News

This competition has been organised and prizes funded by members of the online GP32, GP2x, WIZ and DINGOO handheld console communities based on various international forums.

The competition was originally suggested on the GP32x.com forums after one member was feeling frustrated and anxious waiting for the pre-order of his Pandora handheld console and decided a fun distraction was in order.

Please contact codingcompetition @ googlemail.com if you would like to donate towards the total prize pool, you can donate as little or as much as you like. Also you can request to be an anonymous donor if you like.

If you would like to be considered as a judge please contact us at codingcompetition@googlemail.com.

If you would like to enter the competition please submit your entry using the online submission box. Also if you want to contribute a splash screen please email us. Splash screens should contain “2010 P.A.C.C February 9-29 2010” and our web address.

This competition was organised to reward and celebrate our scene’s coders and give them an opportunity to work on something they might enjoy doing rather than something “THAT I ACTUALLY LIKE AND CAN USE” as one selfish member stated. Also this competition is not intended to be a way “to shake down the community.”

Rules:

Entries to be submitted by using the online entry box no later than Sunday March 28 Midnight Greenwich time.

Entries will only be accepted for the following formats: GP32, GP2x, WIZ and DINGOO (Native or Dingux).

Entries will be accepted for other systems only if they benefit one of the above formats. For example development tools, video encoders, game makers etc that run on PC/Mac/Linux…

Already released software must have a substantial upgrade from previous releases to qualify for judging and must also contain a list of changes to the previous version.

Entries to contain a text file with the authors email, PayPal address, the name of the software and a brief description of the software. This file should be called “entry.txt”

Entries that are not stand alone software will have to include any libraries or files required to run. In special circumstances we will be flexible on this rule but clear instructions will have to be provided. In the case of interpreters and emulators copyrighted files should not be included.

Entries are not to be released to the public until after the contest has closed and winners announced. Private beta testing is of course allowed.

Entries that run on the units themselves will require a “2010 PACC” splash screen to be eligible for prizes. These splash screens will be downloadable from the competition webpage or you can make your own as long as it contains the following information: 2010 P.A.C.C February 9-29 2010. It also must contain the competition web address “http://webpoint-servers.com/pacc/” and any corporate sponsorship we pick up along the way. 😀

Entries in languages other than English will be accepted as long as sufficient English documentation is provided.

Kwizz PSP is a simple Quizz created by wassgha, inspired and based on an idea by Jy98!

Even more news!

Quote:

Well, we also didn’t. But that was what happened.

The cases did arrive on Friday, not as expected today. While this usually is a good thing, we were shocked by the quality – just look at the pictures which float around at the boards and you’ll agree with us. The bad thing about timezones is: When Michael did get those cases, it was too late to call up the chinese factory to find out what went wrong.

So a lot of turbulences did happen at the boards – which was perfectly understandable. As said, we also were shocked.

However, it looks like this is another thing did learn: Injection mould samples will always look that bad if it’s just a bunch of them.

After recovering from the shock, we started to investigate and think about what just happened. To be honest I didn’t think this could possibly look like the final product. Come on, what kind of company would survive for 12 years if they produce cracked and cheap looking products to their customers. No, there HAD to be something we didn’t know.

Then some guys at the board who do work in injection moulding business did tell us a bit more. I also talked to some other guys via ICQ – and got the same replies from all of them: Doing a proper injection moulding run needs a lot of time. The machine has to heaten up completely (which usually needs a few hours) and the mould has to be aligned properly, which also does take some time. As this would mean the machine couldn’t be used for mass production at that time (which is a loss of money) they usually don’t let it heaten up completely.

As the plastic tends to keep sticking inside of the mould if not fully heated, they add a bit more grease. Otherwise, they’d have to manually remove the plastic which could damage the mould – and that’s definately not good.

Another thing was that they might’ve used recycled plastic for the samples. Why use the expensive plastic when it’s just samples that won’t be used at all anyways? That’s why there were discolorations and the case was looking greasy. As the finishing usually also isn’t applied, it looks scratched.

So as that did calm us down a bit, we had to wait until Fatihs friend could call up the factory today.

And guess what: I looks like this was EXACTLY the case. The samples were just meant to check if everything fits. The final mass production cases will be properly heated and cooled down and will get a nice finishing. This is what they did tell us.

As chinese holidays are nearing, you can surely think that a lot of their customers are currently trying to rush things, so they didn’t have much time at all to properly align the case.

So what should we say? We decided to GO for it! Let them do those cases – until we really do the mass production, we will never see a final case with proper finishing anyways!

Let’s hope they can produce as many cases as possible before their new year start!

More progress on the OpenPandora project!

Quote:

Wow. Actually, there’s something that happened earlier than expected: The cases did arrive, including the final keymats.

Here’s a picture of the final keymat. Now please give Michael some time to thoroughly test everything out.

Pandora news, straight from the source!

Quote:

All good things come to an end
And I’m really sure the Pandora is a good thing.

Here are some updates for you. The guys following the boards or my twitter account will most probably know all of this already.

The Cases
The case moulds have been finished and samples were shipped. They will arrive on Monday and if all is okay, themass production of the cases can start immediately.
They can do about 1000 a day and chinese holidays do start on February 14th. Therefore, to be on the safe side, they will probably do 1000 cases and ship them to the assembly factory. Assembling and testing will take a while anyways, there will not be much time between the time when the first 1000 are finished and the next cases will be ready to ship.

The Boards
Another 1000 boards have been populated and are ready to be put into a case. Therefore, as soon as those 1000 cases do arrive, there’s no reason to wait for mass production already!

Let’s keep hoping all goes well!

atari2600land has updated his single and two player simultaneous play variant of a very well known russian block game. The game was previously known as “Tetris”.

Release notes:

Was test-playing this and kept finding a bug which made the game freeze sometimes if you’re on level 9. So I just removed level 9 altogether. Now if you get 80 blocks, that’s the fastest speed there is. And it’s still pretty hard on that speed (at least for me.)

For all of those who own a Dingoo, it might be of interest that FW version 1.22 is out!

Wiz build of the OpenAL Soft Library (source included).

Transmit data between Arduino and NDSL.

“FB4NDS” (Facebook for Nintendo DS) is a Facebook application for Nintendo DS.

Release notes:

First release for this homebrew. More fixes and changes. Finally the chat is working well. If you have the expansion ram like 3in1 you can view your friends’s avatar.

Discussion: http://forum.gbadev.org/viewtopic.php?t=17034