GP2X Publishing Your Game?

[woogal]

The GP2X is more than fast enough to do 3D. It has more RAM and more horsepower than Pentium 1/2's that we used to play all those 3D games on (e.g. Quake 1 & 2, Descent, Rise of the Triad, etc.)

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More ram, more horsepower, less fpu . It will play doom, rott, duke etc really well as they were all fixed point and designed for 486. Quake and other later stuff was coded for Pentium with it's fpu, so they were coded for accuracy rather than speed and made extensive use of floats. Quake 1 should run fairly well (but I can't get a benchmark out of it at the moment). Quake 2 might run at the same kind of speeds as a 200mhz ipaq (around 7 or 8 fps I think - same kind of speeds as Quake 1 on the gp32 at 156mhz). But as long as you keep to fixed point you can achieve fantastic 3D stuff on arm processors (just look at yeti).

Anyway, for distributing games I would say the GPH site would be the best bet. They will take a cut of the profits obviously, but you will get the best exposure and you should get full drm support. Speak to craigix for the details as I think he is helping GPH set up commercial deals.

 

[digitaljez]

If you want to sign the app so it will only run on that device how will you implement that ? Assuming there will be a compressed .fxe type format the website will need to sign the uncompressed file and then generate the .fxe before uploading it. How do you sign a program ? Presumably there is a header with allocated space for this. Is this information available ?

 

[Reesy]

Hmm charging for DrMD....I like it...

Queue Evil Laugh
fDave and I and gonna be rich! Rich! Rich! I tell you! B)

 

[Hooka]

Ok, simply put... there will always be alot of freeware/emu's for the GP2X (atleast I would think...) but doesn't anybody think having a couple commercial games is always a good idea, it ensures a certain level of quality and hey, if you don't want to shell out the $10-$15 bucks that gamepark games are then don't get them (although I would encourage gamepark holdings to keep a $20 USD limit for the most expensive games, ensuring that more people will buy more games but that's just my thoughts and don't really mean sh!t...)

 

[Digital Awakening]

The great parts about letting GPH handle the sales are quite a few. For example if you're an european developer you would have to add VAT to your price if you are selling the games yourself, swedish VAT for games is 25%. Having your game listed on GPH's site you get free exposure of your game. There's a lot less paperwork, you only need to book payments like once a month instead of every sale. GPH is a lot more trustworthy for people who use credit cards. GPH would deal with all the refunds etc problems.

 

[MiniMoose]

...swedish VAT for games is 25%...

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Yeeeesh! Move to Estonia to get out from under opressive VAT taxation, it's just across the water from you.

gp32_console

 

[Digital Awakening]

But then we do get a lot of stuff from our taxes. Like university studies are free and I get some cash every month because I'm studying.

 

[MiniMoose]

But then we do get a lot of stuff from our taxes. Like university studies are free and I get some cash every month because I'm studying.

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My university studies where free/semi-free (U.S. government grants, scholarships, and very low interest loans), and I worked as a programmer for extra cash. When I was finished, I already had experience and was able to make a whole lot more than the other people I studied with. Paying off the loans was easy (4.3% interest) and I was able to also buy a nice house and a nice car. (lower taxes == higher wages, scholarships for good academics == better value to employers, low interest loans == easy to fund university education).

 

[xafier]

What worries me about developing for GP2X is that most owners only want to run emulators and other free stuff and won't bother about commercial games.

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Nah, if there are good games released they'll be bought... I bought a few for the GP32 and if there are good ones for the GP2X i'll buy them too

Infact it'd be great if some of the GP32 games were released on the GP2X too as I'd love to play them again (sold my GP32 and its games a while back )

 

[Digital Awakening]

Nah, if there are good games released they'll be bought... I bought a few for the GP32 and if there are good ones for the GP2X i'll buy them too

Infact it'd be great if some of the GP32 games were released on the GP2X too as I'd love to play them again (sold my GP32 and its games a while back )

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Just because you buy games doesn't mean that everybody buy games. For a lone dev the game doesn't have to sell much even at a low price but the GP2X userbase is smaler then some other platforms and I've heard some people say that they would buy good games on these forums but there are more people around asking for free emulators. I wouldn't mind paying for a good SNES emulator myself and same goes with good games. The question is, what does the rest of the forum think and more importantly what does the rest of the consumers think?

What people don't realise is that if a dev could sell enough games he could start developing full time, buy artwork, sounds, music etc or even team up with others to make more games in a shorter time and with better quality, lifespan and features.

 

[yaustar]

what would be ideal is to have an official site / fanzine that reviews these games on a regular basis. quickest way to gain exposure (a la uplink) especially if it is a site that most users will check. it would also add pressure on developers to make higher quality games since a bad review = bad sales.

 

[K0K0NUT_h3lmut]

Ugh, I don't like where this is going. If many of the things that were free on the original GP32 were costware, then I don't know if I would have bought one...

I do like supporting devs... It's just that I don't have much money. That's why I like click for devs and donating. Because I will donate when I can and click like crazy (since I don't donate much).

 

[Ninjia^]

If I wanted to pay for games I would have bought a PSP and think I speak for a lot of people when I say this. Im buying the GP2X because I know I can play 1000s of games through emulators for nothing.

I hardly buy any games for my PC anymore because its hard to find any worth buying anymore, 90% of the time I'll be bored after a couple of hours At the moment the only games I will touch are Half Life 2 (+mods) and Battlefield 2 if I need a quick fix I'll play retro games through emus.

The point Im getting at and I hope I havent come across the wrong way here is that if Im disapointed with high quality retail games that took 2/3 years+ development by a team of professional programmers I doubt that anything homebrew will warrant me spending $15/$20 anytime soon.

 

[lubidog]

But then we do get a lot of stuff from our taxes. Like university studies are free and I get some cash every month because I'm studying.

​

My university studies where free/semi-free (U.S. government grants, scholarships, and very low interest loans), and I worked as a programmer for extra cash. When I was finished, I already had experience and was able to make a whole lot more than the other people I studied with. Paying off the loans was easy (4.3% interest) and I was able to also buy a nice house and a nice car. (lower taxes == higher wages, scholarships for good academics == better value to employers, low interest loans == easy to fund university education).

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I had a swedish friend at college, and she told me that she had borrowed about £45 grand from the Swedish Government in Student grants...

Sorry, off topic.

 

[digitaljez]

If I wanted to pay for games I would have bought a PSP and think I speak for a lot of people when I say this. Im buying the GP2X because I know I can play 1000s of games through emulators for nothing.

I hardly buy any games for my PC anymore because its hard to find any worth buying anymore, 90% of the time I'll be bored after a couple of hours At the moment the only games I will touch are Half Life 2 (+mods) and Battlefield 2 if I need a quick fix I'll play retro games through emus.

The point Im getting at and I hope I havent come across the wrong way here is that if Im disapointed with high quality retail games that took 2/3 years+ development by a team of professional programmers I doubt that anything homebrew will warrant me spending $15/$20 anytime soon.

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I don't think there is any need to worry about the homebrew scene drying up. As long as someone is teaching themselves to dev then there will always be a supply of arkanoid, pac man, flash game copies etc.

It is only when a gem emerges, and the dev recognises it as such, that they will give it to Craigix/GPH for evaluation. It may still end up as freeware if it's not considered worthy.

As long as Craigix/GPH keep the final retail cost as low as possible it can only be a good thing to have costware. It will encourage better quality innovative games. If devs can remain relatively independant we won't end up with the overhyped 'high quality retail games' produced to maximize profit, devved by people who are treating it as a job rather than a passion.

Besides, it would be nice if in years to come people will want to run GPX2 emu's because there is actually something worth playing developed for it.

(If you have to pay for one emulator that allows you to play thousands of games that is a pretty good deal.)

 

[Digital Awakening]

I'm all for some kind of review site.

Personally I'm not into coding some simple games/prototypes. I put in a lot of work into my games from planning to a complete and solid game.

 

[Korup7]

i believe Emus should be free, worthy homebrew games should be sold for money. Myself as a future dev for the GP2X, playing your own games is a rewarding experience, but sometimes not enough to continue to motivate you. Donations would be great.. IF everyone donated when they downloaded ur game. I'm not saying games should be up at $50+ CAD like other consoles, but a small "tip" (maybe not even $20 US, as i see that as a bit high..), something around $10 US for a good game.

As whether they're worthy or not, betas of the game should be put out and then decided by the community whether they'd pay or not. Mehh, I'm planning to make a Map based, campaign strategy game with a "Map Maker" type prog so you can make your own maps for the GP2X, and I plan to make a little cash of off it. Not because i'm greedy , but because i'm very busy and i need that "extra" motivation to keep me interested .