Will Pandora's Mame Port Match The Mame Project Versions?

[chad78]

The Pandora's screen isn't that big so vertical games without rotate it will look too small.
The screen is 4.3" inches. It will be about, if not over, 2 inches tall. Granted - that's not huge - but it's bigger than the screen on a GBA Micro. And for games like PacMan / Space Invaders / Galaga - games that have really low res screens anyway - you should be able to view them pretty clearly without rotatation. (Having played many of these games on a Micro - I can tell you firsthand it's possible and playable.)

 

[Uukrul]

The screen is 4.3" inches. It will be about, if not over, 2 inches tall. Granted - that's not huge - but it's bigger than the screen on a GBA Micro.

That's not a fair comparison Compared to the GP2X screen (3.5") is only a bit taller so vertical games will look almost the same.

 

[craigix]

I think it is a bit sad that the Spanish scene feel that way, sure I have said some very bad things about GPH (I won't keep quiet on things which I disagree about) but we still spent $70,000 on marketing the device and sold it right up to the end (things ended on high with the great gamesTM article I think).

If we had not signed up and promised to buy 3000-6000 of the GP2X when production started I'm not sure it would have started at all, I was there in Korea when all that was going on and it was knife edge stuff, the GP2X went ahead and the XGP didn't based on very small events.

But now without pushing ahead with new technology (GPH were not interested when we tried to partner with them on the Pandora) we would be nowhere now the GP2X is over.

But soon we will have http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3283325440/tt0098663 too. (Sorry but it is exactly what comes to mind...)

So it should be exciting times ahead for all of us, and we will of course sell the Pandora, the new GP2X and the Icontrolpad (and open source phones if anyone will let us!).

I'm in to all open source stuff and push to get as much on to all systems as possible. I'm not a fanboy for any system, I like there to be as many open systems as possible so we might one day kill m$, sony etc. and take systems back to the days of the Amiga/ST/C64/Speccy when anyone could develop for a system without paying millions to be allowed.

Etc. etc. I could go on and on. I'm sure I've said it all before too.

 

[kevcal]

..what are the other forum users planning to buy to replace the GP2X now production has stopped?
Mine's not broken (yet) and does everything it did before production stopped... so see no point in replacing it :blink:

 

[efegea]

Yes, in gp32spain the Pandora is not very popular. There are a few pandora fans, still. But I think, craigix, you should be more carefull to not lose them. i.e: answering the private messages



EDIT: thanks for responding the pm, craigix, but now your inbox is full and I can't send you another message

 

[chad78]

The screen is 4.3" inches. It will be about, if not over, 2 inches tall. Granted - that's not huge - but it's bigger than the screen on a GBA Micro.
That's not a fair comparison Compared to the GP2X screen (3.5") is only a bit taller so vertical games will look almost the same.I wasn't meaning that since the Pandora screen itself is bigger than the Micro screen itself that it will be okay (although that is also true). I was saying that even with the "pillar boxing" of the vertical games - the area of the screen used on a tall MAME game played on the Pandora will be much bigger than the entire screen of a Micro. And since higher-res games (like GBA games) are playable on a mere 2" screen - low res arcade games should be *very* playable, IMHO.

 

[vampire8bit]

Well Franxis doesn't seem to be interested in the Pandora..

Surely ye jest!?

I would be very interested to here why Franxis is not interested in Pandora, what with he being the main dude behind arguably THE killer app for the '2X.

I thought he would've been sent a MK0 anyway- no?



Read post #45 on this link, near the end of the interview.

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showt...anxis+interview

Then again the interview was done in April and his opinions could have changed since then.

 

[chad78]

Read post #45 on this link, near the end of the interview.
By clicking on the # of the post, you can get the link to that exact post. Like this.

Here's the quote for those who don't want to go to another page to read it.

What’s your opinion of the soon to be released Pandora?

I don’t know, no real console has been shown yet and also the final technical characteristics have not been confirmed. About the published renders, I don’t like too much the design (the QWERTY keyboard seems useless for me, and the position of the joypad and the play buttons seems not good). It seems a “zipped” Asus EEE PC, and I don’t want to have an ultra-portable computer, only a portable console.

Do you think Pandora will spell an end to GP2X homebrew development?

If the console finally appears, I’m not sure about that because the rumored prize of the console seems too expensive (more than 300 euros?). The GP2X homebrew development could move to the Pandora, but if the people don’t buy the console, it is useless… In such case I would prefer to continue with the GP2X and wait another alternative. Let’s wait to see the final design, technical characteristics and prize of the console to have a final opinion…

 

[DisgruntleElf]

if Pandora is to be sold in a global market, it's much better off selling with a qwerty keyboard

I agree with that, but if there are some posts by English speakers of this forum that ask to remove the keyboard, imagine the number of foreign people that find it useless. By the way, we use an extended version of qwerty. It's French that do not use qwerty

I don't see why Pandora couldn't support worldwide languages in future firmware updates that allow the user to reassign keys to their liking and save those settings. Theres always the touchscreen for a virtual keyboard if all else fails.

 

[conso]

as said before: xmodmap could do this and I don't see why the pandora shouldn't have this little tool.

Is their a local distributor to spain and france? Maybe xmodmap could be preconfigured and the buttons relabled for those customers.

 

[juanvvc]

DisgruntleElf and conso, the problem is not solved by means of reassigning. Many foreign languages use the same letters than English plus some extra. And we do not want to lose any letter due to the reassigning A virtual keyboard on the screen does the trick, it is certainly possible but uncomfortable and the percentage of people that see the keyboard as useless is then higher.

Anyway, this have been discussed a lot in the forums.

 

[Lobo]

I'm using a spanish keyboard right now, and the only important difference I can see is that it has "Ñ". The other differences are just where some of the less important symbol keys are(;:<>?! etc).

It is a very poor excuse for being against the pandora IMO.

 

[hlidegp2x]

How the gp2x / gp32 were more internationalized... ? No keyboard We use some weird characters, you know: áéíóúüñ¡¿ Other Spanish languages uses a couple more àèòïç And that's only in Spain, French people for example do not use a qwerty at all and have even more characters. Yes, I'm sure that there will be some alternative way to introduce these characters, but, look, we use them very often. That huge keyboard is actually only comfortable for English people.

French : à â ç é è ê ë î ï ô û ù ü ÿ, æ (et cætera, tænia, ex æquo...), œ (œil, fœtus, bœuf...).

Personally I'm okay with a minimal qwerty keyboard for Pandora.

Note that æ and œ are not accessible from Azerty keyboard so we tend to type them as two letters : ae and oe.

 

[God Ginrai]

My 2 Cents:

1. Anyone who blames Craig for the downfall of either the GP32 or the GP2X is being fucking retarded.

2. Where did Franxis get the idea that the Pandora would cost over 300 euros?

3:

DisgruntleElf and conso, the problem is not solved by means of reassigning. Many foreign languages use the same letters than English plus some extra. And we do not want to lose any letter due to the reassigning A virtual keyboard on the screen does the trick, it is certainly possible but uncomfortable and the percentage of people that see the keyboard as useless is then higher.

Anyway, this have been discussed a lot in the forums.

The idea with xmodmap was to make the extra keys available with key combinations, like Fn+C, etc. (Or at least that's how I understood them)

And besides, having any keyboard is better than having no keyboard. (It's not like you can't CHOOSE to use a virtual keyboard, we're just giving you the choice)

-God Ginrai

 

[conso]

1: dito

2: Iirc pandora will be 300$. Most hardware would cost 300 € in europe then... I guess it's a roumor that spread. We will see what craigx, ed & co will take

3:
yeah, that's what I meant.

The local distributor could work together with the community to find out, what key combinations would be most intuitive and then put additional labels on the keyboard, so noone will ever forget. I'm pretty sure ed will do this sometime to the german keylayout (though this will definately be unnecessary here, since we don't have THAT much special characters and they are all associated to ordinary letters like ä to a or ß to s) and whoever distributes pandora in spain seems to have demand for doing this. So everyone buying a pandora in spain should get a pandora with proper localized keylayout, even though it might not be 100% identical to the one on their computer.

 

[God Ginrai]

2: Iirc pandora will be 300$. Most hardware would cost 300 € in europe then... I guess it's a roumor that spread. We will see what craigx, ed & co will take

The Pandora will be $330. But it will only be 212 euros. That's the current prices on the site. Doesn't anybody read these things?

-God Ginrai

 

[juanvvc]

I'm using a spanish keyboard right now, and the only important difference I can see is that it has "Ñ". The other differences are just where some of the less important symbol keys are(;:<>?! etc).

You forgot dead keys and inverted exclamation/question characters. I just cannot write a single paragraph in Spanish, Catalan or Portugues without a stress mark. It is not a poor excuse: since it's uncomfortable to write properly with the Pandora's keyboard, you are more inclined to prefer a machine without any keyboard. It is not that everybody rejects the keyboard, it is that there are more people that rejects the keyboard in non-English communities than here. And not everybody that rejects the keyboard rejects the Pandora as well

Anyway, the keyboard is just one of the complaints, not the main one, there are solutions and it was heavily discussed in this forum in the past!

 

[chad78]

The Pandora will be $330. But it will only be 212 euros. That's the current prices on the site. Doesn't anybody read these things?

No, actually no one does read the openpandora.org website because it's horribly outdated and never updated - other than the bimonthly post to the blog.

And the prices on the site are as follows: QUOTE
How much will it cost?
Around £199 (inc VAT), $330, Euro212 (Ex.VAT).
So the €212 price is actually lower than the final price to Europeans, since that "excludes the VAT" - which, from what I understand, in needed. What is ironic to me is that despite the weak dollar, us USAmericans are getting the best price.

 

[TaG]

2: Iirc pandora will be 300$. Most hardware would cost 300 € in europe then... I guess it's a roumor that spread. We will see what craigx, ed & co will take

The Pandora will be $330. But it will only be 212 euros. That's the current prices on the site. Doesn't anybody read these things?

-God Ginrai

The price of £199 would have translated to €300 in the early part of this year (if you forget about VAT differences) as the rate was about €1.45 to £1.00, so it would be an easy assumption for someone to make. after tax the euro price will be closer to €250, depending on country.

US price = (UK price - VAT )*2

Trust me, they are all pretty much the same price.

 

[God Ginrai]

The Pandora will be $330. But it will only be 212 euros. That's the current prices on the site. Doesn't anybody read these things?

No, actually no one does read the openpandora.org website because it's horribly outdated and never updated - other than the bimonthly post to the blog.

And the prices on the site are as follows: QUOTE
How much will it cost?
Around £199 (inc VAT), $330, Euro212 (Ex.VAT).
So the €212 price is actually lower than the final price to Europeans, since that "excludes the VAT" - which, from what I understand, in needed. What is ironic to me is that despite the weak dollar, us USAmericans are getting the best price.

First, Basic information doesn't need an update. What would you want them to do? "UPDATE!!!!1111oneoneone: Price is still £199."

Second, I don't know if the EU requires a VAT like England does, but even if it does, I doubt it would be 90 Euros or more.

Third, The reason the Americans have a better price than the English is because we don't have a VAT. If England didn't have to pay the VAT, I'm sure that our price would be no better than theirs.

EDIT:

2: Iirc pandora will be 300$. Most hardware would cost 300 € in europe then... I guess it's a roumor that spread. We will see what craigx, ed & co will take

The Pandora will be $330. But it will only be 212 euros. That's the current prices on the site. Doesn't anybody read these things?

-God Ginrai

The price of £199 would have translated to €300 in the early part of this year (if you forget about VAT differences) as the rate was about €1.45 to £1.00, so it would be an easy assumption for someone to make. after tax the euro price will be closer to €250, depending on country.

US price = (UK price - VAT )*2

Trust me, they are all pretty much the same price.


Ah, that could be how Franxis came to that conclusion, thank you.

-God Ginrai