Ziz
Advanced Member
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2006
- Messages
- 3,583
Hi guys,
First of all: If you don't want to read my whole wall of text, this is fine. But please consider, whether it really makes sense to write an answer then. I also want to apologize for my bad English, but you are probably already used to it anyway.
I've been in the board now for four years. I joined back in 2011 while a homebrew competition was happening. Back in these days I started to use my old gp2x again (after two or three years of abstinence of the scene) and searched for active boards. I was active again in the German gp2x board and also wanted to be more active in gp32x.de, too, but at that time the board was already dead. I searched for recent informations about the gp2x, installed open2x, used some very neat emulators (gpsp is awesome!) and started to develop for this very fine device again.
That was the point, where I joined the OpenPandora board. There was the already mentioned Homebrew competition. I realized, nobody except me would play my games on a gp2x and as gp32x was already dead, the same would probably happen with releases for Wiz and Caanoo. So I joined this board to tell about my software renderer here in the competition thread.
It worked out very well. Much better than I expected. You have to consider, I left the community as noob with good, but too chaotic programming skills. I made some small releases for the gp2x (A clock and a function plotter) when it was still used, but all in all my programs were rubbish. It was different now. When I "rejoined" the scene, I were a (lot) better developer, furthermore I started to study computer science in the meantime. So I got a quite good feedback to my software renderer and my first game: Snowman.
As I joined it anyway I started lurking around in the board. Even without owning a pandora the topics were often quite interesting. I tried to convince as much people as possible to go multi plattform and to release their games for the gp2x, too - which worked quite often. But I also enjoyed offtopic discussions or discussions about retro games. OpenPandora was a very neat place for every retro lover - be it with or without pandora (at that time, even some pandora presellers didn't receive their units). In the very end I made the third place and won a SD card (in the next years I will win a lot of them). One big point about this community was also the Linux and open software affinity, which I enjoyd a lot!
Then the RIOT competition came. It was awesome. Best. Competition. Ever. It was MADE for me. I undertake too much (Schizophrenia was never in a good state, probably will never), but I reached the fifth place with Puzzletube. It was a great time. I could even test most of the RIOT games under Linux or wine and some games even with my gp2x! We had so much new hopes (AAAA, Rainy Days, Paperwars), so much troll fun (Skylark, Guitar on Fire). I still think Geek 'em up deserved better, but anyway... I think I won another SD card. Everbody was still very excited about everything. I meet a lot new people and enjoyed the stay in the open pandora board very much.
I have to admit, I am not sure, whether one or two competitions followed. At least I remember the "Pandora resurrection" competition. It had very good attempts and some nice release, but it started to anger me. I don't want to go too much into detail, but winning a (second and golden!) Pandora for trying, failing and letting someone else doing the hard work? Anyway. Not my beer, but still grinds my gears. I would have won another SD card and a voucher for ED's shop with a new release of Puzzletube or Snowman, I forgot. Sometime I wrote "Schwerkraft", too. Probably for another competition, but I can't remember. However instead I asked ED for a bigger voucher. Later I bought a GCW-Zero from it and later again I found someone, who wanted to switch it for a Pandora, but that's another story (from which exists a pandoralive post
).
Now there hasn't been a competition for a long time. There were plans. There were crappy ones. I am not sure, but this may be one reason, why the board has changed. So we are coming to the interesting part, why I am writing done these thoughts. The board changed. It is not the friendly, supporting place anymore it have been. I don't want to tell you, that you are rude or unfriendly (however some members indeed went more dickhead lately). But I miss some things I found here in the very beginning.
As said: I miss the competitions, especially the board overarching ones like the RIOT competition. It was a lot of fun seeing the progress of the games trying to get the best result before the dead line. Even without owning a pandora, it was fun! We got so much awesome stuff like C4A. It was an incredible push in the activity of the board. Today even the games of the already passed competition aren't finished. I never got Paperwars to run on my Pandora when I finally got one. I didn't hear anything about AAAA the last years and we all know the end of Rainy day (the name is a self-fulfilling prophecy).
But beside competitions I also miss the general feedback for developers and porters. I know, I whine a lot about this, but the feedback for my recent game Hase is sobering. I don't think I will continue developing this game. It just doesn't make fun to spend so much time without feedback. Did anybody notice my Harry Potter named weapons? I don't think so... And I know, that I am not the only one with that feeling. Ptitseb has the same problem with his ports and even notaz with his awesome work.
I think a subitem of this problem is the shrinking user base. In the past we had more active users. Where is foxblock? Why did so much users loose interest in the Pandora? Only because of the Pyra? I don't think so, this started earlier. We have an active C64 Community out there, but you want to tell me the pandora gets boring, because it is now ~6 years old? Same for gp2x, wiz, caanoo and dingoo. I don't see a reason to stop developing for them (except the bad battery time of the gp2x, but battery switching is retro!). I read the "retro magazine" (German magazine about old games) from time to time. There are plenty of old games, I didn't even hear about it, which would run in one of the dozen emulators of my gp2x. Or to come back: On my pandora. So I can't explain, why the users are going. I just can tell, that this is a fact. And other user probably go, because others did, too. But this is a secondary effect.
However the board is not inactive (like gp32x). It is alive. Just different. When I look at the most read topics of the last months I see keyboard threads, the alluminum thread, minecraft (it doesn't even run well), spam (with Strigoi leading the way) and in generell Pyra related stuff, be it ED's blog (which is nice, no offence) or button or keyboard designs. Of course there is the Diablo thread, but it needed 5 days until someone tested it. Mandatory excuse for myself: I don't own the game and didn't have time. But in fact: This is an excuse. I am part of the board, so the same rules apply to me like for the rest of the board. I was just not interested enough. But why? I love Diablo II and always wanted to play Diablo I. THAT would be the perfect time to do it. But I did nothing. The whole board lurches in semiactivity. Nothing happens, but we have 100-pages-threads of it. And if something happens nothing happens.
So, why did I write all this? I don't know myself. I just thought, I had to write down my feelings about this place. It was awesome. It went meeh... I don't think the Pyra will fix this. Yes, we will still have some very Pyra related releases, probably emulators and some optimized games. However the most interest of the board these days isn't Retro anymore. We are talking about PSX, N64, Dreamcast and Nintendo DS. These were great console - no question - but not really Retro. Most of the users want 3d graphics. I know that, my games had bad game mechanics but simple 3d graphics, why they were quite successful. Furhtermore the Pyra will be a mini computer even more than the pandora. So new users with new use cases will join, who are not interested in some hacky homebrew anymore, if they can install the best worms clone ever with sudo apt-get install hedgewars. Maybe the Pandora discussions even killed gp32x (there were senseless keyboard and button threads, too!) in the very first place? Interesting theory. We will see. If a new Pyra board will be created like openpandora.org as reaction to gp32x, this board will probably die, too.
So imho the Pyra community will most of the time nag about some first problems with the first runs (which is normal), how to use Linux and discuss how to emulate best the mentioned systems above and of course x86 windows. Sometimes I think it was a bad decision for the Pyra to stay with ARM. Don't get me wrong, I like ARM. But the mass likes x86 windows games more and want them to play on the go. If the Pyra sucessor would get an x86 chip, I am quite sure Windows 7 will be ready to be installed after two weeks. In the past I thought the Pandora community was full of Linux enthusiasts. Now I think it is full of people, who uses Linux, because it is there and not so hard as they thought. But if they could, they would change to windows without batting an eyelid. Same for products from Sony or Nintendo, but I dislike them not as much as Microsoft.
I myself will draw some conclusions. First of all I will delete this page from my "daily visit bookmarks". I will not leave the community, but stay less active on purpose. Don't worry, I get mails if I get feedback on my stuff (like sparrow3d, c4a or hase). But I will not be here daily anymore. It is just too demotivating to see at least one whole page of unread threads every day, for which I don't care anymore in most cases. The last months I saw myself just trolling in threads I don't care for. Just have a look at my last hundreds posts, you will see, what I mean. I should use my time better.
But I will also use my pandora more. I will e.g. test Diablo and try not to through my pandora to a corner like others seem to did. I still need so much to test. We have such a nice eco system with things like a repo or an online highscore system. It is such a shame, that it isn't used much anymore.
I also found a new, more Linux enthuastic community around a debian port for the Mindstorms EV3 brick. I will invest time in this instead. I will not have much feedback there too but at least in the end I get a fucking linux lego robot, which is awesome. Maybe I will post my projects here too.
Or to close with Bilbo Baggins:
Alex
PS: If I don't like your answer, be prepared to get trolled.
First of all: If you don't want to read my whole wall of text, this is fine. But please consider, whether it really makes sense to write an answer then. I also want to apologize for my bad English, but you are probably already used to it anyway.
I've been in the board now for four years. I joined back in 2011 while a homebrew competition was happening. Back in these days I started to use my old gp2x again (after two or three years of abstinence of the scene) and searched for active boards. I was active again in the German gp2x board and also wanted to be more active in gp32x.de, too, but at that time the board was already dead. I searched for recent informations about the gp2x, installed open2x, used some very neat emulators (gpsp is awesome!) and started to develop for this very fine device again.
That was the point, where I joined the OpenPandora board. There was the already mentioned Homebrew competition. I realized, nobody except me would play my games on a gp2x and as gp32x was already dead, the same would probably happen with releases for Wiz and Caanoo. So I joined this board to tell about my software renderer here in the competition thread.
It worked out very well. Much better than I expected. You have to consider, I left the community as noob with good, but too chaotic programming skills. I made some small releases for the gp2x (A clock and a function plotter) when it was still used, but all in all my programs were rubbish. It was different now. When I "rejoined" the scene, I were a (lot) better developer, furthermore I started to study computer science in the meantime. So I got a quite good feedback to my software renderer and my first game: Snowman.
As I joined it anyway I started lurking around in the board. Even without owning a pandora the topics were often quite interesting. I tried to convince as much people as possible to go multi plattform and to release their games for the gp2x, too - which worked quite often. But I also enjoyed offtopic discussions or discussions about retro games. OpenPandora was a very neat place for every retro lover - be it with or without pandora (at that time, even some pandora presellers didn't receive their units). In the very end I made the third place and won a SD card (in the next years I will win a lot of them). One big point about this community was also the Linux and open software affinity, which I enjoyd a lot!
Then the RIOT competition came. It was awesome. Best. Competition. Ever. It was MADE for me. I undertake too much (Schizophrenia was never in a good state, probably will never), but I reached the fifth place with Puzzletube. It was a great time. I could even test most of the RIOT games under Linux or wine and some games even with my gp2x! We had so much new hopes (AAAA, Rainy Days, Paperwars), so much troll fun (Skylark, Guitar on Fire). I still think Geek 'em up deserved better, but anyway... I think I won another SD card. Everbody was still very excited about everything. I meet a lot new people and enjoyed the stay in the open pandora board very much.
I have to admit, I am not sure, whether one or two competitions followed. At least I remember the "Pandora resurrection" competition. It had very good attempts and some nice release, but it started to anger me. I don't want to go too much into detail, but winning a (second and golden!) Pandora for trying, failing and letting someone else doing the hard work? Anyway. Not my beer, but still grinds my gears. I would have won another SD card and a voucher for ED's shop with a new release of Puzzletube or Snowman, I forgot. Sometime I wrote "Schwerkraft", too. Probably for another competition, but I can't remember. However instead I asked ED for a bigger voucher. Later I bought a GCW-Zero from it and later again I found someone, who wanted to switch it for a Pandora, but that's another story (from which exists a pandoralive post
Now there hasn't been a competition for a long time. There were plans. There were crappy ones. I am not sure, but this may be one reason, why the board has changed. So we are coming to the interesting part, why I am writing done these thoughts. The board changed. It is not the friendly, supporting place anymore it have been. I don't want to tell you, that you are rude or unfriendly (however some members indeed went more dickhead lately). But I miss some things I found here in the very beginning.
As said: I miss the competitions, especially the board overarching ones like the RIOT competition. It was a lot of fun seeing the progress of the games trying to get the best result before the dead line. Even without owning a pandora, it was fun! We got so much awesome stuff like C4A. It was an incredible push in the activity of the board. Today even the games of the already passed competition aren't finished. I never got Paperwars to run on my Pandora when I finally got one. I didn't hear anything about AAAA the last years and we all know the end of Rainy day (the name is a self-fulfilling prophecy).
But beside competitions I also miss the general feedback for developers and porters. I know, I whine a lot about this, but the feedback for my recent game Hase is sobering. I don't think I will continue developing this game. It just doesn't make fun to spend so much time without feedback. Did anybody notice my Harry Potter named weapons? I don't think so... And I know, that I am not the only one with that feeling. Ptitseb has the same problem with his ports and even notaz with his awesome work.
I think a subitem of this problem is the shrinking user base. In the past we had more active users. Where is foxblock? Why did so much users loose interest in the Pandora? Only because of the Pyra? I don't think so, this started earlier. We have an active C64 Community out there, but you want to tell me the pandora gets boring, because it is now ~6 years old? Same for gp2x, wiz, caanoo and dingoo. I don't see a reason to stop developing for them (except the bad battery time of the gp2x, but battery switching is retro!). I read the "retro magazine" (German magazine about old games) from time to time. There are plenty of old games, I didn't even hear about it, which would run in one of the dozen emulators of my gp2x. Or to come back: On my pandora. So I can't explain, why the users are going. I just can tell, that this is a fact. And other user probably go, because others did, too. But this is a secondary effect.
However the board is not inactive (like gp32x). It is alive. Just different. When I look at the most read topics of the last months I see keyboard threads, the alluminum thread, minecraft (it doesn't even run well), spam (with Strigoi leading the way) and in generell Pyra related stuff, be it ED's blog (which is nice, no offence) or button or keyboard designs. Of course there is the Diablo thread, but it needed 5 days until someone tested it. Mandatory excuse for myself: I don't own the game and didn't have time. But in fact: This is an excuse. I am part of the board, so the same rules apply to me like for the rest of the board. I was just not interested enough. But why? I love Diablo II and always wanted to play Diablo I. THAT would be the perfect time to do it. But I did nothing. The whole board lurches in semiactivity. Nothing happens, but we have 100-pages-threads of it. And if something happens nothing happens.
So, why did I write all this? I don't know myself. I just thought, I had to write down my feelings about this place. It was awesome. It went meeh... I don't think the Pyra will fix this. Yes, we will still have some very Pyra related releases, probably emulators and some optimized games. However the most interest of the board these days isn't Retro anymore. We are talking about PSX, N64, Dreamcast and Nintendo DS. These were great console - no question - but not really Retro. Most of the users want 3d graphics. I know that, my games had bad game mechanics but simple 3d graphics, why they were quite successful. Furhtermore the Pyra will be a mini computer even more than the pandora. So new users with new use cases will join, who are not interested in some hacky homebrew anymore, if they can install the best worms clone ever with sudo apt-get install hedgewars. Maybe the Pandora discussions even killed gp32x (there were senseless keyboard and button threads, too!) in the very first place? Interesting theory. We will see. If a new Pyra board will be created like openpandora.org as reaction to gp32x, this board will probably die, too.
So imho the Pyra community will most of the time nag about some first problems with the first runs (which is normal), how to use Linux and discuss how to emulate best the mentioned systems above and of course x86 windows. Sometimes I think it was a bad decision for the Pyra to stay with ARM. Don't get me wrong, I like ARM. But the mass likes x86 windows games more and want them to play on the go. If the Pyra sucessor would get an x86 chip, I am quite sure Windows 7 will be ready to be installed after two weeks. In the past I thought the Pandora community was full of Linux enthusiasts. Now I think it is full of people, who uses Linux, because it is there and not so hard as they thought. But if they could, they would change to windows without batting an eyelid. Same for products from Sony or Nintendo, but I dislike them not as much as Microsoft.
I myself will draw some conclusions. First of all I will delete this page from my "daily visit bookmarks". I will not leave the community, but stay less active on purpose. Don't worry, I get mails if I get feedback on my stuff (like sparrow3d, c4a or hase). But I will not be here daily anymore. It is just too demotivating to see at least one whole page of unread threads every day, for which I don't care anymore in most cases. The last months I saw myself just trolling in threads I don't care for. Just have a look at my last hundreds posts, you will see, what I mean. I should use my time better.
But I will also use my pandora more. I will e.g. test Diablo and try not to through my pandora to a corner like others seem to did. I still need so much to test. We have such a nice eco system with things like a repo or an online highscore system. It is such a shame, that it isn't used much anymore.
I also found a new, more Linux enthuastic community around a debian port for the Mindstorms EV3 brick. I will invest time in this instead. I will not have much feedback there too but at least in the end I get a fucking linux lego robot, which is awesome. Maybe I will post my projects here too.
Or to close with Bilbo Baggins:
GoodbyeI don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
I, uh, I h-have things to do.
I've put this off for far too long.
I regret to announce — this is The End. I am going now. I bid you all a very fond farewell.
Alex
PS: If I don't like your answer, be prepared to get trolled.
Last edited by a moderator: