Development Bounties

[Pleng]

custom Pandora language like AMOS or DarkBasic for quick hacks and casual game writers (like me ), all the classic machines had their own B.A.S.I.C)

A custom language for Pandora only? Seems unrealistic and unproductive. We already have Bash script & Python, then possibly Lua/Novashell, Gambas and Matthais Basic.... no need to re-invent the wheel.

What might be nice (bearing in mind I know NOTHING about Python) would be some Pandora libraries, and walkthroughs in creating games/apps in Python. Of course, I'm rooting for a Novashell port, simply wonderful 2D engine / RAD tool already available for Linux and just waiting for Clanlib to be ported to OpenGLES

 

[elinscheid]

If bounties are at play, they give me a bad taste unless it's for real suff. I mean, homebrew communities are based on free work done for love of the game much of he time, and generally I'm against giving folks cash for ports of someone else work - it doesn't seem right target fortheir donation (ie, porter is doing 1/100th the work of original team usually) and against bounties usually for easy stuff. Ie: dropping asm into snes emu isn't really hard and should not be bounties. Better menus for emus? Lame use of bounty. (likewise it means insult to everyone who has gone before for free). I mean, for easy stuff it's he wrong message - why would me and picle and zx81 and stevem and so on keep pumping out suff when $$ gets thrown around? (likewise for all us firmware hackers)

bounties would be great for stuff that is big, or hard, or PITA - hardware support in video, perhaps forsomething not too bad but pita like SDL, etc. But not stupid little things stuff that is annoying enough or time consuming enoughthat most people don't pickit up. Most of these easy requests are a couple hours work here or here, so I'd think folks would just do it anyway? Or is hat naive - do people need $$$ incentives? (and if so, I'm a sucker

so pick good bounties, or easy requests. Easy bounties are a pissoff

jeffPhone

I feel similar about asking for cash for porting software that you didn't create. I'm all for donations though, I have done it many times before and will continue to do so.

 

[God Ginrai]

If bounties are at play, they give me a bad taste unless it's for real suff. I mean, homebrew communities are based on free work done for love of the game much of he time, and generally I'm against giving folks cash for ports of someone else work - it doesn't seem right target fortheir donation (ie, porter is doing 1/100th the work of original team usually) and against bounties usually for easy stuff. Ie: dropping asm into snes emu isn't really hard and should not be bounties. Better menus for emus? Lame use of bounty. (likewise it means insult to everyone who has gone before for free). I mean, for easy stuff it's he wrong message - why would me and picle and zx81 and stevem and so on keep pumping out suff when $$ gets thrown around? (likewise for all us firmware hackers)

bounties would be great for stuff that is big, or hard, or PITA - hardware support in video, perhaps forsomething not too bad but pita like SDL, etc. But not stupid little things stuff that is annoying enough or time consuming enoughthat most people don't pickit up. Most of these easy requests are a couple hours work here or here, so I'd think folks would just do it anyway? Or is hat naive - do people need $$$ incentives? (and if so, I'm a sucker

so pick good bounties, or easy requests. Easy bounties are a pissoff

jeffPhone

I completely understand your point. But at the same time, isn't the concept of a bounty supposed to be an incentive to get what you want done? If everyone really wants a port of something, but no one is willing to do it, a bounty should not be out of place. Instead, I believe that we should offer different amounts with each bounty, with the harder stuff being the higher payout, and the simpler stuff being the lower payout.

-God Ginrai

 

[skeezix]

GG -- it is a tough place which is why I bring it up -- bounties have to be done carefuly, or things go all to hell I mean, you throw $$ to easy things, and you basicly tick off all us oldbies, and certainly guarantee no more easy ports from anyone without getting $$ for it. ie: It changes the mentality of the community, possibly.

Hence my note -- throw $$ at serious tasks, that are hard or take enough time where no one has been interested in picking them up. At least, for $$ from Craig, perhaps.

But at the same time .. you want a python->6502 compiler that runs only on pandora, for writing games on a vic20, and you want to ffer up $50 for it? go ahead, seems fine But why shouldn't Craig be throwing $$ at what the most people want, even if its silly/easy? Just doesn't seem right. I'm perhaps a little altruistic -- I'd think for easy stuff, if a few people want it, someone could step up to the task and just do it for fun of the game, for the community. (ie: thats why all us guys worked our bones off all this time; maybe someday we'll get some points from craig/ED/etc if Pandora makes some $$, but we certainly didn't do it expecting anything there.)

Craig has some $$ from the 'dev fund' option during purchasing, so he has to spend it somewhere (thats what its for), but he's basicly going to risk stepping on someones toes when he does it; a sucky position for him :/

ex: snes9x is snes9x team's work; SiENcE did the SDLification and lots of work looking at various versions of snes9x and some of his own code I assume, to get it all working pretty nicely; certainly I didn't spend much time on it, and hence I've refused donations for it. DaveC wants no tearing (v-sync), and craig wants asm cores, and we need a new ROM picker, and some more scaling options; if I get some time (in a fe weeks when I'm back to regular life), I'll do it, gratis; or someone should -- its an open source project, descended from the work of hundreds. hence any $$ shoudl go to snes9x team, or perhaps sience; not me, or anyone else who touches it for simple stuff -- doesn't seem right; a risk is .. as soon as craig puts an official bounty on it for somethign simple (not saying he would or would not,k just a 'suppose so'), then no way anyone would touch it for any other reason right?

Weird problem; maybe its just in my head, but as soon as bounties come up for 'easy stuff', it makes my teeth itch You can bet everyone whose doing any code for gp32, gp2x, wiz, dingoo, pandora will be watching this thread

jeff

 

[Pleng]

these are exactly the sort of issues I forewarned about with having an official dev fund. there will be tears before the money is fully spent.

 

[Exophase]

All this talk about DSP stuff. First we need to actually have a method of getting code on the DSP at all, which probably means porting from Beagleboard. There have actually been several modules for this and even finding out the right way to do it is really confusing. So this really needs to be ironed out now.

 

[Pickle]

while i agree with skeezix's comment's if money was to go anywhere it would be towards kernel/driver/os improvements

 

[Pleng]

but is that what contributors to the dev fund bought into?

I would have thought that the average customer would have expected OP to sort the OS out out of the purchase price, and that the dev fund that was going to be spent as advertised and promoted; to encourage application development.

 

[Trip]

while i agree with skeezix's comment's if money was to go anywhere it would be towards kernel/driver/os improvements

..or a native port of a kick ass commercial game

 

[God Ginrai]

while i agree with skeezix's comment's if money was to go anywhere it would be towards kernel/driver/os improvements

..or a native port of a kick ass commercial game

Like Super Street Fighter. Would be perfect on teh Pandora's dpad. ^_^

-God Ginrai

 

[conso]

Give all our money to capcom and make marvel vs. capcom 3 a pandora-exclusive

Anyway, I think money should flow towards a new kernel and video/audio accelleration.

Apps/Games/Emus should not be handled by bounties in this community, but donations.

 

[GizmoTheGreen]

Give all our money to capcom and make marvel vs. capcom 3 a pandora-exclusive

Anyway, I think money should flow towards a new kernel and video/audio accelleration.

Apps/Games/Emus should not be handled by bounties in this community, but donations.

Yes, sounds logical

 

[marshal]

I think openpandora should really focus on the OS and kernel. The community will do a good enough job with third party applicaiton.

kernel, video acceleration, power management, wifi driver improvement, audi, blutooth, 3g connectivity, PND, fixing bug in the OS: Everything to have a good OS on which to build on

I am sure there is enough to do just focusing on this. And there is enough low level things that might warants a paid developper.

Also some basic application out of the box: webbrowser, pdf reader, messenger, image viewer, audio player...

 

[Caine]

while i agree with skeezix's comment's if money was to go anywhere it would be towards kernel/driver/os improvements

I agree.

 

[Esn]

There are two things I really would love to see happening on Pandora. Not sure in which order.

1. There are plenty of independent Flash developers out there and it would be amazing to be able to play Flash games on the Pandora. Not only would we have a huge library of great content but if these developers could do stuff directly for a hand held console I'm sure a lot of them would be interested.

2. Hardware YouTube playback would be great. Playing 480p movies directly from YT in fullscreen would make the Pandora an easy sell to a lot of people. I subscribe to a few channels myself and it would be great to just boot up my Pandora in the morning and watch some stuff in bed. And can you imagine how useful it would be to have a cooking movie on your Pandora, in your kitchen!?

I agree with these.

 

[renegadechic]

for me, the games and emulators are like the fun stuff we can do. the achievements for coders to make their name with, etc. there is always gonna be motivation, drive and donation to people doing that kinda thing which i think is fantastic.

to echo a few other sentiments then, i think donation should go to the stuff people kinda dont want to do but that will be deeply beneficial. the more hardware we can code for and utilise on the pandora the better and the better every bit of software written should potentially work. being able to offload some of the emulator work to the various chips would be fantastic! my vision on this stuff is pretty basic but i dont think flashing games and emulators around is really necessary at this stage to drive interest in the pandora. its already got that, and demand will exceed supply for a good while so really, lets just get it working as well as possible in the meantime!

 

[jonlad1]

I agree with Skeezix.

Save the bounties for the hard which has been done from scratch on the OS.

A working sleep/hibernation/suspend mode would be top of my list I reckon, closely followed by getting wifi has fast as it can possibly be.

Emulators will naturally mature with time. No one HAS to work on the OS/firmware....

 

[God Ginrai]

Emulators will naturally mature with time. No one HAS to work on the OS/firmware....

I don't get your reasoning... No one HAS to work on emulators, either.

-God Ginrai

 

[Dead1nside]

I really agree with what Skeezix is saying here. There is a chance of pissing off the software devs who have already contributed. And, it does have a risk of changing the 'feel' of the community. I think bounties are a good idea but should be for the big things, similarly to Skeezix. For instance it was said that getting proper suspend was going to be a lot of work, a good candidate for a bounty?

I think we'd all be grateful for any work done for the Pandora, but perhaps especially for the hardware side of things. The graphics plugins, the DSP, newer kernel, repositories.

Personally, I would like to see some of the dev fund money go to rewarding the people who have already put so much work into the software, porting, the OS etc.

 

[jonlad1]

Emulators will naturally mature with time. No one HAS to work on the OS/firmware....

I don't get your reasoning... No one HAS to work on emulators, either.

-God Ginrai

I have absolutely no problem with you not "getting" my reasoning.