New Linux Game Handheld?

[Svartalf]

Damn, such an insightful goldmine of information! Dragonlord, is your engine available anywhere for the public to see? Is it available for licensing, or will it be? I'd like to sample it.

He's got a website... Not at my home machine where the links to the stuff are- I'll push an update to this comment when I get back if he doesn't beat me to it. It's definitely an interesting concept he's got and it'd end a lot of this BS on Linux gaming if he can get it done and get people to take him up on the engine.

[edit]

As promised...

Project Epsylon
The Drag[en]gine Game Engine

[Svartalf]

I'd say support both consoles. Both the enthusiast, high end grade Pandora, which is analogous to the ps3 or the x360, and lower end more general purpose wiz handheld, which is analogous to the Wii

I didn't say not to- just that if he's tied to ES 2.0, then he needed to target the Pandora first and then the Wiz, which is only ever capable of an ES 1.1 type engine title. If you're ES 1.1, as long as you're not eating CPU like candy (Heh... I seriously doubt that most of the titles I've got access to will ever run on a Wiz... ) you should target both of them, which shouldn't be too hard out of the gate.

[Dragonlord]

@xav1r:
I would doubt it's a goldmine source :P . But yeah there are 4 sites around ( two for the engine, two for the game ) with the infos. The engine itself is GPL ( maybe more licenses later since consoles have a tendency to allow only very restrictive licenses ). I'm usually though not for posting URLs left and right as this is not nice netiquette... but let's see if Svartalf has the right nose on finding my project... I'm rather sure he did since he looks like a smart person

[Svartalf]

@xav1r:
I would doubt it's a goldmine source :P . But yeah there are 4 sites around ( two for the engine, two for the game ) with the infos.

Four of them... Guess I need to find the other two, then.

[edit]

Heh... Found 'em... On ModDB's servers...

The engine itself is GPL ( maybe more licenses later since consoles have a tendency to allow only very restrictive licenses ).

Heh... The GPL presents an issue with the console space. You might be able to do a Console version with a really restricted license so long as you retain all rights to the code on the engine. You could do that via an assignment like the FSF does, but people might be ancy over you "stealing" their stuff since it'll go into effectively a black hole on the consoles...

I'm usually though not for posting URLs left and right as this is not nice netiquette...

Heh... Someone that knows what that means. That's a bit of rarity in this day and age.

but let's see if Svartalf has the right nose on finding my project... I'm rather sure he did since he looks like a smart person

Heh... I don't think I'm all that smart...

[Dragonlord]

Four of them... Guess I need to find the other two, then.

[edit]

Heh... Found 'em... On ModDB's servers...

... that's it. Two are on my own server while the other two are on ModDB. It's really a nice platform to get some publicity without doing the nasty things ( like URL plugs or other things ). Quite a project INtense! put together there. For not being tied job wise with games in any way he really pours a lot of effort into this website. Kudos for that to him.

Heh... The GPL presents an issue with the console space. You might be able to do a Console version with a really restricted license so long as you retain all rights to the code on the engine. You could do that via an assignment like the FSF does, but people might be ancy over you "stealing" their stuff since it'll go into effectively a black hole on the consoles...

I had in mind to craft additional licenses for such restricted platforms. Since as the author you can release the stuff under as many licenses you want. The big question though is only how such a license in the end would look like. But that's future music so far and I'm going to tackle that tricky topic once the time is right. Important is that the engine itself is freely available to the interested people. If it is locked down in a commercial license on a closed console doesn't bother me since people have access to the original files from which those projects derived. But I could be a bit optimistic on that one. From what I gathered from Coumans ( he's into PS3 stuff ) those consoles can be quite a minefield for non-commercial software.

Heh... Someone that knows what that means. That's a bit of rarity in this day and age.

That's true... in times of 4-Chanism or 1337-speak :O

Heh... I don't think I'm all that smart...

You know how to navigate a minefield called "Linux Game Porting". Alone for doing this properly you can't be from the dumb sort of people

[xav1r]

You know how to navigate a minefield called "Linux Game Porting". Alone for doing this properly you can't be from the dumb sort of people

I agree 100%. You could (and should) be giving lectures here where i go to school at, instead of the morons who call themselves faculty at this school. Heh, one of them actually said that a 3d engine is too much work for one single person (he obviously hasnt met you dragonlord) and that it's mostly about electronics. :P

[Svartalf]

I agree 100%. You could (and should) be giving lectures here where i go to school at, instead of the morons who call themselves faculty at this school.

Oh, they can't all be THAT bad...maybe...perhaps...well...

Heh, one of them actually said that a 3d engine is too much work for one single person (he obviously hasnt met you dragonlord) and that it's mostly about electronics. :P

Nice...

On a nicer note, I should be getting my hands on some OpenGL ES capable hardware in varying forms very shortly- it's good that I think, think, that I just zoomed the sound problem.

[xav1r]

Oh, they can't all be THAT bad...maybe...perhaps...well...



Nice...

On a nicer note, I should be getting my hands on some OpenGL ES capable hardware in varying forms very shortly- it's good that I think, think, that I just zoomed the sound problem.

Cool. Noob question alert. How do you know if a handheld device is OpenGL ES compliant? I'd like to get one too as well, and probably an OpenGL ES 2.0 one too. (one thats not as expensive as the Pandora).

[Svartalf]

Cool. Noob question alert. How do you know if a handheld device is OpenGL ES compliant? I'd like to get one too as well, and probably an OpenGL ES 2.0 one too. (one thats not as expensive as the Pandora).

It'll state it in the PR or official specs.

The Wiz is ES 1.1 capable.
The iPhone is ES 1.1 capable.
There's a few other 1.1 class devices out there.

The only three ES 2.0 capable devices (without an ES 2.0 to GL 2.0 wrapper...) that are close to or on the market right now that I know of are:

Pandora
Beagleboard
Nokia's next NXXX series web tablet (Rumored...)

There's several others rumored to be about, including something from Intel, but none of them are "open" in the normal sense of the concept or they're just in the drawing board stages of things. If you get Linux type access to things it'll be more like what you're seeing right now. Part of that "high" price for the Pandora is the price you're paying for the muscle being brought to bear with it. You're buying a gaming device made with the most powerful mobile device part shipping right at the moment. If you bought a Snapdragon based device (if you could even GET one, they only taped out real devices for engineering prototypes about 2 months ago...), it'd run you the same price. The ST Microelectronics SoC might come out with a "cheaper" unit, priced similarly to the Wiz, but unfortunately, it's NOT the same thing as the Beagle or the Pandora as they're all using ARM11 cores which are about half as fast as the Cortex-A8.

[xav1r]

It'll state it in the PR or official specs.

The Wiz is ES 1.1 capable.
The iPhone is ES 1.1 capable.
There's a few other 1.1 class devices out there.

The only three ES 2.0 capable devices (without an ES 2.0 to GL 2.0 wrapper...) that are close to or on the market right now that I know of are:

Pandora
Beagleboard
Nokia's next NXXX series web tablet (Rumored...)

There's several others rumored to be about, including something from Intel, but none of them are "open" in the normal sense of the concept or they're just in the drawing board stages of things. If you get Linux type access to things it'll be more like what you're seeing right now. Part of that "high" price for the Pandora is the price you're paying for the muscle being brought to bear with it. You're buying a gaming device made with the most powerful mobile device part shipping right at the moment. If you bought a Snapdragon based device (if you could even GET one, they only taped out real devices for engineering prototypes about 2 months ago...), it'd run you the same price. The ST Microelectronics SoC might come out with a "cheaper" unit, priced similarly to the Wiz, but unfortunately, it's NOT the same thing as the Beagle or the Pandora as they're all using ARM11 cores which are about half as fast as the Cortex-A8.

Ah ok. Now, more noob question alert. So is the cortex the most powerful mobile processor right now? I thought ARM licensed their cores to TI for it, is that right, or does TI make all the processor hardware required? I'd like to know how does that work. And also, I've been browsing the opengl site to find out more about it, and learn how to program for it. From what ive browsed, there isnt one specific SDK, as in for example, the directx one, that you can download from the opengl site, but many different solutions you can get anywhere else instead. So where exactly is opengl? In the gfx card drivers?? In the opengl32.dll on windows? what do i need to know that opengl 2.1 for example is available on my computer to program for it?