Where Next

[Critical_Impact]

The pinnacle for me would be being able to play Clonk Rage on it. They recently released the source code for it and I do remember there being a Clonk World port on GP2X so it seems do-able. I may even give it a go myself as I believe it uses SDL and maybe OpenGL(I'm not sure). It's a friking awesome game, and if you haven't tried it before, give it a go it's like Lemmings+Worms+Building, it's great fun.

 

[Karel Jansens]

Thought Android was already confirmed working on a Pandora? I'd love to throw 2.0 on it! Pandora would be the most powerful hand held device with Android right?

Android has been ported to the Beagleboard which should make it easier to finish the job on Pandora. Last I saw on the Beagleboard port it was missing graphics acceleration support. Also, for porting to the pandora support for WiFi, bluetooth, touchscreen and probably some hardware pieces I'm not thinking of would need to be coded... I know that there are a few people interested in working on this, or have done some work towards this but there is not a working product yet AFAIK.

Pandora would arguably be up to par with new Android 2.0 devices coming out soon such as the Motorola Droid, but not exceeding in sheer processing power IMO.

I wasn't really talking about the Android OS, just the Android Apps... You see, installing the OS, we won't be able to access those .pnd packages or any Pandora-specific apps. BUT, by providing support to Android apps, we could have the best from the 2 worlds: The full library of Android Apps (easily downloadable via Android Market, being some free and other not, though...) and all our beloved emulators, ports and linux app stuff provided for Pandora.

Aren't Android apps merely slightly mangled Java apps anyway?

 

[lulzfish]

The question I'd like to ask is, "What is so great about Android that we need to keep asking about having it on Pandora?"
Do they have some sort of awesome games already? It was my understanding they were fairly new, and still trying to escape from the shadow of the iPhone dev community.

 

[Exophase]

For a start its a Megadrive, not the stupid US renamed nonsense due to copyright.

Whatever you say...

Again we could go on for weeks about the bit debate, the CPU on the Dreamcast was 32-bit sure, but the GPU was 128-bit, the same way Atari came to the conclusion the Jaguar was 64-bit, the bit race changed from the CPU to the GPU somehow along the line...

The "bit-race" was always whatever the hell the company felt like pushing. That's true for TurboGrafx16, the "24-bit" Neo-Geo.. in the Jaguar's case it was mainly the 64bit bus, but then there's N64. In the real industry bits have always been about CPU bus width.

I'm actually unsure what's 128bit about the PowerVR chip either. I think what they're really referring to is the 4-way dot products the CPU can do.

but i get the understanding you dont really care, to the matter nor do I, but slagging off a company for falsely advertising something.....hmmm now let me think who is the BIGGEST bullshitter heyho Sony springs to mind....emotion engine.....you can thank Sony for the state of the games industry and the lack of independant publishers and developers...but don't get me started on that, i'd rather play games that were made before the hype train came into town.

So wait, calling their chipset "Emotion Engine" is bigger bullshit than making "Blast Processing" ads? I have no idea what you're talking about. I also think you're pretty full of it, using Sony as a martyr for whatever "state of the industry" you're unhappy with... enh, fanboys..

 

[geckojsc]

I'm looking forward to some good homebrew and ports, especially a Pandora port of MilkyTracker! *starts drooling uncontrollably*

 

[TheRain]

Aren't Android apps merely slightly mangled Java apps anyway?

No they are not. Android has it's own java VM of sorts, not bytecode compatible at all, and a whole set of proprietary frameworks on top of that.

The question I'd like to ask is, "What is so great about Android that we need to keep asking about having it on Pandora?"

Originally I was interested in it so that I could develop and test android apps on it for distribution on the Android app store. Also, I like the idea of a finger friendly UI as apposed to one that requires a stylus to get around in. On the other hand, it will be much easier to port existing Linux software to the Angstrom distribution. And, I think we could easily port the finger friendly versions of QT and GTK libraries created for Maemo to Angstrom. That is what I plan to do now, work on linking against maemo libraries for now and port the libraries once I get a Pandora to test with.

 

[berichandcreamy]

For me it's not about the games but having an android device that blows away anyone's smart phone.

 

[Karel Jansens]

I see a lot of replies in this thread about the gaming capabilities of the Pandora (and rightly so, for awesome they are indeed) and - admittedly fewer - replies about the porting of business type apps to the platform.

This is what I've been thinking about: For me, the Pandora's distinguishing feature is its wealth of controls; it has a keyboard, gaming controllers, shoulder buttons and a touchscreen. Rather than simply porting O, Koffice or even SIAG, why don't we get a few clever (or desperate) people together to see if we can't use that cornucopia of controls to produce a truly innovative killer PIM or Office type app that will run only on the Pandora and make everyone who doesn't own one wheep with envy.

Right now, don't ask me what such an app will look like, because I have no idea, but if it doesn't sound completely crazy, I'm willing to do some deep thinking on the subject.

 

[juniorm33]

I'm in it for productivity software also, I don't need open office, and to be fair I'm not sure how well that would run.

I'm assuming there's already decent apps for what I need as I don't need a lot.
But it would be nice to have something that's highly tailored.
Could even possibly take open source versions and tailor them maybe?

 

[emil10001]

I see a lot of replies in this thread about the gaming capabilities of the Pandora (and rightly so, for awesome they are indeed) and - admittedly fewer - replies about the porting of business type apps to the platform.

This is what I've been thinking about: For me, the Pandora's distinguishing feature is its wealth of controls; it has a keyboard, gaming controllers, shoulder buttons and a touchscreen. Rather than simply porting O, Koffice or even SIAG, why don't we get a few clever (or desperate) people together to see if we can't use that cornucopia of controls to produce a truly innovative killer PIM or Office type app that will run only on the Pandora and make everyone who doesn't own one wheep with envy.

Right now, don't ask me what such an app will look like, because I have no idea, but if it doesn't sound completely crazy, I'm willing to do some deep thinking on the subject.

I think replacing the interface might be enough to make it compelling on the pandora. After several years of using the 770, n800 and my G1 I've really come to appreciate apps that have a UI designed for a really limited screen space, and that require the least amount of tapping/button pushing by the user to accomplish a task.

Though, I don't think that anyone will be wheeping over an office app, even if we punched them.

 

[hackroid]

This is what I've been thinking about: For me, the Pandora's distinguishing feature is its wealth of controls; it has a keyboard, gaming controllers, shoulder buttons and a touchscreen. Rather than simply porting O, Koffice or even SIAG, why don't we get a few clever (or desperate) people together to see if we can't use that cornucopia of controls to produce a truly innovative killer PIM or Office type app that will run only on the Pandora and make everyone who doesn't own one wheep with envy.

Since the Pandora has a rather large screen compared to most handheld devices I would love to use it for creating art, I'd use it as a sketchpad for line/vector and pixel art, which I think it would be perfect for. The stylus doesn't have the sensitivity of the Wacom, but at least you can draw straight on the screen, unlike the Wacom where you have to draw blindly to one side whilst looking at the screen. I find tablet styled laptops too big to carry around and the cintiq is way to expensive so this is why I chose the Pandora as it would be perfect for this. Probably use Gimp or Inkscape if I or someone else can get it ported. Just need to find summat for creating animation, maybe grafx2 ?

Or sending stuff to peoples phones via bluetooth, office reports, files etc would be great for a small business, using Pandora as PDA.

Using the nubs/shoulder and game buttons would hopefully smooth the workflow, then whilst Im doodling I could be in another room and I'd just wifi/bluetooth my art to my computer in the adjacent room, so I wouldn't need to remove the SD card or USB the Pandora to the PC. These are the helpful extras the Pandora can do over the iphone/DS/PSP.

 

[lulzfish]

GIMP's already been ported, Inkscape probably has too.

 

[Pleng]

why don't we get a few clever (or desperate) people together to see if we can't use that cornucopia of controls to produce a truly innovative killer PIM or Office type app that will run only on the Pandora and make everyone who doesn't own one wheep with envy.

Right now, don't ask me what such an app will look like,

I came up with an idea about a system wide API that could be utilized by PIM software and could interface with games/im clients etc.

I'm still not sure that the Pandora even comes with wake up on alarm facility.

 

[lulzfish]

I'm still not sure that the Pandora even comes with wake up on alarm facility.

I'm not sure either, but I heard there is a way to do it, which will be really cool, unless 2 or 3 programs try to access it simultaneously and break something.. It will require some thought to use, I expect.

 

[CoMiKe]

Fullspeed Rhythm Tengoku Gold on a Nintendo DS emulator. That would be really neat.

Anyway, I'm more that happy with the idea of enjoying the original "The Need for Speed" on the PSX emulator.

But I wouldn't mind playing it on a Sega Saturn emulator, or even better, inside DosBox. But that's kinda utopian.

 

[Aninhumer]

Fullspeed Rhythm Tengoku Gold on a Nintendo DS emulator. That would be really neat.

I suspect emulating any kind of rhythm game is probably not a good idea, even on a fullspeed emulator.
Any kind of random slowdown would throw you off completely.

 

[Prometheus]

I suspect emulating any kind of rhythm game is probably not a good idea, even on a fullspeed emulator.
Any kind of random slowdown would throw you off completely.

That's totally not going to stop me from playing through Bust-A-Groove again in psx4pandora. :lol: (Wow, it's been such a long time since I've played it. I bet I've gotten rusty.)

 

[Joshwaan2k]

Personally I would love to see the following.

MAME running early nineties games Mortal Kombat 2, 3 NBA Jam, etc full speed. Portable full speed MK2 I'd pay $500 for serious love it that much

Sega 32X Notaz work on the Genesis is incredible

Model 2 Arcade games as some one else maintained, not sure if the emulator for this is open source.

 

[kingoddball]

After seeing PSX running at decent speed... My pinacle is METAL GEAR SOLID h34r: !
Then:
Resident Evil/Silent Hill. Man! ALL ps1 classics!

But all time greatest achiement that I would love to see if GoldenEye and Perfect Dark (N64) with online play! That would be it for me!

(Doom3 if there is any time left!)

 

[lulzfish]

The pinnacle of software is to have original developers.

As a person who was too lazy to develop for his Palm device, and is having the same result with Android, I can safely say that the Pandora will be the easiest portable device to program that isn't a netbook somehow.

Seriously, I have to install an SDK, an IDE (because I couldn't make the other thing work), I have to sign everything just to get a non-debug package, there's an emulator (For Java, because it's cross-platform, I need an emulator), there's all this other shit.

Developers should consider themselves lucky that the Pandora doesn't have an official SDK, because I've fucking never gotten one to work. Ugh.