Has Wiz Development Died?

[DJWillis]

Somebody buy me one of these

http://www.tincantoo...34&cat=0&page=1

And while your at it somebody get me one .

I am far from convinced that the Wiz scene is dead or really unwell as has already been mentioned, homebrew and hacking tends to be seasonal and most of the good hackers I know are normally working on 2-3 devices at any one time (at least).

I must confess the lack of a so called SDK has never really given me any issues. I use the same Open2X toolchain for building for the Wiz as I do for the GP2X (with some tweaks for dynamic linking) and any libs I find are missing (or broken) on the device I just ship out with my binaries. The situation is not really any different to the GP2X in that regard, yes, GPH are sorely lacking but anyone who has been around for a while will know that is just part of the deal, you buy the console and GPH then leave you out to dry.

 

[Orkie]

most of the good hackers I know are normally working on 2-3 devices at any one time (at least).

2-3 lives for me .

 

[rich_wicks]

I doubt many other developers feel they're being held back by no official SDK right now. Lack of OpenGL ES features could be a problem, but are you sure that what it's missing is capable in the hardware? It would be nice if someone started their own OGL ES drivers using the 3D chip documentation and also exposed features that are not part of OGL..

I am definately one of the people that is being held back on the lack of a stable SDK. So far, I am unable to get the following program to work:

int main (int argc, char **argv)
{
(void)argc;
(void)argv;
return 0;
}

It never returns to the menu after exiting. Guessing that might be normal behavior, I then just had it create a file for write, but no file shows up. I'm using this toolchain:

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/wiz.cgi?0,0,0,0,14,8

My comment there might be incorrect now. I have had to build GCC before for other cross compile environments, and I've always had to place them in a specific location. There's a wiki that says that's where it needs to be uncompressed. I've tried my little test on both 1.0 and 1.1 firmware.

And one thing I've not been able to find - does the Wiz have an MMU or not? I'm GUESSING it does not, and that would explain 90% of the crashes I see on this system, stack overflows.

I volunteer to do a FAQ on this, and I can even maintain a toolchain under Linux. Heck, I'll make a virtual machine for VMWare, and make it available in bit torrent, if somebody will help me get this to work. I'm taking time off from my job, I code for a living, hint hint, I can actually be useful...

 

[aho]

>It never returns to the menu after exiting.

You have to restart the menu yourself.

E.g. your gpe file could look like this:

#!/bin/sh
sync
echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

./myapp

sync
cd /usr/gp2x/
./gp2xmenu

The sync & drop lines at the beginning are very helpful during development (not required when it's done). The first line causes the caches to be written (if there is anything to write) and the second line flushes the caches down the toilet. This ensures that it will always load the latest files.

If you don't do this, it may use old cached stuff. This seems to happen very frequently if you move files onto the SD card via USB.

Replace the myapp invocation with your application.

And finally yet another sync followed by a menu restart.

 

[torpor]

I've put Wiz development on hold until I either get a Serial cable made or someone gets usb gadget-eth working on the thing .. its definitely not fun to develop for the Wiz without a terminal/debug interface, so I've put my focus on other nice devices on the table, like the Zii Egg, Always Innovating Touchbook, and so on ..

 

[iprice]

I'm still developing for Wiz, although I'm busy with a pc competition game at the moment.

As I'm using GLBasic, the lack of an official pc SDK isn't an issue for me. It shouldn't be for Fenix/Bennu(?) users either, but there doesn't appear to be much going on there either.

Development isn't dead, but it is surprisingly quiet

 

[Orkie]

I've put Wiz development on hold

To be fair, you never really started did you?

 

[Squidge]

And one thing I've not been able to find - does the Wiz have an MMU or not? I'm GUESSING it does not, and that would explain 90% of the crashes I see on this system, stack overflows.

Yes, the Wiz has a MMU, same as the GP2X.

 

[torpor]

To be fair, you never really started did you?

No, not true, I got a fair way into porting a few things after I got my toolkit issues nailed down, but it got to be such a hassle to have to keep pulling out the SD card to get a logfile.txt, that I decided it just wasn't worth it until I had a real console. I need a real console, its just that simple, and alas I have other hardware now, which is a bit more fun than the Wiz in other ways ..

 

[craigix]

I think if GPH had not announced a $100,000 competition then said nothing more about it that we would have seen a lot more software.

I mean who would release something for free now when they could wait for this competition and make cash?

 

[Exophase]

It never returns to the menu after exiting. Guessing that might be normal behavior, I then just had it create a file for write, but no file shows up. I'm using this toolchain:

It IS normal behavior, GPH did the menu in a stupid way where you have to start it manually afterwards. People are accomplishing this by wrapping their program in a script. Where are you creating the file?

And one thing I've not been able to find - does the Wiz have an MMU or not? I'm GUESSING it does not, and that would explain 90% of the crashes I see on this system, stack overflows.

It has an MMU, otherwise it wouldn't be running standard Linux.

 

[aho]

[...] the lack of an official pc SDK isn't an issue for me. It shouldn't be for Fenix/Bennu(?) users either, but there doesn't appear to be much going on there either.
[...]

Well, Fenix/Bennu is sorta pointless. It's pretty much like C/C++... just with an uglier syntax. I don't really see the point of it.

I'd really like to see an easier and more productive language on the Wiz. (I still hope to get V8 there one day.)

[...]
No, not true, I got a fair way into porting a few things after I got my toolkit issues nailed down, but it got to be such a hassle to have to keep pulling out the SD card to get a logfile.txt [...]

That's why JustBurn wrote logview (after I nagged around for a bit ).

 

[DaveC]

I think if GPH had not announced a $100,000 competition then said nothing more about it that we would have seen a lot more software.

I mean who would release something for free now when they could wait for this competition and make cash?

While that may be true foe HB stuff that doesn't really apply to emulators.

I doubt any prize money will go to an emu as that would be like GPH paying to get emus and that gets a bit dodgy.

So while could be true it doesn't explain why very little in the way of emu releases/updates are happening.

 

[iprice]

Is that competition ever really going to happen? Have GPH made an official announcement about it yet? I know the Christmas advertising vid thing is on, but they've not really gone into any great detail about that or the prizes.

Perhaps the coding comp is indeed the reason for the apparent lack of software...

Well, Fenix/Bennu is sorta pointless. It's pretty much like C/C++... just with an uglier syntax

Umm... No, it's not. Somebody obviously hasn't been paying attention.

 

[sam fisher]

It kind of is....

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

I don't think it has died, I myself am in the middle of a few projects! Unfortunately lack of time for me is why they are a little slow to appear.

 

[Ravnos]

Didn't we get these threads every couple of months when the GP2X was the big thing? "The scene's dead, time to move on!" Then a few weeks later you'd see a ton of new releases, then another slowdown, "Scene's dead", rinse, repeat.

 

[Optimistic]

Didn't we get these threads every couple of months when the GP2X was the big thing? "The scene's dead, time to move on!" Then a few weeks later you'd see a ton of new releases, then another slowdown, "Scene's dead", rinse, repeat.

I remember when things slowed down a few times on the GP2X, I just don't remember it slowing down so dramatically so soon after launch.

 

[shinneri]

Didn't we get these threads every couple of months when the GP2X was the big thing? "The scene's dead, time to move on!" Then a few weeks later you'd see a ton of new releases, then another slowdown, "Scene's dead", rinse, repeat.

I remember when things slowed down a few times on the GP2X, I just don't remember it slowing down so dramatically so soon after launch.

Correct. The GP32 never slowed down until it was finally replaced with the GP2X, and the GP2X didn't slow down until a couple years after its release. The Wiz just came out and already attention seems to be shifting from it to the Dingoo and Pandora.

Just the activity of these boards don't seem to compare to what things used to be like.

 

[Rivroner]

The problem (really a problem ?) is that Pickle port it all in a few weeks.

Thank you Pickle.