The Pandora Killer

[Nintendo]

YAY to me! andora2ut4: B)

Damn, sorry to see you go Sony! Couldn't a warning have been issued instead of an outright ban? He's generally pretty helpful in these forums, so I think that should count for something!

It's all good now, babe. Troops was just kidding around this time around. Thankfully.

I think Trooper is joking. I *hope* Trooper is joking.

If not it might just be the catalyst for me to post a massive facepalm and leave this forum.

It's all good, mate. I'm on egg-shells, so getting banned is somewhat of an impossibility. But for a while there, Troops got me, hehe. Damn joker!!!

Obviously a joke, trooper's cool guys.

Edit: Uh, whatever he did he mucked up Sony's signature :/

Yeah, I know and at first I was like, WTF? But all good now though.

I think SONY is one of the most often banned members, I've seen him go several times. Chip posted a screenshot a while ago that showed a "warnstatus"(IIRC) progress bar in someone's profile. Maybe SONY is near the maximum most of the time.

That's right, mate~ B)

Sony's been banned before? Really?

But yeah, this isn't real.

A light-hearted joke it seems.
Pretty awesome one even if I must say so myself.

Sony's been banned before? Really?

Yep. I've seen him go three or four times for a week or so. edit: I'm not so sure, maybe less than a week.

That's right, 3 or 4 times, iirc.

1. Making/using another account and spamming by being a Pandora fanboy ala OpenPandora

2. Flaming me some n00b with mis-use of profanities

3. Being a twat

4. Being an absolute twat

 

[trooper]

And his sig`s sorted out too, PHEW!!!.

Trooper

 

[Orion4874]

Good one Trooper, fooled the heck out of me!

 

[Nova]

And his sig`s sorted out too, PHEW!!!.

Trooper

Thank god, I was totally missing seeing that DS XL and outdated openxile logo!

EDIT: haha awesome, you changed it!

 

[Magic Sam]

Hi

It has been out for at least a year and a half and there's 34 things there, with only a few qualifying as games. I certainly think people can do things that they consider games, but very little reproductions that can be considered authentic enough. What someone lists there is a game "similar to Tetris", but no Tetris fan will agree that an 8x8 playfield is enough for Tetris. It completely castrates the game.

I bought the Meggy JR RGB this morning !
I'll tell you how the Tetris clone looks and plays as soon as I have a chance to try it
And 34 things is not that bad IMHO, considering how "weird" this machine is...
Can you agree at least with me about this hardware being an interesting, innovative platform ?
Bye, Magic Sam

 

[Exophase]

Can you agree at least with me about this hardware being an interesting, innovative platform ?

Do you want my honest opinion..? There are a great deal of eval boards and what have you that have LCDs, buttons, and extra items like accelerometers and so on. This board tries to distinguish itself from those by having buttons in a gaming arrangement. But for a board that must be intended for gaming having an 8x8 display is painfully inadequate. Everyone will agree - everyone pretty much has to agree - that there exists a threshold point where the display is just giving too little information. No one can be rightfully happy with playing games on a 1x1 display, even though you could play some primitive audio based games. But I think even if it did have a 1x1 RGB display it would still get a lot of positive feedback, maybe even more so. At what point do we admit that people are deluding themselves?

The problem I have is that in many areas in this world - maybe in all areas in this world - items are praised on merit of being "different" alone. It's true that useful innovation is born of unique approaches, but to give a lot of focus and praise to an item merely for being different is counterproductive and even dangerous, in my opinion more so than allowing genuinely useful things to not stray too far off of the path of the status quo. Doing something "the same" is relatively easy, but doing something that only fulfills being "different" is even easier. The key is to do something both different and useful, and that's challenging. In my opinion, this product does not offer those two things, and doesn't deserve praise for innovation because when I see 8x8 LCD what I don't see is effort.

I get that the point is probably more to try to see how far people can develop when pushed into a tiny corner, but I think they made that corner too small.

 

[lulzfish]

You can't show a full line of text on an 8x8 display, much less several lines of text, much less anything useful.
That's ridiculous.

 

[Magic Sam]

I suppose I am the only one to find this entertaining...

@ lulzfish: what about scrolling text ?

Bye, Magic Sam

 

[Exophase]

I suppose I am the only one to find this entertaining...

Possibly.

I will give you that it's "Snake", where I would not give you that something called "Tetris" on this is Tetris. But it's the least interesting version of Snake I've ever seen. I've seen versions of Snake that were less than 50 bytes of x86 code that were superior to this (lookup the Hugi competitions).

You say that this platform is interesting and innovative. But when the resulting statement is "well, it plays Snake in its most basic form" it feels more like an antithesis to innovation and interest.

Does anyone else find it a little humorous that the peak power draw surpasses what USB can provide? Guess those 8 * 8 * 3 LEDs draw a lot of power.

(but all things considered, I might actually buy one of these when I finally decide to learn how to solder, just to have something to practice on)

 

[senquack]

Man this thing is limited! I guess you could make a game where a bunch of bytes are displayed vertically and you must place the correct parity bit for each byte along the top row, one after the other, as quickly as possible.

 

[Exophase]

Man this thing is limited! I guess you could make a game where a bunch of bytes are displayed vertically and you must place the correct parity bit for each byte along the top row, one after the other, as quickly as possible.

Forget making it a game, this should be the ECC on your new computer

 

[Magic Sam]

Hi

I will give you that it's "Snake", [...] But it's the least interesting version of Snake I've ever seen. I've seen versions of Snake that were less than 50 bytes of x86 code that were superior to this (lookup the Hugi competitions).

You say that this platform is interesting and innovative. But when the resulting statement is "well, it plays Snake in its most basic form" it feels more like an antithesis to innovation and interest.

(but all things considered, I might actually buy one of these when I finally decide to learn how to solder, just to have something to practice on)

When you finally decide to learn how to solder and to buy a Meggy, please tell me, because I'll be patiently waiting for YOUR superior version of Snake [joke]if you don't fry the PCB first[/joke]
Bye, and good luck
p.s: I think you're expecting too much from a Meggy, and comparing it against an x86 based computer is just not fair. You should think about what it can actually do, not the contrary...
Magic Sam

 

[Exophase]

When you finally decide to learn how to solder and to buy a Meggy, please tell me, because I'll be patiently waiting for YOUR superior version of Snake [joke]if you don't fry the PCB first[/joke]

If I buy one to learn how to solder I probably won't even program it. And yes, there's a good chance I'll fry the board

p.s: I think you're expecting too much from a Meggy, and comparing it against an x86 based computer is just not fair. You should think about what it can actually do, not the contrary...
Magic Sam

I wasn't comparing it to an x86 computer. I even said in this thread that it'd be a lot nicer if it had say, a 32x32 display instead. Are you sure that's too much to ask for? Yes, there are many things you can do on this but I think it's too limiting for games, which is what it was otherwise designed for.

Rather than ask "what can it do", I think it's better to ask "what does it offer that can't be found in something cheaper." The soldering/overall do it yourself quotient is higher on this than other things, and I can understand that that's probably the main appeal, but it's quite disconnected from anything you'd actually use it for. I also understand that people sometimes marvel at a device solely because it's so limited, and think that by forcibly limiting what you can do it'll help focus what you end up doing. That may be true in some cases, but here I think they just went too far.

 

[senquack]

If, by chance, you have briefly tried soldering in the past and decided that soldering is overly difficult, you should try it with a good soldering iron with a proper tip and heat controls set to the proper temperature. Also make sure you scrub the PCB first with some scotchbrite. You will probably find it to be a lot easier than before if you were using a crap gun. Actually assembling stuff like this is very very easy, it's when you screw up and need to go back and desolder and fix mistakes that it can get hairy. You should definitely get yourself a large solder-sucker (not the small crappy ones, get the big 12" quality plunger models) if you can. There's only so much that solder braid can accomplish, but that is useful, too.

 

[Exophase]

I've never soldered before.

 

[senquack]

Another good tip when soldering DIP ICs like this is, instead of soldering it directly to the board like the first post's picture shows, you instead solder a DIP socket and just insert the IC into the socket. That way you can flip it if you make a mistake with the orientation or you can replace it if it goes bad or you need to troubleshoot. Desoldering DIPs can be a pain in the ass sometimes.

 

[lulzfish]

Another good tip when soldering DIP ICs like this is, instead of soldering it directly to the board like the first post's picture shows, you instead solder a DIP socket and just insert the IC into the socket. That way you can flip it if you make a mistake with the orientation or you can replace it if it goes bad or you need to troubleshoot. Desoldering DIPs can be a pain in the ass sometimes.

I actually heard that this was recommended because heat might damage the IC, but maybe that's only for noob solderers?
I did some soldering but my gun was crap, always dirty, I didn't have the equipment to get proper experience.

 

[second exodous]

Why is everyone so critical of this device? Isn't it just to teach basic soldering and basic programing? This is something you would put together in Junior High or earlier.

 

[Exophase]

Why is everyone so critical of this device? Isn't it just to teach basic soldering and basic programing? This is something you would put together in Junior High or earlier.

Yes, you're right.

It would probably be better to say that I'm not critical of the device, but am critical of all the people saying how many great games you can do it once you start thinking outside the box.

I think people have overactive imaginations.

 

[lulzfish]

I'm not critical of the device, but am critical of all the people saying how many great games you can do it once you start thinking outside the box.
I think people have overactive imaginations.

But remember that time I made a time machine out of a Game Boy and a blender?
I'm sure with the right optimizations and LOD, this thing could run Quake 1.