Shut Up About The "death Of The Gp32 Community"


Swiss_Cheeseman

SwissCM
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Threads like "Soon the *insert product here* community will die soon" are posted in pretty much every game/peice of hardware/book/movie message board on the goddamn internet.

Newsflash - None of them die. They may get smaller, they may become less popular, but they never die. The Commodore 64 community isn't dead. The Dreamcast community isn't dead. The Amiga community isn't dead. Some of them may have had quiet periods, but there are still people who consider themselves fans of an obsolete peice of hardware/software for some reason.

A good example of things never dying would be a cute little peice of software called 3D Movie Maker. 3DMM was a cheap little semi-educational program made by Microsoft that let you direct crude 3D Movies using static backgrounds and stupid looking 3D Models. It was fun to play with, and I still have it on my hard drive to mess around with on occasion. Surely its a dead peice of software, a relic of the past never to be seen again?

Wrong. 3dmm.com is a community of people still playing with this thing, and some of the stuff they have done with it is incredible. This is almost 8 years after the damn thing got released.

DOS games never died. People remake them, programs like DOSBox come along and make them playable on new computers. Strife, a Doom engine based game that almost noone has heard of recently got reverse engineered and is now supported in ZDoom, despite the source never being released for it. People are still releasing maps for Stunts, a racing game made in 1991 for petes sake.

The jaguar was a horribly shitty peice of shit that was completely fucking shit. Surely that would be forgotten in the sands of time? Nope, I got on my computer an emulator for it. Its not perfect and doesn't have sound, but if someone could dedicate time towards making an emulator for an absolutely HORRIBLE system on which 99.9% of the games available for it are fucking shit, you would think that people would like to play their GP32s some time down the line.

In conclusion, don't panic over something that is likely never to happen. The GP32 has been around for more than 2 years now and has grown in popularity, even with competition from devices that are far more powerful than it, have major companies backing them, and have a larger official game library. The GP32 will never die, because nothing else has.

Hooray for the edit button!
 
The jaguar was a horribly shitty peice of shit that was completely fucking shit.

Ah, sheer poetry. Quite liked it myself, but I know what you mean.

I think the biggest thing that will keep the GP32 'alive' is the fact that just about anybody can develop reasonable software for it. Nearly every console before the GP32 has had 'closed' development environment, and even home computers needed a fair amount of understanding before you could code for them.

On the GP32, we've got things like Fenix, gigas, Zot, etc which means anyone can have a go. If I had more (any) time, I'd be banging out arcade conversions, home computer remakes and original classics myself (maybe)...

Long live the GP32...

Oh, and it plays Doom to. Properly. That'll keep me coming back forever...
 
And Quake now...

P.S. Strife? Doom engine.. does that mean we can use the "Wads" on GPDoom and play it?
 
In regards to the Jaguar community, there are games still being developed, all be it 1 or 2, but its still not dead after so many years, even the Lynx has had a few more games come out in the recent years so to say the GP32 community is dead is completely false. Even when the PSP4 and the nintendo quad screen come out the GP32 will still be alive.
 
Agree 100% with this. The gp32 community is going to be around for years to come, so you can take all yer gizmondos and zodiacs and £$%£$^^%

:D
 
Of course the GP32 community will die....

but NOT YET!

Nothing lasts forever, but it's got a hell of a lot more in it yet, and by the time its exhausted, there will be another system around that'll give exactly the same buzz!

:D So just bloody well ENJOY IT!
 
Waaahaahaaa!
The community dies?
*sob* *sob*

Okay folks, time to close my GP32x File Archive... after all that hours I spent uploading older stuff... but who needs that... if the community is dead.
And all the review links with donskeetos review site... pretty useless, if the whole community is dead...

Now you did it... I'm gonna cry... buuuuhaaaaa.... huu.... huh?

9,206 Files (55.787 GB) downloaded in three weeks (since I opened the GP32x File Archive)?

Maybe the community isn't dead after all. Hoooray! :)

Hehe. Community is dead. This was a good one.
It won't die in the next few years.
Maybe in 3-4, okay, when the next-gen homebrew console is ready.

So keep it up folks :)
 
Thanks so much for that EvilDragon, one thing that always worried me about buying the gp32 was no one hosting files anymore.
You are the gp32's Messiah! ;)
 
Thanks so much for that EvilDragon, one thing that always worried me about buying the gp32 was no one hosting files anymore.
You are the gp32's Messiah! ;)

He, glad you like it :)

But I don't think you need to worry - if I wouldn't do it, anybody else would.
And there are more file hosting places than my site :)
 
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The GP32 scene is not going anywhere. Mostly because the GP32 device itself is tying several classic consoles, and their respective fan bases into one scene. Even though the DS and the PSP are coming out in the weeks ahead, I still chose to order a GP32, (two days ago in fact) because I see more playability in it than both the other consoles put together.
 
and if you keep your GP32, in 5 years time when all most people know of it is a little section on an emulation site about 'an obscure korean handheld with mainly homebrew releases <download: geepee32.zip>' we'll be able to play the ROMS on the original console, with no raking around second-hand-shops looking for old cartridges...

(i wonder if they'll ever build a 'randomly disable joystick diagonals' option into Geepee32 for added realism? :p)
 
The only way the GP32x community will stay alive is if other handhelds are supported. As GP32's popularity (if it ever had any) wears off, people will still be interested as long as it's still around. In the near future, not many people are going to visit a GP32 only site. But a site with all the major handhelds as well as the older ones will still spark some interest in GP32.
 
It's gonna be a long while before DS or PSP get hacked for independent development.

There are still reasons why the GP32 is better. For example, the controls on the GP are overall the most comfortable and ergonomic I've ever used. The controls are one of the the main reasons I went and got a GP32 again. The DS has Nintendo's classic crosspad pad of pain, and PSP has that awful PSX dpad - both are bearable, but not great. The Zodiac's analog pad turned out to be uncomfortable and imprecise (for emulation and 8way games).

Also, GP32 is really the only system that is totally, 100% open to development right from the start. No hacking the hardware needed, no getting apps signed by central servers, no SDK/GPL hoops to jump. It's the Linux of handheld consoles.

The only thing that is unfortunate about the GP32 scene is how many great projects get started, but then left unfinished just short of perfection. I'd like to see more projects taken all the way through to the end. Or at least, devs should try to release source code (and BACK IT UP!) if/when they decide to shelve an unfinished project.

Enough rambling. GP32 scene is alive and well, and probably will be for years.
 
I'm planning to keep the GP32 for a long time... it does its job well in my opinion and things that do their jobs well are worth keeping.


Agree with the Cheesman on this one. :)
 
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