Valve's Source Engine Port For Pandora?

[typs lik dis]

Valve will be able to port the Source engine behind Portal, Team Fortress 2, Alien Swarm, etc. if the Pandora becomes popular enough to be worth the time, right? Like, there isn't anything theoretically preventing Source games from running in some form on the Pandora, is there?

 

[Loonie]

The only obstacle is tons and tons of money.

 

[CPUnltd]

are you sure on this one? popularity won't be a prob once production picks up and we're past batch 2... but that is a big claim you're making there...

 

[Exophase]

are you sure on this one? popularity won't be a prob once production picks up and we're past batch 2... but that is a big claim you're making there...

I think there would need to be an install base at least in the hundreds of thousands for Valve to even consider this, probably more likely millions. OP are having a good challenge meeting hundreds.

 

[gruso]

Not sure if serious.

 

[Tempel]

Consider that they have only recently ported to Macs, and haven't yet at all ported to Linux.

 

[God Ginrai]

Not sure if serious.

obvious troll.

-God Ginrai

 

[elwing]

sure, as soon as we'll have millions of pandora outside they'll port their source engine...



nice troll through...

 

[typs lik dis]

Trolling for true answers to my question, maybe. But I see that you're trolling for an excited response from me. Not biting, thanks.

The latest Steam client files show clear evidence of an in-progress Linux port. But that doesn't matter. My question remains, is the Pandora technically capable of running Source engine games at playable framerates, should they (if possible) be ported to Pandora ARM Linux.

 

[mali]

This question is rather academical. I doubt Source games would be playable on Pandora's hardware without stripping features. Chances are pretty much non existent that Valve ports it anyway and the Linux Steam client has nothing todo with any games being ported.

 

[typs lik dis]

What makes you doubt that any Source games could be played on the Pandora?

 

[lulzfish]

What makes you doubt that any Source games could be played on the Pandora?

They probably require preposterous amounts of floating-point math, and most of them just run 'okay' on my x86 laptop that I got 3 years ago.
They'd probably have to strip away a lot of stuff to make it run on the Pandora, and stripping away a lot would mean paying the programmers or artists to change things, which is a discouragement.

They regret doing the PS3 port and I'm not sure how the Xbox 360 port went, but the Pandora is much less powerful than an Xbox 360, so they would have a lot more work to do for the sake of the tiny ARM/linux community.

It was a big step for them to go from Windows to OS X, but to go from desktop gaming computers and current-generation consoles down to a portable is ridiculous.

 

[traylorpark]

Out of curiosity, was this question inspired by Rage on the iPhone? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uofg7m2rtQ4&feature=related

 

[CiderPunk]

Valve won't let their games run outside of Steam, so you'd need them to port that too! I'm sure they'll get right on to it..

 

[mali]

What makes you doubt that any Source games could be played on the Pandora?

Trying to play Half-Life 2 on an overclocked netbook.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

The Source engine uses Havok for its physics, which has quite a focus on CPU -> lots of floating point math

 

[Jourdy288]

Can it work? It most certainly can, if, as mentioned earlier, stuff is stripped, ripped, etc. Will it happen? Ah, now that's where things get difficult.
Unless they open source their engine and make stuff more moddable to reduce graphics, particles, etc., I doubt we'll be seeing Pandora Portal anytime soon.
But you can believe how badly I wish for this to happen!

 

[Grench]

Actually - I can see a world where this is a theoretical possibility.

Valve does pretty much everything through Steam.

Steam has been getting expanded to include a lot of -old- titles (Keen, DOOM, Quake, etc...)

Valve is clearly working on -something- for steam on X86 Linux.

Is it that much of a thought push for them to do a Steam on Android (ARM Linux)?

If you had all these great titles, wouldn't you be looking at the mobile ARM CPU driven market and giving some serious thoughts to releasing games for it? If you also had your own store platform, wouldn't you consider bypassing the application store that the device manufacturer pulls a cut from?

Things to consider... But I'm not going to hold my breath.

 

[greendots]

With Enemy territory recently ported it may be possible to play http://www.truecombatelite.com/
The problem is the mod built on the ET sdk and compiled for x86. The TC:E guys have never released source code. Maybe if some one would ask nicely after ET is shown to work on pandora, they will let someone port it.

 

[linc186]

TF2 rewuires 1.7 Ghz CPU to run. Pandora's max is 600 mhz - (overclocked) 800mhz. No chance this will run without being stripped, as others have said before. Also, Valve has no reason too. They're not going to make much money out of 8,000 units....we'll have to wait a long time before they even consider it seriously. It would be easier for them just to release the source code at a price, so they make money (not just off pandorians) but others. That way, our own community can strip it down, add their own features, and hell, and may even go away from TF2, and turn into its own game. But if this would happen, would the developer make it free? After all, he had to pay for the source code.