Edit: The company Marcelo Oliveira works for is ( INDT )
Here is a link to the main repository for Maemo applications
www.indt.org.br/maemo