What Do You Think The Pandora Should Feature First?

[EvilDragon]

As some devs already have a Pandora and are developing for it, it's time to find out what's more important for you guys for Pandora release.

Do you want a good menu system superior to the gp2x one featuring a good audio and video player and other stuff OR do you want to have a basic menu system and a lot of fullspeed emulators for the first release?

What is more important to you?

(Don't worry, the rest will come with later firmware releases, it's just what you want to have as a start).

 

[Squidge]

The GUI forms the basis of the system and also first impressions, so I think that should come first. Emu's are easily installable later.

 

[quadomatic]

Always great to hear from the devs. Yeah, the GUI is really important. In the interest of Pandora's success, I think the GUI should be made to work well first.

The fullspeed emulators will come with time.

Are the emulators actually going to be included with Pandora?

 

[craigix]

My opinion is that no one ever comes in to the GP2X forum asking if it has a fancy menu, they ask can it play Quake, SNES, Genesis, Doom etc.

That is what sells systems and makes them popular fast.

That's just coming from a retailer of course.

 

[jmetal88]

Maybe you should make a good GUI and stick a dirty port of something that runs fullspeed at 500mhz in there as well.

 

[EvilDragon]

Well, most people are expecting something better than the standard gp2x menu (like gmenu2x, just a bit more enhanced).

It's what I got most complaints about while selling the gp2x

 

[quadomatic]

My opinion is that no one ever comes in to the GP2X forum asking if it has a fancy menu, they ask can it play Quake, SNES, Genesis, Doom etc.

That is what sells systems and makes them popular fast.

That's just coming from a retailer of course.

Emulators are more important, but I don't think that the GUI should be shafted into looking like the GP2X gui.

If say you were to work on the superior GUI, what would become of emulators on the first release? Aren't other developers making emulators for the Pandora anyways?

We've seen how well the arcade games run in the videos you put out. And those weren't hardware accelerated. Would it be difficult to have unoptimized ports of emulators like SNES, Genesis, NES, etc. on the first release that would run fullspeed no problems and have the superior GUI? Kinda like what jmetal88 said?

The GUI is the first thing people see, and its very important that it looks and functions very well. Quick n' Dirty ports of emulators prior to PSX would probably run fullspeed anyways, at least that's the impression I got from the videos of the Pandora running stuff so far.

 

[craigix]

Looking back over GP2X customers opinions the FPS of the SNES emulator (for example) seem to sway 90% of people, I'm not aware of anyone who has not bought it because of the menu system.

Still though if you want it we will shift attention to the GUI ahead of the other software.

The menu is already better than the GP2X one, but in order to make it astonishing is going to take some serious dev time, it will take progress away from other areas.

My plan had always been to improve the GUI towards xmas knowing everyone was happy with the other software first.

 

[quadomatic]

Are emulators actually to be included with the Pandora and its firmware?

 

[Orkie]

I don't really see how anybody can be voting for emulators. Surely it is better to have a decent base firmware at launch than lots of emulators? :S

 

[craigix]

I don't really see how anybody can be voting for emulators. Surely it is better to have a decent base firmware at launch than lots of emulators? :S

Because a fancy menu will not sell those 3000 units.

Look at what potential customers ask in the GP2X forum before buying one.

 

[goobers]

I agree- I think the GUI/base system is of utmost importance. I don't think that a major firmware update later on would be a good idea. Also, don't underestimate the 'wow' factor of a nice looking GUI. It will make the product seem more 'advanced' I think.

 

[Orkie]

But emulators are useless without a solid firmware to support them.

 

[TaG]

A good GUI/menu system plus one really good emulator would impress a wider general audience, and gets my vote too.

Those that are mainly interested in games probably want the emulators. Depends where you see the market. It also depends on just how many dev units are out there.

Many on these forums will buy it if the GUI is not 'fantastic' as they know other options are likely to come along the way, but so will the emulators.

 

[quadomatic]

Just to gauge the consequences of what we're all asking for, how much will emulators suffer if attention is to shift towards GUI?

 

[Chip]

I don't think the people voting for the GUI fully understand the question. Do you really think that useful applications should take a back seat to purely aesthetic modifications to the UI? As long as the menu system works and isn't cumbersome, that's all you really need. Anything beyond that is fluff and can be added later. The larger the library of functional games/emulators/programs is, the better off we'll all be.

Never put form before function, especially on a geek-centric device.

Are emulators actually to be included with the Pandora and its firmware?

No.

 

[Gilrad]

The way I see it, the GUI is one of those things that, barring some extreme circumstances, will be almost completely developed by the dev team. Emulators are something the development community can pitch in and help with.

But I guess there are some areas in which the dev team would be most effective in developing for. Which emulators would require some serious optimization to get to full fps?

 

[greendots]

A lot of the market for this thing is still UMPC. I think the release should need a good gui and WM. Any emulator can be optimised later as long as they run full speed already.

 

[craigix]

Just to gauge the consequences of what we're all asking for, how much will emulators suffer if attention is to shift towards GUI?

Well it shifts who gets the next batch of dev units.

Do we sent them to game/app/emu authors or to people who want to work on the firmware/gui?

 

[Orkie]

I don't think the people voting for the GUI fully understand the question. Do you really think that useful applications should take a back seat to purely aesthetic modifications to the UI?

No, this really is about the firmware.