Illinc

[goldbott]

I've been designing a game for the better part of three years now - trying many different ideas and learning all I could about all the complicated topics surrounding video game programming. In the end I modeled the design after a great game that has grown a little old over the years (EndlessAges) and after looking at the pandora I think the system would be great for this project. Illinc is basically a mmofpsrpg. I prefer not to use a tag like that because it puts up the usual little red flag and also because its too freaking long. By "MMO" I mean a very large seamless map that can support a lot of players. The FPS part mainly applies to combat - maybe with the option to switch between first and third person. The RPG portion would mean quests levels (or something similar) and upgrades. All of this would require a lot of difficult code but I'm quite sure that it is possible. I can't really get started till I know a bit more so if someone could help me by answering some questions I'd be very grateful.

Would the Wi-Fi system on the Pandora be fast enough to handle multi player networking?

Are there any specific complications with the Wi-Fi?

Is there any documentation (Other than that found on the wiki) concerning programming for the Pandora? (I'm assuming that any application that would work on Angstrom would work however from what I've read I cannot be sure)

Random Note - Illinc translates to "On that side" - the name is debatable.

 

[Vorporeal]

A few "generic" but possibly useful answers:

The Pandora has 802.11b/g WiFi. I assume it can handle whatever a laptop can, more or less.

No clue about specific complications - you'll have to talk to someone with hardware about that.

In terms of programming for the Pandora, you can just write code for a desktop, x86 Linux install. Make sure you don't use any x86 specific code, restrict yourself to libraries known to work on ARM, and if you're using OpenGL directly, you ideally want to only use the parts of OGL2.0 that are also in OGLES2.0 (if you want shaders; if you don't mind having no shaders and only the fixed-functionality pipeline, OGLES1.1 is fine). I don't remember where the guide to programming for OGLES2.0 using OGL2.0 is, but I'm sure someone will post soon with a link to it.

 

[goldbott]

Thanks for the information - I ask about programming because I was considering using RakNet but I'm still not sure if it would work on the Pandora (or any ARM system for that matter).

Edit - I'm going to put up a blog soon that will update as I work on this.