Unofficial Blog - Development Feature

[Butterman]

Hey guys.

I've been given the go ahead to write a series of basic Pandora game development features for the Unofficial blog. I'm planning on starting very basic, aiming at an aboslute novice, but at the same time making sure readers are comfortable targeting the Pandora so that they work with the Pandora from the start.

I wanted some community opinion on what you would want for such a feature and if you've got any ideas for it.

Cheers.

 

[dflemstr]

Hey guys.

I've been given the go ahead to write a series of basic Pandora game development features for the Unofficial blog. I'm planning on starting very basic, aiming at an aboslute novice, but at the same time making sure readers are comfortable targeting the Pandora so that they work with the Pandora from the start.

I wanted some community opinion on what you would want for such a feature and if you've got any ideas for it.

Cheers.

Please elaborate.
What would this cover? Only OGLES? PND packaging? What would make it stand out from all the other gazillion tutorials out there?
Which language(s) do you use? Frameworks? Libraries?

 

[Butterman]

Sorry, I made a few too many assumptions there.

It would cover compiling applications to the Pandora and using PND to package them. Naturally it will be in C using SDL at first, giving a quick introduction into the language and the library. But I would be mainly covering very simple game development and cross platform compiling to give budding developers a foothold on the system.

 

[JayFoxRox]

Imo the blog should stay a blog - stuff like this should go to the wiki

 

[jlepley]

I like this idea. I think that it should be posted in the blog and the wiki. I've been dying to know how the heck we're supposed to package the stuff and exactly what kind of libraries and library extensions we can include.

 

[gruso]

Imo the blog should stay a blog - stuff like this should go to the wiki
The problem with just putting it on the wiki, is that it sits there waiting for people to point their browser to it and try their luck with the search function. Most people won't do that. We're hoping that if we deliver tutorials to peoples' desktops via RSS, then link them back to the wiki, we'll encourage more up & coming devs into the scene.

Once the first batch ships, the nature of news (and the readership) is going to shift a little. We're throwing around a few little ideas like this for the blog, but it'll always be 99% news.

 

[dflemstr]

Imo the blog should stay a blog - stuff like this should go to the wiki
The problem with just putting it on the wiki, is that it sits there waiting for people to point their browser to it and try their luck with the search function. Most people won't do that. We're hoping that if we deliver tutorials to peoples' desktops via RSS, then link them back to the wiki, we'll encourage more up & coming devs into the scene.

Once the first batch ships, the nature of news (and the readership"] is going to shift a little. We're throwing around a few little ideas like this for the blog, but it'll always be 99% news.[/quote]Why not make a news post like "New tutorials on the Wiki!" and redirect people to the Wiki instead of making the acutal tutorials as news items? Then we would still be in the realm of actual news.

 

[gruso]

A tutorial article on the blog can take a more casual style, and be more engaging than a dry wiki tutorial. We will of course point to the wiki as a reference. Another aspect of a blog article is that the comments section can be used as an accessible Q&A, and by extension, an evolving FAQ.

I'm also writing a feature on upcoming homebrew games, and it will point back to the wiki where people can see everything in development. Fair to say that the article will be more fun to read than the table of text on the wiki.

Of course, Butterman didn't start this thread to find out whether or not we should do this. He was doing the right thing by putting it out to other devs first, who might have their own ideas on how to approach it. I'm sure if no input is forthcoming, he can handle it on his own.

 

[(naw)mcx]

So are we talking, porting over X86 apps, changing the res, etc.? That could be awesome!

 

[PokeParadox]

A tutorial article on the blog can take a more casual style, and be more engaging than a dry wiki tutorial. We will of course point to the wiki as a reference. Another aspect of a blog article is that the comments section can be used as an accessible Q&A, and by extension, an evolving FAQ.

I'm also writing a feature on upcoming homebrew games, and it will point back to the wiki where people can see everything in development. Fair to say that the article will be more fun to read than the table of text on the wiki.

Of course, Butterman didn't start this thread to find out whether or not we should do this. He was doing the right thing by putting it out to other devs first, who might have their own ideas on how to approach it. I'm sure if no input is forthcoming, he can handle it on his own.

I think it is a great idea in that case.

 

[bzar]

Great idea! I already await for the first post.

 

[Cpasjuste]

I think you should maybe wait a real "certified" pandora toolchain, because for now nobody use the same toolchain/libraries.

 

[mduffor]

I think you should maybe wait a real "certified" pandora toolchain, because for now nobody use the same toolchain/libraries.

I think tutorials like this are a great idea. And you could start now, even without having the final toolchain/libraries in place. After all, the developers will want to compile locally first and test the game on their dev machine, before recompiling for ARM, packaging it, and putting it on the Open Pandora for testing. You can start with an introduction to the framework of a game and SDL, and then when the Pandora and its toolchain become available you can cover getting the sample game you've been developing on the blog onto the hardware itself.

Cheers,
Mduffor

 

[Cpasjuste]

I think you should maybe wait a real "certified" pandora toolchain, because for now nobody use the same toolchain/libraries.

I think tutorials like this are a great idea. And you could start now, even without having the final toolchain/libraries in place. After all, the developers will want to compile locally first and test the game on their dev machine, before recompiling for ARM, packaging it, and putting it on the Open Pandora for testing. You can start with an introduction to the framework of a game and SDL, and then when the Pandora and its toolchain become available you can cover getting the sample game you've been developing on the blog onto the hardware itself.

Cheers,
Mduffor

Sorry but i don't see the point to rewrite SDL tutorials when there is around 1 million already available.

 

[dflemstr]

I think you should maybe wait a real "certified" pandora toolchain, because for now nobody use the same toolchain/libraries.

I think tutorials like this are a great idea. And you could start now, even without having the final toolchain/libraries in place. After all, the developers will want to compile locally first and test the game on their dev machine, before recompiling for ARM, packaging it, and putting it on the Open Pandora for testing. You can start with an introduction to the framework of a game and SDL, and then when the Pandora and its toolchain become available you can cover getting the sample game you've been developing on the blog onto the hardware itself.

Cheers,
Mduffor

Sorry but i don't see the point to rewrite SDL tutorials when there is around 1 million already available.

Dito, there's no point in having tutorials about libs that already exist on desktop Linux, since there are a gazillion of other tutorials already out there. If a dev feature is made, it has to be about using the special Pandora controls (through the kernel interface) or setting up a cross-dev environment.

 

[JayFoxRox]

Make sure you also explain how to get 3D stuff on the beagleboard to work. My angstrom image doesn't work anymore and I don't have enough space for bitbaking - so if angstrom doesn't come with the 3D drivers right now I'm pretty much fckd and have to pause most of my projects until I get a new PC or someone offers a better angstrom image...

 

[Butterman]

Thanks for the feedback. I agree about making this very platform specific, but I do think that small introductions are in order. I want a programmer of any language (or even a non programmer) to be able to follow the series. So, stuff like say explaining how to open an SDL window and draw will be briefly touched on but I will link Lazy Foo.

My main aim is cross compiling, OpenGL ES 2.0 and controls.

What do you mean by getting 3D stuff to work JayFoxRox? Porting native OGL stuff to ES?

 

[JayFoxRox]

nah, SGX Driver, OpenGL ES libs etc.
(When I started with Pandora-PSP the angstrom image didn't come with the SGX driver and I had to bitbake it wich took more than 20GB of disk space. For some weird reason that image doesn't work anymore and I can't get more than 1GB free space on my desktop anymore neither, making bitbaking impossible.
So if angstrom doesn't come with these parts right now (question: Does the angstrom demo image include SGX drivers already?), I can't work on my projects anymore for obvious reasons..)

 

[Gandi]

I would apreciate such tuts very much!
I'd love to do a little coding for the andora1: and don't have any experience with handhelds or the arm architecture...
Please go for it! B)

 

[wardred]

Love the idea. Setting up the development environment, especially the 3D / openGL ES 2.0 and 1.x side of things. SDL, especially for the keymaps and joymaps since a lot of the other stuff has been covered elsewhere, and cross compiling. I'd had a mind to do something like this myself, though the cross compiling and 3D looked like they were going to be a headache. I'm glad to see somebody's taking this on. It can be worse getting the dev environment to work sometimes then releasing simple projects with that environment. Please, yes, go forward with this project.