Playing Other Gamepark Games

[riboshom]

I saw many interesting games/portages for other GPs (GP3X, GP32, Wiz, etc.), and I wondered if it could be possible to play them on the Pandora?

Just a question...

 

[typs lik dis]

Only if someone with the source code for each of them ports it to the Pandora.

 

[lulzfish]

other GPs

The Pandora is not made by GamePark Holdings, it is made by someone else. I suspect there could be a GP32 or GP2X emulator or whatever, but there cannot be official backwards compatibility since it is not a GPH device in the first place.

 

[Tensuke]

Technically the GP32 isn't even GPH, it's just GP, as GPH formed from some former GP employees.

 

[Ravnos]

If the game was dynamically compiled, then it should probably work on the Pandora without recompiling, assuming all the expected libraries are there. The problem is, there's almost nothing for GP2X that was dynamically compiled, because GPH's version of SDL was terrible. The community-supplied hardware-accelerated SDL was much better, so devs tended to use it and statically compile it so you weren't in "dependency hell", but it includes a lot of stuff specific to the GP2X and will likely shit the bed when running on Pandora. Those apps should hypothetically run with just a recompile to use the Pandora's libraries, but new bugs may get exposed, and some of the games either don't have source available or the dev isn't around anymore. I'd love to see a Cave Story port, for example, which should be nothing more than a recompile, but the guy who did the GP2X port isn't around and Pixel doesn't give out the source anymore, so it's probably not going to happen.

 

[WizardStan]

I'd love to see a Cave Story port, for example, which should be nothing more than a recompile, but the guy who did the GP2X port isn't around and Pixel doesn't give out the source anymore, so it's probably not going to happen.

They've probably still got the GP2X source. If you explain it should be just a recompile against the new libraries, they may relent, at least partially.

 

[Ravnos]

I'd love to see a Cave Story port, for example, which should be nothing more than a recompile, but the guy who did the GP2X port isn't around and Pixel doesn't give out the source anymore, so it's probably not going to happen.

They've probably still got the GP2X source. If you explain it should be just a recompile against the new libraries, they may relent, at least partially.

Like I said, the guy who did the port isn't around. AFAIK Pixel doesn't have the Cave Story SDL code, he might but who knows? The other guy who contributed to the SDL port was doing some work to get it to run on Linux for the PS3 and had the rug pulled out from under him by Pixel due to the upcoming WiiWare version, so it's doubtful that anyone will be allowed access for even simple recompiles.

In any case, this illustrates the point about cross-compatibility with the GPH devices. It's sort of possible, but there are little details that get in the way in a lot of cases.

 

[timofonic]

The only way I think: reverse engineering.

GP32 is relatively simple to emulate, due to being mostly using the ARM for everything.

GP2X uses Linux, so maybe using a custom QEMU could make it possible too.

About Cave Story, RE too...

 

[WizardStan]

Like I said, the guy who did the port isn't around. AFAIK Pixel doesn't have the Cave Story SDL code, he might but who knows?

Wait, someone else was allowed to do a port, and when it was done, the code wasn't reclaimed? That's kind of disturbing. If I were making money off something, I'd want to be able to at least reproduce it, if not to have it in the event of the need to defend copyright.

 

[cbox]

Are there any GP games that are worth it? I had a GP100 and you know honestly, I never saw a GP only game that looked good. I used mine just for the emulators. Seems like a lot of effort to reverse engineer an emulator to play a handful of subpar games.

 

[Exophase]

GP2X uses Linux, so maybe using a custom QEMU could make it possible too.

GP2X games hit the hardware directly so strictly user-mode emulation may not cut it. On the other hand, they do it using /dev/mem so it might be possible to sort of emulate GP2X using a fake /dev/mem and trapping/emulating all accesses to the memory returned by it. This might work for running GP2X programs on Wiz w/o using QEMU but on Pandora there'll be problems with that since GP2X is OABI and Pandora is EABI.

Does anyone know if QEMU includes any kind of layer for handling /dev/mem in its user-mode emulation, or does it just get passed through to the host's /dev/mem?

 

[notaz]

Like I said, the guy who did the port isn't around. AFAIK Pixel doesn't have the Cave Story SDL code, he might but who knows?

He did come here once and told that all wip and future ports are canned because of Pixel's commercial endeavors (i.e. WiiWare release).

Does anyone know if QEMU includes any kind of layer for handling /dev/mem in its user-mode emulation, or does it just get passed through to the host's /dev/mem?

seems to be pass-through (based on few things I've tried).

 

[-Tj-]

Like I said, the guy who did the port isn't around. AFAIK Pixel doesn't have the Cave Story SDL code, he might but who knows?

He did come here once and told that all wip and future ports are canned because of Pixel's commercial endeavors (i.e. WiiWare release).

Damn... That's bad news for me. I was hoping Cave Story would be one of the first things ported to Pandora, and it would have been one of the first games I played on it (if not the first). Granted, Pixel does deserve to make money off his creation. I wonder if he'd consider allowing a port if we threw some money his way?