Our New Machine, Pandora

[finisterre]

Talking of colours.....I'd like mine to be in BBC Micro beige and brown and with the same rough texture if possible.

 

[atomicthumbs]

Talking of colours.....I'd like mine to be in BBC Micro beige and brown and with the same rough texture if possible.

Ooh! Ooh! I want mine to be made out of metallic hydrogen!

 

[bnolsen]

Aside from color...
Are there any plans for supporting some sort of SD Card DRM for commercial developers that may result in some sort of subsidy for the project (ie, minor charge per secure SD card or something) ?

 

[vampire8bit]

I think it was mentioned earlier in the thread but could we have an external SCART TV-Out? as this gives the best picture on SCART TV sets for games.

 

[Squidge]

Aside from color...
Are there any plans for supporting some sort of SD Card DRM for commercial developers that may result in some sort of subsidy for the project (ie, minor charge per secure SD card or something) ?

Programs running from SD card can already check the serial number of the card and only work with a particular card. Also, if they want more security, they can implement the official SecureDigital DRM (the one thats built into every SD card).

I think it was mentioned earlier in the thread but could we have an external SCART TV-Out? as this gives the best picture on SCART TV sets for games.

There's no such thing as "SCART TV-Out". SCART allows for RGB, SVideo & Composite on the same connector. Which do you want?

 

[vampire8bit]

I meant RGB output to SCART TV's

 

[bnolsen]

Programs running from SD card can already check the serial number of the card and only work with a particular card. Also, if they want more security, they can implement the official SecureDigital DRM (the one thats built into every SD card).

So let's say some company like EA thinks this thing is the most awesome handheld ever and decides to develop for it there's not any way to get some sort of nominal licensing fee from them? Or that's just part of the appeal ?

 

[yaustar]

It is unlikely for EA to do something like that as they won't see it as a viable market to profit from. Smaller start-ups and indie developers are much more likely. E.g. Introversion, Popcap, Pom Pom games.

 

[MWeston]

So let's say some company like EA thinks this thing is the most awesome handheld ever and decides to develop for it there's not any way to get some sort of nominal licensing fee from them? Or that's just part of the appeal ?

Well, first off, this would be so awesome if it could ever happen! Probably not likely, but we can dream

My take on the commercial game is this: Since I don't think these big game companies distribute their own games (?), rather than charging the company anything to make their own game or license it, perhaps an agreement for exclusive distribution rights would be the perfect win-win situation for everyone involved?

Again, I couldn't say if just saving on licensing costs and having access to cheap development hardware would be enough to entice any big companies, but this would probably be the only way it could go down.

 

[Squidge]

So let's say some company like EA thinks this thing is the most awesome handheld ever and decides to develop for it there's not any way to get some sort of nominal licensing fee from them? Or that's just part of the appeal ?

You can't really give unlimited homebrew but ask commercial developers for license fees. Considering the market for such a thing, you'd just turn them away.

 

[icurafu]

Some big wins would be to licence the ports of the games from homebrew titles such as gish and the Introversion games. The types that have won some serious cred with retro and hardcore gamers alike.

You would do this in a similar way to steam. After the game is ported, you intrgrate it into the DRM and sell it at a single online location. The company receives a majority percentage of the game and does not have to worry about distribution.

I would love a steam style client available to sync commerical games. And I have offered to develope this a couple of times for the GP2X and the Pandora. But it will fail unless it is an official tool.

 

[___]

actually that is a neat idea. The only problem is that independent devs might not want to take that route for their commercial games and what is the point of a steam like program then? If you have a look at the software distribution programs of tapwave (zodiac) and gamepark, after the companies went bankrupt no service could be provided anymore. So if that steam-like distribution scheme fails and doesn't run as well as intended, how are devs going to get their games to the customer and how are they going to do this if the service completely halts?

If you could only solve that issue, maybe it would work very very well. It could be integrated with the package manager for the free stuff. Maybe one could even enter their paypal details on the pandora (shadowed for safety ofcourse) and after browsing the catalogue of commercial games or playing the latest demo, you could automatically download the full version and pay through paypal. Many people asked for an Xbox-live sort of service and this could be it!

 

[atomicthumbs]

Some big wins would be to licence the ports of the games from homebrew titles such as gish and the Introversion games. The types that have won some serious cred with retro and hardcore gamers alike.

You would do this in a similar way to steam. After the game is ported, you intrgrate it into the DRM and sell it at a single online location. The company receives a majority percentage of the game and does not have to worry about distribution.

I would love a steam style client available to sync commerical games. And I have offered to develope this a couple of times for the GP2X and the Pandora. But it will fail unless it is an official tool.

 

[fusion_power]

So let's say some company like EA thinks this thing is the most awesome handheld ever and decides to develop for it there's not any way to get some sort of nominal licensing fee from them? Or that's just part of the appeal ?

EA??? No, EA=EVIL! Same as Microsoft.

Darwinia! Played a Demo Years ago. Nice Idea for the Pandora but I think this Game is a little bit to much, even for the Pandora. Of course I have no real clue how good are the 3D skills of the OMAP Chipset. ^^""""

 

[icurafu]

actually that is a neat idea. The only problem is that independent devs might not want to take that route for their commercial games and what is the point of a steam like program then? If you have a look at the software distribution programs of tapwave (zodiac) and gamepark, after the companies went bankrupt no service could be provided anymore. So if that steam-like distribution scheme fails and doesn't run as well as intended, how are devs going to get their games to the customer and how are they going to do this if the service completely halts?

If you could only solve that issue, maybe it would work very very well. It could be integrated with the package manager for the free stuff. Maybe one could even enter their paypal details on the pandora (shadowed for safety ofcourse) and after browsing the catalogue of commercial games or playing the latest demo, you could automatically download the full version and pay through paypal. Many people asked for an Xbox-live sort of service and this could be it!

Wouldn't be hard to keep it working even with the CA server down. Just a few settings. You would not be able to sign new games if the CA is down.

The problem with others systems is that they required every application to be signed in order to run. In the PAndora's case, it is quite different; as all application can run, however "protected" or encrypted applications would only run when they are run on the Pandora unit with the unique ID. TI have a whole chip built into the OMAP3 just for this kind of thing. It would be easier than on a PC, because it is built into the chipset.

 

[___]

well why don't you come up with a nice design then and ask craig if he would like you to start a service like this? i would imagine that something like that might be very well appreciated. well after the pandora is released that is.

 

[White Demon]

I have a question about the wifi in this device.

At my house we don't have wireless internet, so what I am asking is will a device that plugs into a PCs USB port and provide a wifi connection like this one work with the Pandora? (so I can access the software repositories and so forth)

 

[icurafu]

well why don't you come up with a nice design then and ask craig if he would like you to start a service like this? i would imagine that something like that might be very well appreciated. well after the pandora is released that is.

Not interested. Maybe the lack of responce is because he already has some DRM system under development. I'm not the kind of sucker who codes for no good reason. These days I only code for a very good reason.

 

[Squidge]

I have a question about the wifi in this device.

At my house we don't have wireless internet, so what I am asking is will a device that plugs into a PCs USB port and provide a wifi connection like this one work with the Pandora? (so I can access the software repositories and so forth)



The Pandora will probably support both Infrastructure and Ad-hoc networks, so you should be able to just plug a Wifi dongle into your PC. It would probably be just as cheap to use a proper Wifi router however.

 

[Cameleon]

Hi, I'd just like to ask if the Pandora will have programmable graphics hardware. e.g. shader support. In complience with OpenGL ES 2.0