Pandora Cube 2 Engine On The Pandora?


Jonttu

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I'm really a noob when it comes down to engines, but would the Cube 2 engine work on the Pandora?
 
Although I couldn't find any system requirements info on their site, someone on their forums said it ran on their Intel P3 750 MHZ, nvidia geforce 2, 128 MB of ram with 70 fps average.

So yeah, it could work if someone ported it.
 
I'm looking at a port of Cube 2 / Sauerbraten to Pandora myself. A few points to note:
  • Larger levels require more powerful systems due to larger vertex buffers being built from the internal octrees; this can however be optimized. Then again, ioquake3 has reduced performance on improperly designed maps too.
  • Whilst the game part of Cube 2 is easily converted to use the dpad & analog sticks (or should be); there will be difficulty in porting the map editing functionality. This would be really worthwhile as cooperative editing via WiFi on the handset would be just awesome!
  • The latest Cube 2 would need some of it's shading features cut as I strongly assume they would not work on the "lower end GPU" compared to what most people are playing it on at the moment.
That said, it is a tight little engine that can (with a little editing) be a great foundation for other games on the Pandora console (hence my interest in it).

--BenT
 
uuuurr you realise that a geforce 2 doesn't even have real shaders... I have played cube 2 on a geforce 2 mx 400 64mb and is was playable.... and i am pretty sure that the powervr out classes the geforce 2 considerably... shareing system memory might be the only issue

how does the map editing work anyway i know to enter map editing mode you just hit "e"

perhaps I didn't have the latest version but it has only been since early spring since i ran it... also i thought that the powervr DOES have shaders so what is the problem there?
 
The latest version of Cube 2 uses GLSL shaders for some of the cooler effects. While the PowerVR support shaders, I'd put money on it not being able to handle GLSL (at least to a degree that all cube2 maps run decently!).

Cube2 can run without shaders but at that point, it doesn't have the "glitz" of ioquake3.

--BenT
 
BenT, from your observations. How easily can textures be mipmapped and LOD be utilised to be optimised for the small screen? Is tile-based rendering textures, or do they include vertexs, and will this have conflicts with the unique vertex buffer used in cube2? Sorry if my questions are a little misguided.
 
BenT said:
The latest version of Cube 2 uses GLSL shaders for some of the cooler effects. While the PowerVR support shaders, I'd put money on it not being able to handle GLSL (at least to a degree that all cube2 maps run decently!).

Cube2 can run without shaders but at that point, it doesn't have the "glitz" of ioquake3.

--BenT
Heh...

ES 2.0 uses GLSL ES (Or ESSL...) for shaders... ;)

It's going to have 8 pipelines for things, so it may be able to "keep up" with the resolutions we're running at. We're just going to have to tinker and just see what we can/can't do with the Pandora. :D
 
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In answer to the questions regarding mipmapping - this is not really a problem. Cube 2's default textures are pretty small by today's standards and should be fine for the Pandora as I see it.

I'm not sure what you meant by the textures including vertices... You need to be a little more detailed on that one for me to respond.

On the subject of OpenGL ES, what version of ES is being used / implemented for the Pandora unit? Sure, having some shaders would be good, but I still don't know if they are going to be available.

--BenT
 
I'm playing with the Sauerbraten Engine on my old PC with GeForce 3. I'ts running fast but of course some Effects are missing. (most of the advanced Texture ans Shader effects in Sauerbraten need a better Graphic Card)
For the mobile Pandora, this still should look good enough even without every effect. AND We would have a great ingame-Editor straight onto the Pandora. No PC needed to make Levels. :) I love the simple Sauerbraten Editor, much more user/beginner friendly than the "bigger ones" from other Engines.
 
icurafu said:
Pandora has OpenGL ES 2.0 hardware. I understand that the ES 2.0 driver may not be available yet.
Kind of weakens the unit to not have the drivers for the 3D support. I suspect that it'll have them available for us
when the first 3k unit run becomes available. I'm making my game dev plans accordingly. If it were me (and I
didn't already have entirely too much on my plate...) I'd be working on a port to ES 2.0 for Cube2 and see if it
makes the cut on the Pandora. If not, you can always work at other platforms down the line as ES isn't going away,
it's likely to be an option choice on desktops in the near future along with full-on OpenGL, etc.
 
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ogl-es2 means that you must use shaders for everything, because the fixed function pipeline is almost completely dropped. Not only deprecated, but simply non-existant. It's also completely different to ogl-es 1, which is basically a simplified OpenGL 1.5. Instead, ogl-es2 is much more similar to OpenGL 3 as far as one knows the ogl3 API.
If you don't use the ogl-es2 driver you will either have to use a software emulation of OpenGL (i.e. Mesa, which still has to be ported, though) or your own software renderer...
 
icurafu said:
The device supports 1.1 and 2.0. So I would assume that 1.1 is there.
If it is, then it'd be a separate driver set. ES 2.0 is not a superset of ES 1.1 like with OpenGL versions- they're differing beasts.
 
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Anyone know if AssaultCube (video link) uses the original cube or Cube 2 / Sauerbraten engine?
The website just says Cube, but it looks more like the Sauerbraten engine to me. If it only uses the original one, they must have put in quite a few hours of work to get it like that :)

p.s Not got around to trying it yet. Anyone know if it's any good?
 
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Assault Cube uses the original Cube engine, and as such is 2D only in that you cannot have bridges & tunnels over one another. That said, it's pretty good - like Doom was :)

--BenT
 
BenT said:
Assault Cube uses the original Cube engine, and as such is 2D only in that you cannot have bridges & tunnels over one another. That said, it's pretty good - like Doom was :)

--BenT
Cheers for the clarification BenT. I wonder if they're going to update the mod to use the new engine soon? that would be sweet.
As it's a little bit slower than most FPS's due to the weapon reloading and being more focused on team play, I think it would be pretty damn good on a handheld like the Pandora :D
 
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BenT said:
[*]Whilst the game part of Cube 2 is easily converted to use the dpad & analog sticks (or should be); there will be difficulty in porting the map editing functionality. This would be really worthwhile as cooperative editing via WiFi on the handset would be just awesome!
(apologies in advance if I am misunderstanding) Can you convert the mouse input to touchscreen? With that and the keyboard, editing should be a breeze.
 
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