Too Many Firmwares

[Epicenter]

..there's very few people on this forum with a viewpoint even close to 'objective' and 'non-biased'.

A lot of the time you aren't one of those very few people either though

Anyway, who cares about all that. As Orkie said, balance is good to have.

Being non-biased doesn't mean you don't make any sort of judgment call of any sort-- e.g. a preference. It means you give the appropriate amount of opportunity to each side of the issue to present itself before you make a decision. My opinions do not match those of many members of this board, perhaps the majority view. This, however, does not constitute "bias".

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

..there's very few people on this forum with a viewpoint even close to 'objective' and 'non-biased'.

A lot of the time you aren't one of those very few people either though

Anyway, who cares about all that. As Orkie said, balance is good to have.

Being non-biased doesn't mean you don't make any sort of judgment call of any sort-- e.g. a preference. It means you give the appropriate amount of opportunity to each side of the issue to present itself before you make a decision. My opinions do not match those of many members of this board, perhaps the majority view. This, however, does not constitute "bias".

Epicenter, why do you insist on hijacking threads. I have been reading through your recent posts and still I have not seen one positive GP2X attitude from you. It's obvious you're still on the hate campaign and you haven't learnt anything from your recent ban.
And Crikey I just read that you don't even own a GP2X, what gives you any right to bash the unit when you cannot actually experience it first hand.
As for your high standards in game programming, take a look at Vektar or Payback, are you honestly saying your 2D game will be more intensive than those? I bet not, two little words: Code Optimisation.

 

[J201605]

..there's very few people on this forum with a viewpoint even close to 'objective' and 'non-biased'.

A lot of the time you aren't one of those very few people either though

Anyway, who cares about all that. As Orkie said, balance is good to have.

Being non-biased doesn't mean you don't make any sort of judgment call of any sort-- e.g. a preference. It means you give the appropriate amount of opportunity to each side of the issue to present itself before you make a decision. My opinions do not match those of many members of this board, perhaps the majority view. This, however, does not constitute "bias".

Epicenter, why do you insist on hijacking threads. I have been reading through your recent posts and still I have not seen one positive GP2X attitude from you. It's obvious you're still on the hate campaign and you haven't learnt anything from your recent ban.
And Crikey I just read that you don't even own a GP2X, what gives you any right to bash the unit when you cannot actually experience it first hand.
As for your high standards in game programming, take a look at Vektar or Payback, are you honestly saying your 2D game will be more intensive than those? I bet not, two little words: Code Optimisation.

are you sure he doesn't have one, i thought he had an mk1... I wish that he could try out a dpad modded mk2 but i guess that will never happen

 

[Epicenter]

Epicenter, why do you insist on hijacking threads. I have been reading through your recent posts and still I have not seen one positive GP2X attitude from you. It's obvious you're still on the hate campaign and you haven't learnt anything from your recent ban.

You're the one derailing a thread here with your own personal agenda. You're calling me out on a totally unrelated topic just because you have a personal vendetta. How hypocritical of you. You set a very poor example for other mods to follow. I'm glad they're not all as terrible as you are at their job.

And Crikey I just read that you don't even own a GP2X, what gives you any right to bash the unit when you cannot actually experience it first hand.

I had one for about a year. Do a little research. I know it inside and out, so I am well qualified to bash it.

As for your high standards in game programming, take a look at Vektar or Payback, are you honestly saying your 2D game will be more intensive than those? I bet not, two little words: Code Optimisation.

Aw christ, I'm going to have to explain this AGAIN because you can't read? Fine. When this thread comes crashing down in a maelstrom of flaming and 'why did you have to go on an anti-gp2x rant, epicenter' replies, you can blame yourself. (believe me, I will.)

It has nothing to do with code, and if you paid any attention or had some actual development experience, or if you had even read a bit of my post history, you'd know that. The issue that got in the way of realizing our vision for Stargazer running on the GP2X was in no way impacted by code efficiency or CPU speed-- the ARM920T is very snappy, much faster than is required. The engine would run happily on the CPU at ~50 MHz, probably slower.

The issue was, the game is very graphically intensive in that it draws a LARGE quantity of data to the screen every frame, in the form of numerous background and foreground layers to create immersive parallax. This had to be done on top of drawing sprites, and the engine itself along with all the game logic, and audio decoding/playback. We were hitting a brick wall because performance went through the floor whenever the graphics were ramped up to where they needed to be. The technical reason is that the blitter was doing little to nothing to accelerate blitting of sprite data to the display, leaving the CPU to pick up the slack. Its cycles were eaten up by drawing that should've been done by even the most rudimentary 2D accelerator, slowing down everything else. Further RAM bandwidth issues compounded the problem, and attempts to utilize the ARM940T to aid in audio decompression, the greatest CPU-intensive task hit hardest by the blitter's failure, were a similar trainwreck due to memory contention issues leading to the ARM920T and ARM940T fighting over the bus to memory, REDUCING performance, not increasing it.

Even if we did want to scale things back dramatically to get the GP2X to be able to run it acceptably (we didn't), the stick was so abysmally poor it wasn't even any fun to play because you had nearly no appreciable degree of control. It's a real shame-- the GP2X, at its core, has the potential to be a real powerhouse. 2 ARM9 processors at 200 MHz, overclockable in my case to 305 MHz, nearly 48 MB of usable RAM, a colorful and responsive 320x240 display.. it sounds like the perfect development platform on paper, it's just too bad that its other problems killed it for us.

These issues don't so strongly impact Vektar because it does not write a large quantity of raw pixmap data to the display every frame, same for Payback. The control issues also do not plague it as strongly because both games use imprecise control schemes for coarse rotational movement, not highly precision-oriented twitch dodging and reaction-time intensive movement as is necessitated by an intensive shooter. Anyone who's played a few shooters emulated on the GP2X will have encountered this issue firsthand-- the stick's monumental swing time to switch from one direction to its opposite leads to many unnecessary deaths and excessive frustration. I'd rather spare the player all of that, and us the effort of limiting our visions to run on a system that will be no fun in the end.

Spiel over. Would you like to post some more flamebait?

 

[Parkydr]

Is there any way of getting rid of posts, I'm getting tired of all the

You have chosen to ignore all posts from: Epicenter.

· View this post
· Un-ignore Epicenter

(getting rid of posts quoting from ignored posts would be better too - there's too much troll feeding going on)

 

[krosfyah]

I'd rather be spared of the inane ramblings. Now I see why you left out the part about someone losing their cool when you quoted me.

 

[Epicenter]

I love it when things happen just as I predicted not 2 posts ago.

 

[ste_167]

Epicenter - "Now, if the new firmware included a photo viewer that didn't crash on every 4th or 5th image (arbitrarily)"

I found that too, but only on my Mk2 not my Mk1. They both had the same firmware (2.0), but the Mk2 would reset itself back to the main GUI every now and again whn viewing a photo. On trying it with exactly the same photos on the Mk1, I had no problems.


Just a quick question re:Stargazer, don't take this as flaming. How come the GP2X is able to run emulated games with big sprites and parallex layers without any problems but not your game? Games such as the Thunderforce series on the Megadrive, and numerous Neo Geo games. This is including compensation for the fact that the GP2X is having to emulate another system too.

 

[Alex.]

Epicenter, did you for a second think that perhaps SDL is not the proper library to use for such a graphically intensive project? This has been said time and time again, but I'll say it to you once more, that if you coded Stargazer specifically for the GP2X, taking the specific hardware into account and using something like rlyeh's minimal lib you would have gotten much greater performance out of it.

It's very unfair to expect the same source code, with the same library calls, to work much the same on the GP2X as on your 2.8Ghz Athlon or other hardware that is either vastly superior or simply different to the GP2X. You obviously never looked at Stargazer as a GP2X game, but rather as a port that you would've brought over, and naturally it shows.

- Alex

 

[sam fisher]

Epicenter, did you for a second think that perhaps SDL is not the proper library to use for such a graphically intensive project? This has been said time and time again, but I'll say it to you once more, that if you coded Stargazer specifically for the GP2X, taking the specific hardware into account and using something like rlyeh's minimal lib you would have gotten much greater performance out of it.

It's very unfair to expect the same source code, with the same library calls, to work much the same on the GP2X as on your 2.8Ghz Athlon or other hardware that is either vastly superior or simply different to the GP2X. You obviously never looked at Stargazer as a GP2X game, but rather as a port that you would've brought over, and naturally it shows.

- Alex

Finally. A level head.

 

[Epicenter]

Epicenter - "Now, if the new firmware included a photo viewer that didn't crash on every 4th or 5th image (arbitrarily)"

I found that too, but only on my Mk2 not my Mk1. They both had the same firmware (2.0), but the Mk2 would reset itself back to the main GUI every now and again whn viewing a photo. On trying it with exactly the same photos on the Mk1, I had no problems.

I can't think of why it'd make any difference which model you had since they both use the exact same chipset. Weird.

Just a quick question re:Stargazer, don't take this as flaming. How come the GP2X is able to run emulated games with big sprites and parallex layers without any problems but not your game? Games such as the Thunderforce series on the Megadrive, and numerous Neo Geo games. This is including compensation for the fact that the GP2X is having to emulate another system too.

They weren't pushing as many layers and their graphics were much simpler-- a palletized affair with perhaps 16 unique colors per image in most cases. When you're looking at 16-bit RGB data instead, it's a much different story. At any rate that's a tough comparison to make since emulating a game is a whole different approach to the hardware. It's difficult to effectively draw parallels.

You obviously never looked at Stargazer as a GP2X game, but rather as a port that you would've brought over, and naturally it shows.

What on earth did you base this statement on? .. It's blatantly false. I've said it many times before; a big goal of the engine was to be portable to numerous machines. That said, I began the project after I got a GP2X, and it was coded specifically for its limitations. Had I intended it just for use on a PC, it would've been bloated and slow-- the actual engine is quite snappy, and the only slowdown issues occurred utilizing the GP2x's miserable excuse for a graphics subsystem.

It's very unfair to expect the same source code, with the same library calls, to work much the same on the GP2X as on your 2.8Ghz Athlon or other hardware that is either vastly superior or simply different to the GP2X.

if you coded Stargazer specifically for the GP2X, taking the specific hardware into account and using something like rlyeh's minimal lib you would have gotten much greater performance out of it.

Your comments indicate you haven't actually written anything using SDL or you wouldn't have made that statement. At any rate. These aren't problems you need a 2.8 GHz Athlon 64 to fix (I will give you credit for remembering the exact spec of my computer. That's creepy.) They're limitations the Nintendo DS, which has a CPU more than 3 times slower, with less cache, is COMPLETELY devoid of, because it has at least a real GPU, not something intended for a DVD player or a digital camera. It isn't a coincidence that despite the massive CPU and RAM defecits compared to the GP2X, the NDS is also able to emulate most SNES games (a platform known for its complex graphics hardware) much snappier than the '2x does. It's also the reason it's able to run games like Quake faster (right now, ports are going at 20 FPS+, and the author believes he can squeeze 10-20 more FPS out of it.) The GP2X is just very poorly suited to intensive graphics. It's got a hell of a processor and gobs of RAM .. but it's just terribly lacking in the graphics department and the library of choice isn't going to surmount that obstacle.

This is a very important facet of my thinking you must understand-- if you were faced with the choice of making your engine work only on one system, a system with a near-broken thumbstick that makes the game no fun to play, but you'd gain some marginal performance improvements and lose compatibility with every other platform (including those with working controls), would you do it? Or would you sacrifice compatibility with the system that the game isn't fun to play on anyway, to support platforms that run it better anyway, with controls that more than 5% of the players will find tolerable? Which would you pick?

 

[The Master]

This is actually an interesting discussion when people don't stoop to slagging each other off. As Parkydr pointed out, if you don't like a certain member's posts then there is an ignore function. Please use it rather than letting threads deteriorate into childish banter. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, I believe.

 

[daclassicgamingmaster]

*eats popcorn*

 

[Epicenter]

This is actually an interesting discussion when people don't stoop to slagging each other off. As Parkydr pointed out, if you don't like a certain member's posts then there is an ignore function. Please use it rather than letting threads deteriorate into childish banter. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, I believe.

THANK you. That was excellent. This forum needs more people like you who can recognize that an effective conversation requires people who don't have an immediate knee-jerk reaction to label anything that doesn't cast their opinions in a positive light as "trolling". Otherwise threads just turn into giant circlejerks.

 

[ste_167]

I enjoy reading these threads. Just because there's an enthusiastic debate, it doesn't mean the thread's deteriorated.. although I think you'd sometimes help yourself if you linked to your previous replies rather than repeating your argument. Not that I'm saying that this would be the correct thing to do.

Epicenter, at one point I remember you posting that your Stargazer graphics engine was running at over 100fps, and this was including running OGG audio in the background. Was this on the GP2x or on your PC?

 

[Epicenter]

I enjoy reading these threads. Just because there's an enthusiastic debate, it doesn't mean the thread's deteriorated..

Epicenter, at one point I remember you posting that your Stargazer graphics engine was running at over 100fps, and this was including running OGG audio in the background. Was this on the GP2x or on your PC?

GP2X. Things were REALLY promising for a long time. But once we went past 2-3 graphics layers and added all the game sprites needed in an average scene things really started to go downhill. I could've dealt with it to a degree, though how much we'd have to scale back would be very disappointing to me and to HydraLancer who has some very ambitious level designs which we'd never be able to fully realize. But what really killed everything was the stick more than anything. The best code in the world and the best graphics in the world can't work around it.

 

[krosfyah]

Erm, he was including you in that.

This is so bizarre. DCGM, pass the popcorn.

EDIT: Wow I didn't realise so long had passed before I pressed enter.

 

[ste_167]

Personally, and I'm probably inthe minority here, I still would actually prefer The Dreaded Stick over a D-pad. Simply due to the fact that many 8-bit games lend themselves to one. C64 with a d-pad?? Ugh!

It's a pity that it's not precise enough and won't ever be rectified, but at the same time I can't really think of a handheld/portable device with a decent analogue thumbstick. The Zodiac is known for its stick problems, and the PSP's stick is like playing with a spring! The GP32 was louder than bombs, and was terrible on diagonals.

 

[daclassicgamingmaster]

Personally, and I'm probably inthe minority here, I still would actually prefer The Dreaded Stick over a D-pad. Simply due to the fact that many 8-bit games lend themselves to one. C64 with a d-pad?? Ugh!

It's a pity that it's not precise enough and won't ever be rectified, but at the same time I can't really think of a handheld/portable device with a decent analogue thumbstick. The Zodiac is known for its stick problems, and the PSP's stick is like playing with a spring! The GP32 was louder than bombs, and was terrible on diagonals.

Neo Geo Pocket Color

 

[ste_167]

Not fair! You have at least a billion more handhelds in your collection than me! Seriously, what's the Neo Geo thumbstick like? Is it Metal Slug's dream?

Getting completely off-topic, for one or two more sentences, I see you have Call of Duty 3 in your sig and I take it you've mastered the controls now. Would you recommend me buying it given the fact I've got it for the 360?