Pandora Rpg Gaming Diablo 2 On Pandora.

[crasherball]

The very short answer is no.
The short short answer is don't count on it.
The long answer is, if there was a perfect kernel with a perfect intel chip emulator with capable of running windows native code at an acceptable speed on an ARM processor. Diablo 2 would still run like a one legged dog.
The crux of the problem is that even though Wine runs on your PC or Laptop it won't run on the Pandora because Wine relies on being able to take advantage of the x86 CPU in your PC to execute many of the instructions without any need for dynamic recompilation, emulated code, or other nasty bits that slow common emulators like your PS1 emulator down. Wine simply isn't emulating anything it just provides a way for the Windows based code to use the facilities in Linux to display the program onscreen and provide a layer for interacting with the running program in a useful manner. This is completely different than how a PSX or SNES emulator works.
If Diablo II were a dos based game, this would be a different dicussion. But because it requires Windows to run you're not just talking about running the game, but you have to run all of Windows fiddly bits in the background as well. But even then you'd need a Dynamic Recompiling core for that DOS emulator for it to work with any amount of speed. Unfortunately, no DOS emulator with Dynarec exists at the moment (Though I understand that one is in the works).
As it stands right this very moment. The best you can expect as far as DOS or Windows games on the Pandora is going to be any game up to any including games that would run on a 386 at about 66mhz. And that certainly isn't fast enough to run Windows 95 and a demanding game on top of it. If we had a Dynarec those numbers could improve slightly, but not by a margin good enough to play DirectX games in windows.
If a game is post 1989 or so you're pretty out of luck unless the source is available or someone writes an interpreter.
The only real hope of playing Diablo 2 would be if some very clever programmer wrote an interpreter for the data files.

alright then.
but if it was possible to install windows CE on pandora - would it help?

and another thing: what about normal windows-tools
no games - just windows-tools
like no-open-source, windows95-based that uses like 24ram.
2d-surface only - its really simple

will it be possible to run that?
or should I just forget all about windows-only-software at all

Diablo 2 seems really far-fetched, and I doubt it'll ever be on Pandora, unless someone makes a clone.

PSX has some neat looking action-RPGs like Gauntlet Legends and DarkStone (3d diablo clone)


no clone is like diablo 2

 

[peca]

...was possible to install windows CE on pandora...

No, it isn't posible. And even if posible, then WinCE (mostly for ARM based devices) is diferen from Win32 (for x86/x64 procesors)

 

[mindlord]

and another thing: what about normal windows-tools
no games - just windows-tools
like no-open-source, windows95-based that uses like 24ram.
2d-surface only - its really simple

will it be possible to run that?
or should I just forget all about windows-only-software at all

I wouldn't hold my breath. Almost any tool you find that was available from that era has a linux counterpart so there is very little incentive. And I re-emphasize that the different CPU architectures is a HUGE deal when it comes to emulating a PC. So While Windows 95 might run with some semblance of speed, and you might actually get some real work done, you probably wouldn't want to. The boot time would be abysmal, and responsiveness would be poor at best. While it might be nice to boot up 95 and say to some random person, "Look what I can do!" that's about all windows emulation on the Pandora will be good for.
It may be possible to do some neat stuff in windows 3.1, however.

 

[crasherball]

ya alright
well the program I'm talking about is just some kind of digital "reference book"
so performance is not really important. but I guess I'd have to use book in its non-digital form....wow, kinda pain in the ass lol

but thanks for explaining me without labeling me as a newb hehe

 

[fusion_power]

And IF we would have the full source Code of Diablo2, what would be possible then?
D2 in 800x600 needs a relative big PC to run smooth ( over 1GHz) so could the Pandora handle it in theory (and in 800x480)?

 

[sindbad]

It should be able to handle it, but there still is no source. And it would be very surprising it there ever were.

 

[crasherball]

lol ya
call blizzard and ask em if u can have the sourcecode of a game theyre still selling and still tousands playing online everyday

 

[fusion_power]

lol ya
call blizzard and ask em if u can have the sourcecode of a game theyre still selling and still tousands playing online everyday

With Quake 3 this was posible to.

 

[crasherball]

is quake 3 really open source?
I thought there is only a open source client - and u can run the gamefile on every system without compiling it

 

[bigtruck]

is quake 3 really open source?
I thought there is only a open source client - and u can run the gamefile on every system without compiling it

IIRC, the code is GPL, but the game data (models, textures, etc.) is not.

 

[Svartalf]

And IF we would have the full source Code of Diablo2, what would be possible then?
D2 in 800x600 needs a relative big PC to run smooth ( over 1GHz) so could the Pandora handle it in theory (and in 800x480)?

With some re-work, perhaps. One would need to re-work the code from the DX7 perspective to the SDL/OpenGL ES perspective. Sometimes you end up increasing the efficiency of the game code in that process. Same goes for other things, like the input layer, etc. Anyhow, this is largely a moot point- NO SOURCE.

 

[quasist]

Without mouse or a trackball playing D2 will be hard. I do not believe that pandoras' tochscreen is nice to use in gaming.

The PSX Diablo has advanced auto-targeting system for spells.

 

[peca]

Pandora have 2 analog and touch screen. If dual analog control couldn't work, touch screen does.

 

[crasherball]

well i dont wanna hack n slay my touchscreen

its gotta look like the face of a geek-teenager after act 3

 

[quasist]

I got two major questions about Diablo 2 on pandora...

1) If you transmute two GP2X in Horadric Cube will you recieve one pandora?
2) If you transmute two pandoras in Horadric Cube will you recieve one GP2X?

 

[plopperz]

1) No, that would require one Ral rune.
2) Now that's just silly

 

[crasherball]

2) If you transmute two pandoras in Horadric Cube will you recieve one GP2X?

of course not - u'll be gettin the first atari

 

[barzoule]

go make a D2 clone adapted to the pandora device
do it and i'll play. many will play! you could even sell it for cheap like 5$ and get more than an hundred bucks at the end!

but srsly, making a game could be more fun to do than trying to hack the system to emulate at 1/8th of the speed.

 

[palmertech]

Nobody would spend more than a few hours for the promise of $100. Maybe like, $3000.

 

[Svartalf]

Nobody would spend more than a few hours for the promise of $100. Maybe like, $3000.

Heh... Indeed. However, it's been asked for (well, I suspect that if D3 has serviceable gameplay they'll start asking for THAT) as a porting prospect for Linux in general over on Phoronix over in one of the forum threads I initiated in the games section. If I thought they'd part with the source code for a reasonable amount and I could at least expect to break-even, I'd do the work. The problem is, it's a AAA title- that means at least $20k or so out of pocket for something even this old- just to get a peek at the source code. The per-unit royalties are going to be crazy-expensive even now and the distribution model that would make it work won't go over terribly well with the publisher.

Porting's unlikely. Making a clone...heh...many have tried. There's even source code for one of the clones in Object Pascal from a commercial interest that open sourced their engine
back ages ago. No Diablo/Diablo2 clones. Too much work to get the assets up to the right level and the iso engine's not a simple thing to get it right with the effects they did and all.