Distant-Earth

ScummVM: Very belated 1.1.1 release for the GP2X Wiz

While this is a little late to say the least (better late than never and all that, I mean it’s only 3 months late ) I have finally managed to get my hands on a working GP2X Wiz, some all important free time and motivation, and built up and tested the GP2X Wiz backend for the 1.1.1 release following on from the official announcement.

This post is also an announcement of the GP2X backend release as I forgot to post about it at the time despite the fact it got uploaded and released only a few days late .

I have not had a great deal of time recently to work on these releases so the backends are largely the same as the previous releases with just the needed changes to support all the fancy new things in the ScummVM core. No reworking of the control system or the like has been done yet (it’s still on my TODO).

Some of the highlights of the changes 1.1.1 bring, that benefit the GP2X and GP2X Wiz, include 2 completely new engines and games, Dragon History (available free from here) and TeenAgent (available free from GOG.com). Also new is 16bit graphics support, which allowed us to add support for a whole bunch of newer Humongous Entertainment games for kids and improved support for the Amiga versions of Monkey Island, Legend of Kyrandia and Future Wars.

Please provide feedback in the usual places on these releases and enjoy using them.

Platform specific restrictions:

Each of the releases has a small number of restrictions that have an affect on the games/engines you are able to use with each platform.

GP2X: The biggest restriction with this platform is the overhead (and crudeness) of the downscaling when using 640*480 high resolution games on the 320*240 screen making such games perform poorly and look, well, bad.

GP2X Wiz:  The downscaling support is a relatively recently added feature to the Wiz backend and while it looks a lot better than the GP2X, some issues still remain with high resolution games exhibiting ‘tearing’ when updating the screen under some circumstances.

Unfortunately this seems to be an exhibit of the Wiz screen tearing bug and while efforts have been taken to minimise it in this release it the problem has not totally gone away.

Providing feedback:

If you would like me to consider a feature or fix a bug help me to help you by ensuring the reports end up recorded in official places.

• Bug Reports (ScummVM’s Sourceforge bug tracker)
• Feature Requests (ScummVM’s Sourceforge feature tracker)
  • Source Code Patches (ScummVM’s Sourceforge patch tracker)
• General Forum Feedback (ScummVM’s GP2X/GP2X Wiz forum)

Downloads:

• ScummVM download page

What’s Next:

Now I have the outstanding official 1.1.1 releases out of the way my plan is to get test releases from the main ScummVM trunk codebase featuring the ‘new’ SCI engine out as soon as I get time for the GP2X and Wiz, hopefully I will also be including support for the new GPH Caanoo at the same time.

I also plan to update the OpenPandora release at the same time.

Regards,

John Willis

OpenPandora: Development toolchains, SDK’s and build platforms (Part 2).

This is the 2nd of the 2 simple guides I have put together to help you through the process of getting a working development environment and basic SDK going for the OpenPandora allowing you to build applications, compile up code, all of that neat stuff really.

Note: These guides and toolchain/SDK packages do not constitute an ‘official’ OpenPandora SDK or anything of the sort, they are just what I have put together during the development process in the hope somebody may find it useful.

There will be things missing libs and odd littke things that did not end up in the SDK package etc. at first and this article and the toolchains will evolve as time goes on.

Consider this 2nd part of the guide a work in progress.

With the OpenPandora you have 2 primary options for code development…

• Native (on device) software development

Want to write code for the OpenPandora on the OpenPandora, have a little read of this. Not the way I would recommend doing normal development but handy sometimes.

The is covered in part 1 of this article.

• Cross compiling

The most common method of code development for a device such as the OpenPandora. Requires access to a regular PC to using for building code.

The is covered by this part of the article.

I’ll aim to outline how you can start to develop code using either setup, and provide a really simple test app to prove your setup is working.

This is mainly aimed at C, C++ and Assembler developers who are familiar with GCC, build tools and Linux in general.

Read the rest of this entry »

OpenPandora: Development toolchains, SDK’s and build platforms (Part 1).

This is the 1st of 2 posts that I hope will form simple guides to help you through the process of getting a working development environment and basic SDK setup for the OpenPandora allowing you to build applications, compile up code, all of that neat stuff really.

Note: These guides and toolchain/SDK packages do not constitute any ‘official’ OpenPandora SDK or anything of the sort, they are just what I have put together during the development process in the hope somebody may find it useful.

Some of the information in these articles has already been covered, I just got tired of covering the same ground helping people so I figured I could refer them here so everyone benefits.

With the OpenPandora you have 2 primary options for code development…

• Native (on device) software development

Want to write code for the OpenPandora on the OpenPandora, have a little read of this. Not the way I would recommend doing normal development but handy sometimes.

The is covered by this part of the article.

• Cross compiling

The most common method of code development for a device such as the OpenPandora. Requires access to a regular PC to using for building code.

The is covered in part 2 of this article.

I’ll aim to outline how you can start to develop code using either setup, and provide a really simple test app to prove your setup is working.

This is mainly aimed at C, C++ and Assembler developers who are familiar with GCC, build tools and Linux in general.

Native (on device) software development:

Read the rest of this entry »

OpenPandora: Building your own ROOTFS image (Part 1).

Updated: 7th June to expand the setup scripts section and tell people to get them from GIT.

This is the 1st of 2 articles I will be publishing on getting started with building the Linux distribution installed on the OpenPandora, from source code, from scratch.

Note: This is not a guide to using OpenEmbedded or bitbake, or writing package recipes. It’s just a guide to getting an OpenPandora build setup running.

This 1st article will cover the basic setup of OpenEmbedded environment and the building of our Ångström distribution derived ROOTFS, the 2nd will detail how you can run the resulting images on your OpenPandora from SD cards, or if you really want to, the NAND.

I also plan to write a separate related article will show how you can setup toolchains and SDK’s to help you develop applications for (and natively on) the OpenPandora using some of the strengths of OpenEmbedded to make this easier.

As I write these posts in my own time I can’t promise to do anything quickly. Nor can I make any promises about how accurate they may be . As always, feedback is welcome.

Most application developers/porters will only be interested in the related article on setting up SDK’s and toolchains, these 2 are really for the hardened Linux hackers who want to mess about with the ROOTFS/distribution development.

Health (and sanity) warning: Building the entire ROOTFS from scratch is pretty technical in nature, if you have no desire to rebuild the ROOTFS or hack with the inner workings of you’re OpenPandora this is probably not for you.

You can’t really damage anything on your OpenPandora but if your not familiar with compiling your own apps, kernels etc. and fixing things when they don’t work this will present a VERY steep learning curve. You also have the potential to make a mess of your build host if you are not careful with the setup.

I’ll focus showing how you can build a ‘one <> one’ version of the 1st official release (GIT tag: “Release-2010-05/1”). 

Once you have that going feel free to build the tips of the metadata GIT’s if you want to work with the latest and greatest or get stuck in modifying the metadata to suit whatever purpose you may have in mind.

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ScummVM: Unofficial test “1.1.1” release for the OpenPandora.

EDIT: This release has been superseded, please get the latest release.

This is just a quick post to let people know I have uploaded a test build of ScummVM for the OpenPandora. For those that care, the belated GP2X Wiz 1.1.1 releases will follow when I get back from a few days away at some point next week.

Note: Please don’t mirror or hotlink preview/test/alpha etc. releases or put them on download services but rather, direct people to this page. This helps me ensure that users always have the most recent versions and stops me being swamped with requests for help with ancient test versions.

Nothing especially exotic about the code as it stands (it’s mainly a plugin enabled ARMv7 optimised build of ScummVM packaged up as a PND file) but it works quite well and at least a fair selection of games are very playable.

I am only releasing this so people have some ScummVM goodness for their new OpenPandora consoles (you can stop emailing me now ). It’s largely untested and has been hanging around on my build box for a few days. All 1.1.1 game engines should be working but I have only tested SCUMM, Tinsel (Discworld) and SAGA, and played a little bit of The Curse of Monkey Island .

It does not represent what the final backend will look like and a lot of the OpenPandora specific graphic and input handling is disabled in this release (nothing is mapped to the DPad and game buttons/triggers for example). It does support the keyboard, nubs and touchscreen fine however (for the most part) and most regular ScummVM keyboard shortcuts should work fine.

My plan is to commit the changes to the ScummVM codebase as soon as I have things cleaned up a bit and make the backend official (and manage releases accordingly) but as I am now away for the next few days I thought I would do a quick test release 1st so people have something to mess about with it on there new toy.

To install just download and unzip the file and copy the resulting scummvm-openpandora-2010-05-26.pnd to the following folder on your SD card (or USB2 stick):

/pandora/menu –> This will cause the ScummVM app icon to show up in the Xfce menu sorted by category.
/pandora/desktop –> This will cause the ScummVM app to appear as an icon on the Desktop of Xfce.

Either folder will also ensure the application icon shows up in MiniMenu.

To run, just select the icon as normal, the ScummVM GUI will start up and you can add games as you would normally do with any other ScummVM release (including Mass Add).

Note: On the OpenPandora /media is the root mount folder for removable storage devices. Your SD cards are known by the driver name (MMC) and the card number so the root of your 1st SD card is normally /media/mmcblk0p1, 2nd SD card is normally /media/mmcblk1p1. When you 1st add games you will need to select the SD card you are using (or a folder on your USB2 stick).

Downloads:

• ScummVM for the OpenPandora – Test 1.1.1 release – 2010-05-26

Feedback:

Any feedback, please leave comments or drop me a mail.

Regards,

John Willis

OpenPandora: Booting, NAND layouts and general firmware fluff.

One of the common questions I get now and then on IRC (#OpenPandora on FreeNode) or email concerns how the OpenPandora booting and firmware is setup, what technologies are used in it’s setup and how we try and prevent things like accidental bricking and the like.

With this in mind I thought I would knock up a quick post detailing how these things are setup as a starting point to expand on.

I’ll start off with a technical overview of how the system boots and then detail how this will work for normal end users (and that includes ‘most’ developers).

There are 3 main sections to this post.

• Booting the OpenPandora: The ‘low level’ process.

Only of interest to hacker types .

• Booting the OpenPandora: End user booting and the boot menu.

Normal users who want to play with alternative firmware, boot there own firmware and such look here.

• The stock firmware NAND layout.

Want to know a little about how is the stock firmware organised on the NAND? What setup is used? etc. – read this.

Read the rest of this entry »

ScummVM: 1.0.0 “Shiny Logo” released for the GP2X and GP2XWiz

This is just a quick post is to announce the 1.0.0 releases of the ScummVM for both the GP2X and the GP2X Wiz following on from the official announcement.

Please provide feedback on these releases and enjoy using them, this is a huge milestone for the ScummVM project and we are all very proud of this release.

New features since the 1.0.0 RC1 for my backends:

Below are the main features and fixes added with this new release from the earlier RC1 release.

Both releases feature additional ARM assembly optimised routines and tweaks to the build system along with a myriad of small ‘nips and tucks’.

There are also further tweaks to refine the use of the “Return to Launcher” and “Global Main Menu” features (remember that Left Trigger and Select/Home/Menu will bring up the Global Main Menu in any game).

This is in addition to the hundreds (litterally) of bug fixes that have gone into the core and game engines for this release from the ScummVM development team.

Supported engines:

Both releases feature support for all the game engines that are due to be included with the 1.0.0 release.

This includes support for high resolution games.

Read the rest of this entry »

ScummVM: 1.0.0 “Preview 2” for the GP2X and GP2X Wiz.

EDIT: This release has been superseded, please get the latest release.

This is just a quick post is to announce the “preview 2” test releases of the upcoming ScummVM 1.0.0 for both the GP2X and the GP2X Wiz.

Note: Please don’t mirror or hotlink preview/test/alpha etc. releases or put them on download services but rather, direct people to this page. This helps me ensure that users always have the most recent versions.

Please test and provide feedback on these releases as they will form the basis of the official 1.0.0 release candidate release for these platforms.

New features since preview 1:

Below are the main features and fixes added with this new release.

Both releases feature additional ARM assembly optimised routines that offer performance increases in a number of games including “Sam and Max” and “The Curse of Monkey Island”. Both releases also feature tweaks to the default volume levels to cut down on sample clipping.

There are also tweaks to refine the use of the “Return to Launcher” and “Global Main Menu” features (remember that Left Trigger and Select/Home/Menu will bring up the Global Main Menu in any game).

GP2X: Lots of code cleanup and a few tweaks to lower memory usage. Disabling “Aspect Ratio Correction” now also works as expected rather then stretching the screen.

GP2X Wiz: The biggest new feature is the addition of downscaling support using an optimised ARM assembly routine. This means the Wiz release now features support for the 64*4xx games such as Discworld 2, The Curse of Monkey Island etc. – It should also be mentioned that this seems to work well (better then I expected as I am not a fan of downscaling). Lots of my testers reported that the high resolution games are often extremely playable and look very nice on the Wiz’s OLED screen.

There has also been substantial code clean up and fixes since the preview 1 release.

Read the rest of this entry »

ScummVM: 1.0.0 “Preview 1” for the GP2X and GP2X Wiz.

NOTE: This post is now out of date, please see the most recent posts for more info.

This is just a quick post is to announce the “preview 1” test releases of the upcoming ScummVM 1.0.0 for both the GP2X and the GP2X Wiz.

Note: Please don’t mirror preview/test/alpha etc. releases or put them on download services but rather, direct people to this page. This helps me ensure that users always have the most recent versions.

Please test and provide feedback on these releases as they will form the basis of the official 1.0.0 release for these platforms.

New features:

Both the GP2X and the GP2X Wiz backends benefit from some long overdue code cleanup and general TLC in this release. Where possible both backends are using common/similar code to aid in there long term maintenance.

Both releases also now feature support for the ScummVM virtual keyboard. This can be accessed by holding the left trigger and pressing the right trigger (the old ‘0’ for Monkey Island 2 copy protection key combination).

The ScummVM virtual keyboard works well but it’s feature set is still maturing. If you have virtual keyboard specific feedback I would welcome that. It should be noted that the virtual keyboard works independently of the game engine and the running game is paused when it is in use.

GP2X Wiz: If you have used the early alpha releases for the GP2X Wiz then you will be pleasantly surprised, all the known issues with saving, OGG Vorbis playback and volume control have been resolved along with loads of other minor fixes.

Supported engines:

Both releases feature support for all the game engines that are due to be included with the 1.0.0 release.

Specific restrictions:

Each of the releases has a small number of restrictions that have an affect on the games/engines you are able to use with each platform.

GP2X: The biggest restriction with this platform is pure performance (some audio can be choppy) and the overhead of the scaling code when using 640*480 games on the 320*240 screen.

This renders high resolution games such as Discworld 2 totally unusable on the device and games such as Curse of Monkey Island, Touché and the Broken Sword games very slow (to the point of unplayable IMHO but others disagree).

GP2X Wiz: Whilst the Wiz is a more powerful console then the GP2X on paper there are still a number of features lacking compared to it’s older sibling. The most noteworthy is the complete lack of any down-scaling support in this release.

This means that any games that have graphics higher then > 320*240 will fail to function on this release. Most/all 320*240 or lower resolution games run very well at full or near full speed on the device.

Providing feedback:

If you would like me to consider a feature or fix a bug help me to help you by ensuring the reports end up recorded in official places.

• Bug Reports (ScummVM’s Sourceforge bug tracker)
• Feature Requests (ScummVM’s Sourceforge feature tracker)

Note: Feature Requests for 1.0.0 are closed but any requests will be looked at for future releases.

• • Source Code Patches (ScummVM’s Sourceforge patch tracker)
• General Forum Feedback (ScummVM’s GP2X/GP2X Wiz forum, I also check any official news posts I make to the GP32x forums)

Downloads:

Please ensure you download the correct version for your device.

• GP2X F100/F200: download

Extract the contents of the zip to a suitable folder on your SD card and launch “scummvm.gpe” to run.

Review the README-GP2X for more information.

• GP2X Wiz: download

Extract the contents of the zip to the game folder on your SD card, ensuring that you have a “scummvm.ini” in your game folder and the rest of ScummVM in a “scummvm” subfolder. Launch “ScummVM” from the main SD launcher menu to run.

Review the README-GP2XWIZ for more information.

ScummVM: A quick and dirty alpha release for the GP2X Wiz.

NOTE: This post is now out of date, please see the most recent posts for more info.

As some people know I have been hacking around with the Wiz on and off for some time now (in addition to the Pandora) and while I got ScummVM running on the Wiz quite some time ago I have been holding off on a release so that I could get a little more time to fix issues with the Wiz backend.

Well time has been rather cruel of late and I have not had as much time as I would like to clean up things and add funky features so rather then leave a half completed ScummVM backend languishing on my hard disk and rotting I decided to find a few hours to trim down the code, bring it up to date and put aside all the non working bits for now (mostly scaling support, OpenGLes parts, better controls, that sort of stuff) and get a ‘raw and ready’ ScummVM release out so people can start to give me feedback etc.

This release is mostly untested and is built from mainline (HEAD) ScummVM revision 41101. Expect odd issues and things not to quite be working correctly yet. If your not happy with the odd crash and bit of unexpected behavior then this build is not for you.

Anyway, onto what you get in this release and what you need to do to get it running.

You can download the release here – Don’t forget to check the README-GP2XWIZ text file in the zip.

As this is an early alpha release and is likely to get superseded quickly I would appreciate it if you did not mirror the download but rather pointed users back to this page.

Once you have downloaded the release you need to extract the contents of the zip to the ‘game’ folder on your SD card. Once extracted you should have a ‘scummvm.ini’ file in the game folder and a separate ‘scummvm’ folder with all the actual files needed by the Wiz.

Pop the SD card into your Wiz and select ScummVM from the SD games menu. If all goes well after a few seconds you should be greeted with the ScummVM game launcher. From this point it behaves very much like any other ScummVM release.

Controls are very similar to the GP2X F200 release (including touchscreen support) with a few notable exceptions. Menu now brings up the game menu and Left trigger + Menu now brings up the global main menu for ScummVM.

Other then that things pretty much match the layout of the GP2X F200 release. If you want to refresh yourself of the control mappings I have included full details in the README-GP2XWIZ text file in the zip.

Known Issues:

• No scaling support so only 320*xxx games run. Games that need a bigger screen then the Wiz will just crash ScummVM. Scaling support is on the TODO.
• Save support may be erratic. Not quite sure of the cause yet but some of my testers had the odd issues with saves not writing correctly.
• Speed. For most games speed is quite good but I have noticed a few points when performance really gets bad. Still looking into that.
• OGG Vorbis support: One tester mentioned that games he used that had OGG Vorbis audio did not work. Still looking into that.

Feedback on this release:

The feedback avenues for the Wiz release are the same as the existing GP2X release.

In order to help me keep track of requests, bugs etc. I am asking that people kindly report such issues to the correct places (or at least copy them there). I don’t spend all my time looking at forums and bug reports placed on random internet forums are never very helpful to me (i.e. they are very unlikely to get fixed or even read). The same applies to feature requests etc. etc.
If you would like me to consider a feature or fix a bug help me to help you by ensuring the reports end up recorded in official places.

• Bug Reports (ScummVM’s Sourceforge bug tracker)
• Feature Requests (ScummVM’s Sourceforge feature tracker)
• Source Code Patches (ScummVM’s Sourceforge patch tracker)
• General Forum Feedback (ScummVM’s GP2X forum, I also occasionally check news posts I make to the GP32x forums)

Source Code:

Source for this release will be up on a ScummVM patch tracker in the next few days (or, if the team view it as good enough, hopefully committed to SVN).