DCEmu Featured News Articles

The Emulatemii team have released a new version of their Playstation emulator for the Gamecube and Wii:

...

News via http://www.openpandora.org/index.php...emid=2&lang=en

Just some quick update report on the Nub status:

The company is doing electrical testing for bad traces, bad resistance in the joystick and is also setting aside any nubs that feel loose or gritty.
I'm pretty sure that test is way better than any of our "move them around for a while to see if they work fine"-testings.

While we don't know yet if this is related to the few nubs that kept sticking in one direction (those nubs are still on the way to the manufacturer to be tested), it could well be the reason. If the rubber is a bit too gritty or thick, the resistance is wrong and it could lead to a sticking nub.


500 tested nubs (tested in one day! ) are ready to be shipped today to the board manufacturer. Shipping takes one day, so if we're lucky, by next week more boards will be ready.

I'll keep you updated! ...

News via http://www.openpandora.org/index.php...emid=2&lang=en

Wow, what amazing six weeks!

The Pandora has just been delivered to the first 600 users - and software comes flooding in.

Besides the official hotfixes (where a few contributions have come from the community, too) which fixed most of the bigger problems, quite a few ports, games, emulators, etc. have been released.
So all of you still waiting for your Pandoras: You will have a LOT of cool stuff available ready to play! I know it's hard to wait - but just think about what you can do with it once you receive it...


The Games

At the moment, there are 63 files in the freeware games section already - which basically means: At least one free game a day!
Not only casual games like Spout, Ceferino or Alienblaster, but also games which can keep you busy for a looong time like Battle for Wesnoth, FreeCiv, Gianas Return, Numpty Physics or Clonk Planet.

And if those games aren't enough for you, why not replay some classics like the Secret of Monkey Island series or one of the other countless adventure games ScummVM does support?
Or do you rather want to play Baldurs Gate? Well, we have GemRB in beta testing... Hexen? Rise of the Triad? Yep, all out there, waiting for you to be played.

There are also some multiplayer games out there - wanna play BomberClone against 11 other gamers...? Or try OpenLieroX.... there's a lot of fun coming.

Of course, a lot of other classics can be played using one of the Emulators...
There are already 27 files in the Emulators section - covering the real retro ones (Atari 2600, 7800) as well classics (C64, Amiga, MSX, Speccy, Atari ST, SNES, Genesis, etc.) and even weird ones like the SIMH where you could emulate a PDP-1...
Those are all fullspeed with sound - even in the unoptimized state some of them are in (a few of them are just quick ports).
PSX and Nintendo64 are getting there. PSX runs pretty much fullspeed with sound with a lot of games if you overclock, Nintendo64 is still a bit slow. But both are under heavy development right now - and will become better.

Please note: Using emulators and/or roms for certain system might be illegal in the country where you're in. Please make sure you don't do illegal things here!
A good way to legally emulate would be Amiga with the licensed emulator kits (including all the roms), for example.

Or DOSBox is also an example how you legally emulate - and it is running well for an unoptimized version: It plays games like Pirates! Gold or MadTV... so choose your classic and PLAY!


The Apps

There's a lot more than just gaming on the Pandora. You can listen to music, browse the web, do office work, etc.
Therefore, quite a few nice apps have been released here, too.

You don't like the built-in browsers? Well, Fennec, Chromium, FireFox... they're all available.
Want to follow RSS feeds? Liferea will help you.

Have a VNC server somewhere and you want to connect to it using the Pandora? Remmina will do it for you.

Want to listen to music? Choose your player! Besides MPlayer, you can download Audacious, GMU, OMMPC, Exaile or Deadbeef. Some even support classic game formats like SPC or NSF - so if you're up for some classic chiptune sound, you won't need much space.

And if you rather want to compose music - Milky Tracker and Schism Tracker are already available.



The OS

Quite a few things are happening around the OS right now. As mentioned, a lot of stuff has been fixed using Hotfixes during the last weeks.
At the moment, we are working on official Pandora feeds (meaning: You don't need to download and install hotfixes anymore - you can use an online updater on your Pandora to update your machine).
It's already being tested. There will be stable and unstable feeds available - so if you want to help us test and bugfix the latest stuff, you can do so (risking a reflash in case something goes really wrong).
Of course, there will also be regular Hotfixes released in case you don't want to do it online.

BTW: Did you know SDXC is already supported? Apparently, it just works

The community has also started to work on improving the OS. paeryn is currently working on SDL - that would speed up games and eliminate tearing.


If YOU want to help out with the OS, check out the current open tasks or take a look at the bugtracker. Maybe there's a task you want to work on and help improve it?


Other Projects

Beside programs or OS works, there are also other Linux flavours available - and some teams are working on them.
A mobile version of ArchLinux is already booting into X and can do updates via pacman, while a Pandora version of Gentoo called Neuvoo is also reported to boot and emerge already in IRC.


Also, did you know you actually run Debian within the Pandora OS?
So without rebooting or using any speed, you can actually use all the programs from the Debian repository...

Isn't that nice?

...

News via http://www.openpandora.org/index.php...emid=2&lang=en

It's been kinda quiet in here lately, hasn't it?

Well, I hope this will change in the near future and I'll find more time keeping you up-to-date with what's happening.
During the last days, it has been so incredibly hot in here... 30°C in my room at night... it was really hard to concentrate on what you're doing.

Good news: The Cases

4000 new cases have been produced and are being painted at the moment. Over 1000 of them will ship using UPS, the rest will probably go by sea (takes a bit longer, but is way cheaper... and we will be busy with the first 1000 cases until they arrive).
And yes, you read correct: It will be 4000 cases. We will need some for replacements ourselves - and I guess quite a few of you will want to be able to buy replacement cases for modding, etc. yourselves.
Thank god, case production seems to work fine now.

What's up with the nub?

Our challenges seem to continue - Murphy must really hate us, and I have no idea why. I'm not THAT evil, am I?


Well, as you might have seen on the boards, some nubs fail. While it was no catastrophic number (so far, 20 out of 600 units had to be replaced), combined with the ones that failed while testing, the failed number is too high.
We don't want to deliver units with broken nubs we have to replace after a while. This would not only lead to more delays (as working boards would go into replacement units instead to new customers), it would also mean A LOT of additional costs for us. Also, testing all the boards and sending them back to get the nubs desoldered and exchanged eats a lot of time and cost.

Thank god the nub manufacturing company is really helpful. They even followed the threads on the GP32x.com boards to see what problems occured and are now testing all the nubs. They admitted that something went wrong in the manufacturing process - and they know it's really urgent. Therefore, the first 400 fully working tested nubs should be ready to be soldered onto the waiting Panda-Boards in next week! The rest will follow soon after.
As we have 13.000 nubs (8000 for the Pandora and 5000 for the iControlpad - however, the Pandora has priority), there should be enough working nubs for the first batch. The failed ones will either be repaired or reproduced.

So the good thing is: This (last) issue is also being solved right now - the rest of the production works flawlessly now, so this is the last challenge for us it seems.

Still, we really want to apologize for the inconveniences some of you experienced there. That definately was NOT our plan. We will try to resolve this as soon as possible.

But what does that mean for further production? More delays?

Well, it will take a while until the next Pandoras will be shipped. Even the ones that should've been build this week (those 400 Craig mentioned) will have to be delayed since the nubs won't arrive before next week. We don't want to ship any more units where the nubs will break after a few days!

However, even with this break, it will speed things up. Why?
Well, because we don't just sit around: We prepare all the lids and base parts, so basically all units will be ready and simply need a board.

Building a single Pandora (with all the testing, etc. we do) takes about 16 - 17 minutes per unit at the moment. Also, we needed addtional 5 - 6 minutes to extensively test the nubs!

These are the steps needed to build a Pandora:

1. Solder the speakers to the LCD cables.
2. Put the LCDs into the lid. Connect the cables.
3. Place a few layers on top of the LCD cable to shield it (needed for CE).
4. Put the Antenna into the lid.
5. Roll the LCD cable and place it in the hinge. Put the antenna through the rolled cable.
6. Close the lid carefully to not kill the LCD cable.
7. Put the hinge in the base part.
8. Carefully pull the LCD cable through the base part, putting together the lid and the base and engage the hinge.
9. Put each button in (ABXY) as well as the left and right light pipes and the microphone holder into the base part.
10. Place the keymat into the base part.
11. Put the stylus holder into the bottom part.
12. Screw the lid together and put the screw covers on top of it.
13. Put the board into the the unit, connect LCD cable and antenna.
14. Put in the power switch, L and R buttons and screw the unit together.
15. Do a quick test (WiFi, controls, keyboard) and flash the firmware.

So, even if the boards arrive later - as long as we have the cases (which should arrive soon) and the LCD cables (where 3000 are on the way to me to be soldered), we can do most of the steps needed for assembly. Once everything is prepared and the boards arrive, the time needed per Pandora shouldn't be more than 5 minutes (instead of the 16 - 17 or even 22 - 24 when he had to test the nubs).

While those five minutes nub testing we needed didn't sound like much, it adds up: Testing the remaining 3600 would've ...

News via http://www.gp32spain.com/

Please remember that the deadline for the second GP32Spain contest is July 31 at 23:59 (GMT+1).
The deadline for donations is August 15 at 23:59 (GMT+1). Until then, you can continue making donations to this paypal account: webmaster((at))gp32spain.com
The jury will have 15 days to rate the entries. The results will be published on 16 August.

All participants will have 10 additional days to send bugfixes for their emulators/games, until 10 August at 23:59 (GMT+1).
During these 10 days we will accept only bug-fixes, no more new features, levels, etc. At this point, any additions/new features will not be taken into account by the jury. These 10 additional days are just to fix problems found in their applications.

Donations received so far (July 14, 16.00): €2484 (~$3158.74).
With current donations the prizes are as follows (Important: we have withdrawn €84 from the total pot, for printing and mailing diplomas)

First Category: Games
First prize: 600€ (762,98$) + special diploma.
Second prize: 360€ (457,79$) + special diploma.
Third prize: 240€ (305,19$) + special diploma.
Fourth prize: 1 GP2X WIZ + Pack LIAR + full WIZ accessories + participant diploma.
Fifth prize: Pack LIAR + full WIZ accessories + participant diploma.
Other entries: participant diploma.

Second Category: Emulators
First prize: 600€ (762,98$) + special diploma.
Second prize: 360€ (457,79$) + special diploma.
Third prize: 240€ (305,19$) + special diploma.
Fourth prize: 1 GP2X WIZ + Pack LIAR + full WIZ accessories + participant diploma.
Fifth prize: Pack LIAR + full WIZ accessories + participant diploma.
Other entries: participant diploma. ...

news via http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php...dpost&p=892427

Elemental 0.2 is up on the app store: http://icontrolpad.com/cgi-bin/viewa.../elemental.inf

Elemental
a platformer/puzzle game

Designed by Paul Gunn (chaosmage.com)

-------------------------------------

There are three modes in Elemental:

New Game/Resume Game
This is the basic set of rooms that come with the game. New starts from the first room, Resume starts from the furthest room you've reached.

Editor
This will allow you to make your own rooms to share! They get saved as elemental_edit.elm in your user/Applications/Data folder.

Free Draw
Play with elements without having a little player character in the mix.

-------------------------------------

These are the keys and what they do! Stuff in parentheses only works in editor or free draw mode.

dpad: move guy (and select paint)
a/b button, CTRL, O, Backspace: Jump
y/x button, ALT, P, 0: Use Power
r: reload current room
Esc: menu, esc again to quit
j: take a screenshot as el.png in the appdata folder
b/n: go back a room or to the next room

e: (switch paint to eraser)
s: (save current set of rooms)
l: (load rooms from file)
c: (clear current room)
x: (copy current room to clipboard)
v: (paste room before current room)
.: (pause the movement of elements)

these are in a semi-functional state
f: toggle fullscreen mode - it runs MUCH slower. Not recommended for play.

Elemental is (c) Paul Gunn, 2010 ...

Newly released for pandora



This is an almost straight port to the Pandora of my GP2X game Reword.

The basic idea is, you have a 6 letter word that has been jumbled up and you must find as many of the 3, 4 5 and 6 letter words that can be made from it in the time allowed. You must get at least one 6 letter word to progress to the next level. The dictionary I am using is a British word list I found (sorry can't remember where, but if I do I'll include a credit) that seems to hold a reasonable selection, which once filtered for just 3-6 letter words contains about 7500 words.

The word list can be replaced or amended using an additional utility I wrote that formats the list ready for the game. This will be included in the source release.
Any feedback or suggestions welcome.

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/...0,0,0,0,25,159 ...

Newly released for pandora



Have the mascots of your favorite free software titles battle it out in the Wormux arena using dynamite, grenades, baseball bats and other bazookas...

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/...0,0,0,0,29,158 ...

Newly released for pandora



An Amiga Emulator.
Fullspeed with sound for A500 games!

Changelog 2010-07-16 (by john4p):

* Added VSYNC

Changelog 2010-07-10 (by john4p):

* Joystick mode is default now
* START-button is now "Run" in main menu
* removed unnecessary GP2X-hack where Enter&Space were sent when pressing the (A)-button

Changelog 2007-07-09 (by john4p):

* added horizontal adjustment
* faster mouse movement
* slow mouse movement with (Y)-button
* (X)-button is now confirm-button in menu ((A) still works, too)

Changelog 2010-07-09 (by john4p):

* Removed gp2x config options
* Added selectable UAE core. While this is a bit slower, it adds compatibility
* Ask for nub mouse mode on first startup (added by EvilDragon)
* Added Savestates (only working with UAE Core)
Changelog 2010-07-05 (patches by john4p):

* Move screen with L + DPad
* Addes softstrech scaling (software-only at the moment, so it's slow)

Changelog 2010-06-09:
* Added PAL / NTSC LCD Timings (if HotFix 2 is installed)
* Added Mini-Documentation
* Added Kickstart-Test

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/...?0,0,0,0,72,74 ...