Will Software Be Designed For The Small Screen?

[EvilDragon]

If someone wants to build a pxml file for wget or make, more power to them, but since most players aren't going to be using those type of tools (and they don't make much sense in a menu-based context), there probably isn't a need to repackage them. Even on the default OS, it'll be possible to install this type of software without a PXML file; it's just linux.

Yep, exactly. For commandline tools PXML makes no sense, since it's mostly used for the GUI.
It can only be used for commandline tools with file associations, i.e. a picture viewer, etc.
Then those commandline apps need to be repackaged. But don't worry, I'll repackage everything I find running for the Pandora, so no worries (if it's not already included within the NAND, we've got 500MB and a minimal Linux distri, so a lot of standard tools like imagemagick will be included, etc.)

(...) It's meant for the PLAYERS, not for the Linux cracks. Players don't want to fiddle around to make stuff work - they want to copy it and play without any hazzle. (...)
I hope I can have both. I would like to "copy and play" and maybe on a SD-card a "fiddle around" distribution. This is why I wanted the pandora.

Sure, you can either boot from NAND or from an SD Card. So you can use SD Card slot 1 to boot your custom linux (or Ubuntu, Gentoo, etc.) and put all your files on SD Card in slot 2

 

[Eniko]

For what it's worth, and I don't really play many games, but some games running on the Nokia internet tablets are 2x-scaled and look better for it, and GVM, the Palm OS emulator, also got a 2x scaling option in the second beta and it looks much better.

Thanks for the input, that makes me a lot more comfortable with my decision.

 

[Svartalf]

But don't forget: It's an open system. If you totally want a standard Linux distri where you can use all the stuff in the repository: Install Gentoo, Ubuntu ARM or anything else.

Indeed. Notaz has an older Ubuntu ARM image in hand already for the people with dev boards. It's not at all hard to do once you get the bootable stuff properly on the SDHC card... In fact, there should be a howto made up here shortly after release to show people HOW to do it.

QUOTE

But the default OS is aimed to NOT annoy anyone. It's meant for the PLAYERS, not for the Linux cracks. Players don't want to fiddle around to make stuff work - they want to copy it and play without any hazzle.



Again, everyone ought to repeat this to themselves several times, take a couple of deep breaths and move on here...

Ideally, we would have enough of the "usual stuff" in there that it'll mostly please the "Linux cracks" <* Looks at self, then raises his hand... *> but yet do precisely what you're looking for, which is that the system should work MORE like a gaming handheld than a MID out of the box, but that you can pour the MID on without making too much mess of things. In fact, that's my desire with what I'm doing right now. It may not have "everything", but the reality is, you're not going to want it- and if you do, you understand enough about Linux (our OUGHT to...) to be able to add it on your own anyhow. Even to the default firmware.

 

[Olexxy]

For what it's worth, and I don't really play many games, but some games running on the Nokia internet tablets are 2x-scaled and look better for it, and GVM, the Palm OS emulator, also got a 2x scaling option in the second beta and it looks much better.

Thanks for the input, that makes me a lot more comfortable with my decision.

Do you mean coding 400x240 and blow it to 800x480 with some algo (like pixel 1x1 -> 2x2) ? If so, I don't see how this would be any better than directly coding to 800x480... It's like the difference on a 1080p screen between a dvd upscaled to fullscreen and a bluray... You get the same proportions in the end, but the bluray was coded with much more details per surface unit (mm2 or in2 or whatever you use).
But of course it would require much more time to create the additional details in your game than doing it at a lower res and pixel doubling after.. Or if your game should look retro, then yes better having pixel doubling to create the retro effect than hardcoding all the redundant pixels creating the pixelisation effect

 

[mali]

I think it would benefit from the half-resolution-mode, which is a hardware feature as I understand it, so a software solution won't be needed?
Don't know it's just a guess, I'm no dev.

 

[Eniko]

For what it's worth, and I don't really play many games, but some games running on the Nokia internet tablets are 2x-scaled and look better for it, and GVM, the Palm OS emulator, also got a 2x scaling option in the second beta and it looks much better.

Thanks for the input, that makes me a lot more comfortable with my decision.

Do you mean coding 400x240 and blow it to 800x480 with some algo (like pixel 1x1 -> 2x2) ? If so, I don't see how this would be any better than directly coding to 800x480... It's like the difference on a 1080p screen between a dvd upscaled to fullscreen and a bluray... You get the same proportions in the end, but the bluray was coded with much more details per surface unit (mm2 or in2 or whatever you use).
But of course it would require much more time to create the additional details in your game than doing it at a lower res and pixel doubling after.. Or if your game should look retro, then yes better having pixel doubling to create the retro effect than hardcoding all the redundant pixels creating the pixelisation effect

Yes, it's meant to cut down on time I need to spend on art assets, for the most part. Halving the resolution means having only a quarter of the canvas to fill per sprite, which translates into a rather large workload reduction. My biggest fear was that it'd look bad, but this thread has put that to rest.

At least, on Pandora, on PC/Mac it would still look vexing when run in a window because the rest of your desktop will still make the game look blocky. But then that's not what I'm primarily writing it for anyway.

 

[wesbrown18]

I think it would benefit from the half-resolution-mode, which is a hardware feature as I understand it, so a software solution won't be needed?
Don't know it's just a guess, I'm no dev.

Yeah, there's the hardware 400x240 mode, which uses the LCD to do it. That's one thing that we're looking at, is getting this working.

Or you could just use the 2xSAI algorithm which will smooth out jaggy lines, and looks fairly good. I've found that 2xSAI isn't usually TOO computationally expensive.

The xu4 screenshots page has a nice comparison of some scalers that you can use. So, you can essentially 'upscale' your images rather nicely and it'll look better than straight pixel doubling.