Questions About Case Eta, Orders, & Emulator Progress Predictions

[psychodegu]

I hope these unwarranted expectation of the generous coders are not due the 'developer fund' that was implemented. Nobody should be putting money in that as a right to be demanding. Its just the lazy man's way of joining the share party.

 

[Pleng]

I remember when I first got my GP2x, a couple of years after it was launched. It was great having access to hundreds of classic Megadrive and SNES games! I watched with interest about the GBA emulator as it was reported to go faster and faster. I never tried it because I never HAD a gba and therefore didn't know of any games I'd want to play (I didn't realize, at the time, that there was a version of Sega Rally available for it!), but it was good to know that a whole new library of games were emerging if I ever did get bored.

Time went on and I got busy, not really having any time to play my little 2X. Then a holiday to Spain came along, bringing with it a 2 Hour flight and 4 Hours of trains. A perfect time, it would seem, to bring 2X out of retirement. I went to the archives to download the latest versions of my emulators and BANG! Virtua Racing was supported on the Megadrive. What a find!

Was that on topic? Not really sure. I'm pretty sure I had a point to make at the beginning of the post...

 

[gruso]

^ If I may attempt to make the point for you, it's that these systems age like fine wine.

 

[TaG]

^ If I may attempt to make the point for you, it's that these systems age like fine wine.

So people should stop moaning and put a cork in it...

 

[Squidge]

Everyone should remember that there's only a couple of people who have proper Pandora boards, and those people have little more than that (ie, they have a PCB + LCD, with no controls).

By the time devs get complete hardware, it is most likely that other people will get it also, so expecting finished or polished emulators by the time the Pandora is released is just daft.

As for SNES, there is a version running (as you can see from the posted videos), however there is currently no gui and no controls. When I get my Pandora in November, those features will be the added. In the mean time, if anyone wants to do some graphics for the gui, feel free. If its left to me, the gui will be text-based, which is probably not what you want.

 

[gruso]

Hmm. What kind of format would such graphics need to be in, to be put into the app? (I'm being hypothetical, for the moment). I'm assuming separate BMPs/PNGs for the different components (bezel, background, menu items?).

 

[b._.o._.b]

the gui will be text-based, which is probably not what you want.

What's wrong with a text based gui? Picodrive has one of the best gui's I can think of and is pretty much only text.

I hope we will not see too much requests for polish right from the start of the launch of the Pandora. It is even ok by me to have buggy firmware/kernel as long as the launch of the hardware is not delayed.
The hardware is the most important, software can come later.

It will indeed be fun to see a bunch of devs releasing update after update from the start. We (the pre-order crowd) are software test pilots for the second batch. Looking forward to that

 

[gruso]

Picodrive's menu is pretty nice actually. The subtle background graphic seals the deal though!

 

[Squidge]

Hmm. What kind of format would such graphics need to be in, to be put into the app? (I'm being hypothetical, for the moment). I'm assuming separate BMPs/PNGs for the different components (bezel, background, menu items?).

I don't think finding file type loader is going to be much of an issue, but it would be best if you could keep with the same format for all elements. Maybe the standard could be PNG?

 

[moxie]

However much you may dislike it, Chip, people naturally have expectations in their minds of the software that they will have on the Pandora. People expect something of the performance of software for the Pandora. They're expecting that PSX emulation will be full speed, or DOSBOX will be able to run more games full speed than on the GP2X.

Yes. That's what we may expect, and that's what will be. Eventually.

It's one thing to complain about free software. It's another to expect something of free software. You can put a bad spin on it if you want, but don't use the same arguments that are used with those who complain about free software (sense of entitlement, lectures about how developers are doing this stuff for free, etc.; you don't have to remind me that developers are doing this for free in their spare time, save that for the people that'll start complaining if their free software doesn't meet their expectations).

But that is what you're doing. You have bought hardware from party A, and now you expect party B, c and D to provide you with polished, free software for said hardware on launch day. That is sense of entitlement stupidity on two fronts - Stupidity for not realizing the developers of the hardware are not the same as the developers of software, and stupidity because you expect the developers of software to work in negative time (how else will that 'polish' be there when you get your pandora, if the developers get their units at the same time as you do? 'coz that is the preorder thing, you know - You are part of the people who get the very first units that rolls off the assembly line. If you didn't want to be part of that, why did you preorder?

Double stupidity. Double fail.

There is, of course, a simple solution: If Craig makes sure that Jerrys Pandora isn't shipped out until the emus have the requred "polish", then Jerry won't have to suffer through unexpectedly unpolished software, and everybody's happy. It might be administered through youtube or something - Every month Craig puts up a video with footeage from the latest versions of the "expected" emulators, and Jerry can watch the video and decide whether the software is polished enough that the pandy should be sent out. Everybody happy with that?

EDIT: bawd splleing