Speed Of Development? Out Of Box Features?

[CronoTriggerfan]

Hey all, new here. First of all, let me say how impressed I am with this project. I remember first hearing about it a while back and seeing the original thread with all the proposed specs and concept art and thinking, "Sure, call me in a year or two." However, after seeing the initial surge of progress, I must say my attention has been reinvigorated.

As a GP2x owner later on, I was happy with the amount of content available for it. Being a late adapter, though, I had the advantage of pre-developed software and a fairly large community. And seeing as I didn't follow the GP2x at its launch, I have no idea how fast the development grew. With that in mind, what do you veteran members expect the initial install base to be for the Pandora, and how fast do you feel progress in emulators, ported games, and internet-related features will be?

I'm asking mainly because I'm planning on selling a good number of my current tech devices (iPod Touch, maybe EEEpc, etc.) to buy one of these, and I'd like a fairly full-featured multimedia player out of the box (movies, music, maybe a web browser) with a solid number of gaming features after a year or so.

If this question has been answered before, I apologize. I'm a moderator over at the benheck.com forums, so I know how annoying it can be to deal with n00bs. Thanks for the input!

-CTFan

 

[chad78]

Welcome - BenHeck rocks!

Out of the box features that have been mentioned in the forum.

MPlayer - so your multi-media needs are covered.
PS1 emu (I refuse to use the PSX moniker, since that looks like PS_ (1,2,3,P) ).

-
That's really all I can remember being already tested and working. However, emulators that are pretty much a lock include:

NES, SNES, Sega Master System, Genesis, GameBoy, GB Color, GBA, Atari (800/2600/5200/7800), Apple ][, Wonderswan (and color), C64, Intellivision...

Let me put it this way - all the emulators that you have on your GP2X can, and most likely will soon, if they aren't already, be ported to the Pandora.

There's a Sticky at the top of this forum that has a more complete list of the emus that are expected (and a list of ones *NOT* to expect).

 

[Chip]

Honestly, it's a bit too early to tell. There are several projects underway (check this thread for details), but it is anybody's guess whether or not they'll be ready at or near launch. There is certainly a lot of interest in the Pandora platform. All indications are that we'll see tons of software within the first few months, but nobody can truthfully guarantee it.

What we do know is that Craig won't ship the retail units until there is a respectable bundle of software to ship with it. That probably means a fully functional web browser, media player, and other basic utilities. We've seen MPlayer and FBA running on OMAP dev boards, so they're pretty much a given. Squidge says he has a SNES emulator running as well. ZodTTD and Tinnus have already done most of the work for converting PSX4all into PSX4Pandora, which we can reasonably expect to be ready for launch.

Beyond that, it's all speculation. Check back here often - when new stuff is announced, it'll be announced here first.

 

[paulobecker]

All I know is I'm waiting until Gran Turismo 1 and 2 are running consistently at a playable speed (as in 30+ fps) before I get mine. If I have portable GT, I'm set

 

[Insanemal]

All I know is I'm waiting until Gran Turismo 1 and 2 are running consistently at a playable speed (as in 30+ fps) before I get mine. If I have portable GT, I'm set

If you actually read posts on here you would allready know that PSX emulation was said to be at full speed. So by waiting.. you mean getting one on pre-order as soon as you can.

 

[PoisonedV]

I suppose stuff will depend on how fast the libraries and dependecies are ported. I have a game I'm working on, mix between space invaders and icaruga sort of, that will be ready to port nearly just as python + pygame are out on it.

 

[paulobecker]

If you actually read posts on here you would allready know that PSX emulation was said to be at full speed. So by waiting.. you mean getting one on pre-order as soon as you can.

Not that I don't trust Craig and all the guys (far from it actually, I'd trust them before Sony or Microsoft any day), but I'd rather hear about how well stuff runs from actual users. I find that console makers usually exaggerate their capabilities before release.

 

[Prophet]

If you actually read posts on here you would allready know that PSX emulation was said to be at full speed. So by waiting.. you mean getting one on pre-order as soon as you can.

Not that I don't trust Craig and all the guys (far from it actually, I'd trust them before Sony or Microsoft any day), but I'd rather hear about how well stuff runs from actual users. I find that console makers usually exaggerate their capabilities before release.

This has nothing to do with Craig.

It's what Zodttd himself reported and demonstrated with videos already. And the emulator isn't even optimized yet.

 

[gaterooze]

Not that I don't trust Craig and all the guys (far from it actually, I'd trust them before Sony or Microsoft any day), but I'd rather hear about how well stuff runs from actual users. I find that console makers usually exaggerate their capabilities before release.

Or... you could watch the actual videos of PS1 running fullspeed on zodttd's Pandora

http://youtube.com/user/zodttd

 

[TaG]

Not that I don't trust Craig and all the guys (far from it actually, I'd trust them before Sony or Microsoft any day), but I'd rather hear about how well stuff runs from actual users. I find that console makers usually exaggerate their capabilities before release.

Good. Thats one down and make my chances of getting one of the 3000 slightly better

All platforms increase their performance significantly as devs 'learn' how to get the best from the hardware etc. With the performance zodttd/tinnus are getting for PS1 already, how much better is this gonna get?

It really does seem like craigix et al want the project to be released as a decent system, not just something that offers future promise. The progress to date is impressive. I'd definitely sign up for mine now, although I really do trust these guys to decide when its ready ( although having said that, craigix get the guys to pull their fingers out - I want mine before I go on holiday B) )

 

[jbr]

QUOTE
PS1 emu (I refuse to use the PSX moniker, since that looks like PS_ (1,2,3,P) ).


But PSX is the actual name! It's not "PlayStation One," it's "PlayStation eXtreme." It's just like how you couldn't talk about "World War One" in 1920, because it was simply "World War Extreme^UNDO The Great War."

Although, many people do not know that, and it confuses n00bs, so I suppose it's a good practice.

 

[realyst]

QUOTE
PS1 emu (I refuse to use the PSX moniker, since that looks like PS_ (1,2,3,P) ).

But PSX is the actual name! It's not "PlayStation One," it's "PlayStation eXtreme." It's just like how you couldn't talk about "World War One" in 1920, because it was simply "World War Extreme^UNDO The Great War."

Although, many people do not know that, and it confuses n00bs, so I suppose it's a good practice.



I don't think the "X" ever meant "Extreme" officially. I thought they just tacked that on since "Playstation" was meant to be a Sony/Nintendo joint venture(Nintendo Playstation.....scary sounding, really) so they called it "Playstation X" to avoid SKU legal issues

 

[plopperz]

PSX originally stood for Playstation Experimental in development. The name just stuck.
Sony used PS as the official abbreviation.

 

[Rayek]

I was an early adopter of the GP2X, within a month or so of launch, and, other than a few hardware issues which were worked out with time, I found that I always had something to do on the GP2X. I don't ever remember being frustrated about this or that not being ported (other than dosbox) or this or that not running at fullspeed.

As far as development, the GP2X had a lot of dev switchover from the GP32, a few didn't join the fold, but many did and that's kind of what I'd expect with the Pandora. Moreover, most, if not all of the apps or emulators for the GP2X are open source, so you'd bet there'd be at least a crude port of the GP2X 'must-own' peices of software for the Pandora, if not an optimized port.

I'd say I had a 2G SD full of games and utilities by the third month of owning one. I'd expect that, and maybe a bit more from the Pandora community.

 

[Prometheus]

PSX originally stood for Playstation Experimental in development. The name just stuck.
Sony used PS as the official abbreviation.

I can't comment on Sony, but an awful lot of third party developers (going on experiences of them) actually used the PSX abbreviation throughout the console's life. I wonder if it was present in some official documentation or other?

 

[realyst]

I can't comment on Sony, but an awful lot of third party developers (going on experiences of them) actually used the PSX abbreviation throughout the console's life. I wonder if it was present in some official documentation or other?

Yup
Check the UPS code on the side of the original Playstation boxes(at least the American/Canadian ones), the SKU started with "PSX"