Pandora Live / Pandora Network


vertice

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Now I know this is putting the cart before the horse here, but the recent discussions about the online store made me consider what further features we could provide on the pandora.

Basic social networking

From the mock ups / screenshots I have seen of the store, it seems as if it is going to require the user to log in, but what if we treat the login to the store as a federated identity.
numerous standards exist that could make it very useful, PRIMARILY openid but also oauth.

Tie that into LDAP on the backend, and feed that into an XMPP server (although i'm so used to using google for jabber these days), and you have

1) a pandora ID
2) A friend list
3) a chat mechanism
4) an incredibly useful routing mechanism for any kind of messages.

There are numerous libraries to speak to jabber servers, and the nice thing is you can build it so it queues messages locally (you don't have to be online
all the time, it can just poll and fetch).

The XMPP connection alone would make it possible to implement some turn based homebrew such as chess or go.

More advanced/invasive features

One of the biggest features of the console networks is how directly they are tied into the games themselves. So, to properly implement this would
mean that we would actually need to modify the source code of the emulators / games, and provide a "pandora-lib" of sorts, that implements
some standard features across all pandora apps.

Think of it as a more in-depth emulator front end, which at first could be as simple as setting the status of 'I am playing X game on Y emulator',
which also opens up the question of privacy settings.

This library should also be able to be used in homebrew games that have been written / ported to the pandora, and all the games on the store
that have been "pandora-enabled" could be flagged as such on the store.

I do not see applications needing to be implemented with this functionality. who cares if "i am using a word processor" or more shockingly
"i am browsing sexwithhippos.com". :rolleyes:

As the API evolves it could start providing features such as an emulator front end would (ie: a stock rom picker, a standard pause screen, access
to network features)

Really not expecting major things to be able to be done overnight, especially because we need to actually have the emulators ported first
to be able to see if the standard lib idea is even possible.

match making

Next part is match making, for which the OBVIOUS option is kalliera. However, it is closed source and very near dying.
Server-Client is not the best way to handle this either imo. If we do choose to implement kalliera (as in, if it's even possible),
there exists an open source implementation of the server component - http://www.emulinker.org/

What I think would be more interesting and way trickier, is seeing if we can get the people behind open kalliera to get involved.
They started as an open source re-implementation of kalliera, and then fizzled out 2 years ago,but it seems they recently
resurrected with some pretty lofty goals. http://sourceforge.net/projects/okai/

You can see their spec document here (http://okai.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/okai/trunk/docs/system-definition.tex?revision=78&view=markup)
Just parse out the tex :D

What could even be an interesting thing to try and do, is write a dummy USB device, which is actually the network input. Pretending to be usb HID.

in closing

yes this is a 1000ft overview of the idea, yes it's not possible to implement this stuff properly yet .. but a guy can dream =P

what other uses can you see for a pandora live / pandora network type system, and more interestingly .. what do you think a 'pandora-lib'
api should provide.

Something the pandora has that a lot of other situations don't is a small, loyal and fairly technical user base.
 
I haven't read your post in detail admittedly (I'm ninjaposting from work) but take a look at TINXL: http://pandorawiki.org/TINXL

There hasn't been any movement on it for a long while, but all it really needs is someone to get the ball rolling again. There is certainly plenty of interest in the idea. Maybe this thread could become the revival TINXL needs. :)
 
His idea is pretty much the same, TINXL with integrated XMPP client and a bit of twitter :p .

It's a good idea, but it would need a good configuration that let you choose the rights for each soft.
Maybe storing the rights to access server directly in the PND xml would be the best way.
 
Gruso said:
I haven't read your post in detail admittedly (I'm ninjaposting from work) but take a look at TINXL: http://pandorawiki.org/TINXL

There hasn't been any movement on it for a long while, but all it really needs is someone to get the ball rolling again. There is certainly plenty of interest in the idea. Maybe this thread could become the revival TINXL needs. :)
Interesting. Although a lot of what it suggests is easily assemble-able from off the shelf components.
No need to write a server, no need to write your own protocol.

All you do is send some XML to the jabber server. All the libraries you could ever want are available online.
There might even be XEP (xmpp enhancement protocols) that already implement what you need.
 
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KodeIn said:
His idea is pretty much the same, TINXL with integrated XMPP client and a bit of twitter :p .

That was kind of my point ;) If numerous people are having the same ideas, that's a good thing. Might as well build on the existing (somewhat abandoned) foundation rather than reinvent the wheel. Not that much of a wheel has been built yet.
 
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It's a bat habit, I'm frequently the captain obvious :rolleyes: or posting completely unrelated things...

I would like to help making this real... But I don't know much about XMPP besides using it and I never made any daemon.
I think we could also (not for the emulator, but for native Pandora games) make an online ranking.
 
KodeIn said:
His idea is pretty much the same, TINXL with integrated XMPP client and a bit of twitter :p .

It's a good idea, but it would need a good configuration that let you choose the rights for each soft.
Maybe storing the rights to access server directly in the PND xml would be the best way.

Yeah, which is why i mentioned needing more invasive options. For some applications it would
likely need to modify the code to include the message sending. (see for example running a specific rom, not
just whether you are running the application).

Then there is the question of how to do in-game messaging.

Hence it might take some work to make games TNXL-enabled ( i hate that name )
 
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On the server side, this would greatly depend on how the pandora store is being developed. I feel fairly strongly that there should only be a single login for the 'network', which ties into the online presence notification, friend list stuff and store. they can be loosely coupled however.

For initial testing we could probably get away with a gtalk server.


Library wise :
http://code.stanziq.com/strophe/ seems like a good option, but there's lots of libraries - http://xmpp.org/software/libraries.shtml

I don't know enough about the development environment on the pandora to be able to make a good decision about the UI, I expect GTK would be available though.

This would basically be a special purpose jabber client, but a nice thing about jabber being that you can be connected multiple times. So you could sign up your pandora
account with your desktop client and recieve and send messages.
 
Vertice said:
Yeah, which is why i mentioned needing more invasive options. For some applications it would
likely need to modify the code to include the message sending. (see for example running a specific rom, not
just whether you are running the application).

Then there is the question of how to do in-game messaging.

Hence it might take some work to make games TNXL-enabled ( i hate that name )

Do you know Growl for Mac Os X ? It shows small translucent pop-ups on the top-left of your screen, over all the windows.
When you click on the pop-up, it put the focus on the source window, bringing it it front of the others.
It's configurable on a per application basis wether or not it make sound, the style of pop-up and everything else.
So it's a central pop-up system, pretty useful, that way, you don't have to search around all you soft where to setup the pop-ups.

Maybe an app like that could be made, then we could use pidgin (I think it's the standard IM shipped with the pandora).
 
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KodeIn said:
Do you know Growl for Mac Os X ? It shows small translucent pop-ups on the top-left of your screen, over all the windows.
When you click on the pop-up, it put the focus on the source window, bringing it it front of the others.
It's configurable on a per application basis wether or not it make sound, the style of pop-up and everything else.
So it's a central pop-up system, pretty useful, that way, you don't have to search around all you soft where to setup the pop-ups.

Maybe an app like that could be made, then we could use pidgin (I think it's the standard IM shipped with the pandora).
Yup. i'm just unsure of how to get the same effect with the software libraries available on the pandora, plus all the stuff that would be displayed.

IE: can we even depend on X11 , and will some full screen apps really dislike us trying to layer windows over them (probably). The same way that
growl popups don't happen when you are in opengl games.

Then there's the very very limited screen property.

Personally, i'm envisioning something that you can bind to the pandora button on the device itself (kind of like the xbox 360 guide button), which
will bring up the friend list etc. What does that button do at the moment anyway?
 
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From ED's videos, it looks like it send you back to XFCE, but I'm unsure.

About growl, you're right, but it would have been great :rolleyes:
 
IIRC, the Pandora button returns you to XFCE if you're in Pmenu, but if you're already in XFCE it brings up a little app selection menu. It was said a while back that it was off the table as far as remapping goes, but I'm not sure if that's still the case.
 
Pandora button, power button, lid close and other things are configured as part of libpnd.. Pndevmapperd . You can alter what the buttons thus do.
One thing we,ve had to wrestle with is never knowing what environment.. X or no x? Xfce, pmenu, ubuntu netbook launcher or other? Could even be anoher distro.. And sdl, OpenGL, or x11 API?

It makes some things tough :) (ie: If an app is fullscreen sdl on /Dev/fb, hard to have another app switch onto the top, but if it's x11 then you can, etc.. MS has it easy :)

skeephone
 
I think at first, if we were able to send info about the game played, it would be a great achievement.
The daemon, itself would be pretty much portable, I think.
The real problem is chatting while gaming.
An option would be making a lib available to the devs that will only take care of the chat system, and they'll have to provide the graphical interface.

To be honest my knowledge is pretty weak, I just throw random ideas hoping that one could help.
 
Social networking makes me turn my head and spit every time I hear the expression. As a developer please explain why the hell anyone should have to login or register anything to download a free game or software. Erecting road blocks is more what it sounds like.
 
I don't think anyone is suggesting that you must login to download anything. Craig's unnamed software source isn't going to have a gate on it (is it?) so there'd be no point. The idea is more to provide you with a Pandora-specific identity so you can connect with other people who also have a Pandora and want to discuss the game you're playing or play with you. You know, social things.
 
well, if craig/ED would set-up an xmpp-server with group- and shared-roster-support, tied with some sql-magic to the appstore-accounts, this would make an excellent start.
Any xmpp-client could be set to autostart in pmenu/xfce/unl and thus be always accessible, as long as you don't currently play some 3d-game.
You want to find some people to play quake3-with? just join the quake3-user-group. You'll get a new category "quake3" in your roster (contact-list), showing you all online users in that group. You can even broadcast a message to them (like "new quake3 deathmatch at 136.172.001.002:532 in 2 minutes").

In-game support and TINXL-magic can come later, xmpp's nature even allows us to have a decent shift from one approach to the other, since you can log into it with multiple clients.

did I tell that I love xmpp? :D
 
conso said:
well, if craig/ED would set-up an xmpp-server with group- and shared-roster-support, tied with some sql-magic to the appstore-accounts, this would make an excellent start.
Any xmpp-client could be set to autostart in pmenu/xfce/unl and thus be always accessible, as long as you don't currently play some 3d-game.

Yeah, and apparently pidgin ships with the device, so libpurple is on the system already .. it supports these xmpp extensions out of the box -
http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/SupportedXEPs

And i don't think a full featured client is needed. At least in my mind the device / network connection should be handled by a bespoke jabber client
written specifically for the task.

And as far as 'social networking' being a gate, it would be completely optional. The entire idea is that it would allow you to interact with other pandora
owners, and eventually lead to things like online leaderboards and match making.

Simple example .. you add a couple of like minded pandora users to your friends list, and you notice one day down the line that they all seem to be
playing some new port of risk or settlers of catan that someone whipped up. Now you know that there's a cool new game with your interests out there,
and that there's a bunch of people you can already play online with.
 
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As Vertice said, it's not facebook (or any similar things), it's more like some kind of automatic statuses.
"I'm currently listening to blahblahblah" would become "I'm currently playing <some game>".
It's an opportunity to make an unified system for all the games, that will allow players to find partners for a game and have centralized ladder/ranking/whatever.

And if it was possible, having a central chat system for pandora games
 
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