This Is Just Sad.

[palmertech]

I have been a GP32X fan for a long time. I remember when the GP2X was announced, buying it right after launch, and excitedly waiting for new releases. This was before "app store" style environments, and having such a library of homebrew on a handheld was awesome! Wow!

I remember the excitement of the Pandora, and the heated debates that took place. Man, this forum was ACTIVE!

And now? :-/ I was an early pre-order-er, I even bought the TV out cable (The one that should have been included, as Craigix had specifically told me in a thread I made, after he made a long rant about "rip off" cable prices. Hah!). I was one of the very first people to get my Pandora, and to be perfectly honest, it was not nearly as good as it should have been. Iffy build quality, cheap plastic, and the dpad that was supposed to be better than sex turned out to be forgettable at best. This is ignoring all the OS problems, because I knew those would be fixed someday. I held on to it for a while, hoping that the flood of software would make up for it... and it never came! I finally traded it to someone for a laptop that was worth a little bit more. Then I moved on.

I know that the Pandora people moved over to the official boards, but it really pains me to see how dead everything is here, and how locked down everything is over there. The iPhone and Android have been a large reason for the lack of development, I suppose, but I really miss the way things used to be.

Well, that is my long ramble. No real point in making it, to be honest, but I wanted to kinda spew my thoughts all over the internet.

 

[WizardStan]

It's not really dead here, just kind of quiet. All the forums are quiet, there's just not a lot going on right now.

 

[Kayday]

I had the same feelings as palmertech but just recently turning on my Pandora and updating it to the new hotfix 6, the excitement of using the Pandora came back.

I admit, I jumped on the tablet bandwagon and had 2 great devices (Viewsonic GTablet and Dell Streak) but sold them as I patiently await the Samsung Galaxy Prime to replace my G1 phone.

The only thing hindering the Pandora is lack of software. I wish there was a way we can easily port over the android apps(unless there is?). I hope things pick up once the boards are made at the new company in Germany and the rest of the preorders are all fulfilled. There's still nothing like the Pandora on the market. I await the day when the Pandora gets pushed to its limit like how the GP32 and GP2X did. It'll be exciting times when that day arrives.

 

[Esn]

I agree that the build quality of some portions of the Pandora isn't great. In particular: the plastic case (the lid doesn't fully close at one edge and the plastic's a bit soft and brittle), the LCD-cable (see: PTOD), and to a lesser extent the nubs (which work great when they work, but are a bit delicate and hard to fix if they do break). It's a bit unfortunate because the most expensive parts like the screen and the board are built very well.

On the other hand, the customer support is amazing.

I disagree about the d-pad: I found it to be the best d-pad I've ever used.

As for software... I think there's plenty. What do you want that doesn't exist? (to be fair, I myself could name a few things) I think the main problem is that there aren't enough simple step-by-step guides for how to do simple tasks for regular users who may not have enough time to learn everything.

For example, a keyboard layout changer app was released, but it was months before I figured out how to use it to enable Pandora's keyboard to type in a different language (and wrote a wiki how-to guide for that use).

You see a lot of that. Great programs are released, but nobody figures out how to properly use them until much later (or if they do figure it out, they don't share the methods with others). Some programs are perfectly usable but have Pandora-specific issues that it takes time to figure out.

The main problem is probably that the community simply isn't big enough.

 

[WhiteFalcon]

I remember the excitement of the Pandora, and the heated debates that took place. Man, this forum was ACTIVE!

You tell me. I loved the GP32 even after buying the GP2X. Then the idea of a Craginator or Pandora appeared and I was all into it. Met a girl. Kept talking about the Pandora to be. Got engaged. Kept talking about the Pandora to be and preordered. Years passed. Split up cancelling the engagement. Still no Pandora for me. Then the capaign "He who pays more, skips the line and shows the middle finger to the long time preorderers" started. Fed up. Finally cancelled the preorder. No fiancee, no Pandora. So I cant even feel like a geek anymore. The forum no longer looks like a living thing. This post doesn't even deserve a smilie. Just kind of needed to spit it out, like you did.

 

[Miner49er]

Yes. It has been very quiet around here, that's why I moved over to the official boards. I do find that a bit sad though as this is where it all started.

As for cancelling and selling and stuff well, you obviously were never that into it.

PS. I still don't have mine...

 

[redlemon]

I wouldn't say the forums are dead. Theres just not a whole lot to talk about. The Caanoo is a nice device and I really enjoy mine but to be honest it's based on fairly outdated hardware and gph don't seem interested in making a true sucessor. It's lucky it's seen the level of support it has. Maybe things will pick up if the pandora finally enters a reliable production schedule but who knows?

 

[dsraa]

I hate, literally hate to do this.....but I agree also. I was a diehard fan of the gp32x, still have it actually....and then the gp2x came out, and it was amazing. Infact its still my main portable game console to bring places, and show people....Then when the Pandora buzz started, I got really really excited, I couldn't wait. I didn't have the money to pre-order...bills were too tight...so I decided to wait. Glad I did wait because it took so long. And sadly....I started reading the forums less and less, and posting less and less....and now only check here maybe once a week, or every other week.....when it used to be 3-4 times a day. I moved on.....and its sad....its real sad that the Pandora buzz seems like it has died.

I remember there was supposed to be a "One video a day" which started but never happened, the programmers were supposed to port everything...and it seems like they wrote some of the ports...and then just gave up after a while. I even subscribed to all the developers on youtube, and they haven't reelesed any new videos for months, and have the pandora toolbar for firefox which I disabled recently.....Now we have all this half baked software for the Pandora which really doesn't help, and the development I was looking forward to for PSone, and PS2, and N64 seems to just kinda stopped and never really got started......So the feature set I was most interested in isnt there. The development of GP2x went much further....or atleast it feels that way.

Hell, even the DAMN status page hasn't been updated since APRIL.....APRIL. Do you know how sad that is? The fans were supposed to keep this stuff updated.....and its not updated.......or it least it wasn't until recently....

I moved on....I'm sorry to say it, I really am. I do hope to pick up a second batch Pandora one day, if it gets off the ground.....

DSR

 

[skeezix]

Well that one part isnt' true.. ED certainyl released a video a day for a month or so; theres stickies with links to them all. He couldn't keep going .. 30 videos was enough Imagine how many hours it took to record and edit and post all that material, cut the man some slack

All the Pandora related issues are due to momentum; we've limited hands doing new apps, ports, and firmware changes, since theres only so many units out there in dev hands. Hopefvully momentum will pick up again when units start shipping again, under EDs hands..

But enough of all that, theres enough posts abou that, I onyl wanted to reply to note one thing --



I miss the busy gp32x forum days, too -- when GP32 was the thing, and we were hacking like mad to eek out 1 more frame-per-second on each app; it was a crummy unit, but we loved it to pieces. The follow up machines were all cute in their own way, but we had one forum, a bunch of crazy fools, and good times

jeff

 

[Pickle]

Yeah it has slow lately, but we also dont have a lot of the useless type of threads or the high emotional kind.
it may not get better with the fact that GPH wont be putting out any new hw in the near future. Maybe it might pickup some when pandora reload production hits in jan/feb, but most traffic may end up on the other side.

Might also bring up the idea of compressing the forum topics, the forum could probably see topics shrink to at least half.

 

[Prometheus]

I'm a little confused. What's locked down, and where? :blink:

 

[icurafu]

Yeah, tis sad. I remember reading the forums when I was back in university and drooling over the GP32 but not being able to afford it. I remember later when I was a developer, producing half finished games for the community, but I eventually gave up on that when the industry changed, and I moved to security architecture instead (which was booming).

The biggest shame is that there are a lot of interesting and clever people here who are still interested in retro gaming, hardware hacking. I think the final straw that killed my community spirit was when I offered to write a DRM app for the OpenPandora using the security hardware module API in the OMAP3430, but didn't even get a reply from Craig. It soon became obvious that although the community were the investors of the Pandora project, there really wasn't much we could do.

Well, if anyone want to add me, my msn id is in my profile.

 

[skeezix]

Craig never had much to do with the firmware or software vision .. He was the hardware assembly and financier and such, but he doesn't know anything about Unix/Linux or workIng wih devs

If you want to help design some pnd-friendly drm or publish some reusable drm toolkit to help commercial ventures down the road.. We have mailing lists and IRC, and you can talk to us software guys and run wih it. You can take that visionairies hat if you like.. We stayed purposefully clear of nailing that down prematurely, didnthave the spare cycles to do it right.. And needed to see where things would go first.

But we could extend PXML and libpnd or do it aside orwhatever. Come talk to me about it

Jeffphone

 

[Magic Sam]

Hi,

I'm feeling sad about gp32x.de, and the Archive too I really have fond memories of the Gp2x and early Pandora days...

I reluctantly created an account on the other boards some time ago, because this is where most of discussions happen.

Now, let's face it, we have here a website (gp32x.de) partially dedicated to a console maker (GPH) which does not plan to produce any new device...The Pandora has its own boards now, so what's left ? Dingoo A320 and Odroid... Dingoo technologies seem to be quite active, with many devices available: A-320, A-330, A-360 and A-380. Odroid also seems to be an interesting platform...

Maybe the focus nowadays should be on these newer handhelds, and no longer on GPH's...

We could also let some other consoles be part of this community (MI2 / PDC Touch, Gizmondo, Tapwave Zodiac, N-Gage, Gameking, game.com, etc...), to bring in some "fresh" blood ? I know some of these handhelds are quite old now

EDIT: What about the Ben Nanonote, the JXDs, the letcool...?

EDIT 2: I think it could be important to make a list of all the weird devices out there, then decide which of them will be part of gp32x.de future.

Bye, Magic Sam

 

[dgame]

I'm a little confused. What's locked down, and where? :blink:

I would say the forum police are a little vigilant over there. The Angry Birds thing comes to mind. I mean going back and wiping the Wiki history? Really?

I understand not wanting E-D to get into possible legal trouble, but the Boy Scout level is over 9,000 over there.

And this forum is on the same server, but I don't see that level of panic happening over here.

 

[DaveC]

IAs for software... I think there's plenty. What do you want that doesn't exist? (to be fair, I myself could name a few things) I

There are many emulators that don't exist yet. How about dedicated optimised CPS1, CPS2, etc? Then there are the quickie drive by ports like NeoGeo, Coleco, AtariST etc that kind of work but are either not optimised and/or the interface is rough. Many leave the PC type interfaces and menus that make things hard to navigate on the Pandora and some just have tacked on zenity GUIs just enough to get by. The best ones are actually GP2X and Wiz ports as they are the most optimized and the menus the most d-pad friendly. Others are laden with bugs due to the "port and run" nature of things. There are some very good emus like Notaz's stuff. It just feels like the love is not there like it was with the GP32 or GP2X where a dev would spend 5 months honing an emu to perfection. Maybe it is just because there are not many Pandora units out there, and/or the "scene" is so fragmented up with all of the phones, Dingoo, Caanoo, PSp, DS, PC, tablet PCs, Android device of the week, etc. There are just too many shiny objects out there to compete with limited resources. In the GP32 days, that was basically it.

 

[WizardStan]

I would say the forum police are a little vigilant over there. The Angry Birds thing comes to mind. I mean going back and wiping the Wiki history? Really?

I understand not wanting E-D to get into possible legal trouble, but the Boy Scout level is over 9,000 over there.

And this forum is on the same server, but I don't see that level of panic happening over here.

I'm going to have to disagree, if that's your argument. That port of Angry Birds is entirely illegal and was treated in the exact same way as if someone were to link to ROM download sites on this or any other forum trying to stay above board.

 

[Esn]

Fair enough, DaveC. I'm a perfectionist like you in these things, so as time has gone by I've become annoyed by little things in various emulators and settled down to using mostly the emulators that Notaz had a hand in (namely: PicoDrive, gpSP, pcsx-reARMed) plus Pickle's DOSBox port (simply because I love the old DOS games more than I hate the occasional stutter in the emulation).

Is GnGeo considered a "quickie" port, though? I was under the impression that it's one of the more polished ones, or at least it's listed as "blue" on the emulator list. I just never really got it working because my ROMs were incompatible and I didn't have the time to find versions that were.

The original poster seemed to be talking more about app-type software rather than emulators though, which is why I directed them to the software list.

 

[fusion_power]

I still miss DOSBOX in the Repo, I never had tested this Emulator on the Pandora, because I didn't found a up-to date version. I'ts about time. ^^
And GnGeo is a sad story since my Roms also don't work, weird enough since they work on the GP2X Version of GNGeo. But this Version doesn't run with GINGE sadly. I really wish that this great Emulator increases the ROM Compatibility. The Emulator should orientate the ROMS and not the ROMS should orientate on the Emulator.

 

[Prometheus]

I'm a little confused. What's locked down, and where? :blink:

I would say the forum police are a little vigilant over there. The Angry Birds thing comes to mind. I mean going back and wiping the Wiki history? Really?

I understand not wanting E-D to get into possible legal trouble, but the Boy Scout level is over 9,000 over there.

And this forum is on the same server, but I don't see that level of panic happening over here.

I was going to say that, whilst I'm only one person, I do the same here as I do over there, but it looks like Stan beat me to it in pointing out why the illegal Angry Birds package was removed.

Moreover, I've had to remove plenty of ROM links over here - many more than on the official forums, in fact. :lol:

It doesn't answer the question as to what's "locked down", at any rate - I genuinely am confused by that.