Caanoo coding competition

[Nova]

Thanks for the vid. Gotta love a bit of Mumford and Sons .

GPH is planning a worldwide emulator coding contest.

Did they tell you this privately? Because I don't remember them ever being specific towards emulators for it.

Yeah, it was in an email from Tony Han.

 

[Exophase]

EDIT: Tried PMing Nova, inbox full, just gonna post here:

Nova; This probably goes without saying, but if you get more details plus the go ahead do you think you could start a new thread on the emulator contest? A company willing to pay real money (especially if it's in the kind of scale they were offering for their game contest) to develop emulators could end up being really big. Possibly for the handheld world at large if GPH doesn't require that the results stay Caanoo-only.

 

[Mr 2X]

About Emus Coding Contest there was a Discussion on FB:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Anyang-Si/GPH-Official/127461713948354#!/topic.php?uid=127461713948354&topic=121

<h6 class="uiStreamMessage" data-ft="{"type":"msg"}">GPH is thinking to open a World Wide Coding Contest
But we are not 100% which will be the most attractive one.
Any advice will be welcomed.

What we are thinking of
1. Web browser for Caanoo&Wiz Coding Contest
2. Emulator Coding Contest (Emulators that are not able to run presently)
3. Network for Emulator Coding Contest
4. Game Coding Contest

If you have any further ideas let me know.

Thank you </h6>

 

[craigix]

EDIT: Tried PMing Nova, inbox full, just gonna post here:

Nova; This probably goes without saying, but if you get more details plus the go ahead do you think you could start a new thread on the emulator contest? A company willing to pay real money (especially if it's in the kind of scale they were offering for their game contest) to develop emulators could end up being really big. Possibly for the handheld world at large if GPH doesn't require that the results stay Caanoo-only.

But what exactly do you imagine the Caanoo could have which can't already be ported? GPH are probably in their usual dream land thinking about what they could emulate. What would you imagine coming from this even if they offered $150,000?

 

[Exophase]

But what exactly do you imagine the Caanoo could have which can't already be ported? GPH are probably in their usual dream land thinking about what they could emulate. What would you imagine coming from this even if they offered $150,000?

Easy: a PS1 emulator that runs much better than psx4all and supports the 3D hardware of the device.

 

[quote]

But what exactly do you imagine the Caanoo could have which can't already be ported? GPH are probably in their usual dream land thinking about what they could emulate. What would you imagine coming from this even if they offered $150,000?

I doubt that they think it'll manage anything above PSX. The competition will encourage optimized ports and faster developing, above what happened for the Wiz (which was a 'quick' port here and there).
I think it's great news.

Edit: Also ^ what he said.

 

[gibberish]

i don't understand this competition. hasn't it already been concluded that psx and n64 are out of bounds for a machine with this much processing power? what emulators are people hoping to see from the comp?

edit: ah, question was answered while i was posting. psx, i see... gph would have done better to code their own fully functioning psx emulator in time for the caanoo release date if they really think it's possible... they'd sell a whole load more units that way.

 

[Exophase]

I don't know if GPH thinks it's possible or not (and I wouldn't trust what they think is possible), it's just what I think is possible.

GPH allegedly employs one half of a software engineer, and probably not an especially great one. I think an extremely optimized PS1 emulator is a little out of their reach. Having a competition tends to be much cheaper (and probably more effective) than hiring if you have a strong developer base to pull from. I strongly doubt they're going to be paying anyone $150,000 for winning a competition.

 

[Nova]

I'll see if I can get more information from Tony about this in the morning. It's possible that they have changed their mind since our exchange.

Here's the original email:

Hi Paul,
Thank you very much for your support[...]We are trying to open an emulator contest with one of our buyer and we would like to do it together in all over the world.
What do you think about this?

 

[Alpha2]

Wouldn't GPH hiring anyone to code a PSX emulator instantly land them in a lawsuit with sony anyway? Because it's not as if sony's going to license out PSX games when they're selling them on PSN for the PSP. It seems weird (or downright insane) that GPH would actually admit to paying out directly for an emulator with a risk like that, rather than just saying they're looking for "Homebrew" and waiting for emu developers to just show up to the party anyway.

 

[Pickle]

Everyone should just give up, devil64 will mop up any competition

I think their main goal with a compo would be to generate content for fungp, generate emu's/game's that use internet connections in some way.

 

[jutleys]

can it handle quake 3 you think? i knnow it handles quake 2 no problems

 

[Pickle]

can it handle quake 3 you think? i knnow it handles quake 2 no problems

it might run, but be very slow.

 

[jbrodack]

psx is definitely possible especially given that an emulator was made for the original gp2x with some games decently playable and that only had 200mhz and no 3d acceleration. caanoo/wiz have gpu, more ram, and faster processor. Of course it wouldn't be easy as its still not the most advanced hardware.

I've never seen an "emulator coding contest" before. Emulators are quite complicated and I doubt there would be tons of people making full speed psx emulators. If they want a psx emulator better off creating a bounty for it or something.

 

[quote]

Tony just posted this on the GPH Facebook:

We are thinking to OPEN the contest End of August or Early September.
We will like many users to attend in this contest.
It will be based for Classic Games that arent running in the Caanoo.
Some developers will get some ready before but the rest we will have the contest.

During that we will have another contest of Apps Dev Contest.
Which will be Apps for Caanoo

By 'Classic Games' I'm thinking he means emulators.

 

[Nova]

End of August, hmm.

Just saying, if you didn't buy the Caanoo with the game pack, you won't have anything to play until some decent homebrew comes along.

 

[quote]

I don't really like the idea that they're going to have a seperate apps competition running at the same time as the emulator one. It'll split interest as well as the prize pool :S.

 

[Exophase]

I've never seen an "emulator coding contest" before. Emulators are quite complicated and I doubt there would be tons of people making full speed psx emulators. If they want a psx emulator better off creating a bounty for it or something.

A contest with huge cash prizes is more effective than a bounty since it has monetary incentive AND people are competitive.

 

[quote]

A contest with huge cash prizes is more effective than a bounty since it has monetary incentive AND people are competitive.

You sound interested. I'm almost certain that GPH would send you a dev Caanoo if you asked for one.

 

[Exophase]

I don't really like the idea that they're going to have a seperate apps competition running at the same time as the emulator one. It'll split interest as well as the prize pool :S.

I think it's better this way, because emulators have a pretty unfair advantage in perceived quality. They derive so heavily from money and effort put into so many third party games.. while apps are generally external media oriented in some way (in particular video players and web browsers) they're not quite as pronounced as this. It'd depend how it's judged, of course.

You sound interested. I'm almost certain that GPH would send you a dev Caanoo if you asked for one.

I think I'm more genuinely interested in it for the outcome it'll produce than actually competing in it myself. If I do decide to do something like that I wouldn't have a problem buying my own, this time around I think GPH has much better people to send it to and it's almost out so I wouldn't miss out much in waiting. I'm actually kinda thinking of getting one anyway.