craigix posted on Sep 8 2006 at 05:28 AM said:
That is shockingly edited. The tone of that conversation was sarcastic and playful from my side as i worked on vektar.
Try posting what happened much later on when i revealed that as we were talking i was putting his suggested control method into the game.
Epicenter what is your problem with me? This isn't the first time you have tried to get little digs in on me.
-Craig
If it was a misunderstanding, I am willing to accept that, but I can't say my interactions with you have left me with any impression of professionalism on your part. I honestly feel I've been misled and downright insulted, and disrespected to an extreme in our previous discussions. This isn't appropriate behavior. Allow me to relate the reasons in the most objective fashion I can.
#1, My initial contact with you was regarding development of a 3D game based on Quake. You PM'ed me about producing a commercial game which we were planning on bringing over from the PC. You spun an interesting story about the then-young GP2X hardware, how the two ARM9s could work in tandem, an SLI-like interface, to draw an interlaced Quake frame achieving very high framerates compared to what we previously had (~10-12 FPS). A picture was painted of a developer or more being paid to work on the Quake port and make it a feasible platform for a 3D game. The Gp2x.co.uk site reflected, and still reflects, the Quake engine as being a terrific means to develop original 3D content for the GP2X.
When I got my unit and began working with it, it became abundantly clear the Quake port was playable, but nowhere near snappy enough to build a game so advanced upon. In fact, it seems to this day that to achieve decent framerates, a majority of sprites must be used, not actual 3D models! Achieving 20 FPS is 'good' and I managed this only with an overclock to 280 MHz; the 'standard' 30 FPS was not achievable even at 312 MHz.
I dug deeper, and learned that the rendering method you suggested using both CPUs was not possible due to multiple issues involving how the 940T is implemented in the MMSP2- most notably lack of an MMU, memory contention between the two cores and cache limitations all made it poorly suited to this task. On top of this, I learned there was one person working on Quake, and it was just a personal project done separate from GBAX, and was only casually maintained. There was no one dedicated to it from GBAX, and it was a much more informal project than I was informed of. There was also no one working on this 'SLI' concept.
Now, we seem to differ on the front of what 'good playable framerate' is, e.g. your opinion of Payback's framerate was 'good' when my view of it, and my associates' view of it, was 'intolerable'. I do feel, however, the vast majority of people trying to play a port of Armor of Acheron to the GP2X would not find 10-20 FPS 'good'. I wrote the project off as 'for another time, if we can be bothered to try and shoehorn it onto the GP2X hardware, or maybe another platform'. This whole experience, however, gave me a very bad impression of the whole concept of producing a commercial game by way of GBAX/GPH.
I suggested instead a 2D game which we are working on to this day, Stargazer, be published by GPH/GBAX. I was met with a 'we'll see', essentially. But later on, despite the success of the 2D game Vektar, I was met with a great deal of sentiment from you about how no one wanted to play old-fashioned 2D games and you'd never sell any copies. It was just a notch down from an argument to get you to entertain the concept, even-- I quickly lost all enthusiasm for the idea when I saw the first 'boxed' copy of Vektar; on a generic SD card, bouncing around freely inside what appeared to be a remodeled TV-Out cable package, stapled shut. That's not exactly what I imagined when you described neat, boxed packages with manuals, much like a Japanese Famicom (or was it GBA?) game comes packaged. Much like how when you mentioned the games would be protected by DRM on encrypted SD cards, I didn't imagine you telling me we had to write our own DRM scheme because you didn't feel like sharing yours.
#2, our discussion of the GP2X stick. I've had my GP2X for some time now, not much under a year-- and I'm enjoying it. It has capable hardware inside, though I remained highly irritated by the stick. While many on this forum are perfectly alright with it, most newcomers to the console who expect something more similar to a traditional console, say, a GBA or PSP-- are not. Those outside of the GP32/GP2X community have a tendency to look at the GP2X as being a shoddily-made toy, and nothing can create that impression quite like a stick that feels broken.
You seemed wholly indifferent to the issue, not concerned as you propose to be now. I brought to your attention threads that populated the first page of the General GP2X Talk forum constantly, discussing D-Pad installation, why the stick was used, how to circument problems with the stick, if GPH would ever offer a machine with a D-pad, so forth. Threads that were over 20 pages long in some cases, had been read thousands of times and posted to hundreds of times! You shrugged off the issue, telling me that if you could play Battle Squadron for the MD, that the MK2 stick was fine. The simple facts of the matter are that not every game requires the same control movements. A platformer is much harder to play than a shooter on this stick due to the time it takes to swing from one direction or another. It feels like playing with a multiple-direction lightswitch, very loose, imprecise and sloppy. Something that is 'just tolerable' is not something to shoot for ... I made this clear.
However, what truly agitated me was that when I stated that the problem was not fixed in the MK2 units, by merely rotating the existing stick 45 degrees, you logged out and refused to speak to me becaue I hadn't personally used the MK2 stick. I was well aware of the reason it was rotated, the UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT directions were biased less than the diagnols were, which the MK2's re-orientation of the stick corrected. But this does nothing to fix the long swing time going from one direction to its opposite or the complete lack of precision, and sloppy feel of the control overall.
That kind of an argument is much like a person entering a car dealership, complaining that his brakes on his new car are shot. He returns, and finds they've had a mechanic replace his steering wheel and put a prettier pedal onto his brakes. He knows his problem wasn't fixed, but no one will listen to him because he didn't go test-drive his obviously still-broken brakes? You've got just as many people still complaining despite that they are all getting rotated sticks in their new MK2 units. The problem was obviously still there, whether it persoanlly bothered you or not. Such logic should never be the basis of a product design anyway-- it should be what the customers want. Not what a distributor wants.
Now, if it's impossible to fix the problem for monetary reasons, that's a whole different issue from entirely disregarding the problem, and pretending that it does not exist.
#3, The final straw came when we were speaking and the topic of discussion came to a successor of the GP2X that was planned sometime in the future. Now, I am always enthusiastic about a new development platform, especially one that would build on the strengths of the GP2X, could add some more, and remove some of its weaknesses. I suggested, a 2D accelerator, or more ideally for those more interested in 3D, a 2D/3D acclerator like the PowerVR "MBX Lite" RS, and a moderately higher-clocked ARM9, amid some other suggestions like, of course, a D-Pad.
I suggested an SoC that would be great for GPH's next machine, and was met with many illogical arguments, most of which centered on that you'd rather include a higher-clocked ARM9, to the tune of 600 MHz, despite that such a chip does not exist, because those easily affected by big numbers in marketing would want to buy one. You made the analogy of a big engine in a truck, if I recall correctly, and how it sells trucks better than more useful features. You made a lot of inaccurate statements about the usability of OpenGL-ES. You wanted to know that such features as a 2D/3D accelerator would really benefit things like PS1 emulation in particular-- so I went to Zodttd and asked him about the exact SoC I suggested. His response was nothing but positive-- he stated if such hardware came out, he'd be right on it to port PSX4ALL and use the 3D, Floating point and Vector processing capabilities to their fullest. I assured you PS1 games would be at or near full speed in the majority of cases, a statement that is fully grounded in reality based on technical knowledge, talks with Zodttd and research of the hardware.
You asked me to make a GP32X post asking which the community would prefer. You laid no guidelines or rules for such a post. Knowing prior threads were just 'what would you want in a GP3X?'-styled and were rapidly filled with ridiculous ideas like Athlon 64 2GHz+ processors and 7800GTX 3D Accelerators, full PCs in a tiny pocket-sized handheld that would cost $4,000 .. I told it straight and said that it was to be input for an intended future successor to the GP2X. Posts on GP32X overwhelmingly favored the SoC I had suggested to you, despite your resistance and constant illogical arguments.
Then, you saw my thread, said my claims were crazy, and that I said too much, that I had no right to say anything about a future GP2X unit, and that you'd never speak to me again. Then, you replied to the thread stating everything was purely hypothetical, and there was no future unit planed, quite presumably to minimize impact on existing GP2X sales.
Would not a little warning have been appropriate? A bit of information on what you did and did not want revealed? If something is a secret to you, it is in your best interests to be careful that persons to which you speak of it know there are rules to what is and is not secret information. I didn't consider myself privy to any secrets of GPH or GBAX, as I had no reason to be. If you had some kind of faith in me not to reveal such information as that, it would have been expected for you to say so-- and at the very least, not to hold one in contempt for violating guidelines that were never set.
I don't wish to call you out sheerly out of spite, but none of your behavior towards me has been professional or respectful, despite my attempts to show both of those attributes to you in our prior discussions and dealings. Courtesy is a two-way street, and when one recieves treatment such as this, he cannot be expected to sing your praises. I want you to undestand this, and not feel as if I am being blindly hateful, but wish to make my feelings on this matter known, as is fully within my rights.
If you wish to rebut what I've said, I welcome it, and I do vow not to abandon reason and maintain a rational dialogue-- a flamewar isn't what anyone welcomes, but I would like to hear your thoughts on this matter here or in private, whichever you prefer.
I believe I've said all I need to. I'm sorry for cluttering up this thread, but I did need to get that off of my chest.
