Vektar saved

[craigix]

I've managed to recover the Vektar source code from my old Dell laptop, it was rather exciting as the laptop in question died years ago and will, occasionally, boot up then rapidly overheat and crash. The HDD is error ridden and very slow if it works.


Anyhow, victory! I pulled the lot (with an SD card and patience) and Pickle is going to try to port it to the Pandora.


Another possible angle is to build it on the GP2X without the second core and push the OGG player on to the first and run it overclocked with Ginge.


Now, to remember how the 6 year old source code worked... and how that second core worked.

 

[Nintendo]

Congrats! Now, send me your porn-ridden laptop HDD, so that I can pull all the porn out of it.


In all seriousness, looking forward to Pickle's port. Please keep us updated if you get it working another way.

 

[Blue Protoman]

All right! Will it display at a higher resolution?

 

[Emnasut]

Cool stuff, kinda like finding hidden treasure somewhere (you know it's there but it's hard to get to and you don't know what you'll really end up with).

 

[craigix]

All right! Will it display at a higher resolution?

It might, depends on how deep in to the code I go.


Chances are it could just render the whole game on the lcd (so no scrolling) to make life easier.

 

[Mr_Loon]

Great news, really enjoyed Vektar on the GP2X, looking forward to trying it on the Pandora with its far superior gaming controls.

 

[Pickle]

I've managed to recover the Vektar source code from my old Dell laptop, it was rather exciting as the laptop in question died years ago and will, occasionally, boot up then rapidly overheat and crash. The HDD is error ridden and very slow if it works.


Anyhow, victory! I pulled the lot (with an SD card and patience) and Pickle is going to try to port it to the Pandora.


Another possible angle is to build it on the GP2X without the second core and push the OGG player on to the first and run it overclocked with Ginge.


Now, to remember how the 6 year old source code worked... and how that second core worked.

try! there is no try, there is only do! Glad you pulled it off, now we can get crackin on getting to form so it will run on any device till kingdom come.

 

[PokeParadox]

Well this is some nice news! Thanks for enduring the slow torture than can be data recovery.


I hope that soon we'll be playing Vektar on our devices again! B)

 

[craigix]

http://craig.gp2x.de/vektar-free.zip


Is the full game for the gp2x I believe, if anyone still has a gp2x and wants to try it.


Edit: I've a feeling it does not work on the GP2X MK2 with the dpad.


Vek uses the GP2X original stick like an analogue stick (all 32 results) and the DPAD does not work right with it.


Will need to hack an edit in.

 

[Exophase]

Vek uses the GP2X original stick like an analogue stick (all 32 results) and the DPAD does not work right with it.

Will need to hack an edit in.

I'll have to look at what it actually did, but GP2X's stick was digital and only had 8-positions in hardware. AFAIK the diagonals are still not wired to anything on F200, so that'd still cause a problem. But it's easier to fake, you can just make it set the diagonals when the corresponding cardinal directions are both pushed (and clear those).

 

[craigix]

Vek uses the GP2X original stick like an analogue stick (all 32 results) and the DPAD does not work right with it.

Will need to hack an edit in.

I'll have to look at what it actually did, but GP2X's stick was digital and only had 8-positions in hardware. AFAIK the diagonals are still not wired to anything on F200, so that'd still cause a problem. But it's easier to fake, you can just make it set the diagonals when the corresponding cardinal directions are both pushed (and clear those).

It had 16 positions (there were 2 diagonals between each direction).

Also, I have to say, after looking back at this code Pickle will be a porting god in my book if he makes this run on anything but Ginge.


I'd forgotten how low level this game was. Everything speaks direct to the hardware. It's horrible from a porting point of view.

 

[JetsVille51]

I've managed to recover the Vektar source code from my old Dell laptop, it was rather exciting as the laptop in question died years ago and will, occasionally, boot up then rapidly overheat and crash. The HDD is error ridden and very slow if it works.

External Enclosure would have saved you a lot of stress?

 

[Scntrblob]

Any chance we see the sourcecode of this under the GPL or do you plan to sell it, Craig?


I'd really like to see how he did the things like he did.

 

[craigix]

I've managed to recover the Vektar source code from my old Dell laptop, it was rather exciting as the laptop in question died years ago and will, occasionally, boot up then rapidly overheat and crash. The HDD is error ridden and very slow if it works.

External Enclosure would have saved you a lot of stress?

I didn't want to risk opening it up and taking it out as I'm not certain of the connection type on the HDD, also I once had a disaster where I managed to kill a HDD from an old PC by mounting it on a mac.


With the HDD in question having hundreds of dead sectors I preferred to keep it in its original habitat and coax the data from it

Any chance we see the sourcecode of this under the GPL or do you plan to sell it, Craig?


I'd really like to see how he did the things like he did.

I can never release it under GPL unless DZZ (who has vanished from the scene) agrees that his low level code can be GPL too. It uses his tutorials extensively, and he wrote the OGG player for the 940...

 

[Exophase]

It had 16 positions (there were 2 diagonals between each direction).

No it didn't. Look at these GPIO mappings:


http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/Reading_from_input_device

 

[craigix]

It had 16 positions (there were 2 diagonals between each direction).

No it didn't. Look at these GPIO mappings:


http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/Reading_from_input_device

I'll see if I can get some photos.


http://nick166.free.fr/gp2x/14.jpg


As you can see, dual diagonals. And yes you can read them all in hardware.

 

[Exophase]

That's wrong.

Right and I suppose when I used these same mappings while reading the GPIOs directly from hardware they were wrong too?


Oh I see you edited your post - well do tell me what GPIOs you think these are wired to (if they are indeed actually signal outputs).. oh and by the way there are only 12 pins there.

 

[craigix]

That's wrong.

Right and I suppose when I used these same mappings while reading the GPIOs directly from hardware they were wrong too?

Look at the photo.

 

[Exophase]

Look at the photo.

Look at my post.

 

[double7]

Now, to remember how the 6 year old source code worked... and how that second core worked.

Easy going, just look into your documentation. <eg>

I didn't want to risk opening it up and taking it out as I'm not certain of the connection type on the HDD, also I once had a disaster where I managed to kill a HDD from an old PC by mounting it on a mac.

As far as i know mac does always write on an attached disk. For data recovery i got best results by copying the disk first, with the GNU tool dd_rescue. It does copy blocks and ignores errors. dd_rescue is included in several Linux distributions like Knoppix or SystemRescueCD. And by the way, dd_rescue for the pandora could be a good idea.


If you have the copy of the damaged disk, you can start recovery with different apps and get the best out off all.


And yeah, Vektar for the pandora will be great, even with ginge!