If I had an open source emulator for C64, Mame, Spectrum and the like, would it be possible to hack away at the code and merge it with some kind of Game Center functionality, achieving online multiplayer in the emulator?
I'm not asking for the code or anything, I just had an image of booting up an emulator, a Game Center window saying it's looking for players, then starting a 2-player game. Is that feasible, or is just not possible to integrate an emulator with GC like that?
You could make one computer host the game by running the emulator. It would stream the video+audio to the remote computer, and receive keyboard+joystick events from it. Hacking this up would be far from a trivial task, but not colossal either. I don't think there's any useful "Game Center" software that would do this for you - you'd have to code it up yourself.
If the video streaming is a bottleneck, you could perhaps stream the emulated machine's state changes instead. This is much more ambitious in terms of the amount of coding needed, but it would probably solve any throughput problems.
Practical playability would suffer from network lag. Over the internet, you would probably be limited to turn-based games. In a local network, it might work well for action games too - it's all too hypothetical to really tell.
Apple won't allow you to publish an emulator on iOS. It requires downloading and executing code to run a particular game, which is forbidden.
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So in linux there are all kinds of menus and application launchers, but no one of them suits my needs.
Please, let me explain you what I want to do.
I student in a school now so we have fancy dreams and all those never getting involved ideas, but luckily I try to realize some of them.
I want to build an open source gaming platform, a video game console with a linux distro that is based on debian stable liquorix kernel and all that kind of stuff, but it needs its custom DE and something different from the PC interface as it will be controlled by a gamepad and will be a video game console, people must think it is not like a PC, people must see the cool interface and kind of realize that it is different.
The problem is:
All applications menus from other Desktop environments are a bit too windows-like which does not provide a video game console experience.
What do I need for that? How can I read a source code from other applications menus? How can I make something rounded in xorg, as I want to make it a cs:go-like rounded menu (CS GO is just for a reference, I don't play that!)?
One of the requirements in my project is to reduce runtime footprint on an embedded system. It looks like jackd is required on Linux and seem like it's currently a hard dependency and it cannot use libasound directly instead, is it true? It'd be also great to hear from someone who use jackd on an embedded device and could summaries it's resource usage. Although, I'm planing to use BeagleBone with relatively enough memory, I'd rather spare it for a longer delay line instead of running jackd.
Jack is definitely the standard way of doing it for SuperCollider on Linux. There is an AUDIOAPI flag in the cmake build settings - you can set -DAUDIOAPI=portaudio when you make your own build. (There's no direct libasound implementation; supercollider is cross-platform.) However, be warned that the portaudio approach is rarely used and might not even work at the moment. If you need help getting a build working, ask the sc-devel mailing list.
On the other hand I know people have run jack+supercollider on small ARM devices such as beaglebones. You might find it a better use of your time to go with the flow and use jack.
This is one of my coding projects. I'm fairly new to linux, so I need some pointers and thoughts from you guys, before I get started. I know there exists screen sharing software already, but I want to make my own! (=
Specifically, I want to clone my laptop screen to my TV over WLAN, via a linux box that is connected to a TV through a VGA cable:
Laptop streams it's screen
Linux box reads the stream
Linux box outputs the stream into the TV (through a VGA cable)
First of all, how do I record the screen and send the stream in real time in linux?
Secondly I must write a program that reads the stream being sent. The program must listen to some port, and collect the data being streamed from the laptop. Any thoughts?
Then I must output that data in real time to the TV. Do you how any ideas on how to solve this?
Thanks!
Edit: Regarding programming languages, I'm most comfortable with python.
Sharing your screen can be done via the various flavors of VNC (ie. RealVNC, TightVNC, UltraVNC, etc.). Most of them are Open Source, you might want to:
Stick with the VNC protocol for later compatibility
Take example of how the established solutions does for screen-hooking.
In Linux, the graphics are all processed by Xorg (new version of X Server), which was developed with networking embedded. This explains why you can ssh -X into a machine, execute a graphical interface on it and see it on your remote computer. I recommend you to read about hooks on Xorg to achieve your needs.
You need a client-server topology to achieve your needs. You are not talking about any programming language you forecast to use, though. Some languages may be harder than some to start with. Furthermore, this kind of code is already really well understood under every major programming language. You should try to at least use a framework that simplifies your networking portion of the project.
Sharing a screen on the TV can be done by your video card driver in Linux. Just check on your Desktop Environment (KDE and Gnome offers video configuration panels, for example) or in your video card configuration (nVidia and ATI Linux drivers offers multiple screen support)
It seems to me like you're trying to reinvent the wheel and are not too sure about how to begin. I recommend you to begin simple with one of the already proven VNC software and see how it goes from there. If a feature is missing, you've got the source code of the server and the client, so you can continue development of these projects. Once you've got your setup working, start thinking about replacing a single piece of the puzzle by your own code, and see how it goes.
Do not expect good (full HD, for instance) video quality on your TV without some very capable CPU/GPU and a 802.11n wireless network empty of users and be ready to accept some lag for the codecs to kick in.
You should try to take as small steps as possible. If I were taking up such a project, my first step would be to try to implement a solution using standard unix tools (e.g. netcat or socat for the network part, mplayer or vlc for the playback and maybe ffmpeg for the capture)? Then, replace each component with custom-written ones if needed.
I am a .NET programmer who needs to port one good Desktop OTP system already at work to be used into cell phones. As far I know J2ME is the correct answer to do it. I'll appreciate any good advice about IDE, first steps, books or any other information.
Well, Eclipse IDE have good J2ME support, or so I've heard.
For api, read the javadocs:
http://java.sun.com/javame/reference/apis.jsp
You'll have to figure out which device you want to target, and grab its emulator.
Then, proceed making a hello world app with the aid of tutorials.
I would give NetBeans a try as well. Eclipse and NetBeans are very similar, but the differences can be night and day depending on your personal preferences. NetBeans also has great J2ME project support, and it is plug and play for any emulator of a device you may need to target, though I recommend sticking to the default or SonyEricsson's. Motorola's was always buggy and never reflected the device at all, and Nokia's was always sloooow.
Also, there are a ton of devices out there. Before you jump head first into this you should define a scope of exactly which devices you will need to target. This will have a huge impact on scheduling as porting is no small task.
Finally, just get your hands on the actual devices you need to target. Emulator is a good way to start, but there are always so many nuances and problems that pop up once you throw the app on the device that it's best to have your target devices from day one.
I'd like to write a game for the Nintendo Wii. How do I go about obtaining an SDK and/or any other tools necessary for writing a game?
The Wii Remote and Wii Balance Board use bluetooth. You can pair them with your PC and write your own PC apps that interact with them (like this guy). If you want to make something that actually runs on the Wii, you can try finding some homebrew development help.
If you want to actually sell your software for Wii, you need:
game development experience
secure office facilities
$2,000 - $10,000 for dev kit (WiiWare is cheapest)
The Nintendo Software Development Support Group
Authorized Developer Application
UPDATE: Also see the Wii U Developer Site. Nintendo now has a simple application for individual developers to makes games for the Wii U, giving you access to the SDK and dev-kits.
You could spend literally thousands of dollars on the dev kit or you could be a bad person and go look at the homebrew stuff. It is technically hacking though, so I only hypothetically recommend it.
If you are a one-man team, then your only option is really WiiWare. At $2000 for the kit, you picked the right console. That's a tiny fraction of the cost of a 360 or PS3 dev kit.
You do have to have your own business. You also have to get your game rated by the ESRB which will put you back another $2500. Your game also has to be really good. In the end you could spend all the money and time and have Nintendo refuse to publish your game for any reason whatsoever.
A different approach... Flash.
You could develop a Flash game that is controlled only with the mouse. Put the game on the web so that it can be played on the Wii via the Wii's browser. The game might not be as exciting as a direct-to-Wii game, but you won't have to deal with things like development kits and modded Wii's either.
You would have to get in contact with Nintendo of America and obtain a developer kit from them. Be prepared to spend a wad of dough though.
Check this out:
http://www.nintendo.com/corp/developer.jsp
Yes the SDKs (and dev hardware) are expensive, and you must be an actual company with an actual office to get one.
The information in this post is dated. Today I set up an account with Nintendo as an individual using my full name as the company name. With this account I have access to the Nintendo Development Portal. There is some level of support provided. I should be able to develop an app. To expose my app on the Nintendo site will require that they have access to the code and full approval rights. I'm mostly in it for fun right now. But if you are looking for something interesting to do and have some ideas I would check it out.
https://developer.nintendo.com/