Gp2x Dead?

[rmatheso]

GP2X = Pocket Crack.

 

[Vimacs]

Just less white and more addictive

 

[moz]

im gonna miss his avatar

 

[Nickmon]

I cant believe we have run this for 6 pages !!

my 2cents worth !

I know when i bought it this was an minority machine and a bit of a gamble, I can afford and accept that.
I have DS, PSP, Neo Geo Pocket, GBA, PC Engine handheld, gp32 and yes the build quality is not as good - I knew that in advance, I was prepared.

I play the Gp2x more than PSP, DS is my main handheld, but portable neo geo (and yesterdays beta was ace) make the GP2x cheap at any cost! and Hu6280 is going along nice as well

10 Minutes emulation/gaming/DRMd crap?? - well what ever, some times 10 minutes are all we have time for, DRMd its ace it runs megadrive games as they should be ! Have you ever played a real megadrive ?? the games are the same so are you moaning about the quality of the games or the quality or the emulator/system thats playing them...

I have two megadrives here and the games are the same.

If I had to choose today to sell either DS, PSP or gp2x to raise some money - the psp goes !! (and no im not selling it before anyone asks).

And no im not 14 !

Im a mature adult gamer and for me the gp2x has been a great purchase..

 

[Megagun]

Okay, so first of all I'm new to the GP2x and GP32 stuff, and in fact the GP2x which I will hopefully soon arrive will be my first handheld ever, and already I notice ordering one wasn't a bad move..

Now, what all you "emulation-is-shit" people think and say ("GP2x is dead because of all the emulation being there only and no homebrew!!one").. well.. There's one argument I can put against your whining that might do the trick of killing this topic: developers' feelings.

Think about it. What would you rather do: spend 3 weeks developing a few awesome homebrew titles, get little attention and generally speaking don't get a larger e-penis out of it, or would you rather spend 3 weeks developing an emulator that allows everyone to play a WHOLE LOT of games, thus giving everyone a whole lot of fun in the process, and thereby getting the developer a lot of attention and thus a very large e-penis?

An analogy: some artist can make a masterpiece, yet if it might not ever be known well. Some other artist can make a quality-wise worse painting, with lots of references to other famous old paintings, which lets the viewer experience those old paintings all over again. It'll very likely get more attention and be rated better than the single 'masterpiece' painting.

So. yeah. The advantage of coding an emulator is that you give a LOT of people a LOT more possibilities and a LOT more fun, thus getting better feedback and feeling better about your own creation.

Also, I expect the actual homebrew community growing rapidly as soon as most of the emulators reach a "completedish" state, where there isn't much to improve anymore on those emulators... So just kick back, play some good ol' Sonic or laugh an evillish laugh as you get the fireflower, while waiting for emulation to get done.

Emulation ain't bad.

 

[Nr.56]

@stepp

The product quality (in software and hardware) of the gp2x is not comparable with products which finance with softwarelicenses. you get soft for nothing!!!!! eachone of the comunity is glad to get improvements of the software (the games, the emulators). every step the soft goes towards to a comercial quality is a victory of this comunity and its coders. there is no plug and play. if you want it, you have to buy a nintendo or psp. but some members of this comunity are adult and able to istall software. they have other priorities. they dont need the oportunity to say to daddy: "please, please, present me Donkeymarioridge.. for my nintendo-psp!!" if somewhat not pleases you, you can alter it to your zestfulness. try this on your gameboy!! and now sell your gp2x, daddy can soothe you!

 

[nickspoon]

Think about it. What would you rather do: spend 3 weeks developing a few awesome homebrew titles, get little attention and generally speaking don't get a larger e-penis out of it, or would you rather spend 3 weeks developing an emulator that allows everyone to play a WHOLE LOT of games, thus giving everyone a whole lot of fun in the process, and thereby getting the developer a lot of attention and thus a very large e-penis?

Are you a developer yourself?

If not, then you're not going to know about developers' feelings. I for one enjoy the creativity, imagination, variation and problem-solving tasks that go into writing a homebrew game. How am I going to tackle this? Is this going to be a problem?

I also lack the technical skill to write an emulator. And don't give a flying fuck about my so-called 'e-penis'.

 

[^RaZ]

Seems to me that the people who bought the console that seem to totally hate it, obviously didn't read up on it! Its abit retarded to be honest, would you go out and buy a reasonably expensive pice of kit with your eyes closed? I don't think so!

With all consoles the way to figure out whether its for you is to look at the software available and what you want. Its like me going out and buying a DS sorry but I don't want to ply kiddy games!

As to the build quality.. I've a MKII and haven't found a thing wrong with it! The joystick takes a little getting used to, but other than that I've never had a problem with it =)

Never regreted getting one for my 21st

 

[lealoc]

This thread is great. You know, I still haven't ordered a GP2X yet. However, I lurk on these forums every day and read all the latest threads and check out what's available etc. etc.

My point is that this thread has made me more determined to get my act together and order one soon! Why? Because of all the arguments posted by you guys in favour of the GP2X. I don't give a stuff if the build quality is lower than the Sony (DRM anyone?!) PSP who have bottomless pockets for hardware development. The PSP and DS are successful due to the brand name, hype and very clever (and expensive) marketing. This combination doesn't equal good quality or value for money imho. Look at the iPod as another good example of this! There are much better mp3 players out there for a lot less money, but everyone wants to keep up with their peers and buys the brand name. I'm more careful with my limited funds and would rather support the independent and smaller developers every time.

I love emulators and have a huge collection on my PC, I watch lots of films, listen to music and read a lot of ebooks. I also code (for Windows currently) and am interested in learning how to do so for the GP2X/Linux. There's no contest afaic, the GP2X is the only handheld that fits the bill for me.

Thanks guys.

 

[EvilDragon]

Nickspoon and Ravnos, notice that I have a GP32, joined the forum earlier than both of you, AND am still posting in the forum. What, do I really need to have a GP2X to follow the scene? Not having it just saves me the trouble of becoming disappointed from buying it for the many problems.

Well, let me tell you one thing: I came here MUCH earlier than you. I owned a GP32 BEFORE I came here. The first GP32 I had was a NLU, cause the FLU wasn't even out at that time...
At that time, the GP32 was already 1,5 years old.

What homebrew games did exist at that time?

We had some Pong and Tetris variations... not a single fullspeed Emulator... to be honest, there wasn't a single game worth playing out at that time....
Nevertheless, I liked that system. I stick to it - and devs began to code better and better homebrew stuff and emulators for the GP32.
Half a year later, there were quite a few good Homebrew games. 2 years later, there exist REALLY cool homebrew games (try Nazcadreams, Gianas Return or Numo), but that was after the GP32 was REEAAAALLY old already.

Now, we have the gp2x. You think it's better suited for coding? Only half true. Sure, you can easily port games that will run like crap unoptimized.
However, Squidge just found an MMU hack, which sped up emulators by 10 - 20 fps. You think this is only useful for emulators? Nope, even GAMES could use this!

The devs have just started hacking the system, we're not even talking about REAL HARDWARE ACCESS yet (as there's still some hacking going on for that).

If you're waiting for games better than the GP32, come back in 1 - 2 years, when the hardware is more commonly known.

It's the same with every system. Devs need to get used to it in order to squeeze out more and more.
Compare FF7 graphics with FF9 graphics. Same system, FF7 looks ugly compared to FF9.

Compare early Amiga games with later titles like Turrican 2. Same system, way better graphics and sounds.
Compare Super Mario Bros. with Super Mario Bros. 3. Same hardware, worlds in-between sound, gameplay and graphics...

Compare Sonic the Hedgehog on the Master System with Sonic Chaos on the Master System. The graphics of Sonic Chaos do almost look like the Genesis versions...

The list could be extended to an endless list of examples.

Now, the devs of the gp2x are at the beginning - and some games same quality (some even better) than late GP32 games... where do you think that system will be in a year or two...?

 

[PokeParadox]

Well put, ED!

 

[nickspoon]

Well put, ED!

 

[Hanz™]

To all those that play emulators only (most people here), remember that you are not playing the games that someone would buy the GP2X for. No one ever says "Man there's this cool game called "Super Mario World" for the GP2X. You gotta try it out."

Most people however bought a GP2X for it's emulators.

Original homebrew games require not only good coding skills, but also imagination. Creativeness is what makes a homebrew game the most appealing. With emulators, you can only go as far as perfectly emulating the games. But with homebrew, say there is a very fun game: people can make requests to the author to add features and such. The only requests people can make relating to emulators is "MMEMEEME WANTS GGBBAAA!!!!11"

Last time I looked Emulators have features. Save states, save states with screenshots etc... Features related to improving compatability etc....

There have been requests by people to stop uploading bootup sounds and just collect them into one file. That didn't happen. There have been requests by people to remove the useless sticky topics. That didn't happen.

It was decided that we should wait to see if the creation of them dies down.
The stickies are there for a reason.

Anyway, as people have said, this is still early days, and as Ed has said we haven't got direct hardware access yet...

 

[Azure]

I agree with the topic creator. I get a plain, unstable handheld just to be able to play nothing but the @&*!ing emulators. Just look at the recent upload list. Emulators, skins, boot sounds, more boot sounds, no homebrew = FAIL.

( which gets boring after 20 mins of playing games for about 10 secs each )

That perfectly supports my claim that while everyone with a GP2X is playing their emulators and nothing else, they are secretly not really having fun playing the games since they only play them for a short amount of time.

Who the hell does this guy think he is? All of these retarded claims about how everyone who uses emulators barely plays the games for only short periods of time has got to be one of the most ignorant and just flat out retarded claims I've ever heard in my whole life. Where exactly did this information come from? This is a piss-poor reason to down emulators (OMG! They're SOOOO bad because they aren't original!! God forbid you want to play your favorite classic games that you played while growing up). I played Sonic and Super Hang-On through DrMD for an hour and a half yesterday...

But the GP2X is better suited for development to begin with. It shouldn't be developing slow. The reason it's so slow is because everyone is busy playing with their emulators.

Nah, we only play games for 10 seconds on our emulators, so that can't be why.

Original homebrew games require not only good coding skills, but also imagination. Creativeness is what makes a homebrew game the most appealing. With emulators, you can only go as far as perfectly emulating the games. But with homebrew, say there is a very fun game: people can make requests to the author to add features and such. The only requests people can make relating to emulators is "MMEMEEME WANTS GGBBAAA!!!!11"

What's the big deal about being able to make requests and what not (You can still make requests for emulators though, like save states, frontends, other feature requests, etc.)? Isn't playing the damn game more important? The games that can be emulated are so fucking polished that it doesn't matter if you can do this or not. Oh no, we can't make requests! It's the end of the world!! Emulators are completely useless!!!

Homebrew games also give inspiration. Games like Epicenter's Stargazer and Dzz's upcoming games will hopefully give inspiration for others to create homebrew games. Right now, there's NOTHING. No one knows the full potential of the scene yet because of the lack of homebrew. Wow, they can see emulators running on the GP2X, but what difference does it make if they can see the emulators running on many other systems?

Given enough time, the homebrew scene will grow. Just be PATIENT and give it the same time to mature that the GP32 had (You know, that handheld that you own that wasn't as great as it is now as when it first got started). You worry about inspirational games being released, and I'll just worry about playing actual games themselves and not giving a shit about whether something is inspirational and will spark further games. If you buy a GP32 or a GP2X and don't have any interest in emulators, well, then I think you just bought yourself a $169 brick. No, I'm not saying that this means that all the GP2X is good for is emulators. I'm saying that there are so many emulators available for the GP2X that you should easily (INCREDIBLE UNDERSTATEMENT) be able to keep yourself busy between homebrew games and what not.

To all those that play emulators only (most people here), remember that you are not playing the games that someone would buy the GP2X for. No one ever says "Man there's this cool game called "Super Mario World" for the GP2X. You gotta try it out."

That's right, we don't say that. Instead we say "Man this handheld can emulate the classic SNES. You gotta try it out." I don't exactly see the point of your argument here. If you don't appreciate classic 8-bit/16-bit gaming (Which is essentially emulating all of those classic systems that you grew up playing) then why'd you bother getting a GP32 (Why are you even on these forums?)? I'm not saying that the only purpose is emulation, but that's a PRETTY big selling point of such handhelds and is quite a big component of these kinds of scenes.

Looks like someone doesn't know how to make 2 second wav files. I'm just waiting for the person that will create a news post for a boot sound. That is when the community has surely gone under. In retrospect, GP2X SUCKS compared to the GP32. Obviously the GP32 took a long time to develop since no one knew about it for the first couple years and it was originally not very homebrew-friendly. Yet, the "weak" GP32 surely outdid itself. Now, everyone knows about the GP2X and it was originally made to be homebrew-friendly. Yet, the GP2X releases are sparse and completely focused on emulators and useless files (ie. bootsounds and skins).

If you aren't satisfied with how the scene currently is, how about giving it some time to mature (This is why everybody is saying your impatient, along with the whole people only playing games for 20 seconds with emulator thing)? The GP32 has had a community for so long that it's had an incredibly amount of time to become polished into the product that you see today. Just because the GP2X was birthed into an already established community doesn't mean that that makes up for the GP32's having been around for years. Seriously, just be quiet, go play with your GP32, and come back in 6-12 months.

JaqMS, there's a very simple reason for the disparity between the homebrew:emulators ratios on the GP32 and the GP2x respectively. Namely: the time the console have been around.

You joined this time last year, yes? Well, had you been around about a year and a bit prior to that, you'd have seen about the same ratio for the GP32 as there currently is for the 2x. Everyone wants emulators first - that's the quick buzz. Then, once all the emus are made, then homebrew games start to appear, and their quality gradually to rise.

If the ratio's still bad in a year and a half's time, PM me and I'll send you a video of me eating a hat, but it will, short of the GP2x actually dying, have improved somewhat.

Couldn't have said it better myself (Same with EvilDragon's post).

BTW, I don't like the GP2X's stick (Quite honestly the worst stick I've ever used), but I'm gradually getting used to its stiffness.

I know this probably didn't add much to this thread, but I'm just trying to kill some time right now (And I'm not in the mood to play video games). Excuse whatever spelling/grammar errors there are.

 

[Nr.56]

@Azure

http://forum.gp2x.de/viewtopic.php?t=2173&...5a4931cca0133e6

every problem is waiting for its solving!

 

[Megagun]

Are you a developer yourself?

If not, then you're not going to know about developers' feelings. I for one enjoy the creativity, imagination, variation and problem-solving tasks that go into writing a homebrew game. How am I going to tackle this? Is this going to be a problem?

I also lack the technical skill to write an emulator. And don't give a flying fuck about my so-called 'e-penis'.

I am a developer myself, yes, although I haven't really done much because of lazyness and boredom with actually starting afresh on a new project. I have a lot of game designs done already, ready to get worked on, though. Designing a game itself is a whole lot of fun though. Probably one of the most fun things in the whole development cycle of a game.

Myself, I've experienced that whenever I added one feature I thought was great to a project, yet that in the end no-one ever seemed to bother using it or even commenting it, my willingness to work on a project got a big hit. So probably, whenever someone works on an emulator, he'd get less of this than whenever he'd work on a game itself.

And ofcourse the whole e-penis thing was an analogy.

 

[jmetal88]

Nickspoon and Ravnos, notice that I have a GP32, joined the forum earlier than both of you, AND am still posting in the forum. What, do I really need to have a GP2X to follow the scene? Not having it just saves me the trouble of becoming disappointed from buying it for the many problems.

Well, let me tell you one thing: I came here MUCH earlier than you. I owned a GP32 BEFORE I came here. The first GP32 I had was a NLU, cause the FLU wasn't even out at that time...
At that time, the GP32 was already 1,5 years old.

What homebrew games did exist at that time?

We had some Pong and Tetris variations... not a single fullspeed Emulator... to be honest, there wasn't a single game worth playing out at that time....
Nevertheless, I liked that system. I stick to it - and devs began to code better and better homebrew stuff and emulators for the GP32.
Half a year later, there were quite a few good Homebrew games. 2 years later, there exist REALLY cool homebrew games (try Nazcadreams, Gianas Return or Numo), but that was after the GP32 was REEAAAALLY old already.

Now, we have the gp2x. You think it's better suited for coding? Only half true. Sure, you can easily port games that will run like crap unoptimized.
However, Squidge just found an MMU hack, which sped up emulators by 10 - 20 fps. You think this is only useful for emulators? Nope, even GAMES could use this!

The devs have just started hacking the system, we're not even talking about REAL HARDWARE ACCESS yet (as there's still some hacking going on for that).

If you're waiting for games better than the GP32, come back in 1 - 2 years, when the hardware is more commonly known.

It's the same with every system. Devs need to get used to it in order to squeeze out more and more.
Compare FF7 graphics with FF9 graphics. Same system, FF7 looks ugly compared to FF9.

Compare early Amiga games with later titles like Turrican 2. Same system, way better graphics and sounds.
Compare Super Mario Bros. with Super Mario Bros. 3. Same hardware, worlds in-between sound, gameplay and graphics...

Compare Sonic the Hedgehog on the Master System with Sonic Chaos on the Master System. The graphics of Sonic Chaos do almost look like the Genesis versions...

The list could be extended to an endless list of examples.

Now, the devs of the gp2x are at the beginning - and some games same quality (some even better) than late GP32 games... where do you think that system will be in a year or two...?

Excellent reply. I found out about the GP32 in October '03, I ordered an NLU off ebay in December '03, and joined the forums in March '04 to post about a fix I found for the loose joysick involving sticking a wad of paper in the back of the case. Unfortunately, by then, I had broken my NLU by trying to construct and fit my own light guide to make a homebrew FLU (I was going off the success of Nerd of Nerds, what happened to that guy anyway?). Well, by then the release of the BLU was just around the corner so I started saving my money, and all of these really great releases came about while I was GP32-less! Needless to say, when I finally did get my BLU (I think in August of '04) I had plenty of stuff to keep me occupied with, that hadn't really existed before, except in emulators and that one "Car Race" game which was really more of "dodge the falling cars" than racing. So, JaqMs, I wouldn't be so quick to put down the 2x if I were you, as it's made amazing progress for the short time it's been out and within a few years, it will almost definately surpass the GP32 in sheer quality and playability of games available, not to mention quantity of releases!

Just thinking about it makes me feel all happy inside...

 

[xinfernoofdantex]

GP2X SUCKS

 

[jmetal88]

GP2X SUCKS

 

[DBH]

GP2X SUCKS