Which Open Source Handheld To Get?

[DaveC]

What about in terms of community and development? how does the Caanoo stack up?

Pretty much the same people who where behind the GP2X community went on to the GP2X Wiz, and quite a few are moving up to the Caanoo (coincidentally, a lot of them are also involved with the Pandora community.

Okay, but in terms of a support-base and an active community ready to develop and deploy for the Caanoo --whether porting or developing from the ground up;-- where does it stand?

Well the caanoo is basically a Wiz with some changes (some good, some bad). The SoC is the same one. If a version of Ginge came out on it then it will basically become a Wiz in different packaging and controls. As far as new stuff exclusively for caanoo I wouldn't bet on allot. Wiz development was relatively weak compared to the GP2X or Pandora, so I would guess the same for caanoo. The caanoo doesn't really have much compelling for devs that the Wiz didn't (I don't think a vibrator or accelerometer is a big draw and there is no new more powerful chip to play with). Unless the caanoo really explodes in sales I would expect allot of Wiz ports.

The reason the Pandoa has more interest for development is the bigger higher res screen, much more powerful SoC, more RAM, a variety of controls like analog AND digital, keyboard, more functionality (PDA, wifi, linux productivity apps etc).

 

[zeldarocks]

I was also wondering, should I opt for a Caanoo now, or wait and see if any issues are reported with the initial units? --Wiz's screen failures come to mind.

I don't want to invest in something that could degrade or die on me...

 

[b1ueskycomp1ex]

I was also wondering, should I opt for a Caanoo now, or wait and see if any issues are reported with the initial units? --Wiz's screen failures come to mind.

I don't want to invest in something that could degrade or die on me...

Well it's all a matter of where you feel you're at financially. Something like the Dingoo or the Wiz have been around long enough for reports to have come in. The Caanoo is just shipping now and I would say not too many people have them. Should you wait maybe a few weeks to see if any faults are reported? Why not. It couldn't hurt. At the moment I haven't heard of any broken or faulty Caanoo consoles at all.

 

[DaveC]

- That's why I said "ALMOST" Impossible. Also, we've yet to determine the caanoo's ability to pull off street fighter moves - Seeing as how the original game was in arcades with a joystick it's possible it will be great. It just depends on the build quality, responsiveness, and software.

Except that in the arcades the stick was digital not analog, big difference.

But you're right, I should go back and rewrite it to be clear as to it's advantages.

Edit: rewrote it. Really I had a lot of advantages there, but it didn't look that way due to having prefaced it with "But..."

Like I said though your post still lists everything negative and nothing positive about Wiz, and everything positive and nothing negative about caanoo. It is as "fair and balanced" as Fox News Channel You need to have the true pros and cons of each to be unbiased.

 

[zeldarocks]

The Wiz screens failures can not be replicated on the Caanoo because of the latter's LED screen as opposed to the Wiz's OLED screen, am I right?

Also, is there anything to suggest that the Caanoo's have gone through rigorous testing to ensure quality and functionality?

 

[Exophase]

For all the people who claim that the Caanoo stick is a great d-pad substitute, how well does it work in games where double-tapping a direction is essential like Battletoads (not to mention near the end where you absolutely have to keep on very straight directions)? I have a very hard time believing that it's just as good.

I've used stick for emulation on a Logitech Rumblepad and sometimes it's okay, sometimes it even works better than a d-pad for some things, but there's no way I'd consider it a suitable substitute for anywhere close to a majority of games. If the game requires you to quickly move from one extreme to another a d-pad can do that much better than a stick, which will always have travel time. I don't see how Caanoo's can be alleviating this.

I know this issue has been beaten into the ground, but some of the Caanoo reviews, like Nova's, are coming from someone who seemed to highly favor the platform before it was even out, and it's hard for me to call them totally unbiased. Maybe the controls are fine for emulation of some games, but you shouldn't be quick to accept this just because some reviews say so, especially if the reviewers haven't played at least dozens of games from several different genres. Sorry Nova, but when you say things like how it's the best GPH handheld yet - well, maybe to you; I'm sure others will like the Wiz more, or possibly even the GP2X. There are a lot of pros and cons that have to be considered, and when giving input on this it's more helpful to just stick to the facts and let the person form their own conclusions rather than feeding them a preference.

EDIT: DaveC, you keep saying a digital stick is better than an analog one, and this makes no sense to me. How is a digital stick any different from an analog stick with thresholds applied? I'd say the difference in an arcade stick and something like on the Caanoo or say, most modern game controllers, is that one is a full sized joystick you hold with your whole hand and the other is something you move with your thumb.

 

[DaveC]

The Wiz screens failures can not be replicated on the Caanoo because of the latter's LED screen as opposed to the Wiz's OLED screen, am I right?

Also, is there anything to suggest that the Caanoo's have gone through rigorous testing to ensure quality and functionality?

The caanoo uses LCD not LED screen. There is no such thing as an LED screen. And no the caanoo LCD won't fail the same.

Knowing GPH and also knowing analog sticks there may be an issue who knows. Analogs can be prone to failures just look at the big problems the anlog stick on the Zodiac had and all of the defective analog nubs on the Pandora. The caanoo hasn't been released really so the durability of the stick is not known.

 

[DaveC]

EDIT: DaveC, you keep saying a digital stick is better than an analog one, and this makes no sense to me. How is a digital stick any different from an analog stick with thresholds applied? I'd say the difference in an arcade stick and something like on the Caanoo or say, most modern game controllers, is that one is a full sized joystick you hold with your whole hand and the other is something you move with your thumb.

Because one thing with analog there is usually a bigger dead zone. Also a digital stick usually has tactile stops where you can subconsciously feel the direction you are in and when you switch directions such as from left to down-left the stick kind of hits a detent. With an analog, unless you are looking at the device, you can be close to a direction and hit it but since there is nothing telling you what the stick position is in, the distance you need to move to go to in a different direction ALWAYS is a different amount. This can make it challenging as you have to be careful to not let where you think the directions are drift. The band where a direction is hit is wider too. So you may have to move the stick 1 mm to get it to go from on to off. This takes more time as with a d-stick a movement of a small fraction of a mm can change from go to no go. This you explain with your double tap example. That would be very difficult to pull off on an analog because of this wide contact band. If you make the analog contact band as small then your dead zone gets big and you add sloppiness that way. If you decrease the dead zone you will hit the wrong direction allot and the contact band will be again too wide adding sloppiness there.

Try playing a digital game using the Pandora's analog nub, no amount of thresholds will make it as good as digital stick or pad.

 

[zeldarocks]

All in all, is there anything I should really be worried about in regards to the Caanoo's build quality and build?

 

[DaveC]

All in all, is there anything I should really be worried about in regards to the Caanoo's build quality and build?

Haven't heard any problems with that. If the screen bezel cropping the screen, backwards facing speakers and analog don't bother you then go for it. Those are the only build/design issues I know of.

 

[RupeeClock]

Haven't heard any problems with that. If the screen bezel cropping the screen, backwards facing speakers and analog don't bother you then go for it. Those are the only build/design issues I know of.

The bezel looks to be a very minor issue really, I checked a video of Slap Fight from FunGP and saw it shaves about... 4-6 pixels maybe?

It's still a pain though, but many home-entertainment games give a small margin around the HUD graphics for this sort of reason. It'll probably be an issue for MAME in general.
The backwards facing speakers is pretty weird though, but it's forgiveable, as is the analogue stick since it's gotten a lot of praise.
These issues are nothing compared to the terrible joystick of the GP2X F100, the crappy d-pad or close face buttons of the Wiz, as well as its small 2.8inch OLED screen with a limited lifespan.

Hell, do you guys remember when the Wiz was going to have dual d-pads?

 

[Exophase]

Because one thing with analog there is usually a bigger dead zone.

Why would it? If anything I expect it to have less, because a digital stick has to have thresholds internally, whereas an analog stick can happily present the full spectrum of positions. Dead zone should be a software problem, although scaling issues could possibly affect it.

Also a digital stick usually has tactile stops where you can subconsciously feel the direction you are in and when you switch directions such as from left to down-left the stick kind of hits a detent.

It does? I don't remember this on GP2X's stick.

These things you're talking about are really design issues that are separate from digital/analog and don't seem to always apply. The only sure thing about a digital stick is it being an analog stick with (much) less resolution.

I know you've said before that even GP2X's stick is better than an analog one, so are you telling me it did have these things and I'm wrong about it?

With an analog, unless you are looking at the device, you can be close to a direction and hit it but since there is nothing telling you what the stick position is in, the distance you need to move to go to in a different direction ALWAYS is a different amount. This can make it challenging as you have to be careful to not let where you think the directions are drift. The band where a direction is hit is wider too. So you may have to move the stick 1 mm to get it to go from on to off. This takes more time as with a d-stick a movement of a small fraction of a mm can change from go to no go. This you explain with your double tap example. That would be very difficult to pull off on an analog because of this wide contact band. If you make the analog contact band as small then your dead zone gets big and you add sloppiness that way. If you decrease the dead zone you will hit the wrong direction allot and the contact band will be again too wide adding sloppiness there.

Sure, but why don't these things apply to a GP2X-like digital stick?

Try playing a digital game using the Pandora's analog nub, no amount of thresholds will make it as good as digital stick or pad.

With all due respect, Pandora's nub is not a stick and IMO not a very good nub either. Of course it's not as good as a stick, but we're not comparing it; we're talking about a digital stick vs an analog one with no other considerations besides one being digital and the other being analog. But I do think neither will be as good as a pad for a lot of things designed for pads.

 

[b1ueskycomp1ex]

Hell, do you guys remember when the Wiz was going to have dual d-pads?

You mean when GPH was intending it solely for the purpose of emulating smash TV? Yes. Yes I do.

 

[DaveC]

Because one thing with analog there is usually a bigger dead zone.

Why would it? If anything I expect it to have less, because a digital stick has to have thresholds internally, whereas an analog stick can happily present the full spectrum of positions. Dead zone should be a software problem, although scaling issues could possibly affect it.

Also a digital stick usually has tactile stops where you can subconsciously feel the direction you are in and when you switch directions such as from left to down-left the stick kind of hits a detent.

It does? I don't remember this on GP2X's stick.

These things you're talking about are really design issues that are separate from digital/analog and don't seem to always apply. The only sure thing about a digital stick is it being an analog stick with (much) less resolution.

I know you've said before that even GP2X's stick is better than an analog one, so are you telling me it did have these things and I'm wrong about it?

A digital stick does have less resolution, but that doesn't always mean it is bad. The games themselves were designed for this lower resolution so adding all of the in-betweens that weren't designed into the game can actually be bad. Analog sticks have a longer throw distance for obvious reasons. If you as you say narrow the dead zone in software to compensate then your physical stop is further away and now your band of contact is super wide. Try a double tap with that. Unless you have robotic hands and can precisely move the stick right to that exact threshold and stop there every time your control is going to be very sloppy. If you move further in and want to change directions fast you now have to move out of that wide band (and until you get out of it you will still be moving the opposite way that you want to)before getting to the other band of opposite direction. By the time you do all of that you are watching your ship do the explosion sprite sequence or Chun-Li laugh at you.

You don't remember this detent on the GP2X stick because it wasn't there. The GP2X stick was crap. It actually had most of the "flaws" of an analog (no detent, big dead zone) and was often called an analog by reviewers that didn't know better. I said it was better only because the contact band was narrow (you could do your double tap with it). I said it was better but looking back maybe not so much at all. The GP2X stick was bad. You probably could tweak the caanoo stick to be as good maybe a little better than the GP2X digital stick, but that isn't saying much.

I guess I should have clarified a *properly designed* digital stick is better than an analog for emus.

Now if someone set out to make an analog stick that worked like a digital one then yes that could be done and you wouldn't know the difference. They would give it a narrow throw distance, give it some sort of tactile detents at the extremes, make the threshold narrow etc. But that isn't what the caanoo or any other analog does.

 

[Exophase]

Okay, that clears things up for me. Thanks.

 

[Orion4874]

Wouldn't fashioning some kind of octagonal shaped insert at the base of the analog stick solve some of the issues? Like what Nintendo does on their controllers. If that's copyrighted then maybe a hexagonal shape instead?

 

[johncross85]

Wouldn't fashioning some kind of octagonal shaped insert at the base of the analog stick solve some of the issues? Like what Nintendo does on their controllers. If that's copyrighted then maybe a hexagonal shape instead?

Not just me that has thought this then!!! I doubt it'd be perfect but it would certainly be better and probably a decent "best of both worlds".

john

 

[Amon_Re]

Well the caanoo is basically a Wiz with some changes (some good, some bad). The SoC is the same one. If a version of Ginge came out on it then it will basically become a Wiz in different packaging and controls. As far as new stuff exclusively for caanoo I wouldn't bet on allot. Wiz development was relatively weak compared to the GP2X or Pandora, so I would guess the same for caanoo. The caanoo doesn't really have much compelling for devs that the Wiz didn't (I don't think a vibrator or accelerometer is a big draw and there is no new more powerful chip to play with). Unless the caanoo really explodes in sales I would expect allot of Wiz ports.

The presence of that vibrator & accelerometer however does allow game devs to try novel idea's that would be otherwise impossible. There already is a MAME version that allows you to play Out Run by using the Caanoo as a steering wheel.

Personally, the biggest advantage the Caanoo has over the Pandora is availability, it's out there in retail, it's being made in sufficiant numbers, and that makes it available now.

The reason the Pandoa has more interest for development is the bigger higher res screen, much more powerful SoC, more RAM, a variety of controls like analog AND digital, keyboard, more functionality (PDA, wifi, linux productivity apps etc).

Is there really more development going on on the Pandora? Haven't been following the platform closely since i haven't gotten one yet, but it seems to me that it's pretty much the same people

 

[b1ueskycomp1ex]

Well the caanoo is basically a Wiz with some changes (some good, some bad). The SoC is the same one. If a version of Ginge came out on it then it will basically become a Wiz in different packaging and controls. As far as new stuff exclusively for caanoo I wouldn't bet on allot. Wiz development was relatively weak compared to the GP2X or Pandora, so I would guess the same for caanoo. The caanoo doesn't really have much compelling for devs that the Wiz didn't (I don't think a vibrator or accelerometer is a big draw and there is no new more powerful chip to play with). Unless the caanoo really explodes in sales I would expect allot of Wiz ports.

The presence of that vibrator & accelerometer however does allow game devs to try novel idea's that would be otherwise impossible. There already is a MAME version that allows you to play Out Run by using the Caanoo as a steering wheel.

Personally, the biggest advantage the Caanoo has over the Pandora is availability, it's out there in retail, it's being made in sufficiant numbers, and that makes it available now.

The reason the Pandoa has more interest for development is the bigger higher res screen, much more powerful SoC, more RAM, a variety of controls like analog AND digital, keyboard, more functionality (PDA, wifi, linux productivity apps etc).

Is there really more development going on on the Pandora? Haven't been following the platform closely since i haven't gotten one yet, but it seems to me that it's pretty much the same people

It's more or less an app every 2 days or so.

 

[Crazyteknohed]

There is no such thing as an LED screen.

I beg to differ. I used to play this as a kid:

(Christ I feel old)