Pandora Wow Factor.


sm1988

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Apr 15, 2008
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I was thinking that the pandora will be more capable than the psp in terms of the flashy lights and beeps but I don't see that there will be any game titles that will push these capabilities. don't get me wrong the concept of pandora and it being created for the developer community is fantastic I just think it would be cool tho see the final fantasies and all the other must haves shine on the pandora also. especially when the pandora is such a capable machine BTW kudos to all the developers out there. without you there would be no reason for the pandora to be created and thus nothing for us tho look forward to. your long hours are much appreciated :)
 
Unfortunately, the "big guys" who would bring such wonders as final fantasy, etc. probably wouldn't touch the pandora... BUT I still feel that independent game companies have an advantage here, not only do they have a very nice piece of hardware to push the limits of bringing you gaming goodness, but they also usually bring in gameplay, graphics, and system use that the big guys wouldn't...

I'd say I'm more hopeful to see a lot of cutting edge games come from indies, as I'd rather I put money in some small guys pocket than throw another bill on EA's monopoly.

*shrugs* I guess we'll see...
 
The wow factor is its the most powerful device you'll ever make games/programs for.

There most likly won't be very many super awsome commercial games for the pandora...But there will be plenty of personal developers will make some cool games and ports for the unit...in due time.
 
I always thought that console games tended to use a lot of ASM. It wouldn't be such a quick port to make comerical PSP games work on the Pandora. It's certainly capable, and you might find they look a lot better on a better screen, higher res and shader effects.

I'd love to see Vice city stories btw on the Pandora. :D
 
Anyone who uses assembly without absolutely having to deserves their pain.

I think I can easily push it to it's limits by compiling linux, OOo, KDE and Apache and outputting stuff with thousands of vertexes :D
 
No big commercial game company will produce a game for a system where they'd be lucky to sell 1000 copies.

Small independent devs, who also enjoy the hobbyist aspects of game development - maybe we'll some support there. But the Capcoms and Rockstars of the world won't look at us.
 
sindbad said:
Anyone who uses assembly without absolutely having to deserves their pain.

I think I can easily push it to it's limits by compiling linux, OOo, KDE and Apache and outputting stuff with thousands of vertexes :D
Now that sounds cool--instead of outputting thousands of messages that no one bothers to read anyway (unless there's an error), someone could create a program to generate abstract movies out of compilation batches :D

Hm, I might try that one day :p
 
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Well I think the over-looked fact is that developers will have access to OpenGL on a machine that has enough CPU and RAM.

I doub't we'll see ports of PSP titles but I do think we'll see games using OpengL 3D graphics that build on PSP titles.

There are some nice open source 3D games for PC out there, with OpenGL on the Pandora, hopefully we'll see comparable ones for it too.

There is a chicken and egg thing going here as well. If the community produces a killer app for the first 3000 run, then there might be a second run....

I know I didn't develop much for my gp2x because my game development background usually starts with an #include <GL.h> With this restriction lifted on the Pandora, those who been developing 3D games for PCs over the last few years can now look at reproducing similar effots on the Pandora.

I envisage that maybe the first community homebrew title to push the limits could be a solid car racing game akin to early NFS. I would also like to see something like Draken make its way to the Pandora.

I know I'll be doing my best to see these sort of things happen.
 
You won't see any of the (edit: already existing) opensource PC games max out the Pandora as they are made for systems that have stacks of RAM.

Unless you get a game like Quake3, add FSAA and motion blur and other effects.
 
@OP

I think this is the catch 22 with Pandora.

While dev's and tech' geeks will be chuffed knowing all the impressive technical things it is capable of, the average user isnt going to notice if behind the simplistic graphics of a mini game - 1 gazillion calculations per second are being processed.

And indie devs dont have the time or resources to wow us with jawdropping gfx and immersive game play.

Pandora is the plain, geeky girl in the hand held crowd.
 
icurafu said:
You won't see any of the (edit: already existing) opensource PC games max out the Pandora as they are made for systems that have stacks of RAM.

Unless you get a game like Quake3, add FSAA and motion blur and other effects.
Well... or you scale down the textures to an eighth of their original size. And possibly implement a different loading algorithm that doen't need as much memory.

But yes, for those games which really do need a gig of ram, any port would be a lot of work, and even then, would only work if the game was horribly memory inefficient. Fortunately, at least in some cases (e.g. Zelda Classic - see the 2x port thread, although obviously this won't max out Pandora) this is how it is.
 
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A thought occurred to me.

Perhaps to get a game to look absolutely amazing, it doesn't even have to be 3d. I'm sure that there are plenty of side-scrolling GP games that could get a bit of a visual tweak, where instead of drawing in 2d mode, it could run a little like Castlevania, Symphony of the Night (PSX), and draw all it's 2d sprites in a 3d environment. With sophisticated enough shaders, perhaps even some lighting effects are possible (naturally full on shadows would not be possible, but with a makeshift heightmap, you could probably do highlights and self-shading).
 
I'd make an estimated guess that those games needing 512mb of ram etc. will be able to run with 128mb with some neater code.

The initial show off games will likely be Quake3 and Quake mods on max detail and effects, they should look pretty damned nice at 800*480. They will instantly look a lot sharper than the PSP.
 
Wait a sec.
Prob a dumb question but is Quake3 really possible? Is it open source?
 
DTH said:
Wait a sec.
Prob a dumb question but is Quake3 really possible? Is it open source?
Hi,

ioquake3

The engine is open source but the game remains the property of ID Software.

Bye, Magic Sam
 
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DTH said:
Wait a sec.
Prob a dumb question but is Quake3 really possible? Is it open source?
The engine is; the artistic content is not. The most popular actively maintained version is ioquake3.
 
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