open source game console (ghetto project)

Nintendull · Post by **Nintendull** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 1:36 pm

I want to get an open source console going. Maybe there are some dudes here interested in helping or even giving advice.

Goal:
To have a small video game console that hooks up to the tv. The console is aimed at people who want to play old retro style games, emulators, and people who want to develop for a console w/o nazi like rules. (Nintendo, Sony/etc are all literally poop egress if you read how they do business)

NOTE:
1. This is not for money. This is mainly for fun and learning about hardware/software/games
2. I dont plan on mass producing these
3. Xgamestation, hydra, gp32 could be considered similar but the console will have more features that these dont.

Why do it?:
1. Ever read about how Sony, MS, Nintendo treat customers and developer teams? Its like they are flipping Nazis. Anyways they can do whatever they want, but wouldnt it be nice to have a dedicated console that you can easily develop for and you dont have some old millionaire farts pulling strings?
2. You can easily develop for it.
3. Chance to bust some features that nobody else is doing.
4. Love simple games compared to Halo?

Similar consoles:
1. Pandora - handheld, I dont think its ready for ruby, python and the rest but I am sure someone later on will make it. Cost difference...
2. Xgamestation/hydra - limited to development (parallax), less console feeling

Status:
I am still in planning. I am getting familiar with python and SDL.

Console:
The console will be basically a small computer/mini-itx comp, stuffed into a generic case like of those on polycase.com Linux will be the base of the console. It will have python, ruby, lua and the rest loaded. Since its linux/x86, you can easily develop for it with the many tools already available such as, Lua, SDL, Allegro, Python and much more. It will also have a community feature, where there will be a menu to list everyones homebrew game. You can then download it and play it, and rate it as well.

Help needed:
1. People who can program
2. People who can draw, pixel artist
3. People with good advice
4. Ben Heck type people

What can be covered:
1. Small amount of money
2. Website
3. Forums
4. Maybe some promo material

Issues:
1. Since its basically a computer, why would anyone want to buy one and not use their own computer? Well its a dedicated system. I find that good enough.

2. Since it will be linux, anyone can develop a game/application for it easily. Later on maybe we can put together a sdk or a collection of tools. I dont have the skills to make a super nice sdk or improve SDL to be friendlier.

3. Related to #2, since there wont be a SDK, and one person may use python while another dude uses C, there has to be a standard way to package these games.

Skills I have(small I know, but maybe I can help you and you can help me:
1. BSD
2. Linux
3. PHP
4. Mysql + PostgreSQL
5. Python (learning it now)
6. Pygame (learning now)
==============================================

I just wrote this off the top of my head, I will update it as I think of more. But if you are interested, please post here or PM me! Lets get something going! And keep in mind I am a nice dude. I would love to find some DEDICATED people to work with on a consistent basis. It would really make my day.

Haters are welcome too. I know there are a lot out there based off older posts. But bring it on! Motivation!

And forgive me if I made a mistake. This is all based off my research and understanding. Correct me if wrong!

nightwheel · Post by **nightwheel** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 1:44 pm

Hmm, I'm willing to help anyway I can

Kyo · Post by **Kyo** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 2:40 pm

While I do think that this will basically be a linux PC with a TV out, and that it will probably fail, I'll help.

1. People who can program
2. People who can draw, pixel artist
3. People with good advice
4. Ben Heck type people

I can do all of that, especially the last 3 (My C++ ain't that good, I've got mad PHP skills, but that doesn't help, also I have never programmed in linux before)

Neildo_64 · Post by **Neildo_64** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 4:03 pm

I do a lot of graphics and pixel art, so I could help there. I make my own games, so I've done a lot of spriting, menus, stuff like that. Not to brag, but I'm pretty good with photoshop (not "pretty good" like those guys that recolor sprites or something dumb and think its awesome). I wouldn't be any help with programming though.

nightwheel · Post by **nightwheel** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 4:14 pm

Um Nintendull. I can draw really on paper. I can give good advice.

And if you want to see it when I'm finshed drawing it. I can show you a idea of what I think this thing should look like

Nintendull · Post by **Nintendull** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 4:36 pm

Neildo_64 wrote:I do a lot of graphics and pixel art, so I could help there. I make my own games, so I've done a lot of spriting, menus, stuff like that. Not to brag, but I'm pretty good with photoshop (not "pretty good" like those guys that recolor sprites or something dumb and think its awesome). I wouldn't be any help with programming though.

Awesome! Where can I see some of your work dude?

nightwheeler, thanks! I am sure I will need your help as well.

Neildo_64 · Post by **Neildo_64** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 5:08 pm

Well, I don't have much of my stuff on this computer; it's on my desktop which recently took a crap

, but I have a couple things. For one, my sig and avatar (nothing special). Here is a logo I made a while back for someone.

Here is some stuff I made for a game I was working on. The name wasn't actually "The Adventures of Sun." I just temporarily named it that because I wanted to make a logo. lol. Everything is from scratch - no premade textures, photos, or anything like that. Straight up photoshop. All of it is actually still a wip as some of it isn't nearly as good as it could be.

The animations are all pretty decent, but I never took the time to make gifs from them, except a couple.

This one looks a bit funky when the sword comes back up, but I have since fixed that, just not in this gif.

Post by **Triton** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 5:16 pm

neildo i need to talk to you about some pixelart stuff sometime! as to this project i wish you the best of luck, there have been a LOT of people start their own, make some good progress then vanish off the face of the earth (blackbox for instance and a few others i cant recall) so actually making it all the way to a finished project is going to be a challenge

Neildo_64 · Post by **Neildo_64** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 5:24 pm

Yeah, I was thinking about blackbox when I saw this topic. How far did that ever get anyway? (not to hi-jack this thread)

Best of luck on your project and I will try to help as much as I can.

teraflop122 · Post by **teraflop122** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 6:32 pm

Being a PC, the entire target market can and probably is already doing this themselves- on their own computers.

WhatULive4 · Post by **WhatULive4** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 7:05 pm

teraflop122 wrote:Being a PC, the entire target market can and probably is already doing this themselves- on their own computers.

Thats exactly what I was thinking. Also, the majority of people that "might" buy these probably already have a mini-itx linux machine as a media pc anyways. I wouldn't want to discourage you, and would help in any way. However, for the amount of time and money that would be spent on it, I just don't know if the returns would be great enough.

nightwheel · Post by **nightwheel** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 7:41 pm

I've been thinking nintendull. When sites like Engadget, Digg and Joystix catch wind that some of us here are starting to try to make a open source game console. Lots of people are going to want one when were are ready to sell them. So it might be a good idea if you change your mind to sell this this [unnamed] system for profit.

Also, I'm not done with the drawing yet. I just got back from somewhere

WhatULive4 · Post by **WhatULive4** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 7:59 pm

nightwheel wrote:I've been thinking nintendull. When sites like Engadget, Digg and Joystix catch wind that some of us here are starting to try to make a open source game console. Lots of people are going to want one when were are ready to sell them. So it might be a good idea if you change your mind to sell this this [unnamed] system for profit.

Also, I'm not done with the drawing yet. I just got back from somewhere

Would it even be possible to get this in the console price range? For a mini-itx board to go against the wii/360/ps3 I think it would be a hard sell.

Exactly how would this be different from any other pc with tv-out?

teraflop122 · Post by **teraflop122** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 8:56 pm

Gah, just ignore my previous comments nintendull. I can't help but be pessimistic about everything I see.

I think you should check out Intel's Little Valley Mini-ITX motherboard. It lacks many of the features of the others, but it's cheap- REALLY cheap- and I think this project will fail unless you can keep the cost bellow or near 150 USD.

EDIT: A mini-ITX console based on current boards would not compare with a 360 or PS3 in terms of horsepower.

Website · Post by **Life of Brian** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 9:17 pm

teraflop122 wrote:I can't help but be pessimistic about everything I see.

That's an understatement.