Palm and Treo Hacks

Play Multiplayer Games

Looking for more of a challenge in your mobile gaming? Try playing against another person for that extra edge.

Multiplayer Palm games provide several different ways to connect with opponents. The basic connection methods are infrared (IR), direct Bluetooth connection, and using the Internet. Multiplayer games may only support one or two of these methods—a few support all three.

Infrared

For an infrared connection, you can only connect to one person at a time. You need to be fairly close together, depending on the strength of the IR transmitters in both Palm devices. Pacific Neo-Tek, the maker of OmniRemote, has some notes on effective transmitting ranges for various devices (http://www.pacificneotek.com/range.htm).

You need to keep the devices pointed at each other while you play. To test the IR connection, first try beaming a memo back and forth. Test both ways to check the range on each of the transmitters. If the range isn’t sufficient, then you can look at getting a more powerful add-on IR transmitter [Hack #41] .

Starting an infrared game is straightforward. Both players start the game on their Palm devices. One player initiates an IR game (details vary depending on the game). The other player then connects to the IR game.

Direct Bluetooth Connection

If you are using Bluetooth to connect to the Internet, then that is treated as Internet gaming. A game using a direct Bluetooth connection allows two or more people (depending on the game) to play together. For ...