Need Help Thinking Of A Gp2x Related Dissertation!

[meltbanana]

im in the same situation as xafier where im interested in developing for gp2x (only got one a few days ago) and i need something for my dissertation project next year which involves gaming, a working product and 10,000 (or more) words. supposed to look into a new aspect of gaming but i think maybe homebrew might be a good idea.

i was hoping to improve on my opengl since it is something i want to do as a career and was wondering how easy it is to create something for the gp2x using opengl?

i had an idea for a game in which you start of as a small lifeform (maybe a single cell organism or something) and you interact with objects such as dust, food, liquids, etc and you evolve according to the items which you interact with. only an idea but something i might work on.

 

[Dzz]

I think the E-book reader is a good idea for a project like this. Besides the programming aspect, there is some interesting research to determine good ways to display text on limited-resolution devices (font choice, antialiasing, color choice, and so on), and also interesting application design issues to make the interface intuitive and yet not take up screen real estate. Something like this that has some "academic" research plus the nuts and bolts programming makes for a good dissertation I think.

 

[xafier]

I think you might be right Dzz the thing about a dissertation is even the simplist of things can have a lot of scope if you realise what areas can be researched into more depth than you first think at first glance... I may have a think about the e-book reader idea and jot down some rough plans and propose them to the tutor I've been discussing with lately

 

[sam fisher]

im in the same situation as xafier where im interested in developing for gp2x (only got one a few days ago) and i need something for my dissertation project next year which involves gaming, a working product and 10,000 (or more) words. supposed to look into a new aspect of gaming but i think maybe homebrew might be a good idea.

i was hoping to improve on my opengl since it is something i want to do as a career and was wondering how easy it is to create something for the gp2x using opengl?

i had an idea for a game in which you start of as a small lifeform (maybe a single cell organism or something) and you interact with objects such as dust, food, liquids, etc and you evolve according to the items which you interact with. only an idea but something i might work on.

So basically like that 360 game

 

[meltbanana]

didnt realise until now that anything like that had been done. guess ill be re-thinking for another new idea. suppose to create something which pushes boundaries or has never been done before :huh: but my mind is blank

 

[FluffyPanda]

I think a menu replacement would make an excellent project.

I was thinking of a desktop like menu... ie similar to Windups on GP32... although that was going to be a personal project... I'm not totally sure if there's enough involved for a dissertation... a nice idea though

I think you could devote at least half of the dissertation to interface design, usability studies and the rest. The other half to creating appropriate data structures to allow easy expansion, writing the code to accept plugins, comparisons of algorithms to perform icon layout...

There's a great deal of scope there if you wanted to make a good job of it.

 

[WrongEyedJesus]

I think you could devote at least half of the dissertation to interface design, usability studies and the rest. The other half to creating appropriate data structures to allow easy expansion, writing the code to accept plugins, comparisons of algorithms to perform icon layout...

There's a great deal of scope there if you wanted to make a good job of it.

....and you certainly have a good base of individuals to offer opinions and an easy method of polling them. I would certainly look at using the community to your advantage. The structure and nature of your development project will hold all the more weight as a thesis if you can clearly show you have conducted surveys into the need for the project and that you havebeen able to tailor it to supply a specific "client base". I'm sure people here would get behind you on stuff like that....

 

[jokeman]

OpenGl running independently on the second CPU

i had this idea too...
you could write some libraries using the second CPU for 3D graphic, 2D graphic animation/transformation, sound, AI and even physics (which is a very interesting and hot topic at the moment, i think and would give good material for a diss)

 

[air-can]

You know your own skills and what you could achieve so you should work from there. If it's a Computer Science type degree that has emphasis on programming then you could use one of the ideas above and code something to run on the GP2X. Just be careful to make sure it's focused on one particular element and not vague (this is the issue I had when writing my dissertation!). For example something like the development of an effective text reader could be excellent, but may seem a bit simplistic. What you could do is start by saying you researched, using the gp32x.de forums what users felt would be useful (you should use SurveyMonkey for this - it's free and analyses everything for you). And then can go into the development etc etc. Even if you can't get the program (or whatever) running properly it should be okay as long as this is stated in your possible limitations (i.e timescale) and you explain how you would further develop it.

Once you have a rough idea the best thing to do is discuss it with your dissertation supervisor.

 

[xafier]

hmm, the e-book/text reader does have a fair bit to it and sounds an interesting idea... I've given a rough idea to my placement tutor to see what he thinks of it as a dissertation... if he thinks it could be a worthwhile project I may start thinking up some ideas and put them into a survey...

ie, asking what formats people would want supported, which is most important to them, questions about the interface and useability

 

[pantera6]

Im sorry if this is to hard or anything
im not yoo much in the know on how hard it is to program and stuff
but hey, heres my idea
how about e-book/ text reader like you said, but also a calander where you could enter short memos using an implemented keyboard. so you can plan your life on your gp2x! lol

 

[xafier]

calender isn't a good idea... the RTC on the GP2X doesn't have power, so it loses its date/time every time you switch it off

what formats would people want an e-book/text reader to read?

rtf? word doc(dunno how hard this is)? plain text? pdf(might take a fair bit of work!)?

 

[pantera6]

sorry
i didnt explain it enough
i know the gp2x cant have a clock or anything
the idea was just to have a basic 12 month calander which you could just flick through the months, and save the memos to the sd card.
so it would not tell you what date it was that day, it would just remind you if you have anything you need to do some day of that month. eg deadlines

 

[lippy]

I think if you supported PDF and CHM that would be amazing! However another possibily is to make up your own gp2x exclusive format, and have a converter on the pc, but that would probably take too much work

 

[FluffyPanda]

Well, there's loads of formats for ebooks, but the big two are txt and pdf. They are also the easiest by far to do. PDF is well documented and you don't need to support all the fancier extensions like security enhancements, hyperlinks, etc.

Basically, as long as you can get text that word-wraps correctly you'll already have beaten GPH's offering

Word .doc would be impossible to do since it's not an open standard (well, you could rip the work that the staroffice team did out of openoffice).

.lit and that palm one (.pdb?) might be equally tricky.

If you have time left over you could always try getting OpenDocument working. That would rock.

 

[jokeman]

well... another idea i had in mind was an fast and good way of typing text with the gp2x...
something like the T9 dictionary on cell phones...
this could be a library, you can use in any application (text editors, address books or emulators for amiga, dos,...)

when textinputmode is activated, boxes with the letters could appear in the corners of the screen (arranged the same way like the buttons on the gp2x)... so the user can see, which button is assigned to which letters... then he types like in a cellphone T9... multible presses changes the letters used by this button and there is a algorithm for autocompletion of the words

this would be a much better way than a virtual keyboard...
you could integrate this in your text reader thing

 

[Gaijin]

.lit would be very hard work due to DRM, but it would definately be a great achievement as a large majority of the e-books available come in this format

For my money I think the open e-book standard is a must (which is basically a simplified HTML page)

Glad to hear my idea is of use by the way, I've been bugging people about his since I joined the forum!

 

[xafier]

whats this open e-book standard some of you have mentioned? I've never even heard of it before!

 

[nickspoon]

TXT, RTF, PDF and HTML would probably be the best, as most ebooks are in one of those formats.

 

[Gaijin]

Hey Xafier,

This should clear it up

Open E-book publication stucture