Pandora-Handheld-Port ? Question for developer

[Gurumeditation]

A very good evening/morning to all,

I am ‘Gurumeditation’, the head editor of http://www.pandora-blog.de, which is a German fan-page that covers the latest news about the Pandora OpenSource-Handheld console. Now I’m here for asking you, the developers of the OpenSource-Version of Warzone 2100, whether you’ve already heard something about the Pandora console and whether you’re interessted in a Version of Warzone 2100 for this wonderful portable device? The first question which has to be answered is, whether the porting to a ARM (RISC) system would be technically possible?

I would be glad about your answers.

Now here the technical specifications about the Pandora:

* ARM® Cortex™-A8 600Mhz+ CPU running Linux (1000Mhz possible)
* 430-MHz TMS320C64x+™ DSP Core
* PowerVR SGX OpenGL 2.0 ES compatible 3D hardware
* 800x480 4.3" 16.7 million colors Touchscreen LCD
* Wifi 802.11b/g , Bluetooth & High Speed USB 2.0 Host
* Dual SDHC card slots & SVideo TV output
* Dual Analogue and Digital gaming controls
* 43 keys QWERTY and numeral Keypad
* Around 190+ Hours battery life
* 256MB RAM and 512MB NAND-memory

For more information take a look at:

http://www.openpandora.org (official english developer-page)
http://openpandora.wordpress.com (english pandora news-blog)
http://www.pandorawiki.org (the official pandora-wiki)

http://www.openpandora.de (official german developer-page)
http://www.pandora-blog.de (first official german pandora news-blog)

Yours sincerely,

Maik Späde
Gurumeditation

[Moro_Nick]

.

-- Howdy there sir... this was discussed some last year...

Re: warzone on a handheld Posted » 03 Oct 2008, 22:07


"Rman Virgil" wrote: * EDIT; Frack the PSP and DS.... How about WZ on the Pandora or Wiz ?....


See: https://mail.gna.org/public/warzone-dev ... 00140.html

Put simply: It should be possible with a little bit of work to the renderer. I can't see things such as SDL and GLC (our only real platform dependancies) not running on it — considering that Warzone (using the software renderer) is known to work on the Nokia N-series (N810), which is a 400Mhz, FPU-less device.

Regards, Freddie.

Post by EvilGuru » 04 Oct 2008, 11:38

"Zarel" wrote: "And here I thought that retail Warzone using the software render had significantly fewer hardware requirements than the current Resurrection Warzone..."


Kind of. The version that runs on the N810 is the last version to contain the software renderer, circa 0.2.x. So it is still using the software renderer (due to the lack of dedicated OpenGL hardware). However, it does show that — at a fundamental level — the overhead incurred by using libraries such as SDL, OpenAL (surround sound), zlib and OGG/Vorbis is itself insignificant.

Current trunk versions do not support a software renderer (it was a dead end) — undoubtedly the best course of action, considering how even handhelds nowadays are getting OpenGL support (in the form of OpenGL ES). We also make use (in trunk versions) of a lot of floating point math — as opposed to fixed-point emulation. While this may pose a problem for systems without a floating point unit (many embedded systems) it is the right course of action. This is because modern versions of GCC can convert floating point => fixed point (with range restrictions) at compile time.

This is much better in terms of flexibility and performance than the fixed point emulation Pumpkin used.

Regards, Freddie.

-- I think there was a total of 4 threads were it came up. If you do a forum search for "pandora" it will pull up the threads. I just quoted what I thought salient.

-- My guess is that the WRP developers have their collective hands full with the PC roadmap and some one from the outside
will have to do the port. IMHO, WZ 2100 on the Pandora would go over like gangbusters with owners of the unit.

-- I'm sure one of the devs will weigh-in soon enough on the topic.

- Regards, Moro

[DevUrandom]

I've still got an arm-elf cross toolchain from RockBox/iPod, but one would need an emulator of that thing to do any reasonable testing.

But anyway, it seems to me that you just stumbled into a problem:

We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.

[Kamaze]

I've still got an arm-elf cross toolchain from RockBox/iPod, but one would need an emulator of that thing to do any reasonable testing.

But anyway, it seems to me that you just stumbled into a problem: ...

I think that he made a mistake. http://www.openpandora.org should be the right one.

[Gurumeditation]

Yes it was a mistake
openpandora.org is the correct webadress

@DevUrandom: would you explain more about the "arm-elf cross toolchain" and emulation ?

[pabs]

Debian GNU/Linux compiles Warzone 2100 for ARM (the armel architecture):

http://packages.debian.org/sid/warzone2100

[Gurumeditation]

Oh great, so Warzone 2100 runs now on ARM-Systems like the Pandora ?

[EvilGuru]

Oh great, so Warzone 2100 runs now on ARM-Systems like the Pandora ?

If, and only if, all of the required dependencies are also packaged for ARM systems (with the right endianess, remember ARM chips can run in both big and little endian mode). Furthermore, it also depends on OpenGL being supported by the device — as opposed to OpenGL ES (a stripped down version of OpenGL designed for embedded devices).

Again, if the developers had access to such a device, it is quite likely that it would be supported in the near future — assuming that it is not already supported — however until then there is little we can do.

Regards, Freddie.