Looking For A Small Project To Get Started


NsN

Still Fresh
Joined
Jul 22, 2008
Messages
5
Hi,
i'm pretty interested in the pandora and will try to get one of the first batch. Since i want to contribute to the community and likely will have some ideas for improvements when i get one, i would like to prepare myself for the release by getting to know the development environment.

I want to do something useful, and fun (for me), so I'm looking for some kind of small project to test.

My previous experience:
- basic C knowledge
- basic C++ knowledge
- basic Java knowedge
- very basic ARM7 Assembler knowledge (maybe 3000 lines of code in total)
- some basic experience developing for an embedded linux system
- light background in computer graphics / image processing (i know what a FFT does and have implemented a DCT butterfly in ASM)
- Some small SDL and OpenGL experience
- The usual webdeveloper stuff (CSS, JS, PHP, HTML, SQL, AJAX...)
- If mostly worked on small projects ( max. ~ 8000 loc).

I'm looking for:
- Something that can be done with little to medium initial setup, (i.e. nothing that needs transfering D3D to OpenGL 2.0)
- Something at least moderately usefull
- A small project, i've tried to contribute to bigger projects like libavcodec/ffmpeg before, but normally it takes quite a while, just to understand the code, let alone make a meaningful contribution.

I will probably use the pandora as a general purpose "laptop" more than a gaming platform, but as far as i can tell there is no final gui yet, so i guess there is not much use in creating or adapting a "productive" application, is there?

Are there some small easy emulators / games that need porting and are not too advanced?
 
You could check this thread to get some ideas.
 
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D.C. Thanks I've looked around, but most of these seem to be heavily dependant on the gui, should i just start with an SDL or QT based gui, or should i wait until the gui is further finalized?

Julius:
Looks very interesting, i imagine that the DSP could be heavily utilized to offload the actual sound processing, another challenge might be to adapt the gui for 400px height.

General: Are there any GUI - Look and Feel guidelines? So far i have only found technical specs.
 
Maybe you could start by porting something like Mozilla Prism?

It would be very useful for sites like Google Calendar etc. and you wouldn't have to worry too much about the GUI, as most of it will be able to run full screen ;)

It would also give you the chance to get familiar with coding for the touch screen too (maybe integrating mouse gestures?) :)

Welcome to the forum btw.
 
NsN said:
Hi,
i'm pretty interested in the pandora and will try to get one of the first batch. Since i want to contribute to the community and likely will have some ideas for improvements when i get one, i would like to prepare myself for the release by getting to know the development environment.

I want to do something useful, and fun (for me), so I'm looking for some kind of small project to test.

My previous experience:
- basic C knowledge
- basic C++ knowledge
- basic Java knowedge
- very basic ARM7 Assembler knowledge (maybe 3000 lines of code in total)
- some basic experience developing for an embedded linux system
- light background in computer graphics / image processing (i know what a FFT does and have implemented a DCT butterfly in ASM)
- Some small SDL and OpenGL experience
- The usual webdeveloper stuff (CSS, JS, PHP, HTML, SQL, AJAX...)
- If mostly worked on small projects ( max. ~ 8000 loc).

I'm looking for:
- Something that can be done with little to medium initial setup, (i.e. nothing that needs transfering D3D to OpenGL 2.0)
- Something at least moderately usefull
- A small project, i've tried to contribute to bigger projects like libavcodec/ffmpeg before, but normally it takes quite a while, just to understand the code, let alone make a meaningful contribution.

I will probably use the pandora as a general purpose "laptop" more than a gaming platform, but as far as i can tell there is no final gui yet, so i guess there is not much use in creating or adapting a "productive" application, is there?

Are there some small easy emulators / games that need porting and are not too advanced?
I would recommend writing a simple game using SDL. My first GP2X project was a crappy demo.
My second was ASCII Pong.
After that I had got to grips with things and develop Penjin and then released CromoZome.
If you create something yourself, I think you learn more... just my opinion.
 
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Tripmonkey_uk said:
theoddbot said:
Tripmonkey_uk said:
Maybe you could start by porting something like Mozilla Prism?



Basic c++ skills and Mozilla do not really go together.

Fair enough. I wasn't sure how much coding would actually be involved :unsure:

It probably wouldn't be too difficult, it's already available for linux. The developers might even be willing to do an ARM port themselves, think of the business they could get competing with mobile Opera on ARM-based cellphones--I think the idea would at least raise an eyebrow.
 
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CyruzDraxs said:
It probably wouldn't be too difficult, it's already available for linux. The developers might even be willing to do an ARM port themselves, think of the business they could get competing with mobile Opera on ARM-based cellphones--I think the idea would at least raise an eyebrow.
The amount of people who are wanting to do things like swapping between reading a walk through and a game, you would have thought it would be worth it. It would look a hell of a lot more professional IMO :)
 
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