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 andgive me suggestions show your enthusiasm!
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
h34r: that any dev porting their PC game for Pandora _but_not_GP2x be ostracized from the community ! :gp2x hehe
