Release Neverball & Neverputt


It's great to see this game ported - it is a real gem.


That reminds me about Cubosphere - which is visually similar but is more of a puzzle game than arcade.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cubosphere/


Would that need much work to port?
I don't know. I have put this one on my todo last week already, but haven't started yet. Does it really need GLSL or is it optionnal?
 
If you are looking for games with balls, you can also have a look at trackballs. Should be easy to port with glshim, too.
 
It's great to see this game ported - it is a real gem.


That reminds me about Cubosphere - which is visually similar but is more of a puzzle game than arcade.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cubosphere/


Would that need much work to port?
I don't know. I have put this one on my todo last week already, but haven't started yet. Does it really need GLSL or is it optionnal?
Awesome that is great to hear. I assume that GLSL means it is not a straight recompile to port ? That glshim would not work?

All I know is from the sourceforge website - sorry.
 
If you are looking for games with balls, you can also have a look at trackballs. Should be easy to port with glshim, too.
I didn't knew this one. Will try it too.
Trackballs had some major visual glitches (like memory corruption) last time I checked, but generally ran.

It's great to see this game ported - it is a real gem.


That reminds me about Cubosphere - which is visually similar but is more of a puzzle game than arcade.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cubosphere/


Would that need much work to port?
I don't know. I have put this one on my todo last week already, but haven't started yet. Does it really need GLSL or is it optionnal?
Awesome that is great to hear. I assume that GLSL means it is not a straight recompile to port ? That glshim would not work?

All I know is from the sourceforge website - sorry.
There is an ES2 branch of glshim that's almost functional. It would also be good to get Regal working on the Pandora.
 
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If you are looking for games with balls, you can also have a look at trackballs. Should be easy to port with glshim, too.
I didn't knew this one. Will try it too.
 
Trackballs had some major visual glitches (like memory corruption) last time I checked, but generally ran.

Yep. Just saw that. I think it's some heavy use of glPoygonMode(face, GL_LINE) (with some line offset) that do the corruption. I'll see if I can hack something for polygone mode not GL_FILL...

It's great to see this game ported - it is a real gem.


That reminds me about Cubosphere - which is visually similar but is more of a puzzle game than arcade.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cubosphere/


Would that need much work to port?
I don't know. I have put this one on my todo last week already, but haven't started yet. Does it really need GLSL or is it optionnal?
 
Awesome that is great to hear. I assume that GLSL means it is not a straight recompile to port ? That glshim would not work?


All I know is from the sourceforge website - sorry.
 
There is an ES2 branch of glshim that's almost functional. It would also be good to get Regal working on the Pandora.
Regal I have compiled it some time ago but never actually used it. It's not plug'n play. You have to modify all header to include Regal.h instead of GL.h, and you have to Init it and creat an EGL context by yourself... But yeah, this one may be a test case.
 
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For Trackball, that was that: Polygon mode set to LINE, but inside glLists of course :( .

I still miss some test case it seems (there are still some square here and there, that came black or go back to right colors), but for a 10 min hack, it's not bad :)

post-5182-0-11204700-1398722809.png


trackballs.png
 
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Hm. I have (as far as I know) a completely standard firmware, and when I try to start Neverball, I just get a quick blink and then it quits. Do I need an upgraded graphics driver or something?
 
Hm. I have (as far as I know) a completely standard firmware, and when I try to start Neverball, I just get a quick blink and then it quits. Do I need an upgraded graphics driver or something?
Uh, nope, it should work. Can you post the /tmp/pndrun_neverball.out file content here?
 
I will redownload to check that I don't actually have a broken pnd (discovered earlier that I might have space problems on that SD), but then I'll do that, yes.
 
Eh. User error. "No space left on device", so the resource files didn't fit. Once I cleaned stuff up a bit, everything was alright.
 
Now I've played it. Very nice! Went pearshaped at level 7, but that was to be expected, I heard (Rebirth).
 
New build on the repo.

It is faster, and the level 7 is somewhat playable on a gigahertz (still lagging on a CC, but you can pass it).

Build 02

----------

  • New faster build
  • Latest libs and glshim
 
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After a couple of year, here is a new build on the repo!

There is quite a lot to say.
First, it's based on latest sources: 1.6
Thoses sources brought a new renderer and a faster physics engine.
The renderer works fine withe glshim, but trigger 2 bugs with the SGX driver! First, the SGX doesn't always like 1pixel sized texture. So I added a workaound in glsim to have 2pixels sized minimum. The second bug is that the SGX doesn't like doing a textured something if TMU0 is disabled. I hacked the rendering engine to workaround this bug...

Now about the physics engine. It's more or less the same code, but it has been simplified and optimised a bit. But still not enough for the Pandora. As a reference, I used the 2nd levels of the Medium set, and you start at 4~6 fps and quickly drop to 0.3fps (using LiveSystemInfo). So I injected some neon code
and more neon code, and I also optimised some code in glshim too (the Sphere reflexion mapping loop).
and now, that same level start at 30fps (on my Gigahertz model), and never drop below 10fps :D

Still, on CC and Rebirth (and also on maybe on Gigahertz), remove the Reflexion at least, or some level will be slow (but the GPU is limiting this time, not the physics engine). Some intensive levels on Easy are the 10 and 12 for example.

Build 03
----------

  • Updated sources (based on 1.6)
  • Updated libs
  • Optimized with NEON, much faster now

I hope you can now enjoy Neverball on the Pandora!

(and the diff of the sources is on the 1st post)
 
Tested now. For the first test, I was downloading code::blocks in firefox at the same time, and the performance in level 7 of easy mode in neverball was a slideshow, perhaps even worse than it used to be, but neverput was fine as far as I tested. Having completed the download and closed off wifi, neverball easy level 7 ran fine, and I was able to progress to much harder levels - I ended at a level where I couldn't physically pull it off, rather than being frustrated by the framerate.

I wonder though, is it possible to make the nubs more responsive in neverput? I seem to only be able to get two speeds of rotation and while that's better than the d-pad which just gives me fast speed, some of the levels require very accurate aiming which can be quite fiddly even at half speed.
 
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