Minecraft + Pandora FTW

[I8NY]

this is interesting. i didn't know notch got a Pandora and i thought i had read all of his news. now if mc is going to run on a itouch that is slower than a pandora then using that version of mc should be fast enough to be playable. maybe he will make a minecraft pnd for us. :lol:

 

[ToastBucket]

Could the JRE and Minecraft be installed through PanDebian? There is a .jar version of minecraft for linux.

 

[WizardStan]

As has been mentioned many times before, the graphics library that Minecraft uses is OpenGL only, while the Pandora only supports OpenGLES. The developers are working on OpenGLES bindings, but until then Minecraft won't work.

 

[ToastBucket]

I've heard this before but I don't really understand what it means.

 

[WizardStan]

A library is a prebuilt set of commands for doing something. For example, drawing a line on the screen involves sending a set of commands to the GPU to set the right video mode, figuring out where the screen is in memory, doing a bunch of line math, and putting pixels to draw that line, OR if someone else has already created a library that can do this, it may be as simple as one instruction just saying "drawline" and the library does all the math.


For 3D, there are basically two of these libraries: DirectX and OpenGL. DirectX is for Windows, OpenGL is for both Windows and Linux. These libraries do all the math and drawing required for 3D, and package it up into very simple commands that a programmer can use. Minecraft uses an OpenGL library made for Java. The Pandora, unfortunately, does not support OpenGL, it supports OpenGLES, which is almost OpenGL but it has some stuff removed as it was specifically designed for portable devices that usually don't need the full features of OpenGL. The java library that Notch used to get OpenGL is trying to add OpenGLES support as well. If that happens, it should be possible to run Minecraft in some form on the Pandora.

 

[ToastBucket]

That makes a lot more sense. Thank you

 

[Tehel]

The assertion that someone at Mojang is currently assigned to the iOS port of Minecraft, given Apple's constraints on the language used to create an app, seems to imply a rewrite to Objective C. Or is Java officially OK on iOS ?


Then they confirmed that there also was going to be an Android version (easier there, since Java is the preferred language of android apps), which seemed to imply that an OpenGL ES version was doable (Android only supports ES, like the Pandora).


However, there is still the horsepower problem, as Minecraft is already sometimes slow on middle-end desktop PCs, that have many times more processing power than handhelds. Maybe there is a magical 'non-beta' mode to be activated someday that will dramatically lower the needed resources (by removing logs, or sanity checks, whatever), but I wouldn't count on it.


Really curious about the performance we can have on handhelds if they really try to. Playing Minecraft with Pandora controls would really be great.


Btw, for me too, Notch's review of the Pandora was what renewed my interest in the device, which I had heard about two years ago and didn't think about since, even if he didn't seem to be over enthusiastic. By the sound of it and the fact that he didn't mention it once since, I really thought his Pandora was gathering dust somewhere.

 

[fearofshorts]

One note-


The iOS and Android ports arn't going to be straight ports. Mojang has said that they intend to make it more streamlined for the nature of portable devices- ie: a cut-down Minecraft.

 

[XxionxX]

Has notch written anything about his Pandora since last year? I guess he has better things to do...

 

[Silent-Hunter]

Why can't regular OpenGL run on the Pandora, with the right libraries?

 

[Bosbeetle]

Why can't regular OpenGL run on the Pandora, with the right libraries?

it could if you would write a new driver for the sgx chip that is pretty closed so you'd have to reverse engineer that first! but the rest is piece of cake


(did anybody hear from this maciek ubanski that wanted to do that)

 

[Morn]

Why can't regular OpenGL run on the Pandora, with the right libraries?

OpenGL (as well as DX) have to be supported by graphic chip driver. And the driver provided by Texas Instruments doesn't.