EvilDragon has taken the time to list the great contributions that people have made to the project and some history of it’s birth. Frankly, I can’t say more or add more than what ED has already said:
A big thanks to all of you!
Well, it has been a wild rollercoaster ride. It was fun. It was annoying. It was amazing. It was frightening. It was unique.
The green light shone. The roar went up. The blog went down. And here we sit, pensive in the afterglow. So what happens next? Let’s take a look at what the coming weeks have in store.
We are pushing them to ship us 500 on friday. [...] The factory have already been instructed to get on with it, we should hear something today. We don’t know if they will manage it, but we hope they will. They have told us pretty much every customer makes this week hell for them.
(craigix)
Our favourite preserved vegetable has resurfaced, bringing with him nine minutes and fifty one seconds of glorious handheld gameplay. The titles in order of appearance are Ur-Quan Masters (aka Star Control II), Hammer of Thyrion (aka Hexen II), and Pandora Panic (aka Pandora Panic).
In this video, two men we don’t know play Quake 3 on their N900 Nokias, online, thanks to an oven fresh port of the ioquake3 engine. Why do you care? Because the N900 and Pandora share a heart & soul – the OMAP3530. “But we already have Quake 3, let me dig up those twenty videos.” Yes we do, but ioquake3 is a little more than that. Think of it as Quake 3.5, a feature enhanced animal that has been in active development since the Q3 engine went open source in 2005. This opens a welcoming door to MDave & crew’s Pandora port of Zeq2lite, and in theory, a range of other titles including Tremulous, Urban Terror and Smokin’ Guns (each of which would need to be ported separately). Oh, did we mention that Pickle not only reported this news to the forums, but already has ioquake3 running on Pandora? No? Yeah.
Pickle gives us a peek at Aleph One M1A1, complete with clockspeed and keymap tweaks, and a clever hand that hardly gets in the way at all. For those quietly wondering, Aleph One is the enhanced open source descendant of Bungie’s Marathon 2: Durandal. The M1A1 variant completes the circle, bringing the levels & assets from the original Marathon into the Aleph One engine. More from Pickle’s Youtube text:
Im using the new gui to set the clock speed
I also show how key mapping works and finally some in game
Sorry hand is in the way at points and also couldnt play sound at the time of recording but it works.
Here it is. The first video of Ari64’s Mupen64 port, running on the hardware that matters thanks to OpenGL jedis Adventus, Pickle, and JayFoxRox. The usual disclaimer applies; being the first video there is a still a ways to go before we see higher frame rates and smooth sound. But the texture rendering is already a treat for the peepers. Follow the tech talk and lavish praise on our new heroes here.
Remember Alf? He’s back, in pog form. Remember PandoraPanic? It never left. The WarioWare-inspired community project has been bubbling away in the background for the past year, absorbing new talent and minigames along the way. Recent developments include some retrolicious 16 bit graphics from Dragons_Slayer, and a WIP gameplay video from Rockthesmurf. Ubiquitous porting machine Pickle even has his hat in the ring.
That’s right, to the power of three. Three new videos, multiple games within each. Press the Back button and return to normal life, or hit the read link and see how deep the Pickle jar goes.
Another video, and another huge thanks to Pickle for keeping the cameras rolling. Today he brings us Super Mario War, the fan-made multiplayer plumber stomper that struggled on the GP2X but looks just ace on Pandora. If you’d like to try it out, chances are it’s already been ported to a platform near you.
Are you old enough to remember The Great Giana Sisters? They were the controversial counterpart to Super Mario Bros, back in the days when people managed their household budget on a Commodore 64. So legendary is this game, that a band of GP32X gurus have been working for years on an unofficial sequel, called Giana’s Return. It recently went beta on the Wiz, and as far as old school platforming goes, it’s about as good as it gets. And guess who already has it running on Pandora?
Thanks Esn for the tip.
A new pair of videos from Pickle, covering 13 glorious minutes of Game Boy and Game Boy Colour action. The videos are entitled “VirtualBoy Advance” but we suspect this should say “VisualBoy Advance” (as in VBA, the popular GB/GBC/GBA emulator). Corrections welcome of course. Keep an eye out for a cameo appearance from Team Pandora, as they help to take down a giant spider. Seriously.
From the Youtube page:
Some gameboy action. Though this is slow emulator I think its very accurate, also shows the pandora power. Some parts will not sound right, at this point I was trying to fast throttle the game to get past parts quicker.
I ran at 600 Mhz, double size with 2xSai Super Duper filtering (something like that
) 22 Khz with low pass filter (If anyone asks I did try some gba stuff, but it just isnt fast enough even with fs. It might be playable with no sound. Doesnt matter gpsp will be faster then anything else anyway.
Itching to know which of your DOS favourites will be playable on Pandora? Got an hour to kill? Let’s get to it. Pickle says:
Anyone can get an idea if something will run. From initial tests it appears the pandora does between 2000-3000 cycles. Try your game and see how many cycles it takes. If its more than 3000, expect it to be slow.
Yes, even running DOSBox on your PC/Mac/Penguin will give you a fair indication. As Pickle puts it, “a cycle is a cycle”. To simulate the Pandora DOSBox experience, just go into your DOSBox settings and cap the cycles at say, 3000. Then fire up your lost loves, see how well they run, and don’t be shy about reporting back with your findings. If you’re DOSBox deprived, name your favourites in the comments and someone just might test them for you.
This is it. The dual-nub love we’ve been waiting for, courtesy of Pickle.
What… you’re still reading this?
Welcome once again to op.wp, your virtual subscription to Pickle’s Youtube channel. Today we present, for the first time, community minigame project PandoraPanic! running on actual Pandora hardware. The video features a detailed demonstration of how to lose each minigame – we’re assuming this is done for informational purposes only, and has nothing to do with using household tools to control gameplay. Next on the list is OpenJazz, otherwise known as the legendary Jazz Jackrabbit. Catch that one after the break.
While we’re rabbiting on about Youtube, Craig has opened up discussion on how his own Youtube channel can be utilised most effectively, now that the new HD camera is in action. The first thing we can all do to help is subscribe to his videos, and spread the word. You’re also invited to contribute your ideas on video content, which you can do here.
This isn’t so much an announcement, as a passing comment that’s been mined from the forums and blown up into a big colourful blog post. Just look at those colours. Don’t pretend they don’t take you back to a better place. Word from the Wiz quarter is that Sonic Robo Blast 2 is now running on both Wiz and Pandora, courtesy of – you guessed it – Pickle. A suitably fast paced video (of the PC version) awaits you after the break.
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