Lack Of Fun Games

[Goemon4]

damn (why couldnt this have been the community crap competetion?)

 

[PSyMastR]

damn (why couldnt this have been the community crap competetion?)

:lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[craigix]

I'm pretty sure that in the first year the GP32 did not have as many homebrew games as the GP2X. It will just take a little time for the library to build up.

 

[JaqMs]

See, lack of homebrew. I was right.

 

[Goemon4]

I'm pretty sure that in the first year the GP32 did not have as many homebrew games as the GP2X. It will just take a little time for the library to build up.

of course, but the 32 was a new handheld to the market with no following, the 2x already had a following before it even came out... i may be expecting to much out of the devs, but look how far emulation has got in this year then look at the amount of ports/clones then look at the original, 2x only games... (there some, and those some are very, very good, but there very little sadly) and thats what im kinda pointing out... (btw if we could only get more games like Firewhip...)



@ JaqMs - "See, lack of homebrew. I was right." right indeed...

 

[GP2X_Coder]

I am finishing up my game as we speak so at least thats one that will be entered so far I just wish I would stop playing the game an program more of it. It's just that fun ( at least for me to play.) I can't stop playing it long enough to code more things for it. I hope eveyone will have fun with it.

 

[zodttd]

Speaking for myself here I suppose, but there's (at least) two parts to a game: the design and the programming of the design. There's a lot of programmers, and a lot of designers (at least a lot of people like to call themselves designers). But there isn't many people that are good at both.

The GP2X has a lot of emulators. It allows a programmer to provide someone with a large amount of games with the game design already done. An emulator also has an advantage of usually supporting more than one game, allowing a wider selection.

It's a massive effort to get a commercial quality game designed and programmed. Having tried designing a commercial title for handhelds, it was not only hard, it was a failure. After it was designed by someone else, I am able to program it without a problem.

And as it was pointed out, not many people are excited about original games. They seem to please only a small portion of an already niche market. It's very hard to spend so much time and effort creating something, and then see nobody like/play it.

Also, the PSP has LOTS of original games due to LUA. But how many would you want to play?

 

[Goemon4]

@ GP2X Coder - Cant wait for your game!, it looks great, and from what you say, sounds very fun! (one more reason to wait for the comp!)

(im always over enthusiastic over new games :lol: )

@ zodttd - very true, i didnt really take that to much into consideration (tho most rants do overlook a few things) but i still dont see why people would rather code/port an emu tho, yes there fun and very good (and i play them all the time) and do get most of the communitys attention (thus their probably more rewarding), but i guess im one of those small portions of the community that gets more excited to see a demo of, or a new original game than an emu, cause i like to see new things, new games and new ideas that playing old games (that ive already played) dosnt offer, cause i have already played them... yes its fun playing old games, but after beating sonic, 1 & 2, 5 times i kinda get bored... but thats just me, (dont let me discourage great emu dev's such as yourself, cause alot of people (including me) love your work! and play your emus everyday!) and yes the psp has lots of games, but i dont have one and hate sony! (take my lik sang will ya!) lol, but either way i guess anything new is good, but its the fact that the 2x is so open to new ideas id like to see those being used (if only i could make more sense of all my "For Dummies" coding books id try and code something) damn me and my small IQ (lol)

 

[bhess]

I LOVE homebrew games, as long as they are actually fun. If there were more great homebrew games like The Minigame Project, Beat2X, and Noiz2a, It would be awesome.

 

[DaveC]

@fargo - 3d accelerators are nice, but i could care less for one (i still play my atari and find it fun, so... )i think all you need is the dev kit (from my uderstanding)

No, I cannot code! I want someone to do them for me and I'd sell them (outsourcing!).

For the 3D accelerator, yes, many members of this forum wouldn't care about that. There are many potential customers out there who like 3D games (myself included). I think GPH should act asap and puts 3D accelerator in GP2X. Its rival is preparing XGP!!

It looks like you are interested in the wrong handheld. If you want 3D accelerated games buy a PSP or DS and be done with it.

 

[J201605]

Hes interested in it as a business thing, its not too easy to hire devs to make a psp game then distribute it. The gp2x however is incredibly easy to create and distribute a game for. He is saying hed rather have a 3d proccesor, but this is the only system where he can do what he just proposed

 

[art1080]

If you could manage to sell 10,000 self distributed copies at $5 each it would be worth it for a 1 yr part time project between 2 people. I don't know personlly what kind of volume a homebrew title could push. If it failed, hopefully at least you would have something cool to show for it.

 

[art1080]

Can vector graphics be used for content? A combo of vector and bitmap would be sweet. Forgive me I'm new at this..

i've had practice with flash, heres a few ex. If this kind of modeling and 2D interface can be mirrored on a suitable platform I'd love to take a stab at a game.

http://home.rochester.rr.com/keithavery/

(particularly the icons on the bottom here)

http://home.rochester.rr.com/keithavery/newportage.html

 

[PokeParadox]

And as it was pointed out, not many people are excited about original games. They seem to please only a small portion of an already niche market. It's very hard to spend so much time and effort creating something, and then see nobody like/play it.

Valid point. If the community wants its devs to improve and to write nice games, they should make sure to support those devs even if they release a simple, bug-ridden clone game... :lol:

Seriously though I get a little demotivated when there is no encouragement about a program/game I've just released... Encouragement for me is more important than donations... but donations are nice too. ^_^

 

[WhiteFalcon]

Can vector graphics be used for content? A combo of vector and bitmap would be sweet. Forgive me I'm new at this..

i've had practice with flash, heres a few ex. If this kind of modeling and 2D interface can be mirrored on a suitable platform I'd love to take a stab at a game.

http://home.rochester.rr.com/keithavery/

(particularly the icons on the bottom here)

http://home.rochester.rr.com/keithavery/newportage.html

I like your work, you really ARE quite talented

 

[sehs33]

I agree wih WhiteFalcon, your are really talented art1080

On topic:

It is just as Zodttd stated, it is a rare case were you have a good coder who is also good in graphics, but the best solution is to match the coders and graphics designers here to form teams that can produce quality games, same goes for music writers, we need to create a trend were people who are interested post topics in the development forum that say they want people with specific skills, and then they can discuss that using PMs, I had an offer from a member here earlier to form a team and build a game to enter the community cometition, but I was very busy so I apologised and he changed his mind and didn't participate, I think that many people also had simillar scenarios.

 

[PokeParadox]

Just a little note, this is what Project Infinity's purpose is. People can do what they are good at and provide their own created content.

 

[Mr.Jabberwocky]

There seems to be a general trend where devs are being told to do this or that. They must conform to standards, they must be matched up with designers, artists and musicians (like they are some commodity). They should be making 'fun' homebrew even though we know most people are not interested.

And why should we care about homebrew, when emulators will play every commercial game ever written ?

Occasionally someone will come out with a homebrew hit, but on the whole devs dont bother because they know the score. Emulators meet the needs of the user base and thus there is little interest in originality and creativity.

Some one who takes some emulator code and tweaks it to run on the GP is going to see great interest while another who creates great graphics, code and gameplay will be virtually ignored even though their effort and talent is greater.

Just to put things in perspective, here is a quote I saw last night on gp2xdev. I have removed the name of the dev as I have not asked him if he minds being quoted, but he is one of the leading lights in the dev community.

********* > have a look how many people donated to the community contest, and now tell me that they deserve anything like a perfect game or tool.
********* > even half baked stuff is too good for the community.

Unless there has been a huge number of donations since it was last updated, I can see his point.

 

[Tobriand]

What happened with the 32, as I'm sure most of you recall, was pretty much the same pattern as we're seeing on the 2x. Namely, first you get a real slew of emulators (because they're impressive, and create a lot of plyability *fast*) up to the point at which it's hard to push the hardware any further.

Then you get the homebrew. To me it's no surprise there's not as much homebrew, because until people have run out of emulators to be exicted about, they don't get over the moon about homebrew. Once the emulators are exhausted - and there's still a few systems left - DosBox might be more doable on the 2x than the 32 playably (at the moment it works, but not fantastically iirc), GBA needs work, though it's coming on very nicely indeed, PSx is a possibility, SNES just needs transparencies (if that's feasible), CPS2 might be worth a look in, and... barring better emus for much older systems that's probably about it - *then* people start to get excited about homebrew, demos, and mods. That's just how things seem to work

 

[Epicenter]

SNES just needs transparencies (if that's feasible)

SNES emulation is in dire need of a full graphics subsystem rewrite designed for ARM processor architecture, preferably in ARM9 ASM. It's one giant mass of inefficiency-- even with transparencies turned off, many games are unplayably slow, even with massive overclocking of the ARM920T. The most visible issue is transparency not being emulated-- it's more that no one has tried the (rather large) undertaking of rewriting the graphics portion of SquidgeSNES or NKSNES-- both use very old, slow C code meant for other platforms, and since very little of the CPU time is spent on the emulation of other portions of the SNES compared-- if you were to turn off drawing of a frame in any SNES emulator you'd likely see 60 FPS in every single game, at all times... Maybe it's the sort of situation where a lot of money has to be thrown at someone to motivate them to action, but SNES emulation issues right now are a matter of effort, not technical impossibility.

(The rest of your points are quite correct)