A. A PalmOS 5.0 or higher device with approximately 6MB of RAM available and a "hi-res" (minimum 320x320) screen, plus approximately 12MB available on an expansion card (or 8MB without sound and music installed). 8MB of the expansion requirements can alternately be installed directly to RAM, meaning 14MB of RAM available before installation, and approximately 4MB for sound and music on expansion card.

EDGE is not playable on any PalmOS 4 or lower devices, nor will it play acceptably on low resolution OS5 devices like that of the Treo 600. Text will be very difficult if not impossible to read at that resolution. All "hi-res" (320x320) OS 5 devices should be able to run EDGE, provided there is enough RAM available.

NOTE: It may also be possible to play EDGE acceptibly on Chinese QVGA devices (called "one-and-a-half density," or 240x320 resolution), but this has not been tested and some scaling will definitely occur. (See PocketPC discussion below for some comments on scaling and pixilation.) If EDGE does run acceptably, you will likely want to switch"Bold Fonts" On in Preferences for more readable type.

A. The simple answer is to use the EDGE Automatic Package Installer, which is available in the "TRY" or Download Area. Depending on your computer installation and desktop OS, the Installer will select an appropriate method for installing the needed files. With the PSI Installer, simply check the button to install everything to expansion card or to install to RAM, and the installer will attempt to put everything where it is needed. Some systems (Mac/Linux) will receive a PRC Installer, which decompresses the files directly on the device*. Sound and music files must be installed to expansion card, so if no expansion card is available, there will be no sound.

*On some devices, the PRC Package Installer does not seem to work very well. (We suspect this is mostly NVFS devices, like the Treo and LifeDrive.) On those devices, the Zip Archive is likely preferred. It is also available on the "TRY" or Download page, a bit lower.

If you do need to install the files manually, follow one of the following installation schemes:

INSTALLING to RAM:
Install Edge.prc, Edge_Data.prc, and Edge_Maps.prc to RAM.
Install all .ogg files to an expansion card in a /Palm/Programs/Edge/Sound folder (sound is optional, but highly recommended).

INSTALLING to SD CARD:
Install Edge.prc to the /Palm/Launcher folder.
Install Edge_Data.prc and Edge_Maps.prc to a /Palm/Programs/Edge folder.
Install all .ogg files to an expansion card in a /Palm/Programs/Edge/Sound folder (sound is optional, but highly recommended).

A. EDGE uses the Aeroplayer Audio Engine, which is a high-quality audio playback engine. This allows us to provide a lot of high-quality soundtrack and sound effects in the form of OGG files, which only take up 4MB of storage but which must be played back from an external card. Uncompressed, the sound files would be much, much larger and prohibitive to install to RAM anyway. Any other format would sacrifice sound quality, and we wished our sound to match our graphics in quality, thus the decision to go OGG. (Even if you do not want to play the soundtrack (i.e. Music Off in Preferences), the song file Edge.ogg is still needed on the card for sound effects to play.)

A. See the above Palm installation instructions for where to put files. The only difference is the Edge.prc application should always be installed to RAM.

A. To play beyond the 14-day StyleTap trial, yes, you must own a registered version of StyleTap. To advance beyond level three (3) in EDGE, you must also purchase a registration code for EDGE. You can run trial versions of both first, to be sure you are satisfied with the way the game runs on PocketPC. (Note that you can own a registration code for EDGE on a Palm device, and use that same Hotsync ID on a PocketPC device, so effectively you could run EDGE on two devices if you owned both Palm and PPC devices.)

A. EDGE was originally designed for the Palm resolution of 320x320 (as a minimum). Palm widescreen or portrait resolutions of 320x480 or 480x320 were designed for as well, but as yet there are no Palm VGA (480x640) devices.

For VGA (480x640) devices (like the Dell Axim x50v), running EDGE in a 320x320 window at 66% mode looks (qualitatively) better, but there is wasted space around the sides. You can also play in 100% mode, but the 320x320 Palm image is scaled up to the full 480x480 screen width to accomodate this resolution. Because this scale is a factor of 1.5, the scale is not perfect, and every other pixel is scaled. Text suffers the most from this scaling (turn "Bold Fonts" On in Preferences for the best readability), but there is also some flicker if the preference setting for "Floating Camera" is turned On. Turn this preference to Off if you'd like to reduce the flicker.

Similarly, QVGA devices must scale the 320x320 screen down to only 240x240. This results is a loss of 25% of the screen's information, making text somewhat difficult to read. The high-quality graphics generally hold up relatively well, but text can be a bit jagged. I have tried to compensate for this by switching to a bolder version of the fonts in this mode.

(Note: It is possible that a 1:1 mode for these screens may be developed in a future revision. This would make the text and characters smaller on a VGA screen with more area around them visible, and would eliminate the harsh pixilation of scaling. On a QVGA screen, it would make characters 25% bigger, and reduce the amount visible around them, but would also enhance the fidelity of the graphics and reduce the effect of scaling. It might also require some user-interface changes, since everything will not fit in the 240-wide layout as is. If you think this is a valuable mode and wish me to consider it in a future update, please add a comment to that effect in an appropriate forum.)

A. More than likely, you gave an incorrect HotSync ID. We provide a double-checking mechanism on our BUY page, but there is probably a typo in your HotSync ID, or it isn't what you thought it was, and the generated Registration Code will not work. You need to determine your actual HotSync ID and send me an email. I recommend the program idCheck, available from Hobbyist Software, just to double-check your Hotsync ID for strange spaces or symbols. When you do determine and email me your exact HotSync ID, also provide the EDGE ID from the Registration screen of EDGE.

A. Because those sites are not developer-friendly, nor are they particularly customer-friendly. Further, they currently take as much as 50% of the potential earnings for themselves. I have invested almost two years of my time and effort on developing this game, and do not feel it is right to give away half of that effort for a generally bad experience and very few valid or good reasons.

I could go on and on about this, but I won't. I'll summarize: #1) The sites do not provide quality "support" to you. They know very little if anything about the products they sell, and can only pass any questions or problems you have to the developer and wait for a response. This "middle-man" process takes a lot of time going back-and-forth (if it happens at all), and usually only irritates the customer. Not allowing direct contact with the developer (or even a link to the developer's FAQ or website) is short-sighted and wrong. #2) These sites are greedy. With their traffic, they should be able to support themselves -- if not earn a tremendous profit -- on their advertising income alone. Instead, they have consistently raised their cut year after year, forcing either the consumers' prices up, or the developers out of business.

There are about four more good reasons I could mention, but those two alone are reason enough.

If you'd like to read more, consider visiting (and supporting) www.esd-union.com. More importantly, I encourage you to Google your developers' own websites, and if possible, to purchase directly from them.

If you have some difficulty paying for EDGE with my PayPal offerings, please drop me an email and we will try to find an alternative that is good for both of us.

Q. EDGE won't run on my Clie! I get a "An error occured in the application you are using. Note the error code and contact the developer of this application. (Sys 0505) (0,1115)."

A. On Sony Clie OS5 devices, you need to install CliePet's Modern Clie Audio (MCA2), which gives you true OS5 streaming sound. Sony released their devices without the proper OS5 SndStream APIs, and this utility gives you the full OS5 sound EDGE requires.

Download Modern Clie Audio (MCA2) here.

Q. EDGE won't run on my device!

A. Does it meet the criteria listed under OS requirements above? (320x320 hi-res screen, adequate RAM.) If it does, please let me know your device details and the specifics of the problem so we can investigate.

Q. EDGE is getting very slow and seems to be hanging on occasion, especially when choosing or drinking potions.

A. If you are playing with everything installed to expansion card, the speed of your card and the number of items your character is carrying can affect gameplay at certain times (like when your inventory is being counted, as in the case of potions). The best workaround is to install the Edge_Maps.prc and the Edge_Data.prc to RAM. If you cannot install both of these to RAM (due to memory constraints), just move the Edge_Maps.prc to RAM, leaving Edge_Data.prc on the expansion card. This should eliminate most of the delays and pauses, and only requires an additional 900K or so of RAM.