Community Paradigm Shift


A_SN

Active Member
Joined
Jun 8, 2006
Messages
899
Here's what I think : when the Pandora will be out there and this community (which is if I'm not mistaken the most active homebrew gaming community out there, correct?) will smoothly transition to it, I think it would be a great time for a paradigm shift in the community, and mainly in the homebrew games department. Let me explain, the Pandora will have an OS about as well featured as a desktop machine, a processing power getting close enough to desktop PCs, a 800x480 screen, which is close enough to 800x600, and lots of games will be designed to use the touchscreen, which is equivalent to a mouse, and a keyboard. My point is, with all of that in mind, the games we'll make for the Pandora will be quite well suited for desktop use.

So while we're transitioning to the Pandora, why not introduce a paradigm shift in this community to go from a community centered around a couple of machines to a community focused on 3 machines but much more opened to cross-platform gaming. Instead of only releasing our homebrew games for one machine, we should be actively encouraged to release simultaneous PC ports. At this point our games will so easily ported, and even if *you* don't want to bother with making your game PC compatible, I'm sure a few enthusiasts out there will be happy to insert the few lines of code necessary to make it happen.

As of now, you can't really be a part of this community until you have a machine. Like, you can stay around, be interested, but if you don't have a GP32 or GP2X you won't be able to enjoy any of the experience. While if we systematically make sure that our *homebrew* Pandora games are playable by people who don't have a machine yet, they'll be more attracted to this community, thus enlarge it, and if they enjoy the experience on their PC then they know they'll love it even more on a Pandora. That's the Apple technique, let PC users get a taste of your experience by porting QuickTime Player (in the 1990's) or iTunes (and make iPods PC compatible) and inevitably it will attract people to over to you!

Besides, that would be a better incentive for making homebrew games, and mostly multiplayer games! It's more interesting to make games when you have a much larger audience, and you don't ever want to make a multiplayer game exclusively for a platform that has 10,000 active owners, it's much more interesting if you can reach out to both these console owners and PC gamers. Instead of being just another platform on which people play emulators, it will create a better incentive for homebrew gaming creation, by centering the community not just on a machine, but on a machine AND cross-platform homebrew gaming.

Also it would I'm sure attract a lot of homebrew devs outside of this community, and eventually this community would shift to being the be all end all of homebrew gaming!

Go ahead and give me suggestions show your enthusiasm!
 
I hope that topic will be deleted when pandora will fail to find it's place to exist
(negative enthusiasm shown)
 
I'm Exophase and I support this message. :B

(sorry if that sounded stupidly arrogant, but yeah, this seems like a good, practical idea in many ways)
 
don said:
I am Svartalf, and I support it too... err...
I humbly propose, as a white belt in this martial arts community :ph34r: that any dev porting their PC game for Pandora _but_not_GP2x be ostracized from the community ! :gp2x hehe

Just kidding ... but promise you won't 'migrate' to PC+Pandora away from my GP2x please :)
 
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This makes absolute sense, and is a great idea. Homebrew developers code on the PC anyway, so encouraging PC builds of their software won't even be that much of an effort at all, given the close native resolution and processing/GPU power.

It's not a bad marketing strategy either - players who get into the cool PC homebrew game they find one day could discover it was conceived with the Pandora in mind, and realise that they could play the same game (and all the other games) in portable form.
 
don said:
I am Svartalf, and I support it too... err...
Riight... Shouldn't that be "don"... Don't be impersonating me, now... I'd have to hurt you. ;)

I'm all for doing Linux x86 to Pandora ports (I'm already interested in moving the three LGP titles I've access to plus one nice Open Sourced Linux title over...)- and I'm all for making desktop titles, where practical, for at least Linux desktop. If it's a cool enough game, you might even get some publishing help from one of the players in the space.
 
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QUOTE
his makes absolute sense, and is a great idea. Homebrew developers code on the PC anyway, so encouraging PC builds of their software won't even be that much of an effort at all, given the close native resolution and processing/GPU power.

Yeah! Release SqDef for Windows!

I like the idea though ;)
 
zacaj said:
Yeah! Release SqDef for Windows!
You have no Gold Pieces left to afford upgrade your PC to play StarCraft/WarcraftIII:TFT?
It also sound like you not going to buy that stypid pandora!


(now cite from wikipedia)
QUOTE

but is presumably Pandora, whose myth Hesiod revisited in Works and Days. When she first appears before gods and mortals, "wonder seized them" as they looked upon her. But she was "sheer guile, not to be withstood by men." Hesiod elaborates (590-93):

From her is the race of women and female kind:
of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who
live amongst mortal men to their great trouble,
no helpmeets in hateful poverty, but only in wealth.




Box that Open refers to be the souce of all sins

Every man who already spilled his passion on that unborn witch(pandora handheld) will bear the fate of root when tree will chopped down and burned. You will be hurt and tormented until the very end of your pitiful lifes.
 
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A_SN said:
Here's what I think : when the Pandora will be out there and this community (which is if I'm not mistaken the most active homebrew gaming community out there, correct?) will smoothly transition to it, I think it would be a great time for a paradigm shift in the community, and mainly in the homebrew games department. Let me explain, the Pandora will have an OS about as well featured as a desktop machine, a processing power getting close enough to desktop PCs, a 800x480 screen, which is close enough to 800x600, and lots of games will be designed to use the touchscreen, which is equivalent to a mouse, and a keyboard. My point is, with all of that in mind, the games we'll make for the Pandora will be quite well suited for desktop use.

So while we're transitioning to the Pandora, why not introduce a paradigm shift in this community to go from a community centered around a couple of machines to a community focused on 3 machines but much more opened to cross-platform gaming. Instead of only releasing our homebrew games for one machine, we should be actively encouraged to release simultaneous PC ports. At this point our games will so easily ported, and even if *you* don't want to bother with making your game PC compatible, I'm sure a few enthusiasts out there will be happy to insert the few lines of code necessary to make it happen.

As of now, you can't really be a part of this community until you have a machine. Like, you can stay around, be interested, but if you don't have a GP32 or GP2X you won't be able to enjoy any of the experience. While if we systematically make sure that our *homebrew* Pandora games are playable by people who don't have a machine yet, they'll be more attracted to this community, thus enlarge it, and if they enjoy the experience on their PC then they know they'll love it even more on a Pandora. That's the Apple technique, let PC users get a taste of your experience by porting QuickTime Player (in the 1990's) or iTunes (and make iPods PC compatible) and inevitably it will attract people to over to you!

Besides, that would be a better incentive for making homebrew games, and mostly multiplayer games! It's more interesting to make games when you have a much larger audience, and you don't ever want to make a multiplayer game exclusively for a platform that has 10,000 active owners, it's much more interesting if you can reach out to both these console owners and PC gamers. Instead of being just another platform on which people play emulators, it will create a better incentive for homebrew gaming creation, by centering the community not just on a machine, but on a machine AND cross-platform homebrew gaming.

Also it would I'm sure attract a lot of homebrew devs outside of this community, and eventually this community would shift to being the be all end all of homebrew gaming!

Go ahead and give me suggestions show your enthusiasm!
Umm .. what about OpenGL ES vs OpenGL?
 
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When people play what's fun on dual analog sticks or a d-pad with a hacked up keyboard version all they will think is you, the platform it was made for and your game totally suck. What you will learn is the PC is a wildcard of a platform and to write time sensitive graphic applications for completely sucks ass in a most heinous manner. Having the homogeneous hardware of a handheld platform is a very rare gift that makes writing games a joy which is exactly the opposite of writing games for a pc. 800x480 is no where near 800x600, it's a completely different aspect which is why I have to think very few native pandora games will ever make it to the gp2x. Nice dream.
 
Sphinxter said:
When people play what's fun on dual analog sticks or a d-pad with a hacked up keyboard version all they will think is you, the platform it was made for and your game totally suck.
Ever heard of gamepads? Besides, you're exaggerating the problem, not all games will rely on the analog sticks, and the arrow keys are better than lots of d-pads.

Sphinxter said:
800x480 is no where near 800x600

Ever heard of black stripes?
 
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Seems like a fine idea to me. It's easier to debug on the PC, anyway.

Any of you ever hear of Wesnoth? That's a fine example of how well free PC games can take off.
 
A_SN said:
Sphinxter said:
When people play what's fun on dual analog sticks or a d-pad with a hacked up keyboard version all they will think is you, the platform it was made for and your game totally suck.
Ever heard of gamepads? Besides, you're exaggerating the problem, not all games will really on the analog sticks, and the arrow keys are better than lots of d-pads.

Sphinxter said:
800x480 is no where near 800x600

Ever heard of black stripes?
That is exactly the problem I refer to. You don't know if they have a gamepad, gravis mark VI, WTF, could be literally *anything* so to make a decent pc game you will have to code for *everything* or settle for some in between that's sure to disappoint most all of them.
So, if I, and I don't, assume for arguments sake that those fixes would take care of the controller and the aspect, (providing our audience is farsighted and not real picky), take a look at the rest of the machine and count the possible variables. The void of pc hardware disparity is rather wide, deep and cruel.
 
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randomhack said:
Umm .. what about OpenGL ES vs OpenGL?
The delta from OpenGL ES 2.0 to OpenGL 2.0 is fairly painless as one is largely a subset of the other as long as you don't use the Vector data type (which is an ES extension...). Going the other way might be more painful (Heh... MY problem with the titles I plan on porting over... ;)) but it's something that is certainly doable.
 
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Sphinxter said:
That is exactly the problem I refer to. You don't know if they have a gamepad, gravis mark VI, WTF, could be literally *anything* so to make a decent pc game you will have to code for *everything* or settle for some in between that's sure to disappoint most all of them.
So, if I, and I don't, assume for arguments sake that those fixes would take care of the controller and the aspect, (providing our audience is farsighted and not real picky), take a look at the rest of the machine and count the possible variables. The void of pc hardware disparity is rather wide, deep and cruel.
PC controllers have buttons and dpads, and now typically have dual analog. These days most of what you can easily buy is a Dualshock ripoff. You just need to make the button assignments customizable, like a good game should do anyway (and allow for keyboard as well of course).
 
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Sphinxter said:
That is exactly the problem I refer to. You don't know if they have a gamepad, gravis mark VI, WTF, could be literally *anything* so to make a decent pc game you will have to code for *everything* or settle for some in between that's sure to disappoint most all of them.
So, if I, and I don't, assume for arguments sake that those fixes would take care of the controller and the aspect, (providing our audience is farsighted and not real picky), take a look at the rest of the machine and count the possible variables. The void of pc hardware disparity is rather wide, deep and cruel.
Gamepad or keyboard/mouse are the generally accepted PC control schemes. The Pandora will have a gamepad, keyboard and touchscreen. Analogous, no?

The hardware disparity argument is moot, seeing as we're talking about homebrew here. Well, the rest of us are. If you're not, please refer to the original post. The average homebrew game does not (and will not on the Pandora) "hit the hardware", instead relying on cross platform libraries.
 
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fishybawb said:
The Pandora will have a gamepad, keyboard and touchscreen. Analogous, no?
Gamepad is an external device. Are all pandora's worshipers that clever?
 
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