GP2X Setting A Standard..

[ryosaeba]

I think I can do it, and it needs to be implemented in gmenu2x 'cause I don't think that the original image viewer can be launched to open directly a png.
Those "manuals" should be contributed by the community anyway or this would be useless...

 

[Trip]

I think I can do it, and it needs to be implemented in gmenu2x 'cause I don't think that the original image viewer can be launched to open directly a png.
Those "manuals" should be contributed by the community anyway or this would be useless...

Yeah.. the the community making the manuals was one of the reasons that I liked the idea so much. There's a lot of talented people out there, who havn't got any coding skills but would still like to try & help out the dev's by contributing in someway.

If you want to give it a shot Ryo, I'll put together a gimp file with all the layers seperate etc.. This should make it easier for other people to customize them to however they want

 

[tmb_ayebe]

Unfortunatly we can't please everyone all the time, but this combo was decided upon by taking a lot of different arguements into consideration & hopefully most people will be happy to use it.

Fair enough, I'll be happy to use it - any standard is better than no standard, and yes it's like CTRL-ALT-DEL for the GP2X Now, if someone would program a task manager...

 

[PokeParadox]

I do believe I heard that someone WAS working on a tak manager type application... but I don't remember where I saw that..

 

[BradN]

I'd worry that a task manager would be kinda limited in usefulness, since you'll never be able to run 2 programs at once that both use the 940, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's issues with the video accelerator or TV output as well.

 

[Trip]

I'd worry that a task manager would be kinda limited in usefulness, since you'll never be able to run 2 programs at once that both use the 940, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's issues with the video accelerator or TV output as well.

It could allow you to listen to music while playing games, reading ebooks, looking at photo's etc. but I'm not too sure what else it could be used for?

 

[PokeParadox]

I think the idea was to kill processes that you didn't need running anymore. And recover from crashes without having to restart the GP2X...

 

[jimmyslam]

I am a bit confused now, so what are we doing ?

 

[Trip]

Just waiting for a week or so, to make sure that people get a chance to vote on the standard.
The standard being..
Start+R+L or just Start (depending if it's homebrew game, or an emulator/port that won't let you use just Start) which will bring up the options menu allowing you to go to the programs main menu, as well as giving options for the game in progress.
The B button should be used for the primary select & the X button for cancel (as it is in the 2x's standard programs).

The thread went a bit of topic..
when the idea was brought up for the intergration of a .png manual reader, that would show the key layouts & other useful info for the games. This is a completely seperate thing than the standard that we were on about, but would be a very interesting & useful thing to do

Now people people are wondering about a task manager

Lucky that you asked JimmySlam, it was starting to get a little confusing there for a while lol.

 

[PokeParadox]

Yeah sorry for continuing with the off topicness... I was just filling people in that there had been talks about a task manager.

Anyway. My future projects will comply with this standard, as it is sensible.

 

[Trip]

Yeah sorry for continuing with the off topicness... I was just filling people in that there had been talks about a task manager.

Anyway. My future projects will comply with this standard, as it is sensible.

Sometimes the best idea's evolve from topics that have gone off in a completely different direction..
Any hint's at some of the projects you have in mind PokeParadox?

Orkie seems to be the only person who's posted his reason for not agreeing with the standard.
Any feedback from the people who wouldn't want to use the standard (or voted Right idea, wrong answer!) would be cool. We need negative feedback as well as positive for something like this. Maybe you can see a problem that this will cause in the future? It's better to get everyone's opinions now, than run into trouble later on.

Back off topic..
I've been doing some more work on the Mame manual to try & neaten it up a bit. I've tried to make it look a little worn & used too just like the real thing, although I resisted the temptation of adding coffie stains & hotrock damage

I'm not the best graphical artist, but it's a pretty good base manual to show people the general idea.
I've saved all the layers seperate in the Gimp file to allow easy changing of all the pages & I'll upload this when there's enough interest in the idea.
I'm sure that there are people out there that can do a lot better job than I can (the font's suck quite badly)

It follows the same order that most manuals follow..
Page 1 - Cover image
Page 2 - Key layout for the software
Page 3 - (Intro) Background story for the game, Info on the original emulator or where the game was ported from etc.
Page 4 - (Info) Who did the port, folder & file info, supported games etc.
There's no reason why more pages can't be added too.

I was a little worried that the file size would take up too much space to make it worth while, but this weighs in at only 325kb. Should'nt take up too much room on the SDcard or make the downloads take much longer than normal.

 

[PokeParadox]

My projects: I am working on PKAGE, it is (or rather will be) an adventure game engine. Hopefully we'll have the engine and a proof of concept demo running before December. The demo will demonstrate a Phoenix Wright style adventure game.
Karurosu is working on the scripting and parsing engine. It is intended to be simple to write a script and make your own adventure game. David Beoulve is helping out with the art side of things for the demo.

Additionally to this I've been "testing the waters" with some of the OGL libraries that have been mentioned for the GP2X. I'm familiar with OGL since it's what we use at uni. I intend to create a simple 3D game using one of the libraries. I'll probably make it multi platform: GP2X,NDS and Win32

In any case the suggested interface "standards" will go in place on any future work I do on my projects old and new.

I try to make general notes of what I'm up to periodically in my blog

</offtopic>

 

[Trip]

Sounds good! [ 24 ] [52.17%]
I'm against it! [ 8 ] [17.39%]
I'll go with the flow! [ 7 ] [15.22%]
Anythings better than how it is now! [ 4 ] [8.70%]
Right idea, wrong answer! [ 3 ] [6.52%]

Well.. I think that any one who's going to vote has done so by now. Big thanks to everyone that did.
It would have been nice to find out why some people voted against it. It would also have been nice to find out if the arguements for it in this thread have managed to change the minds of the people who originaly voted against it, but never mind.
The results clearly show that most people want it as a suggested standard, or just simply need a change in the basic setup's of the programs.
As far as I'm concerned this has been time well spent.

The question is, where do we go from here?
Do we setup polls on the other GP2x sites & wait until we get all the results back, or do we add the info to the wiki etc. now & hope that it just get's adopted over time by all the 2x communities?

EDIT: Ok so someone else voted after I made this post lol. At least it was in favour

 

[tmb_ayebe]

The question is, where do we go from here?
Do we setup polls on the other GP2x sites & wait until we get all the results back, or do we add the info to the wiki etc. now & hope that it just get's adopted over time by all the 2x communities?

How about setting up a website called www.gp2xstandards.com and putting all this kind of thing on there? Then it could act as a central reference for people coding the games.

Just an idea.

 

[BradN]

I think getting a domain just for it might be overkill... it'd be better to have it on the wiki linked from relevant developer articles.

 

[Trip]

Sorry I havn't been on for a while, but Blueyonder sucks balls big time

I like the idea of a website for the suggested standards, but BradN's right about the expense.. if the sites only going to be used for that one simple thing anyway.
It could be more worth while IMO, to set up a website to help new developers. It could contain the suggested standards, tutorials & useful pieces of code etc.

I'm skint at the minute, but would happily payout for one when I get some coin. Until then the wiki should do fine I think

 

[PokeParadox]

I have got plenty of space/bandwidth already... I wouldn't mind hosting standards site.

EDIT: Sorry for the shameless self promotion, but Project Infinity is supposed to be a site to encourage homebrew development (not just for the GP2X).

 

[Trip]

I knew you had the bandwidth etc. Poke, but I figured you would have your hands full with all your different projects at the mo. It's upto you if you want to be the host with the most
Shouldn't be much messing about to get it setup anyway, I wouldn't have thought. How you thinking of doing it?

Another suggested standard that you might like to add, is that most people are only willing to overclock (or are only capable of overclocking) to 266mhz. This also seems to be the figure that most developers go for, when asking users for benchmark results etc. Not too sure if this is on the wiki though?

There's the suggested standards for the setup of the file system already on the wiki too. This already seems to have been accepted as the norm

 

[PokeParadox]

I can host it, do you want to manage it?

EDIT:
well as I mentioned previously project infinity is supposed to be a site to encourage new developpers. So any tutorials could go on there.

As for the GP2X standards site. I can either create a mini site just for this purpose... or again use Project Infinity, but create a VDomain to point to the "standards section"

I'm open for suggestion here.

 

[Trip]

I can host it, do you want to manage it?

EDIT:
well as I mentioned previously project infinity is supposed to be a site to encourage new developpers. So any tutorials could go on there.

As for the GP2X standards site. I can either create a mini site just for this purpose... or again use Project Infinity, but create a VDomain to point to the "standards section"

I'm open for suggestion here.

I'm currently having loads of trouble with Blueyonder at the mo, otherwise I would have taken you up on that offer of managing it without hesitation. If your too busy & no one else fancies it.. then count me in . I'd just have to hope that the connection doesn't interfere too much.

Tutorials on the main sites a good idea anyway, as there's no reason that they won't be useful for other systems too.

I'm not too sure what your project infinity site is capable of (looks like a lot lol), so I can't rearly say which idea would be best. A mini site would probably mean that you wouldn't have to give me (or whomever) too much access to your main site & server. This would be good if I was todo it.. I wouldn't want to ruin your main site if my broadband craps out while i'm half way through changing something